Author: Tara Powell

Grieving is natural. Grieving is necessary and important. When a significant loss occurs, it can hit like a natural disaster, with no warning. Your only choice is to pick yourself up from the rubble. Your life has changed. From now on, you speak of your life as before and after the death occurred. There is no getting back to life as normal, a new normal needs to happen. You may feel like a stranger in your environment. You have changed, yet everything around you stayed the same.

When this happens, our relationships are impacted. You have those around  you who are not directly affected and who just don’t get it. They may try to explain it, however, they have no connection to your pain. There are advice givers who throw around one liners that hurt more than they help. In addition, people who are attracted to your loss say they understand and it is frustrating because you want to scream ”No, you don’t!”

Those who sit with us and share our grief I have found to be the most challenging. You expect to be at one with them in pain. Often, this is not true. We all grieve differently. We have unique experiences with the deceased. It is tempting to compare but this is dangerous and it is never wise to compare. You simply cannot compare pain and why would you? If you hurt you hurt. It doesn’t matter who hurts more. In reality, people hurt differently not more or less. Respect each hurt. Acknowledge its impact. You do not have to understand to be supportive. Listen to each other. Grieve together as well as separately.

When our son died, I believe the most important thing that my husband and I did was to communicate.  We talked a lot and allowed each other to have our own pain. We allowed for not understanding what the other felt. We respected each statement that came out of our mouths and gave each other grace. If I could see it was important to my husband, it was important to me. He did the same. We promised each other that our grief would not separate us. It was so hard and losing Jacob was harder. It would not benefit us to do it alone, together we were stronger. We acknowledged how grief challenged our marriage. The statistics on the survival of a marriage with a loss of a child haunted us. We recognized our battle and chose to hold each other through the storm. What could have destroyed us, became the foundation of our marriage. I prayed endlessly. I stood on Mark 10:9, “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” We leaned on each other as we both leaned on the Lord. God became the glue.

Looking back at those years, they were was sacred. They were so tender and precious. I will never be grateful for the death of my child. I am grateful for what came out of the rumble. Our devastation made our marriage what it is…..beautiful.