The Best Ways to Damage Your Grieving Kids
A Lesson in Parenting
Just weeks before Breast Cancer Awareness Week at school, breast cancer had claimed their mom. Now, it was their first day back at school.
I walked into the kitchen to see the kids off to school. I expected to find three kids finishing breakfast, but instead, I found two boys wrestling on the kitchen floor and not getting ready for school.
The bus was on its way, and they didn't even have their shoes on.
My fist slammed the counter, "What are you doing? Get ready for school. Are you f*cking kidding me?"
The words hung in the air.
The regret began worming its way through my body.
Quietly, they got up, put their shoes on, and grabbed their backpacks.
I heard the front door close and a whimpered, "Bye."
A Family Apart
My three kids were under the age of 12 when my wife, Ariana, died.
The deeper the grief settled into my system, the more I became absorbed in my own head and loss.
Our family of five became roommates of four.
Nightly dinners at the kitchen table turned into grabbing whatever food was in the fridge and numbing ourselves in front of the TV.
Together. Eating alone.
The kitchen table represented a symbol of family and wholeness.
So, I avoided the table as much as I would avoid eating a bowl full of glass.
I had to learn new ways to bring us together.
Starting with capitalizing on moments we all found ourselves in the same room.
Like our late night snacking around the kitchen counter.
Anger in Small Cuts
The overwhelm I experienced in grief spilled into the paper cuts I inflicted with words all over my children's bodies.
The everyday annoyances felt like crimes against me.
What used to be moments for lessons were now opportunities to loudly proclaim my disappointment, frustration, and anger.
My kids were no longer little humans I enjoyed, but obstacles in my way as I desperately searched for a way out of a life I never wanted.
They needed me. More of me than I was capable of giving.
I was one parent, not two. Each day, at a minimum, I was leaving one child disappointed as I weighed the priorities of whose needs were most important.
Life, for them, became a lottery, a moment-by-moment wondering, "Will my Daddy meet my needs today?"
Confessions of an Overreaching Dad
I would overshare my feelings with the kids, crossing emotional boundaries.
I would burden them with my guilt of failing as their Dad, leaving them to reassure me and convince me otherwise.
But hey, it was all in the name of "transparency."
They knew I was drowning.
I wanted to validate that.
But I crossed the line.
The moment my wife died, I became keenly aware of how important it was for me to ensure my kids did not become a replacement wife, my emotional support.
We were a team, but I began involving them too deeply in my decisions.
What started as a check-in to make sure they were okay, ended with me making all personal decisions based on how they felt.
My kids began to dictate the choices I was making.
The boundary had blurred.
The Inescapable Zombie
Grief takes the last remaining parts of ourselves and grinds them into a concoction of confusion and pain.
The physical toll it takes and the emotional burden placed on us create many moments of failure.
It's an inescapable zombie that will never die.
It is the initiation into our new, unformed lives, to learn and rediscover who we are.
To forgive ourselves, all the stumbles and falls through the hardest terrain imaginable.
One night, while rocking on my bed in an attempt to calm my overactive nervous system, I started to spiral.
The breathing techniques and thought re-frames had no effect, and the longer this went on, the harder it became to get oxygen into my lungs.
Out of desperation, I grabbed my phone—ready to call 911—but instead, I texted my daughter, "I need you. Please hurry."
A few moments later, my door opened, and she walked in to see her dad in a full panic.
"I couldn't save her. I couldn't save her," I screamed.
She said nothing.
Only held me.
Slowly my breathing returned. My body calmed and stopped convulsing.
I thanked my daughter, told her I loved her, and put her back to bed.
She held me together when I was unable to hold myself. It was then I knew I had to find a way to hold her, too.
Our children understand the unspoken language of grief just as much as we do.
They don't need us to be perfect parents in our grief.
Even in our worst failures, the commitment to keep showing up matters more than the perfection we'll never reach.
- CJ
If you want to read more about how I navigated parenting in my grief, you can order my book, Torn Pages from a Broken Heart.
What are some lessons you learned parenting in grief? Leave a comment and share.
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Oh boy this one hit hard. I am grieving the loss of my 27 year old daughter and sometimes I think I "share" too much with my other children also in the name of transparency. Thank you for sharing this with us.