My family and I had just finished a day of touring the Cotswolds when rain started to mist the windshield on that Friday night in England 19 years ago. As I guided the rental car through an intersection, a large car barreled over a hilltop and broadsided us at full speed.
My daughter, Amelia, 18 months old, was killed instantly, and Jeremy, 4, went into a deep coma from brain hemorrhaging and was hooked up to life support in a nearby hospital. My wife, Wendy, suffered internal injuries, a broken leg and multiple fractures.
Words cannot express what it feels like to have your entire family unconscious—Amelia would not be coming back, Jeremy might come back, Wendy almost certainly would but was to experience incredible pain and suffering. The anguish is still very real.
Jeremy’s case was straightforward—straightforwardly bad. “I have to say the outlook for survival is not good,” said the orthopedic consultant. It looked as if Jeremy was just sleeping. He had many signs of life: warmth, pink cheeks, respiration. But his chest moved only with the ventilator.
Our families were notified and immediately flew to England to help us. They sat beside Jeremy and talked to him. We tried to raise one another’s hopes. “All we need is a flicker in his brain.” But it never came. He died within three days.
We thanked the nurses, collected a pathetic bundle of clothing and were air-ambulanced back to Los Angeles.
Missions to Feel Good—At home I felt utterly helpless. I didn’t know where to turn. So I went on missions to feel good, to escape the painful devastation. But my personal life spiraled down with the loss of my marriage, loss of my career and loss of health. A low-grade infection akin to melancholy and numbness started settling in. Life seemed to be closing in around me, bringing a guardedness, defensiveness, even withdrawal.
People tried to help us cope by offering phrases of supposed comfort like, “It could’ve been worse” and “You just have to let go and move on.”
Let go of what? Move on to where? I heard so much of this stuff that I either wanted to lash out or get crazy. Most of the time I’d just stay home, turn down the blinds, order out and pop in a movie. I felt attacked by the pain so I projected it outward. My reactions in life were becoming skewed and disproportionate.
Like so many others coping with grief, I didn’t lack the courage to recover; I just didn’t know where to turn. I did what everybody wanted me to do: Try to get over it. Act as if everything’s all right and put on that “I’m fine” face.
Discovering What Was Unfinished—I finally came to the point where I had to recover or die. After stints with therapists, support groups and books on grieving, I stumbled upon the process of Grief Recovery. There, I found a way to “finish the unfinished emotional pain” and end the isolation and loneliness. I learned that pain didn’t have to be a family member. I didn’t have to accept my pain as a permanent condition or build my identity around it.
Jeremy and Amelia will never occupy their rooms again, never take their places at the table or play in the sandbox, but memories of them no longer tear me up. Fond memories stay fond now because they both leave a legacy of love, not pain. Grief Recovery helped me see that pain doesn’t equal love. Pain equals pain.
That healing has opened the way to peace of mind and even joy for me. Being able to freely express all the thoughts and emotions connected with loss, including the regret, and acknowledging the loss of unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations.
Recovery provided me with the correct tools. At last I’m happy to be reminded of them. Not that I somehow “got over it;” that event is still very much a part of me. But I’ve learned to incorporate that loss and my enduring love for them into my life. I needed to remember them not only for the way they died, but especially for the way they lived.
Today I have the privilege of helping hurting people stuck in confusion and loneliness to move beyond loss by completing incomplete emotional relationships. Through grief recovery, I help provide the correct skills we were never taught from earliest ages. By saying goodbye to conflict, pain and isolation, we are able to hold the fond memories of loved ones forever.
The Grief Program is offering a free community presentation on the tools and skills needed for working through significant emotional loss of any kind at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 18, at the Education Center, Christ Lutheran Church, 25816 N. Tournament Road.
For more information, call The Grief Program at 661-733-0692 or visit them at www.thegriefprogram.com .