Ask Kara
for Sunday, July 5, 2009
Had a woman write saying a couple she knows recently had a child die. The woman wrote: 1) she wanted to know how to help them, 2) she was worried about them, and 3) she held Christian beliefs that the child was in a better place now.
Well, all I can say is: There is no prescription. [as Dr. Peter Barr would say]
While it is wonderful that the woman has a certain set of beliefs that see her through her own tough times -- that is her own prescription. That prescription will not necessarily work for others. Especially after a child dies, our previous belief systems are often shaken to the core. To tell a mother that her child is in a better place dead is just silly. For a mother, there is no "better" place than right here with her. Now, that mother may, someday, come to hold beliefs of a religious or spiritual nature where something like that makes sense to her BUT she has to come to that on her own. If you try to mask your prescription of faith onto her, you are not meeting her where she is at in the moment. You are trying to force her to be where you are. And that is not help.
The other thing I will add to this is that we live in an impatient world. But the grief process takes a looooooooooong time. It isn't something we "get over" but rather it is a process that becomes integrated with living our everyday lives. Just like you are a parent to your living children forever, so too is this couple a mom and a dad to their dead child forever. The physical body is gone, but the love remains. Just like your relationship with your living children will morph and grow and change, so too will this couple grow and morph and change in the way they think about grief, love, their own different kind of parenthood. Trying to hurry them along to "get better" will not help.
So the best advice I have: Be willing to show up and meet people where they are in the moment.
Don't have an agenda.
Don't come with an answer or fix or cure.
Don't be afraid of your own mortality.
Don't try to prescribe how your interactions with them will go.
Just be present.
Hear where they are.
Stay with them.
Allow every interaction with them to be whatever it is in the moment.
Hope that all make sense.
Here are a few other resources for ideas about how to help/how not to help:
Dos & Don'ts from MISS
Responding to Insensitive Remarks
Theory vs. Experience
Ask Kara: How do I help my friend?
Dumb Things Said: the horror
Doka's Idea of Disenfranchisement
Why do you want the false Buddha?
Death Talk Podcasts
About the Author
Kara L.C. Jones is a Grief & Creativity Coach at MotherHenna.com.
Catalyst Eighty-Seven
11 hours ago
2 comments:
Thank you for writing this Kara.
Recently my daughter was diagnosed with Edwards Syndrome at a 22 week scan. The news was heart breaking and I faced the most crippling devastating set of decisions I ever had to make. Nobody should have to make decisions like that.
For those of you who do no know what Edwards Syndrome is, it is a chromosomal difference that has an extremely high infant mortality rate. My daughter had a extra chromosome 18 in every cell of her body. She had a VSD, problems with her kidneys, issues with the umbilical chord, too many things to mention. I was advised that an overwhelming majority of these babies do not survive the womb (around 80% - 90%). Those that do often die within minutes, hours or days of birth. Less than 50% of those that survive the womb live more than 3 months.
I was told my baby would not be able to feed or breathe for herself. Life would be painful and without quality. Medical professionals would keep her comfortable but would NOT resuscitate her. They said her life was futile. While all of this was going on I spent hours in consultations, watching ultrasound scans of my baby, loving her so much.
We chose to terminate the pregnancy to free her from pain and suffering. We could not stop her from dying or change the prognosis but we could save her from pain. It took weeks to reach this decision and was not made lightly.
Since making this decision, people have moralized over me, judged, quoted their religious beliefs to me and all in all made my grieving process so much more painful than it already was. They have acted in a very unchristian manner!
My decision was one of love and has tortured me to the core. Not because I have doubts over my decision, but because I love Nina so much and wish she could be here with me, alive and well. With a chance of survival. I miss her. I cry every day. I don't want to forget my daughter, I love her and she is a part of me.
Even those with good intentions can act hurtfully in situations like this. Kara is absolutely right when she says that one persons belief is just that, their belief!
My mother, trying to be kind in her own way, getting by the best she could, couldn't stop muttering Buddhist chants when in the same room as my daughter. She had the entire Dharma in which she lives lighting candles and dedicating services to my dead daughter.
I have a lot of respect for Buddhism, it is a gentle faith, but I am not a Buddhist. I found the constant stream of progress texts upsetting. I didn't want someone sending me hourly texts reminding me that my baby was dead.
And sometimes I don't want to have to explain why the tears are rolling down my faces or why I am finding it difficult to muster up enthusiasm for anything. My daughter should have been born alive and healthy 3 days ago but wasn't and won't be. Isn't that answer enough? How many times does it need to be said?
Jasmine, my whole heart to you. Thank you for sharing all you shared -- again shows there is no prescription.
I, too, have great fondness for Buddhism, but I was not okay with rituals that were to end after a certain number of days and you were not to "disturb" the dead again after that. It felt like an artificial deadline for doing ritual.
Probably the thing that was most important for me personally was for people to understand that the love for our son continued -- death could not take that. And that my motherhood was different, but I was still a mom. So the expression of those things would continue in whatever way they continued for me.
Of course other bereaved parents were the most able to "get it" and simply be present without trying to control our interaction. But there were many others, too, who were willing to try -- or who were comfortable enough with their own mortality to simply be with us.
The folks who were not able to be with us -- well, they were %99.5 of the time, people who had a prescription for how it should be -- based on their definitions of either religion or mental health or some kind of -ism.
For instance, many of the feminism beliefs were very uncomfortable with me as a "mom" because my baby was stillborn. Though feminist friends were willing to come to my baby shower ( and did not ever call it a fetus shower ), they were unwilling to allow that I gave birth to a baby. If they allowed that my child was as child, then it messed with their abortion politics which say "not a child" "not emotional choice" etc.
I would suspect that you probably experience some of the feminist backlash in your experience. If they allow that choice is choice is choice -- and you made your choice and it was emotional and doesn't change the fact that you love Nina very much -- well, it complicates their abortion politics that says "not a child" "not an emotional choice" etc.
It sucks that in a world that is supposedly wanting equality and wanting women to be empowered to make whatever choice is right for them -- even in the most "liberal" quarter, our choices are not honored.
Anyway, I'm babbling, but I wanted to just say that yes, we see this often, too. Bereaved parents find their situations complicated by the belief systems that want to categorize or fix or dismiss our unique situations. Rather than having others simple BE with us -- whatever our unique situation -- there is a tendency to want to give platitudes or to dismiss grief experiences entirely.
For whatever it is worth, I see you and Nina and I get it. Sending you lots of Reiki vibes!
k-
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