Grieving Parent's Grief

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.......Psalms 147:3

This is a picture of my beautiful daughter, Nickole who died on October 25, 1993.  Today in the midst of the  grief we, as a country, are going through over the tragedy in Newtown CT, I have decided to blog about what it feels like in the days, weeks and years after your child dies.  Many of you reading this, may have experienced this yourself in varying degrees and ways but for those who have not, maybe this will in some way help you to remember these families when others may not.

I will tell you later in the blog about the "how" my daughter died.  Right now, I'd like for you to understand some of the things these parents have facing them.  Reality.....it takes many days for this to sink in.  I remember when the sun came up the first day after my daughter's death, asking God how the sun could just rise.  I remember school buses coming down the street, and thinking how can they just go on as if nothing happened.  Your entire world has ceased to exist in the way that you know it and the world just seems to go on as if nothing happened.  It's a very lonely feeling you see because even others who are grieving for your child are not experiencing your grief.  Your grief is your own.

There is such a churning on your insides and a pain down in the very pit of your being that cannot be consoled.  I think this is where God's grace comes in.....in those places that you don't even recognize or know about until you need it.  Since so much time has passed, I can reflect now and understand that without HIM, I would not have made it but at the time, I was very skeptical.

It would be a waste of my time and yours to try to get you to understand the pain.  Only if you've experienced it would you be able to understand it.   My purpose of blogging on this is to help us all to keep these families lifted up in prayer and if my post can help you remember at a time when you may have forgotten, then my purpose will have been accomplished as they have so much ahead of them and so many different things to go through.

As I was watching the news, they were saying late into that fatal night that the children were still in the school and there would be no time set for their bodies to be removed.  Grief came over me for a totally different reason and that is that the parents felt helpless to help their child, although at that point, there would be no help.  It's your nature to do everything you possibly can for the child and they could not reach them.  Authorities do everything they can to shield a parent from seeing anything that would be burned into their brain as they deal with these sort of things and they know it would be too much to bare.  As a parent, you still just want to help.

This would be just one of many things they were going through.

My story?   Nickole committed suicide by getting in my own car in my own garage and turning the motor on and then turning the motor off.  BUT, it ran long enough to fill the garage with carbon monoxide and take her life.  I'm not going into much more detail in this blog post except to say that when we found her, her body was still warm and my husband removed her from the car, had me call 911 tried to shield me from anything else that would happen.  I did see her laying on the driveway and for years after that I saw the same thing every time I stepped outside my home.

So I know that whatever these parents saw first will be remembered for a very long time.  They will not see the pictures you and I are looking at of the beautiful children.   When they lay down to sleep, they will dream of their children's deaths much more than their lives for a very long time.

Today, I just say pray.......pray every time you think of it.  Just ask God to give them what they need because we don't even know what all that entails.  Join with me in prayer for these families.

Bronna