1. Please describe the most significant loss experience in your life.
I have experienced a number of losses throughout my life but none as significant as the loss of my father. His death came at a time in my life when I was struggling to learn who I was as a young adult.
My father was diagnosed with renal cell cancer when I was 19 years old. I was away at college and made my bi-weekly phone call to my parents when I received the news that my father had cancer, it was aggressive and incurable all in the same night. I was overwhelmed with the idea that my father was home dying and my younger sisters were too far away for me to be that “big sister” that I had always been when I was home. I was numb to the idea that all my dreams as I knew them were crushed. I succumbed to the fact that I would not have my father there to walk me down the aisle at my wedding when the time came, he would not holding my child for the first time and he would never see our dream of me becoming a teacher come true.
That May I graduated from that college and went on to a college in Boston which happened to be located next to my father’s hospital. For a year I was balancing three lives; school, home and my dad. I set-up my schedule in school to be secondary to my personal life knowing I only had a short time with my father. Every Thursday morning my father was at the hospital for his blood transfusion and treatment. I remember feeling mentally and physically exhausted that year he was sick. My life was consistent but the littlest things would set me off course. I was overtaken by the thought that the strong man that once made me the center of his word was now a fragile man that now was the center of my world. I was living on the idea that I needed to do all I could to please him because I only had him for a little longer.
I remember getting the call from my mom telling me that my dad was in the hospital and it was time for me to come home. I was on auto pilot. It was at that moment I became an adult with adult decisions, adult thoughts and adult emotions. My mother was at the hospital with my father that night and when she came to pick me up I drove home. I called my sister at school and told her the news about my father. I sat with my 15 year old sister that night and tried to answer her questions. I cleaned the house so my mother could ride home with him in the ambulance. I sat with him, read to him, and cried next to him. I got to say good-bye. But I was numb.
My father died in March a month after my 21st birthday. I planned the readings for his funeral. I needed to do it. I needed to have the funeral be the concrete experience that represented closure to my father’s death so that I could heal. I remember feeling angry at people who showed up at his wake to support me. My friends came to his wake and I didn’t want them there. I wanted to be alone and with people all at the same time. Two days later I went back to school and my father’s death was a life-changing memory.
2. How did you cope with this loss?
I coped with the loss of my father in many different ways. I became the support person for my family. I found listening to their feelings and offering them ideas on how to cope was a way for me to process my feelings. As I proceed through the grieving process I pushed away people that I loved as a way to protect myself from the hurt that loving someone brought. For a long time I lived by the motto, “If you love it to much it will go away.” I was happy alone. Eventually that alone became a sad place to be and that is when I was ready to talk about my feeling. Unlike my family I wanted to speak to someone who was not part of the big picture. An needed an objective voice that could speak directly to me, about me. I began speaking with a psychologist. After about 4 of them I found one that I was comfortable with to share my thoughts and emotions. Eventually I began sharing my feelings with family and close friends. I reflected a lot through pictures and journaling. The pictures were a concrete object of my past; a way to keep my life in perspective. I poured my heart and soul into teaching and my job as a recreation leader for teens and adults with special needs.
3. How would you describe your current status with respect to the loss?
I have accepted my father’s death. I am at peace with the idea that my father no longer suffers. I feel privileged that I was provided with closure to our relationship months before his death. I still feel sad at times. But the sadness is only a passing feeling now that comes when something momentous happens in my life that I wish he was here for like my wedding day and the birth of my daughter. I miss him. At times I still crave to talk to him when I know he would have the words to get me through hard times.
4. What have you learned from this loss experience?
I have learned a lot from this experience. I have learned that a loss doesn’t heal overnight and that it takes years to find a place you feel emotionally and psychologically comfortable. I have learned that the grieving process is not a systematic flow through the stages of grief but that you travel back and forth between the stages constantly. That it is OK to ask for help. I have learned that everyone handles loss and grief differently. Dealing with emotional issues is exhausting both emotionally and physically. That it is OK to be sad and it is OK to be happy. That the simplest things in everyday life can trigger memories and the emotions associated with them. That the loss can take over your life if you let it. Time heals all wounds but the scars forever remain.
5. How has your experience prepared you to help children with their loss?
My experience has prepared me in a number of ways to help a child dealing with a loss. Having lost my father at such a vulnerable point in my life I handled the loss as a child would handle a loss. I experienced firsthand many of the behaviors, ideas and stages of grief that a child who would be placed in my family through DCF has experienced. My loss gives me the opportunity to validate and begin to understand a child’s feelings and actions when they are struggling with their own journey. My experience gives me a story to share when and if a child needs to know that they are not alone in the grieving process. My experience has prepared me to know many of the services out there to help a child to cope with their feeling associated with the loss or need for belonging. My experience has helped me to not pass judgment when a child behaves a certain way because it may not be who they are but the way they are processing their past.
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