Read Online Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child by Rita Volpe - Free Book Online
Authors: Rita Volpe
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husbands. Even if we wanted to be touched and physically comforted, our timing … or theirs … was off. Men and women do not grieve in the same way or at the same time.
Carol: “Having a sex life with my husband when our daughter was very ill and after her death was virtually impossible. I wanted to hold him and cry with him. He didn’t want that. It took a long time to bring intimacy back into our lives, and it was in small doses.”
Rita: “I was inconsolable. I needed to be held, to be stroked like a colicky baby. I crawled like a young child into my husband’s lap. Sometimes he was there, sometimes not. I had no desire for sex. If my husband did, I worried that Michael was watching. I was void of passion.”
Even after intimacies did resume, there was the nagging feeling not so much that our dead children were watching, but that they might see us experiencing a pleasure that they had never known or would never know again.
And there was the guilt. It permeated deep into our feelings in those early days and months and beyond. What had we done wrong? Why did
we deserve to be punished? Could we ever smile again? Would we ever again know emotional or physical joy? If we did feel pleasure, were we not guilty of forgetting our dead children?
Lorenza: “Marc was married for only three months. I cringed at the thought that I would enjoy a conjugal life that he no longer had. It was as if there was a third person in the room watching every move. What would he think? Did his parents forget him?”
Audrey: “At the beginning, I had no feelings at all and later, with the passage of time, even if I felt amorous, just thinking about Jess’s death made me feel as though I was not entitled to this pleasure. It didn’t feel right.”
It wasn’t only our sexual relationships with our husbands that underwent enormous changes; it was the way we spoke to one another, the way we worked, the way we cried, the way we looked at the sky; it was every thing in every moment of every day.
For the most part, our husbands tended to be quieter in their grief. By contrast, we were hysterical. We spoke constantly of our children, we screamed, we yelled, we fought, we cried, we refused to accept and we sunk deep into the depths of gloom. We could not grasp the gravity or complexity of our husband’s emotions, and in our weakened states, we lacked the stamina or the desire to even try.
Ariella: “Each spouse wants the other to grieve their way. Eventually, that either breaks you up or you learn to accept the differences. Even things as simple as photographs. Bob was unable at first to look at photos of Michael, while I needed to see that sweet face and kept photos everywhere. We went from holding each other tight to grieving separately. We had very little to give each other while we were each cloaked in our own despair. We were running on empty.”
Audrey: “Irv enjoys and is good at delivering jokes. It is difficult enough for me to understand how people smile. How could he want to make them laugh? I needed to recognize that this was not only a part of who he is, but also a distraction from his pain.”
Barbara G.: “I was trying so hard to be a mother to my youngest son, who was sixteen at the time, and I was going to work. I had no energy to try to understand my husband’s feelings.”
Rita: “My husband replaced his pain with anger. Anger became his drug of choice. As his anger increased so too did the space between us. Eventually, I moved out and got my own apartment.”
The estrangement did not last forever. In Rita’s case, she and her husband Tom eventually started to rebuild their lives, courting as if they were dating all over again, and after some time they reunited as a couple. However, they did not move back into the same house they had lived in before.
Rita: “We had to move from that family house. The good memories haunted me. The walls spoke of my losses and it was too much for me to live with that. The old
Carol: “Having a sex life with my husband when our daughter was very ill and after her death was virtually impossible. I wanted to hold him and cry with him. He didn’t want that. It took a long time to bring intimacy back into our lives, and it was in small doses.”
Rita: “I was inconsolable. I needed to be held, to be stroked like a colicky baby. I crawled like a young child into my husband’s lap. Sometimes he was there, sometimes not. I had no desire for sex. If my husband did, I worried that Michael was watching. I was void of passion.”
Even after intimacies did resume, there was the nagging feeling not so much that our dead children were watching, but that they might see us experiencing a pleasure that they had never known or would never know again.
And there was the guilt. It permeated deep into our feelings in those early days and months and beyond. What had we done wrong? Why did
we deserve to be punished? Could we ever smile again? Would we ever again know emotional or physical joy? If we did feel pleasure, were we not guilty of forgetting our dead children?
Lorenza: “Marc was married for only three months. I cringed at the thought that I would enjoy a conjugal life that he no longer had. It was as if there was a third person in the room watching every move. What would he think? Did his parents forget him?”
Audrey: “At the beginning, I had no feelings at all and later, with the passage of time, even if I felt amorous, just thinking about Jess’s death made me feel as though I was not entitled to this pleasure. It didn’t feel right.”
It wasn’t only our sexual relationships with our husbands that underwent enormous changes; it was the way we spoke to one another, the way we worked, the way we cried, the way we looked at the sky; it was every thing in every moment of every day.
For the most part, our husbands tended to be quieter in their grief. By contrast, we were hysterical. We spoke constantly of our children, we screamed, we yelled, we fought, we cried, we refused to accept and we sunk deep into the depths of gloom. We could not grasp the gravity or complexity of our husband’s emotions, and in our weakened states, we lacked the stamina or the desire to even try.
Ariella: “Each spouse wants the other to grieve their way. Eventually, that either breaks you up or you learn to accept the differences. Even things as simple as photographs. Bob was unable at first to look at photos of Michael, while I needed to see that sweet face and kept photos everywhere. We went from holding each other tight to grieving separately. We had very little to give each other while we were each cloaked in our own despair. We were running on empty.”
Audrey: “Irv enjoys and is good at delivering jokes. It is difficult enough for me to understand how people smile. How could he want to make them laugh? I needed to recognize that this was not only a part of who he is, but also a distraction from his pain.”
Barbara G.: “I was trying so hard to be a mother to my youngest son, who was sixteen at the time, and I was going to work. I had no energy to try to understand my husband’s feelings.”
Rita: “My husband replaced his pain with anger. Anger became his drug of choice. As his anger increased so too did the space between us. Eventually, I moved out and got my own apartment.”
The estrangement did not last forever. In Rita’s case, she and her husband Tom eventually started to rebuild their lives, courting as if they were dating all over again, and after some time they reunited as a couple. However, they did not move back into the same house they had lived in before.
Rita: “We had to move from that family house. The good memories haunted me. The walls spoke of my losses and it was too much for me to live with that. The old
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