Surviving The Loss Of A Child
- Written by Stephen R. Marsh
Introduction
Taking time for my children has always been important. At least once a week I would make certain to drive my oldest daughter to first grade. She would give me a hug, a kiss on the nose, another hug and then run off to class, stopping briefly to wave before she disappeared into the school. With a drop off time of 8:15 and an office that opened later, those drives gave me a chance to let Jessica know that she came first and to start my day with putting family first.
Later, as our baby Courtney started to be a toddler, I would get up with her when she awoke in the early mornings and she and I would sit down on the floor and read the morning paper together. That let her tired mother get a little more sleep and gave me a time each morning where I could put my child and family first.
I was asked to write this article to share how my wife and I coped with the unexpected and unrelated deaths of Jessica and Courtney and what we have done to help our surviving daughter. It is hoped that this might help others who find themselves in the circumstances of losing a child or other loved one.
What to Expect
Grief
All significant loss results in grief. If you've lost a grandparent, a pet, a job, or had to move, you have experienced loss and grief and the associated stress.
For "normal" stress your mind automatically responds in whatever pattern you use to deal with stress. For some people that means jogging, for some it means swearing, for some, time with a good book or the television.
Everyone has coping mechanisms that are used to deal with "normal" stress. However, when a person experiences extraordinary stress, the normal coping mechanisms are not enough. As a result, when a person experiences a loss beyond the normal stresses and conflicts of life, they subconsciously begin to cycle through various methods of coping, trying to find one that works better.
This happens to everyone who experiences extraordinary stress. The not necessarily rational logic used by your subconscious is:
"I have to try something new, after all, if the normal method worked, the stress would be gone."
Half of dealing with grief is recognizing this cycling process (which occurs over and over again) and working through the disruption and pain that accompanies it. The other half consists of enduring pain. While it is extreme, deep and forceful, and while it never completely heals, you can learn to cope with the pain that grief provides.
Incapacity
In addition to being painful, severe loss is incapacitating. For example, the period of substantial incapacity normally lasts one to three years when a child dies, nine to fifteen months for a miscarriage. Often losing a job results in substantial incapacity for three to twelve months.
Because a substantial portion of incapacity is the loss of mental function, a person who has lost a child often is not able to properly gauge the depth or level of their incapacity. Many people report that immediately following their loss, they lost the ability to stand, talk and think at the same time. The mental effort required to keep their balance took more than they had. At the same time, they were unaware of suffering from any incapacity, only looking back did they realize just how impaired they had been.
Unfortunately, in addition to reduced mental function greater financial obligations usually accompany loss. Thus the demands on your ability increase as your ability decreases.
Coping and Catastrophic Change
By nature, everyone has multiple ways to cope with any problem. While everyone has heard of the "Flight or Fight" alternatives, there are actually about nine methods of coping used by people, each with a typical type of action and an associated mental state.
- Attack. When faced with a problem, one may attack it. The action for this pattern is fighting and the emotion is anger. Anyone who reacts to challenge and problems with anger is focused on this pattern of resolving conflicts and problems.
- Fleeing. When faced with a problem, a person can run away from it. The action is flight, and the emotional state is fear. Many people run from their problems.
- Denial. The action is to ignore the problem and the emotional state is dullness.
- Dithering. The action associated with dithering is random response and the emotional state is confusion. Dithering is also referred to in the literature as distracting.
- Co-option. The action associated with co-opting problems is cooperation. The general act is trying to reach a participatory and collective action and the emotional state is a cooperative one.
- Analysis. This response to stress or problems is to attempt to think through and understand the problem. The emotional state is usually curiosity.
- Action. This response is somewhat of the opposite to Analysis. It is "doing something, anything" and in many ways is an active form of dithering. The emotional state is one of extreme intentness.
- Appeasement. The general act is to just give in and the general emotional state is guilt.
- Anguish. This response is to give up and the emotional state is one of despair.
Whenever there is catastrophic change and pain, the mind treats the pain as a signal that the current methods of coping need to be changed. The subconscious treats the pain as proof that the current method has failed and forces a person to begin to try the methods over and over again until the pain decreases and something is found that "works."
Persons who have catastrophic loss will experience all of the above states and methods over and over again in their lives, almost randomly, until the pain decreases.
Thus, if a person were assaulted and robbed in a parking lot, they would feel anger, confusion, guilt and a desire to do something (or nothing) over and over again until the pain hadhealed. The emotions and states would be applied to everything in life, not just parking lots and banks.
A person who loses a child will suffer through this cycle for at least a year and usually for three to five years. If they are moved off track in their healing they can become stuck in a mode for five to ten years or even for life. One of the worst things outsiders can do is pressure grieving parents not to resolve a mode or to attempt to force them to stick in one.
Steps and Cycles
It is important to understand that these steps associated with grief and mourning can afflict everyone, not just those with "serious" losses. While these steps are caused by the constant cycling of coping mechanisms, these steps occur, to some extent, in every life when loss occurs. While few lose children, many lose jobs, friends and other hopes, and experience portions of the same steps.
Biography: Stephen R. Marsh
Stephen R. Marsh is an attorney practicing in Wichita County, Texas, and a member of Compassionate Friends (see web-site below).
Jessica died January 26,1993 from Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS - the same thing that resulted in all the Hantavirus deaths). While ARDS has over a hundred known different causes, and while Jessica spent a month in ICU units, the better part of that time in Dallas Childrens Medical Center's ECMO unit (the best center for ARDS treatment for children in the United States), the best guess her lead physician had for the cause of her death was "extreme bad luck."
Courtney died on December 26, 1993. On the 21st she had a complete check-up (we took her in for an ear ache) and she was in perfect health. She came down with what seemed like a mild version of the flu on the 22nd of December. On the 25th she still seemed to have the flu so we took her to a hospital because she seemed a little listless. (We were a little overprotective of her) She was diagnosed as a new diabetic. While in the intensive care unit, she had a seizure which herniated her brain stem. She was pronounced brain-dead onDecember 26th at the UCLA PICU.
I must also note that I and my family would not have made it but for the incredibly kind and careful help of the local community. It is impossible to adequately express just how much of a difference they made and the extent to which so many people helped.
For a book devoted to discussing many similar things, see James Dobson's When God Doesn't Make Sense. See also The Grief Recovery Handbook by James & Cherry (Harper & Row) at pages 30 and 34 for a more clinician oriented set of lists. A book I liked is When Good-Bye Is Forever: Learning to Live Again After the Loss of a Child, John Bramblett (Ballantine/Inspirational, New York 1991). Unfortunately, it was not picked up for wide library sales distribution. Of the countless journal type books, I liked it the best and only wish it were easier to find.
A great deal of harm is done by people who force grieving persons to cover their grief over and to bottle it up inside where it will fester and grow bitter or otherwise not heal properly.
Studies have shown that regardless of how religious you are, sincere prayer has a substantial healing effect. From a statistical viewpoint, it is your personal sincerity that matters, not the religious tradition you embrace.
Emotion needs to come out and be expressed - but in places where others will not be harmed or use the emotion to harm you. Often, in severe grief, a person does not need consolation so much as they need to mourn instead. Christ said "blessed are they that mourn" not "blessed are they that avoid mourning" ...
http://adrr.com/living/sloss.htm
Copyright 1995-1997 Stephen R. Marsh, also recommending:
The Compassionate Friends
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