Good Grief and You

How far is Heaven? I asked myself this many times after my baby died.

A couple months had passed since my baby died…
I was in the kitchen cleaning up the supper dishes and singing.   I love to sing! 

The song I was singing was one I remembered from my childhood. It was on an old 45 record my Dad used to have. The song was written about a little girl who had lost her Daddy and she was asking her Mommy…how far is Heaven?

I do not remember the words to the actual song but I do remember the chorus. I’ve included the video of this song here and at the end of this post.

Tonight I made up my own words.
They went like this…

When clouds of grief come it sometimes seems the sun will never shine again.
Days come and go in this fog of grief and it’s easy to feel out of touch with reality.
It’s almost like you’re living in a daze…

Recently we have been having many many cloudy days… It brought back memories of when my baby died.  Cloudy days were hard.  Crying came very easy and moping around seemed par for the course.  I loved it when the sun shone once again.
It seemed easier to cope with grief when the sun was shining.

Recently a friend of mine had a life changing experience.  She has experienced life changing events before but this one is a moment she will remember for the rest of her life.  Suddenly and without warning her husband collapsed while working.  No amount of life-saving techniques made any difference.  She watched in disbelief as her husband died.  He was 55 years old.  She is 48.  There are 5 children still living at home and the youngest is in 3rd grade.

I have been inspired by what I see her doing.  It is something that is serving her really well as she faces many unknowns and is suddenly plunged into the grieving process.
She just keeps on doing what comes next.

I read a story recently about a little girl whose name was Jenny.
She saw a cheap string of pearls in a store window and asked her mother if she might buy them.
Her mother told her she could buy them with the birthday money she received from her grandmother.  Since the cost of the string of pearls was more than the money she would receive from her grandmother Jenny needed to earn extra money.

The fact that they weren’t real pearls didn’t matter to Jenny.
She was quite the industrious 5 year old… doing odd jobs for the neighbors and extra chores for her mother.  At last Jenny had saved enough money to buy this beautiful string of pearls.

It was a match made in heaven!
Jenny wore her pearls everywhere, and all the time.

Sometimes in the grieving process a person may feel like they’re just going through the motions and not really living life.

Going through the motions of life without really feeling connected to what is happening around them.
Going through the motions and feeling isolated from reality.
Going through the motions because of the intense hurt and pain that happens when someone you love dies.
Going through the motions because right now that’s all you seem to be able to do.
Going through the motions just doing what needs to be done…  It’s kinda like being a zombie…just roaming around… wondering when the next shoe is going to drop…