Grief (Day #7 of AtoZ Blog Challenge)

When I first started thinking about this A to Z Blogging Challenge, at first there was the thought that I could be book-related and fairly silly: Gilbert Blythe. I loved the Anne Shirley series when I was age 11, and read and re-read. I still re-read them at regular intervals, in fact. (These books and the original Little House books are on my re-reread cycle every year or two.) However, I thought that GRIEF would be a more pertinent topic.

In fact, I can add Gilbert into the mix. Anne and Gilbert, in Anne's House of Dreams look forward so much to their first baby, conceived soon after their marriage. She arrives with the dawn early one June morning: "At dawn, when the rising sun rent apart the mists hanging over the sand-bar, and made rainbows of them, joy came to the little house. Anne was safe, and a wee, white lady, with her mother's big eyes, was lying beside her" (116).

If you have read the book, you know what happens next.

"Anne. . . did not need to be told to think of her baby. She thought of nothing else. For the next few hours she tasted happiness so rare and exquisite that she wondered if the angels in heaven did not envy her."(116)

"At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it.

. . . 'It seems as if part of me was buried over there in that little harbour graveyard - and it hurts so much that I'm afraid of life.' [Anne]

'It won't hurt so much always, Anne.' [Marilla]

'The thought that it may stop hurting sometimes hurts worse than all else, Marilla.'" (119)

Later in this book, Anne mentions how she feels she is able to follow little Joy's growth (each day, each month) in heaven, and she would know her when she saw her again. She also knows that no matter the number of children she has, none of them will every take Joy's place in her heart.

That's how I think of my little S. He is growing in heaven. (I also know that he visits his little brother.) He is not confined to the cemetary where he is buried. I have never believed that. That was his earthly body but not his spirit, not his soul. We visit the cemetary once or twice a year, but I am not drawn there as others are to their loved ones' graves. (I am not one who wants to celebrate every holiday in the cemetary with plots/stones.) I have never believed that he is really there. His spirit stays around with us most of the time, or is with his great-grand mother. When S died in arms around 3 am on April 3rd four years ago, I heard her voice (she'd passed away two years before)saying, "He's fine. He's with me now."

Grief. . . The proposed guidelines for the new DSM-V say that qualified professionals can diagnose individuals with Major Depressive Disorder as soon as two weeks after a loved one dies! This means that they would have a label on them for life, and would be able to be treated with
various medications. This really isn't always necessary. Perhaps in some cases, yes, but how do we know which professionals really know enough and/or have enough of their own life experiences to be able to properly sort out what is real depression versus what is NORMAL GRIEF?

I would think that is a difficult task for anyone. From my own experience, I was still in a state of shock after two weeks. I hadn't really started to comprehend that S was really, really gone. I was also feeling guilty for the relief I was feeling (that S was not suffering anymore.) A co-worker who'd lost hear son several years before told me, knowingly and wisely, that it would not really "hit" me until about six months out. She was close. . . it was five months for me. Everything and anything reminded me of S. I would be in a grocery store crying because at the point of time, if S had been "normal" he would have been eating solids, and I was buying vegetables I could have used in the baby food grinder to feed to him. Any pregnant women or people with babies who looked about S's age made me cry. Everywhere. Anytime. Every time.

I do think some people need medication. I know that my anxiety (not depression) has been helped with certain medication (finding the right one was a challenge)over the years, and I can tell the difference when on it versus not on it. I also take only enough to take the edge off the anxiety, but not enough to dampen my emotions. It is just that the medication allows other emotions to come through not always affected by anxiety.

However, TWO weeks after a death is not enough time to work through the normal emotions associated with grief. Especially when related to the loss of a baby or child. For me, it was the hardest that entire first year, when we were going through the first year anniversaries of everything. . . first Mother's Day and Father's Day without him; the first anniversary of the day when we found out about his heart defects; his first birthday; anniversary of his first open heart surgery, and the hope we had; first Christmas without him; the first "angelversary" on April 3, 2008. All of these things.

In the two weeks after S died, I wanted to eat. I know that for some people can't eat after someone close has died . . . but I have always tended to "eat" my emotions. Ten days after S died, I went back to work so that I wasn't at home eating package upon package of cookies. I did that for two days straight, felt so sick, and decided I needed to get my mind elsewhere.

I might have gone back on my medication during all of this (I also eat less while on medication - the desire for sugar isn't nearly as strong), and the medication itself may have been a factor in his defects (I was on a small amount during his conception with my doctor's - at the time - approval), if I had not been trying to conceive again. My new perinatalogist insisted that the med may have been a factor and to stay off, and also to take lots of extra folic acid (which can make a difference in heart development at the third week of pregnancy.)

Anyway, for an excellent argument against the changes to the DSM standards, please see Dr. Joanne Caccitorre's blog:

http://drjoanne.blogspot.com/2012/03/relativity-applies-to-physics-not.html