The Gap

Through the suggestion of a friend, I was reading the blog of a woman who lost her three year old daughter. She mentioned an article The Gap and I went on an internet search to find the article. In my search, I came across a number of articles that I will be sharing in the next few days. Perhaps they will not mean anything to those reading my blog, but they provide me with the confirmation that although grief is an individual journey, there is a common thread woven throughout. Maybe these articles will help someone else in their grief. Perhaps, they will even help build a bridge between those who have lost and those who have not.

The Gap

By Michael Crelinsten TCF, Victoria, British Columbia


Our daughter, Alexis, died six months ago, at the age of nine.
A rare medical anomaly, in a heart-rending wrench of our
innermost spirit, stole her from us in barely more than a
moment. Recently, I was at the beach near our home with
what remains of my soul – my son, Ethan. Our new puppy
romped with us. Beautiful weather, fresh salt air, gentle clear
water and sea lions barking in the distance. Perfect. Walking
back, I saw a sharp, rusted metal rod and thought to get it out
of the way. As I tossed it aside, it caught my thumb and cut
me. Perfect. Every moment of peace we have, cuts.
Everything that is, hones what is not.
The gap between those who have lost children and those who
have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose children
are well and intact can be expected to understand what
parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear.
Our daughter now comes to us through every blade of grass,
every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal,
every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with her atoms – her
hairbrush, her toothbrush, her clothing. We reach for what
was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and
shredded. What we had wanted, when she so suddenly took
ill, was for her to be treated. We wanted her to be annoyed
that her head had been shaved for surgery. We would have
shaved ours and then watched her smile as we recovered
together, whatever the nature of that recovery. “Recover” is no
longer a part of our vocabulary. Now we simply walk through
the noise and debris of our personal ground zero.
A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it
often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place.
For us to enter there is to be cut deeply, and torn anew, each
time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we
return, again and again, for that is where she now resides.
This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly.
At some point in the distant future the edges of that
hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will
remain – a life sentence. It is not unlike a dog who, suddenly
hit by a car, survives. The impact is devastating and leaves the
animal in shock, confusion, and despair. In time the animal
recovers adequately to spend the remainder of its life on three
legs. It is not that he is unable, eventually, to function or even
to laugh and play. The reality, however, is that on three legs
from here on, every step he takes, every action, virtually every
breath reminds him of what he has lost. We are that animal.
Our community of friends will change through this. There is
no avoiding it. We grieve for our daughter, in part, through
talking about her and our feelings for having lost her. Some go
there with us, others cannot and, through their denial add a
further measure, however unwittingly, to an already heavy
burden. This was not a sprained ankle or major surgery that
we suffered. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” six
months later is simply “to not get it.” The excruciating and
isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically
sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it
is a trap – those whose compassion and insight we most need
are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow
them that sensitivity and capacity. And, yet, somehow, there
are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to
reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have
understood, again each in their own way, that Alexis remains
our daughter through our memory of her. Her memory is sustained
through speaking about her and our feelings about her
death. Deny her life and you have no place in ours. That’s the
equation. How different people have responded to our loss, or
not, transcends a range of attitudes and personal histories. It
is teaching us much about human capacity and experience,
albeit at a searing price. Parents’ memories of a lost child sustain
that life. It should be the other way around.
We recognize that we have removed to an emotional place
where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be
normal are painful and the day to day carries a silent, screaming
anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to
moment. Were we to give it its own voice we fear we would
become truly unreachable, and so we remain “strong” for a
host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and
drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would
be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet
we dare not do otherwise. People who understand this dynamic
are our gold standard. Working our way through this over
the years will change us as does every experience – and
extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will
have recovered when, as we read, it is not longer so painful to
be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point or
who will still be with us.
There will come a time, quite some number of years down the
road, when the balance between the desperate awareness of
what we have lost when our daughter died will be somewhat
balanced by the warm and joyful memories of what we had
with her when she lived. I neither long for nor cringe from
that time. It will simply come. We will recognize it – though
now it is beyond us.
So, yes, our beloved daughter is gone – a light in our lives gone
out leaving blackness for us, left behind, to stumble through.
And, while we understand and deeply feel the meaning of our
phrase “Now we are lit by her only from within,” we hope, desperately,
that she is wherever the light is. We are trying to
understand what this means, as we seek our own way, for the
remainder of our lives, to some kind of light. We love our son
and are trying to breathe.
We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved
parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or
risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those untarnished
by such events, who wish to know in some way what they,
thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window
that is helpful for both sides of the gap.

http://www.ameliacenter.org/workfiles/AC/N2.pdf

Originally posted September 4, 2009