Grieving Mother Offers Advice

By Dr. Val Farmer

October 17, 2003

Brenda Houts from Detroit Lakes Minnesota lost each of her three sons during their teen-age years. This is her advice on how help a person who has lost a loved one.

- Be there for me. Be my friend. Just being near can be a tremendous help. If you can't be near, write, phone, send flowers to show you care, and continue this for years to come.

Remember my loved one’s birthday, or death anniversary - even after the first year has long been over. Don’t leave me alone with my memories. Trust me, I am thinking about it. Mentioning it just gives me comfort in knowing others haven't forgotten my loved ones.

Tell me your memories. Tell me the stories you have of my loved one, they don't have to be "wow". They can just be everyday things. I love to hear others talk of them.

- Involve me. Call me up and ask me to go the places we have always gone together. I might not always feel up to it but it will help us move back into daily life if you walk with me. Don't desert me after the initial shock is over. Let me know you still care about me.

- Share the sorrow by listening. Be a good listener, the grieving person sometimes needs to talk, and talk, and talk about their loved one. All you ever need to say is an "I'm sorry" that comes from the heart. Listen to me talk of my loved one - even if it is the same story over and over. Understand that I only have these memories, I do not get anymore, which makes them very precious to me. Don't be afraid of my grief or my crying.

- Don't judge me until you have walked in my shoes. When you listen, don't try to correct me, or tell me what to do, and never tell me you know what I am going through. At that point in time I feel nobody knows what it is like and I am right. I can only feel for another person whose child has died. I do not know what it was like to have their child die. There is no comparison between losing a child and losing a parent or spouse, each type of loss is unique.

- Be patient. It takes time to accept loss and to deal with changes. It has been 16 months since Zach has died. I still do not walk upstairs and see his bedroom door without hoping he will come out. I think of doing something with his room but when I go in there and look around. I find myself sitting down on his bed and looking at his pictures and then smelling his clothes.

Now society might tell me that this is wrong, that I should be moving on. To that I say I am moving on, I get up every morning, I shower, go to work, cook, eat, play, exercise. That is moving forward. To society I say, go home and sit down with your child, look them in the face and decide how much time you think it would take you to forget their smile, their walk, their beautiful eyes.

I am part of a grief support group for parents and siblings called "Compassionate Friends." I go because the people there know what I am talking about. We want to talk about our loved ones and most of society doesn't want to hear us.

- Hug me. Give me a hug. It brings comfort. We go back to work and the daily hustle of life so soon after the death. We get into the practice of saying, "I'm fine" when asked that sometimes we don't even know that we need comfort.

- Let me grieve. Do not tell me what I should or shouldn't be feeling or doing. Just stay close, keep an eye on me, watch for behavior that does not change. I was told once by a grief counselor, "It is ok to stay in bed today and pull the covers over your head but if you don't get out tomorrow, I will come and get you up."

As time goes by, the good days will out number the bad days, but for the rest of my life I will have some bad days. It is normal.

One of the hardest things to deal with is someone else’s need to lighten my emotions. If I am sad, they try so hard to take it away from me instead of helping me work through the sadness. Understand that grieving is something I will be doing for the rest of my life. It is now a part of who I am. Eventually, as time goes by, I’ll remember my loved ones without the pain.

Friends, relatives and co-workers want to ease the pain but do not know how. Many times I have heard people say, "I didn't say anything because I didn't want to make you cry." If you speak to us and we do cry, it is ok.

To me, this is what grief eventually becomes: the ability to face the reality of the death of your loved one, the ability to adjust to that loss each time it is in front of you, and the ability to continue to live a life by finding meaning in other things. My loved ones died, I did not.

Brenda Houts can be reached through www.minnesotaspeakers.com, at brendah@lakesnet.com or at her website www.foreverthree.com.