Normal

Tonia Lynch Lowe

Children are not supposed to die. Parents expect to see their children grow and mature. Ultimately, parents expect to die and leave their children behind. This is the natural course of life events, the life cycle continuing as it should. …The loss of a child is the loss of innocence, the death of the most vulnerable. When a parent dies, you lose your past; when a child dies, you lose your future.

A wife who loses a husband is called a widow.
A husband who loses a wife is called a widower.
A child who loses his parents is called an orphan.
But there is no word for a parent who loses a child, that’s how awful the loss is!

When you accept what has happened, you aren’t acknowledging that it is okay but rather, that you know you must find a way to keep growing and living – even if you don’t feel like it. Don’t let grief be your constant companion. Realize that your grief is born out of unconditional love for your child and rejoice in that love which will never end. Embracing life again is not a sign that you have stopped missing your child, but an example of a love that is eternal.

This space is with me all the time it seems. Sometimes the empty space is so real I can almost touch it. I can almost see it. It gets so big sometimes that I can’t see anything else. What is Normal after your child dies?

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family’s life.

Normal is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Birthdays, Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, New Years, Valentine’s Day, July 4th and Passover.

Normal is feeling like you can’t sit another minute without getting up and screaming, because you just don’t like to sit through anything anymore.

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if’s & why didn’t I’s go through your head constantly.

Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away.

Normal is knowing your last name will not carry forward in future generations.

Normal is having the TV on the minute you walk into the house to have noise, because the silence is deafening.

Normal is staring at every girl who looks like they are Shad’s age. And then thinking of the age she would be now. Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never happen.

Normal is every happy event in your life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole in your heart.

Normal is telling the story of your child’s death as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone’s eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of your “normal.”

Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child’s memory and their birthdays and survive these days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fits the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really.

Normal is going thru yet another special holiday, such as Christmas, and wishing it would hurry up and be over so you can get to a day that doesn’t take you to your knees with pain so horrible that you wish you were dead.

Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special my daughter loved. Thinking how she would love it, but how she is not here to enjoy it.

Normal is still getting mail addressed to your deceased daughter, or to receive phone calls for her.

Normal is having some people afraid to mention my daughter’s name.

Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever.

Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse, not better.

Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss, unless they too have lost a child. Nothing compares. NOTHING. Even if your child is in the remotest part of the earth away from you – it doesn’t compare. Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unnatural.

Normal is trying not to cry all day, because you know your mental health depends on it.

Normal is realizing you do cry every day, in some of the strangest places. At work when you think of your child. In your car when you drive past children having fun. In a store when you see someone from the side or back that could be your child. In the toy department of a store when you remember the fun times you had with your child. At home when you set one less place setting at the dinner table. Crying in strange places – not at all for those that have lost a child.

Normal is walking past your daughter’s clothes that still lay on the bathroom floor after her last shower at home.

Normal is wondering if you have the strength this day to go thru your child’s things.

Normal is seeing your child’s friends grow up, get an education, make something of themselves, get married and have children, wondering what if.

Normal is seeing young ladies or young men that might have become your son-in-law or daughter-in-law, the parents of future grandchildren, and then realizing it will never be.

Normal is still listening to your child’s voice on the home answering machine, and sometimes, just to hear her voice again you call your home number.

Normal is beating yourself up day in and day out wondering if you had only done this or that, would your child have been in the place they were on that dreadful day.

Normal is looking at your child’s picture and wondering what if.

Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone except for someone else stricken with grief over the loss of their child.

Normal is sitting at the computer crying, trying to see through the tears and to focus with what I need to do.

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house, did the laundry, or if there is any food.

Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have three children or two, because you will never see your child again, and yet when you say you have two children to avoid that problem, you feel horrible as if you have betrayed the dead child.

Normal is knowing you will never get over this loss, not in a day nor a million years.

Normal is having therapists agree with you that you will never “really” get over the pain and that there is nothing they can do to help you because they know only bringing your child back from the dead could possibly make it “better.”

Normal is learning to lie to everyone you meet and telling them you are fine. You lie because it makes others uncomfortable if you cry. You’ve learned it’s easier to lie to them than to tell them the truth that you still feel empty and it’s probably never going to get any better — ever.

And last of all…
Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are “normal.

ILMO Miss Shada Brooke Lowe!!!!!!
I love you, Momma