Hanging On Until the Milk Expires
I have never lost a child and I know for certain that I have absolutely no clue about what it’s like to experience such horrible grief. But if I ever do, my friend Shelley is one of the first people I would call. That’s because Shelley is real even as she writes about her raw grief.
I had known her son Joseph as a child and was just learning to re-know him in the months before his death. Shelley and I were in a Moms in Touch group and I had heard her pray for her boys. The winter of Joseph’s death, our unwritten theme had become, “Harvard maybe; Heaven for sure.” We told God that we didn’t care if our kids never made it into Harvard. We just wanted them to make it to Heaven. So when I got the phone call telling me that Joseph was gone, I knew he had made it to Heaven, because I had heard his mother’s prayers and I knew Joseph’s heart.
Dave and I had been friends with Phil and Shelley for years, and our oldest son had learned to know Joseph through high school. So when the news of his unexpected death came, it hit us all. Hard.
If you are a parent who has lost a child, or if you know a parent who has lost a child, I gently recommend her book Grief: A Mama’s Unwanted Journey.
I also recommend her blog, Grief with Hope.
Shelley is using her grief to help other families find healing.
Thanks, Shelley for being my friend and for allowing me to share this here.
Hanging On Until The Milk Expires
Grief Swallowed My Mind
At the tender age of seventeen, my eldest son died a single-vehicle accident. Several months after the casseroles stopped arriving, the barrage of visitors returned to living, and I quit pretending to be full of strength, grief swallowed my mind.
Forgetting to Do … Everything
One fall morning after crawling out of bed to get my boys off to school and myself ready for work, I heard a knock at my bedroom door. My middle son poked in his head. “Mama, sorry to bother you, but we don’t have any clean jeans to wear to school.”
