After Kalei’s death, my body instinctively tried to shut itself down — I was no longer hungry and I slept constantly. When her funeral was over, and my last regular universe Kalei’s mom job was done, my will (to live) tried to follow the same path. My being responded to the crisis by changing what was previously an upright structural posture, into what I can only describe as a protective fetal curl designed to help my body withstand the onslaught of unspeakable pain. That was when Mother Nature…..
One Sunday about a month ago, I was snuggled up in bed, half awake and half asleep; when my mind threw these words at me…grief does not define me! “Wow,” I said, “that came out of nowhere!” It was ‘said’ in such a powerful way that I was well and truly awake. “Dangit”, I said out loud to an empty room, “there is no going back to sleep now.” After trundling downstairs and making a cup of coffee, I sat…..
The second Christmas after Kalei died, I wrote the following on Kalei’s forum. To those who did not have the opportunity to follow those posts, I would refer to Kalei’s gravesite as her ‘room’ in my stories. This is what I wrote on December 1, 2002… Last year I could not face Christmas, so I just pretended there was no such thing as a holiday season. I told my mind to treat it like any other day of the year…..
I came across this picture of Kalei taken the Christmas before she died. We were at her Uncle John and Aunty Carols farm in Saskatchewan. She looks so very happy sitting on Santa’s knee. In her face I see beauty, joy, playfulness, shyness, tenderness and love. It feels like I see all of my Sweetie Pie in that picture. See for yourself… Shortly after finding the photo, I happened upon a couple of posts I had written the second Christmas…..
Prior to Kalei’s death, I did not give much thought to the nuances of living a future based existence. Like most people, I assumed that my lifetime ahead events and the time triggers associated with them, were attainable imaginings, but in no way were they fixed into place if I did not want them to be or if I changed my mind. After she died, I came to appreciate how wrong I was about that last part. You see, when…..
When death happens out of sync with the circle of life, a strange type of time mapping begins – at least it did for me. It started with identifying current time in hours since Kalei’s death, rather than the actual clock time itself. It was not 6:00 o’clock or 10:00 o’clock; it was 10 hours since she died and then 14 hours since she died and so on. Far too soon, I had to acknowledge the word ‘day’ in my new time perspective……
One of the things grieving Mom’s tell me about is the discomfort they encounter when trying to introduce the name of their scary sick, terminally ill or dead child into a conversation. To a person, they cite tears as the main contributing factor. Nine times out of ten; no matter how hard both parties try and hold their emotions in check, as soon as that child’s name is spoken the waterworks start. When that happens, regardless of who is doing the crying, both parties instinctively…..
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