I have just discovered another blog, another mother. I keep in touch with my cancer mother "friends," those connected through extreme similar circumstances. But then, some of our stories are no longer the same. I want with all of my heart for their children to continue surviving, without incident - I pray for those children and families. At the same time, it is a painful reminder that my Madeleine.... why couldn't she survive? Why was she chosen for heaven? Why was our family chosen for this forever, unending painful existence? To write the words, "WE MISS HER SO MUCH" does not even begin to fully describe what that means, to the extent of the pain, the seriousness, the anguish, the dull knife prodding our hearts. Those words go into a pop song about a puppy love crush, not to represent our baby dying a horrible death to a monstrous disease.
Yesterday Big Sister kept saying that our baby died, she died from being very sick.
It turned our stomachs inside out.
She's not lying. She doesn't understand how that makes us feel. At the same time I cannot in good conscience tell her not to say it. What a challenge it is to grieve individually and still try to help a small child understand, when we don't understand ourselves.
I'm going to start reading her blog. I may pick up her book. I know we aren't the only family going through this. The hard part for us, as I suspect it is for others, is the cancer part. The struggles and hiatus and emotions and that journey in itself that prefaced this bereavement journey; the absolute best and worst days of our life. How is that possible!!? How can life be so cruel? The best days of my life because they had Madeleine in the flesh and all the most wonderful and hard everything about her. I hope in time it will become the period of our lives that made us strong, faithful, somehow something good from so much strife. I welcome the day I no longer have the tormenting flashbacks of her suffering. Too many to choose from, each more torturous until her very last day. There are days I just don't want to live anymore, not like this. And really, only a bereaved parent truly understands EXACTLY what that statement means.
Facets of Life...: The Language of a Bereaved Mother: Bereaved mothers speak the same language. We may not be able to translate it to the rest of the world, but bereaved mothers understand i...
