How to Survive This Very Worst Thing — A Love Letter to You

When our beautiful toddler son, Henry, died unexpectedly in November 2018, I was sure the pain itself would crush me too. I would wake up every morning, genuinely surprised to still be alive. It felt like the sorrow alone would stop my broken heart.

If you are living your worst nightmare, or know someone who is living theirs, I hope this will help in some small way. This is how I’ve survived the last 8 weeks, living this very worst thing of losing H.

Our very worst thing, losing Henry

• Grief counselor. We frequently see a wonderful counselor who has had experience with loss. She helps us to pause, examine our thoughts and fears, and re-frame them in a healthier way. She has been, without a doubt, the most helpful piece to this puzzle. The best advice she gave me so far? “Let your grief be what it is.” Friends, we don’t have to figure it out, we are not doing it wrong, we are just free to feel what we feel, whenever it comes. No timetables and no pressure and no expectations.
• Support of family and friends. I hope you are fortunate enough to have people who love you to be around you in this awful time. Let them cook for you, bring you food, remind you to eat. You will forget to eat in the early days. Sometimes, you won’t want to. Sometimes you will think “They can’t make me eat” because you need to protest this new reality. But let them nurture you a little, spoil you some. Let them nurse you back to who you are. Be as needy and selfish as you feel. My mom made me coffee every morning for a few weeks straight. My dad drove all the way across town so many times to bring me my favorite tea latte (London Fog, get it, you won’t regret it, and you’re welcome).
• Antidepressant. This is not for everyone, and you should talk to your doctor, of course. But I started Lexapro right after we lost Henry. It really kicked in for me around 4–6 weeks, which is typical, and it helps me confront the grief. It gave me my appetite back. I can walk through my day a little easier. It softens the sharpest edges of the grief, and that little measure of softening allows me to let the grief in.

I have to remind myself “Keep breathing” when I see this sweet smile

• Some days, just focus on breathing. Some days, I literally told myself “Just keep breathing today. Just keep breathing.” That was all I could do. Eventually you won’t have to remind yourself so much.
• Be extra, extra kind to yourself. Especially in the first days, I felt like a Victorian woman, the kind with “sensibilities” who needs smelling salts. Everyone would ask me if I needed to sit down, needed to go lie down. And I LOVED it! Yes, I am delicate. I allowed myself to feel the comfort from that.
• Try to find something that is really, really funny to you. You won’t laugh at first. The numbness only breaks to let in pain on pain, at first. But eventually, eventually, you can feel yourself start to smile a little. Even when you are smiling and laughing, there is that steady hum of grief, always just below the surface. But, my dear friends, we will take even that! Even that can be a sign to us that life can surprise us, that maybe, just maybe, we can be hopeful about the future. My funny thing? The SNL skit from 2008 with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. I adore it, it is absolute comedy gold. I watched it over and over and eventually it felt funny again.

What made me laugh again

• Exercise. You won’t want to do it and it might not feel like it helps at first. But then you will start to look forward to it, will feel the effects immediately as soon as you step outside. We got a little puppy for our sweet older child, and I try to take him on lots of walks. He spends most of that time biting my legs, pooping, and making me my spill my coffee, but gosh he’s cute.

Biting is his love language, I tell myself

• Writing. Just getting your feelings and thoughts down, reflecting on the loss, reflecting on your loved one, is so helpful. You don’t have to start an annoying blog like me. You don’t have to even share your writings, though I have found sharing it to be helpful. Oversharing? Yes probably. But it helps, and we do what we can.
• Seek out others who understand. There are so many private Facebook groups, filled with compassionate people who are dealing with similar losses. The Compassionate Friends is a popular one for bereaved parents and grandparents. I also love the website www.ModernLoss.com. You can attend local meetings, though I haven’t done this yet. I’m too scared that I will be the only one to have lost a child so young, and all of the unfairness will rear it’s ugly head, and I will be sitting there, hating all of those sweet, dear people who had more time with their kids than I did. Perhaps I still have some work to do? Which brings me to my next point.
• Give yourself all the grace. All of it, every single bit. You will be all over the place — angry, sad, bitter, resentful, numb- sometimes all of these in the same hour. Grief is messy, it is not linear. When he was two years old, Henry spilled an ENTIRE bag of flour all over the kitchen rug, TWICE. Then he played in it, rubbed it all around, spread it out into every crevice he could find. Grief is messy like a toddler, messy like flour covering every inch of the kitchen. All of that is okay. You get to feel all of it, simply because of what you have been through. Try to share it with your grief counselor and write it all down. But most importantly, give yourself grace and space to feel it all.

Flour Boy trying to make his escape

• Find the things that comfort you and focus on those. Hot cup of coffee, fire in fireplace, your new bite-happy puppy, meeting close friends for lunch. They will get tears in their eyes and let you talk about your son, and you will feel like they are cushioning everything for you, holding you up a little, so that you are not having to stay in the deep, dark, lonely spaces.
• Scream into a pillow. Helps so much. Will make you feel crazy. But perfectly captures the horror you have seen. I mean, if you haven’t scream-sobbed into a pillow, have you even really LIVED?
• Give your tragedy, your loss, the meaning of your choice. Losing Henry will never make sense to me. Personally, I don’t feel that it’s part of a greater plan. I just can’t accept that for my son or myself. And trying to make sense of a loss like this can drive you crazy and add more anxiety. But I can choose to give this loss the meaning and significance that honors who Henry was. He was love and light and laughter to our family. So I will focus on bringing more of that into the world.

Brothers and sisters, save a little room for hope. You won’t feel any hope for a while. That is perfectly okay. Just remind yourself to save a little room for the hope that will come. It will come.