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My children’s grief
compounded my own
Just after 4:00am on February 21st, 2003, I woke to the
sound of my husband, Jose, drawing ragged, gasping breaths. His
mother—to whom he was very close--had undergone a double bypass the
day before, and I switched on the bedside lamp to wake him from what
I assumed must be a frightening dream about her surgery,
In fact, my own nightmare was just
beginning. He wouldn’t wake up, and by the time I got the 911
operator on the phone, he had stopped breathing. I performed
panicky CPR for 20-minutes before the paramedics arrived, but they
were never able to revive him. My sweet, funny husband, the
adoring father of our precious children, my soulmate and my
salvation, had died, two weeks before his 32nd birthday.
I grieved as much for my shattered
future as for the past. Our children were so tiny—and they had lost
so much. Our nine-month-old daughter, Clara, would have no memory
of the father who had adored her, and our three-year-old son, Ben,
missed his Daddy terribly. My children’s grief compounded my
own—and I feared the burden was more than I could bear.
After being a “stay at home” mom
with an incredibly supportive husband and co-parent, suddenly all
responsibility fell to me. I was fortunate to find work almost
immediately, but every day seemed to bring new, unpleasant
surprises. My husband had let his life insurance policy lapse,
the house was in danger of foreclosure; I hadn’t even realized we
leased rather than owned his car until a wrecker arrived to haul it
from our driveway.
I learned about “Journey of Hope”
almost by accident. In the sleepless hours after my children were
in bed, I had taken to trolling Internet grief sites, hoping to make
sense of my overwhelming new reality. Although the website I found
was accessible to people around the globe, the first person to
respond to my posting was a woman named Julie, whose children had
been almost the same ages as mine when her own husband had died
suddenly the year before. She was kind and empathetic, and she
explained that an incredible support group called Journey of Hope
that had helped her and her children as they struggled to build a
new life.
I felt envious—until a couple of
e-mails later, I realized that Julie lived in North Texas, and
Journey of Hope meetings were in fact held just 20 miles from my
home. The very next week, Ben and I attended our first meeting. I
wasn’t sure what to expect, or whether we would ever attend more
than that one meeting.
It is still difficult
for me to communicate what a wonderful experience it was for us to
belong to Journey of Hope. From the effervescent woman who greeted
Ben with a special warmth every time we came for a meeting, to the
volunteers who planned special events and prepared delicious meals
and desserts, to the caring, nurturing facilitators who led both of
us through our respective sessions every two weeks--everybody was
amazing.
And the support from
the other members of my group—people with whom I had everything and
nothing in common—was priceless. Everyone was honest and
encouraging. I derived so much inspiration from the men and women
who had been there longer than I; they were surviving, somehow,
despite their sorrow, and listening to their small successes gave me
something to strive for. As time went by, I was always
brokenhearted when new members would join us—their grief still raw
and fresh—but even as I wished the best for them, their presence in
the group helped me to realize how far my own little family had
come.
The sessions were
sometimes hard to get through—but each one took us a step closer to
healing. Before long, both Ben and I actually looked forward to
attending. With the demands of caring for him, his infant sister,
the house and a brand-new full time job all by myself, the bi-weekly
Thursday night meetings gave us special time to share. I found him
very open to talking about his feelings on the long car rides home
from Journey of Hope, and I came to treasure that time together.
Through that horrible year after
Jose’s death, Journey of Hope helped me realize how much I had been
strengthened by his love. My greatest surprise was not that Ben and
Clara and I couldn’t live without him, but that we could-- a
realization that made me sad but also very proud.
I am blessed to have
two beautiful children, and memories of my beloved husband that
bring me more joy than sorrow these days. I also feel blessed to
have found Journey of Hope in the time I needed it most. |
