Take Your Time, Go Slowly

     This book is targeted to parents who are suffering after having lost a child due to a catastrophic tragedy. After such a loss, in the beginning our bodies begin a long process and what seems to be a never-ending depression filled with an array of emotions we can’t even begin to sort out yet. We feel we are utterly and totally alone. And if it were not for our loved ones and caring friends to help us through, we would be. Even so, some of these kind souls are going to say the wrong things at the wrong time. Things like, “I know how your feeling,” or, “It’s God’s will and someday you’ll have all the answers.” Such paraphrases are going to cut deep into your soul and hurt so badly you may want to scream, and rightfully so. Know that they are trying to help, they see you’re in deep pain, and it hurts them to see you this way. And if they could take your pain and sorrow away they would, but if they have never lost a child in such a way (thank God), in all fairness they don’t have a clue. You will find a great need to seek out someone you can relate to, someone who knows the horrible pain you feel, the sickness, the sleepless nights, the uncountable tears streaming down your face as your body shakes and quivers in the shock of it all. Someone who just might understand and help make some sense of it all or, better still, give some of the answers we so desire. Let me say early on, my dear friends, that while we share a heartfelt incurable life event I will not have all your answers, but my promise is that I do understand. I am reaching out to hold your hand and walk with you, and by doing so it is my goal then to in some small way make some reasonable sense of this otherwise twisted world we have recently come only to exist in. We must go on, but only in our own time, and not with someone else’s timetable or expectations. You must Take Your Time, Go Slowly.

     I am not a clergyman, not a psychiatrist, not a clinical psychologist, nor am I a counselor by profession. What I am is a parent. Just like you. Still working his way through the toughest time of my life. Just like you, I still cry. Just like you, my stomach balls in a tight knot every time I reflect upon my son’s pictures that are carefully placed about our home, and just like you I continue to search for answers that may never come. But one thing I can say for sure, our lives have changed forever. They will never be the same from that terrible day forward until we are united with our children in heaven.

     What I am, however, is a lifelong student of psychology, retired with a career dealing in crisis intervention at every level of life’s cycle, but nothing could prepare me for such a loss. I don’t think anything can.

     During my own and my wife’s struggle after our own son’s death, it soon became apparent that we had two choices. We were to seek professional help in dealing with our loss or risk, what we thought to be at the time, losing our minds.