Relationships

Relationships

One of the pitfalls of grieving is destroying good relationships.  I am not an expert on relationships and don’t have all the answers and I also know it takes two people to have a good relationship.  What I mean is I can desire a good relationship with someone and do all I can to build that relationship but if that person does not desire that relationship it remains just that a one-sided relationship.  As you read this blog it is not meant to condemn you just because you have relationships that are really struggling, it could be that you are the one who keeps running your race while the other person refuses to keep going.  But when we lose a loved one especially a child, we hold on to that relationship with all our might.  We don’t want to give it up. 

When we celebrate the birthdays of our boys, I sometimes struggle with how to celebrate.  Are we going to watch the same video every year and share the same memories?  We change, their friends change, sometimes a lot, but our boys don’t change, no new memories, no life changing experiences, they are who they are and will be who they are for the rest of our life.  The relationship with them doesn’t change, the pain of separation hurts so much that we remember only the good in them and if we remember the things that were annoying or painful even those memories become precious and we would like to tell them that they can be even more annoying and bring us even more pain, we don’t care we just want them to come back but if we get stuck and hold on to them to much our wonderful children, spouses, siblings or any loved ones who are still here will soon begin to feel that they are no longer important because if they cause us pain or do something annoying we now become frustrated quicker. 

As we all know when our children leave us on this earth, we celebrate their life.  Celebrating their life means remembering all the wonderful things about them.  We all come together, parents, siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends, teachers, everyone who has been a part of their precious life and we share stories, many of these stories would be forgotten and never shared if they continued to live but now that they are gone they become very precious to us.  After Roderick passed away, we as a family loved the stories told about Roderick.  It was so precious to see how much so many different people loved Roderick.  Then a year and nine months later Tyler went to heaven and again we celebrated his life and enjoyed the stories we heard but now Angeline was left alone. One day Angeline told me that she needed to be as smart as Tyler.  I told her she did not, why would she have to be as smart, Roderick wasn’t “but Roderick was athletic” she said. 

 She would also make comments like’ why don’t you have family pictures on the wallpaper on your phone? etc.  After the boys went to heaven, we had photos of them everywhere.  With her brothers being so celebrated she was beginning to feel like she had these two heroes for brothers but who was she? Left behind in pain and lonely and unnoticed.  She wasn’t able to express it like that and probably didn’t even know that that is how she felt but slowly I began to see that it was more important really to celebrate the people that were still here, the ones where it makes a difference.  Our boys are safe in heaven and they are happy.  Us crying for them and missing them won’t make them sadder or happier but I do believe that as they watch us from heaven, they are joyful, every time they see us encourage each other or love on each other.  The way I know my sons they would not want us to stay stuck in grief and pain.  It would make them both happy to see us happy and enjoy being around each other and so I have decided that my relationship with my Husband and daughter are a priority.  I love my boys and miss them but there’s nothing I can change in that relationship and they are safe and happy so when times get tough and we go through a deep valley I am willing to focus on these relationships even if it means putting my pain and grief aside for a bit. 

After Tyler passed away, we have dealt with a lot of anxiety.  Would we wake up and find another one of us has passed into eternity?  I often felt like we were so busy just trying to survive that we didn’t have time to really grieve Tyler’s passing.

I remember when I was young a very young widow once said that if she weren’t sad how would her husband in heaven feel if he looked down.  She felt that he would want to see that she missed him.  A lot of grieving people feel that way.  They feel their sadness proves how much they loved their loved one.  It’s true that grief is the price we pay for having loved deeply but at the same time I’m not sure how true that is because sometimes people who have not loved well and missed the chance to love deeply when they loose this person who they should have loved and who they should have treasured grieve even more.  Maybe it’s not grief then maybe its regret, I don’t know.  There too though none of us has loved perfectly so we all deal with some regret as well.  Anyway, I think we all agree that heaven is a happy place, full of love and no sin.  If that is the case and there is no jealousy and no selfishness, how could our loved ones ever feel hurt because we aren’t sad for them.  If they are in such a happy place wouldn’t they want us to be happy too.  They know that we are still on earth and that there is pain here but they also know that we are headed towards their happy place and that when we get there the worst pain we experience here will just be a little bit of muscle pain in this race of life.  As they watch us run this race, they want us to high five each other and encourage each other, because after all we are running towards the finish line where they are so surrounded by love and happiness.  As they cheer us on they love to see us happy and the last thing they want is for us to stop running and just stand and watch them in the stands while our loved ones who are still here with us keep running and leave us behind because we refused to take our eyes off our loved one in the stands long enough to see them running the race with us. 

So lets remember our loved ones who’ve gone on to heaven are watching us run our race (Hebrew 12:11) and although they can’t run with us right now because they have finished their race the last thing they want is to see us giving up on our race, they want us to keep running towards them and they understand that while we are running we don’t have a lot of time to stop and miss them but they are cheering us on anyway and they want all their loved ones to run the race together loving each other and encouraging each other even if in hard times we have to take our eyes off them a bit and focus on getting up this steep hill right now. That doesn’t mean that they will take their eyes off us and stop cheering us on from the stands.  They might just ask God to send an angel to give us a drink so we can make it up the hill.