grief, longing & regrets
After Olivia died, my chest hurt and I felt heavy all over, as if my body was more than flesh, bone, and sinew. I questioned myself torturously, second-guessing everything I had done before and during her illness. In the weeks following her death, I found myself lost in cycles of “What if?” and “If only—.” They went through my mind like beads on a rosary, each one heavy with regret.
In the midst of grief and longings and regrets, I felt grateful. I was as overwhelmed by gratitude as I was by grief, thanking God daily that we’d been able to have Olivia at all. During that time, I was surprised to realize that I’d accept Olivia back at any cost and in any condition–even in a coma, even as a child needing total care. I loved to see her alive again, to feel her hand in mine, to smell the smell of her.
Though we had anticipated and prepared for Olivia’s death, we hadn’t allowed ourselves to imagine what life without her would be like. We went through life in slow motion during those first few months after her death. Everyone else in the world seemed happy, blessed, and sane. We suffered.
rituals of mourning
I read Kaddish, Leon Wiesenhalter’s book about mourning his father’s death. Wiesenhalter was a non-observant Jew whose grief compelled him to observe Jewish rituals of mourning, which required daily synagogue attendance and recitation of Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayers of mourning. The reading was sometimes slow going because of all the rabbinical teachings; but the book was compelling.
While reading Wiesenhalter’s book, I found myself enraged with Martin Luther for the Protestant Reformation, because before the Reformation, the early Christian church followed many Jewish customs. We lost these thanks to Martin Luther, Zwingli, and the other Reformers. Though I had been a practicing Protestant for most of my Christian life, I mourned the devastating loss of ritual, especially rituals of mourning. The early Church, like Judaism and later Catholicism, once acknowledged grief with structure and time. But the modern Protestant is expected to bury a child and return to the world as if nothing has changed.
Yet everywhere else in life, we recognize the need for recovery. A new mother is granted rest and care—often twelve weeks of leave—to recover from birth. A patient who undergoes surgery is prescribed a period of healing. But when your child dies, there’s no official space for rest, no sanctioned time to grieve. You’re expected to carry on, as if the deepest wound of your life should heal without a pause, ritual, or witness.
In the absence of communal mourning, the bereaved are left to improvise their own scaffolding. Where once there were prayers, periods of withdrawal, designated clothing, and meals brought for weeks, we now have therapy sessions and grief support groups—modern constructs trying to fill a space once held by faith and ritual. I hadn’t yet found such a group, but I already sensed what had been taken: the right to grieve openly, and the collective responsibility to bear witness.
grief brain
For months after my Olivia died, every day I woke up feeling heaviness and chest pain. Tears dithered behind my eyes constantly.
I was terrified of losing another child. Some people—even family members and old friends—avoided us. It seemed that we were allowed a week or two grace period, after which we were expected to return to our normal strength. Death had birthed us into a caste of undesirables, and our isolation was great.
I constantly felt a tender ache of longing for my missing child. The finality of death was stunning and cruel, something I hadn’t expected to experience so bitterly, for I was a Christian with every hope in an afterlife.
I felt Olivia nearby, as if I might find her in the next room or catch a glimpse of her rounding a corner.
I wasn’t in my right mind. I had taken a break from work on my
Master of Arts in Literature, and one day received a paper back that
I didn’t remember writing. And yet, there it was in my hand, marked “A,” and dated two weeks after my daughter’s death. I stood there dumbly, looking at the red “A,” feeling crazy.
My children dreamed of their sister as a radian, light-filled presence; I dreamed only of Olivia, ill and fading. Two months after she died, we took apart her bed, and I wept for hours afterward. By that time, I carried a million cherished memories of her, alongside a handful of painful moments—and an overwhelming tide of regrets.
finding the right support
I joined a grief support group at a local church three or four months after Olivia’s death. The group was led by a social worker who had lost her only son in Vietnam and whose husband had died of cancer. She frequently pressed group members with probing questions, especially those who were newly bereaved. It felt as though she measured grief on a personal scale, granting more sympathy to some losses while dismissing others as overly sentimental. She embodied the kind of professional whose own unresolved grief colors their approach to those they’re meant to help.
After six weeks, I left the group and sought out a local psychoanalyst for support. My grief felt too precious and private to be dissected in a church setting. While I lacked the strength to hold that social worker accountable, her influence lingered: she showed me I had the power to protect myself and to keep searching until I found the help I truly needed. Before Olivia’s death, I had no idea how I’d respond to such a profound loss. Now I understood that even amid immense suffering, part of me would remain my true self.
deathiversary
Life went on, and there was something soothing—almost medicinal—about schedules and routines. Eight months after Olivia’s death, her birthday arrived. I made a photo album of my favorite photographs and mailed it to her birth mother. My heart ached for hours afterward. I like I couldn’t breathe, as if the grief itself might crush me.
There was constant pain, constant guilt, and constant relief—the pain of missing Olivia, the relief of no longer having to provide constant care, and the guilt over feeling that relief.
How had I managed it while she was alive? Looking back, I couldn’t understand how I’d done it.
The one-year anniversary of her death came and went, but not without force. For all the years I had taught and talked about anniversary reactions as a psychotherapist, I had never understood their power on a personal basis. All of the same feelings I had during the 24 hours of Olivia’s dying and death returned in full.
Later, in quiet reflection, I could see how Love had carried and sustained me. I was not bitter. I was not full of self-pity. I had not used Olivia’s death as a weapon or a shield. Her life had always challenged people—exposing their assumptions and stirring their discomforts.1 Her death only magnified this for others. But for me, she was, and would always be, my beloved child.
Losing Olivia shook me to my emotional, psychological, and spiritual core. But I had come through it, changed and refined.
notes
- In depth psychology, we speak of some such discomforts or assumptions as possible complexes or neurotic tendencies. ↩︎
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