shadows beside me

While we (bereaved parents) are readjusting to our perception of what grief is, and who we are as we grieve, and how our relationship with our deceased child will be, grief changes and evolves, subsides and resurfaces.

Right after our child’s death, we see only devastation. Grief is all-consuming and suspends us in time. There is no future. We become grief. As more time passes, and our grief is affected by the inward (example: solitary) and outward (example: social) steps we take, we begin to fantasize:

What if…he were here, alive, today…in high school now…driving… What would he look like? How tall would he be? Would he wear his hair short? Or long and shaggy? How funny he would be…if…and what would his laugh sound like now?

Over time, we see a “dual-image” of our child: a “real-image,” and a “shadow-image.” And both images coexist in the present. We relate to the concrete memory of our real-image child, and we relate to the abstract idea of our shadow-image child, the one that we what-if about into the future. “Perhaps this is the true meaning of continuing the bond with the deceased child,” said Dr. Shanun-Klein in Gili’s Book, A Journey into Bereavement for Parents and Counselors.

As we continue to realize: he would be graduating today, or, she will turn seventeen tomorrow, our grief resurfaces. The pain may even become worse with time, and not better.

And so it is that we begin to recognize the different shades of our grieving in this seemingly impossible, unpredictable, and lifelong walk. And so it is…

♥

Source: Gili’s Book, A Journey Into Bereavement for Parents and Counselors by Dr. Henya Shanun-Klein