you can pick your friends but........

i read a post today from a mother who has recently had to bury her newborn boy. my heart hurts for her and i don't know her. it is more difficult still to hurt for your own family member. a sister whose husband is awaiting a possible cancer diagnosis, a neice whose father's life is stilled by a tragic accident, a daughter whose athletic husband drowns in a freak accident...or in our case a daughter who, almost 8 months pregnant, gives birth to a stillborn baby girl.

i haven't talked to or read posts or comments by any other grandmothers or grandfathers or aunts or uncles who are walking this road with their family member. i don't know if they don't know about the blogs, if the family member doesn't want to 'burden' relatives or impose sadness on them so they don't tell them about the blog- maybe most of us old geezers don't even know what a blog is or still prefer smith and corona manual typewriters.

the post i read today spoke of the difficulty of grieving and how relationships change through the journey. she commented that it seemed that the ones most sympathtic and most in constant contact are the new friends; and that even family had disappointed her. and it is well-known that any couple experiencing the death of a child, even a newborn, can easily become part of the divorce statistic. i had a friend whose daughter was 16 and killed on new years eve many years ago. she and her husband ended up divorcing and later re-marrying - AFTER the grief process had been completed - differently for each of them.

grieving husbands, wives, grandparents and siblings who may have always been close suddenly face a changed relationship; and if these relatives haven't been very close, it may be even harder to maintain the facade of a "normal' family. i read of a girl whose mother gets upset because her daughter is upset and then the daughter gets upset because she upset her mother. just as any death in a family can upset a seemingly stable family dynamic, a miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of a newborn can do the same. often, there is emotional baggage that family members carry that friends, old or new, don't have to tote around.

the girl who wrote the post also spoke of feeling irritable and snappy and angry. common reactions to recently experiencing a personal loss (and evidently, according to what i've also read recently, a physiological reaction). and don't you know that it is much easier to snap at a friend and experience forgiveness than it is to rail on a family member who unfortunately brings a trunk, 2 large suitcases, 1 carryon and a makeup tote full of family history? think about it this way: we yell at our children and spouses and complain to them about things they do that we "let go" with a wave of the hand and a smile when friends do the same things.

this journey is hard. watching from afar as a family member is confusing. wanting to say enough but not too little. not wanting to impose but wanting to be available. wanting to say her name but wondering if it will cause more pain. it's tiptoeing around the broken pieces for awhile, then deciding that isn't supportive enough and then stomping right through the middle of the shards before walking away in silence for awhile and then coming back to try again. all the while with the realization that the difficulty that you are experiencing is NOTHING compared to what she is going through.

so i pray for the girl who wrote the blog and i pray for our family and others like us. i pray that friends would continue to be supportive and comforting. and i pray that families would be healed and relationships mended....

....and that He would give us patience with ourselves and with each other.