Like all of you, my heart and spirit are hurting this evening. More specifically, for the past six or so hours, I am feeling huge waves of sharp, fresh grief roll through me again and again, as I imagine what the mothers and fathers of those many, many little children who were killed in their Connecticut classrooms today are facing tonight.
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That first night at home, after I had stumbled out the sliding glass doors of the hospital into a dear friend’s waiting arms and car, forced to leave my firstborn child – who was actually, inexplicably dead – behind with strangers, I faced a brutal horror; for the first night since his birth, I now lived in a world where he was not. The early pain of that awareness was more intense than any pain I’d ever imagined possible until that time (it got worse).
But also that first night, I felt a floating sense of powerless unreality. I hoped to God that if I just took the sedatives that were being urged on me, and slept a few hours, I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be true. But when I awoke around midnight, it was to a house full of activity, people lovingly caring for me and our family, but it was still true. My child was dead. He’d really died. His body was still back at that hospital, without me, and would soon be autopsied and taken to the morgue.
So I stumbled out of bed, threw up, and then I took another Valium, and climbed back under the covers, trying once again to flip the off switch on this nightmare that had come to life earlier that day.
Sometimes during that first 24 hours, during which I rarely moved, I’d awaken in my bed, where I was curled on my side in the fetal position, to wail and scream and beg and tear at my hair – literally- before someone would rush into the bedroom to hold me and pat my back and encourage me to drift back off again.
That’s basically what the first night was like for me. And I am guessing my experience isn’t untypical.
Tonight, in one, single community in the U.S., dozens and dozens of parents and siblings and grandparents and other family members will spend the next hours of their lives in some way similar to what I’ve just described. And just thinking about it has put me on the floor in tears.
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I want to write more about what happened today. About both the children who were murdered, and their broken hearted families, and also about the existential pain of the parents of the (usually) very young men who commit these far-too-frequent and uniquely American-style slaughters. But tonight, I find that I really just want to go to sleep, and I once again find myself hoping that when I wake up, it won’t really be true… it won’t really have happened today at all…
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On Children
by Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Katie,
So from the heart written from a mother who has been in that terrible place.
It’s is too much to fathom. I keep thinking of the families with lost children and the brave teachers and the principal and the psychologist who tried to help–and who lost their lives. It is too much. My husband is a high school teacher. We have two kids who struggle. I am coming from a place of eerily understanding what it is like to live with young people who struggle with black rage–and as a parent you can do all you know how to do and seek help from people…And evil happens. And the world is heart broken.
Thanks for this beautiful post, Katie. I live in CT and have two kids in the same age group and the empathy for what you have just described has been killing me all day. Just killing me. Thanks for putting it into words.
Katie:
As I read your post I am crying. I can’t imagine or fathom what you or these have gone through or are going through right now. My heart aches for you and these families that have lost your babies.
My prayers are with you and these families. Thank you for putting this into perspective for me and writing about it. I can only imagine.
Shari
For once can you not make a tragedy all about you? You and Henry have NOTHING to do with this horrible school shooting. Yes, you lost a child, but you can’t possibly know what those parents in Newtown are dealing with. It makes me sick how you profit off of someone else’s misery.
She does know what it feels like to lose a child. She does know what it feels like to go through the first night having lost your child and hoping that it isn’t true every time you wake. She isn’t making it about her and Henry, she’s relating to the pain those parents are feeling. People all over the internet are writing about this tragedy in different ways, including by relating it to their own circumstances. Be kind.
I will not be as gracious or kind as Betsy. You are an ass and need to realize that comments like yours offer nothing. Good grief. Pray you never need the tolerance or sympathy of strangers.
@DM -
I am grateful beyond words for the incredible amount of compassion & sympathy that friends & strangers alike showed me while my teenager was dying in the hospital for 5 weeks, then immediately following his death, and in the 2 years since.
I am unclear why you are angry at me, but whatever the reason, I’m sorry I’ve somehow upset you.
Peace to you and yours,
Katie
C. Don’t be mean!!!
This is very emotional and moving. My prayers are to all of those today in CT and also to you. No one should ever be allowed to tell you how to feel and when to feel it. If they haven’t suffered a loss of a child on their own, then harsh, degrading words need to be kept silently. One loss is of no lesser importance than the next. They are all important and so there should be no expectations on how you deal with the grief even if openly. Putting it in writing helps you and also helps others who can relate. Ignore those who put you down and know that you may be lifting up another even if out of your own misery. God Bless.
Out of respect for these families and their huge and sudden loss, I wonder if we shouldn’t just let this tragedy be about them.
This post is 100 percent about love, life and loss. It is a beautiful and moving testament to the bonds that parents and children share, and how fragile they are. I appreciate these words, as a parent who is struggling to understand the culture in which my children will grow.
Anyone who understands this post as anything other than what it is needs to reflect on their own personal situation, attitude and what they are projecting into the world.
It’s called empathy. Having been through the same gut-wrenching situation–the loss of a child, Katie empathizes with these grieving parents. I can only imagine what any parent in this position goes through.
Only parents who have lost a child can truly grasp the nightmare that will face these families for the rest of their lives. Katie writes beautifully for the purpose of sharing her insight into the worst thing that can happen to any parent. Anyone who does not wish to read Katie’s insights does not have to read this blog.
At this time, it would be best if all of the media backed off and left the families in Newtown alone. They need time and space to process this catastrophe and work through the horrific shock. It’s disgusting to see reporters and journalists prying into people’s lives at times like these. Instead, the best way to try to understand the parents’ feelings and experiences is to learn from other bereaved parents who have reached the point of being able to share with others. Katie is just such a parent.
I usually try to wait a week or so before I attempt to make sense of these (all too frequent) mass shooting situations. So much of what is published in the first days, and the way it is discussed, is based on factually incorrect information, which in turn makes the discussion pretty much useless as well. It’s venting, not intelligent insights at this point. Venting is necessary, I guess.
I am horrified by the deaths, but I will not have anything else to say until we know more. Remember when Gabby Gifford and others were shot? At first everyone was talking about politics as the cause, but that turned out not to be the case at all.
I agree that Katie certainly knows what it’s like to experience the death of a child. Obviously the circumstances are very different. Henry was 19, not 5 or 6, he died due to a sequence of events having to do with drug addiction, mental health issues and the criminal people who prey on those who have those problems.
There are times when I too wonder why everything has to do with Henry, but you know what — this is her blog and if she wants or needs to relive the trauma all over again, that’s her business. Katie certainly has powerfully described what one mother felt like the first night after her son’s death. I would prefer to see her having obtained some distance but that’s not said as a criticism. To me, reliving this over and over so powerfully sounds like PTSD and something to get help for, but I’ve said that before. More than once.
@jzzy55
Just to clarify, Henry was 18, not 19, although that’s certainly a meaningless distinction in the context of what it’s been like to lose him.
I respectfully (and I truly mean the “respectfully” part; I hope you know how much I value your participation in the dialogue on my blog.) disagree that the fact that as a bereaved parent of only 2 years now, there’s anything particularly surprising about the fact that I am thinking tonight about how hard that first night was for me *because* I am so torn to pieces by how painful I know it will be for the parents who lost children today.
If I’d survived a vicious shark attack two years ago, and today there was a large amount of news coverage about someone else who was attacked by a shark under different circumstances, I don’t think it would be unusual for that to create a lot of thinking around my own experience, and what it was like, and perhaps express an emotionally intense empathy for the victim of today’s attack.
Women who lose babies to stillbirth or even SIDS often tell me that they are told that their losses aren’t as “bad” or as “real” as the losses suffered by parents of children who die after infancy. That’s so, so not true, of course.
The group “Compassionate Friends,” which is for bereaved parents, doesn’t categorize parents of dead children into categories ranging from “terrible” to “not so terrible.” Whether you lose your child to stillbirth, SIDS, childhood cancer, a lightning strike on the middle school soccer field, murder, a stupid mistake where your teenager drives drunk, or to brain injury from drug overdose, you have lost a child. In my opinion, the universal awfulness of that experience transcends the specifics, which are deeply personal and unique to each family.
I’m thinking about my own loss tonight, yes, because I am hurting deeply for other parents. I can’t imagine how I could not.
Thanks for telling me what you thought of my post.
Love to you,
Katie
I hope you’re able to find rest tonight Katie. I appreciate your words because it does help for us to sympathize with these parents even more when we get a first-hand account of what it’s like. I just went numb this morning when I found out about the school shooting. It’s hard to reconcile such evil exists and when it’s shed on such innocent life it hurts worse. Those precious babies. The more I hear the more I don’t want to hear. But I’m praying for those mommas and daddies tonight. I hope they all have the same kind of support surrounding them.
I know you — and many others — are blogging about this in an attempt to show empathy. However, I’m uncomfortable with this trend. I really like the comment from Sue (December 14, 2012 at 9:58 pm) that “Out of respect for these families and their huge and sudden loss, I wonder if we shouldn’t just let this tragedy be about them.”
Also the phrase “American-style slaughters” is factually wrong. School shootings have occurred in:
-Erfurt Germany in 2002,
-in 2007 in Jokela, Finland,
-Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada,
-in 1989, Dawson College in Montreal in 2006, and
-Dunblane Scotland in 1996,
…to name but a few.
@PNP -
I believe that this tragedy impacts everyone. Obviously, it impacts no one more profoundly, permanently and painfully as the parents who have lost their babies today, but we are all feeling the magnitude and the unbelievable violence of this particular loss.
For many, probably most of us who have already experienced the nightmare of having one of our children
die, the huge volume of media coverage and
all the conversation as the nation tries to process what’s happened is inevitably bringing our own grief to the surface again. And I, along with other bereaved parents I spoke with tonight, are so acutely aware of the nature of the pain these parents are suffering that we feel sick with sadness. It’s gut wrenching enough to empathize with the parents who lost children today because you can only *imagine* their pain and hurt. It’s another type of painful empathy when you don’t have to imagine what it’s like to go thru losing a son or daughter because you’ve actually done it.
Take good care. Thanks for reading and commenting,
Katie
Your need to make this about you is absolutely disgusting. Those sweet, innocent babies have nothing in common with your 18 year old, voluntarily drug-addicted son. You were with your child when he died; these parents were not. They did not get to hold, and comfort them as they passed. You have no idea what these parents are going through.
@S -
You’re right. My teenage son had a drug addiction. He also suffered from an anxiety disorder. And you are also correct that I was able to be with him when he died, and before that day, I spent 5 weeks caring for him as his brain injury slowly took him from us.
Watching my child become unable to speak, eat, and eventually breathe was very hard. Having to make the decision to remove him from life support, and then staying with him after life support was removed as he died were both very hard for me to bear. But I am grateful for every moment of that time. And I’ve often thought how much harder it would have been if he *hadn’t* made it to the hospital that first day, or if he hadnt woken up from the initial coma. I am so grateful that I got to say goodbye to Henry.
There’s no “good” way to have your child die. Children who linger suffer, and it’s so awful to watch your child suffer as he or she dies, and not be able to do *anything.* Maybe you’ve experienced that, and know, but if not, it really is an agony I cant explain. But a sudden death, especially when you are not able to be with your child to say goodbye, is also beyond imagining. The way that the parents who lost their children today experienced those losses is also an agony that no words can describe.
I am not sure which one of these experiences that any parent would *choose* if he or she had to. Because no matter how your child dies, that’s the essential fact of it. Death and loss and a lifetime of longing for the parent who is left behind.
I’m sorry you find me disgusting. Honestly, I just don’t know what else to say about that except that I am truly sorry if I’ve offended you somehow.
Take care,
Katie