One way we can try to help each other is to share our stories. Readers may recognize some of the experiences and feelings described here. But familiar or not, they’re all real, and the unvarnished truth.<\/p>\n
Doug’s Story:<\/strong><\/p>\n Driving to Maine last weekend for a memorial service brought me back to vacations there when my kids were young and our family was joyous and whole. Singing in the car, stopping for ice cream and fried clams, all the things that “normal” families do. It all came back to me, like flashbacks in a bad TV movie. The love was beautiful. Blissfully unaware we were headed for a cliff.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n David’s Story:<\/strong><\/p>\n Nothing in my life prepared me for my daughter’s death.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What helped me survive it initially were my then-5-year-old son, Harrison; Rabbi Harold Kushner\u2019s profound little book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People<\/em>; the wisdom of our pastor; the loving support of those family members and friends who weren\u2019t scared away; and the kindness of several strangers.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n When Natasha died — suddenly and unexpectedly of an undiagnosed congenital condition at age 8-1\/2 — it hit me physically, emotionally and spiritually.\u00a0 The physical part, though intermittently severe, was the least of it.\u00a0 Afterwards I remember thinking my initial physical reaction must be what a heart attack feels like \u2013 tightness in my chest, spreading to all my muscles, making it hard to breathe or focus or move.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The emotional part was the worst of it: numbness, alternating with the deepest, most intense, sobbing sadness I\u2019ve ever known.\u00a0 I remember the outside world disappearing, or at least becoming irrelevant, for a period of time.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t turn on a TV or radio, or look at a newspaper or magazine, for weeks.\u00a0 We lived in a bubble.\u00a0 The first anniversary of the 9\/11 terrorist attacks passed without notice in our home, because we were totally consumed by our own tragedy; Natasha\u2019s funeral was held 9\/10\/02.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately my wife, Annie, and I were referred immediately to a grief counselor, who helped us to understand that while we shared this tragedy as a couple, in many ways we experienced it alone.\u00a0 The counselor told us our reactions and responses to the \u201ctrauma\u201d of Natasha\u2019s death were individual and unique, and she advised us time and again not<\/em> to be judgmental about how each of us was dealing with it.\u00a0 She said everything in between total denial and suicide was within the range of \u201cnormal\u201d, from a psychological perspective.\u00a0 Still, I found Annie\u2019s deep despair the hardest thing to deal with;\u00a0I tried to comfort her but could not.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n The spiritual part of surviving Natasha\u2019s death was cathartic for me. \u00a0I only began developing a sense of religious faith about five years before Natasha died; that\u2019s when we began attending church as a family, marking the first time in my life I\u2019d ever done so.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>I remember having a God experience at Natasha\u2019s funeral.\u00a0 A\u00a0powerful, palpable feeling of peace swept through me as I sat in our church listening to the pastor and others speak.\u00a0 For a variety of reasons, I didn’t (and still don’t) blame God for Natasha\u2019s death.\u00a0 In fact, I wasn\u2019t angry at all, just incredibly sad.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A friend suggested to me shortly after Natasha\u2019s death that perhaps I\u2019d go on to live a life without fear; after all, having experienced every parent\u2019s worst nightmare, what was there left to fear?\u00a0 But I haven\u2019t found that to be the case.\u00a0 I still fear being separated from my wife or my son through death or divorce.\u00a0 I fear losing my memories of Natasha, as time passes and they grow dimmer.\u00a0 But I no longer fear my own death, because I believe that\u2019s when I\u2019ll be reunited with Natasha — however, wherever and whenever that occurs.<\/span><\/p>\n Howard’s Story: Losing My Religion While Gaining My Faith<\/strong><\/p>\n When the opportunity presented itself to give a Sunday Sermon, I have to admit it satisfied the \u201cwanna-be\u201d Rabbi in me. When I woke up the next morning, I felt alittle like I was facing the monster in Young Frankenstein, shouting \u201cdon\u2019t you know a joke when you hear one? I was just kidding! Let me out of here\u201d I have a much greater appreciation for what Nathan produces each week.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n As stated in our first reading:<\/p>\n To the living, I am gone. Faith. What does it mean to have faith? When someone says \u201cI\u2019ve lost my faith\u201d, what are they saying? Faith and prayer were my ways to give back, to show gratitude for all the good that has come my way, and to protect me and those I love from harm.<\/p>\n As many of you know, our youngest son Andrew died 2 years ago. The diagnosis was SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome. That simply meant after an exhaustive evaluation, there was no explanation for his death. It happened at this time of year, one week before Thanksgiving. After losing Andrew, our faith was shattered into a thousand pieces.<\/p>\n With any death, life takes a pause, Life stops when you lose a child. We have language to describe the phases one goes through after losing a loved one\u2013 denial, anger, depression, \u2013 labels to describe a most complicated process called grief.<\/p>\n Did I not practice my faith sufficiently or did I not pray hard enough? Was I being punished for some reason? Worse, was I somehow responsible for his death? These are just some of the thoughts that went through my mind in the first 6 months.<\/p>\n During these early months, incredible acts of kindness came our way. People brought food every day for weeks at a time. We were checked on daily by family and friends. The day of Drew\u2019s funeral, it felt as if the entire town of Ashland showed up at the Church, with police and fire trucks later escorting the procession to the cemetery. We were being carried by a larger community that we didn\u2019t even know existed.<\/p>\n At the same time, the act of living became very mechanical in those first six months, while trying to resolve a most irresolvable question. How could this have happened to us? Thankfully, Pam and I had enough sense to treat getting help as a necessity and not a choice. We attended parent support group meetings through the Boston Area SIDS Center, couples grief counseling, and took the children to play therapy. The SIDS meetings allowed us to connect with other parents struggling with the same questions. Grief counseling gave us a place to learn how to stay connected with each other while allowing the other person to be where they\u2019re at (Angry, indifferent, depressed, and even happy). Play therapy for the kids sounded better than anything we could come up with on our own. We had much to learn from others.<\/p>\n One particular SIDS meeting, a father, who lost his son to SIDS 18 years earlier, was approaching the anniversary of his son\u2019s death. After all those years, he expressed \u201cThere was nothing more comforting than knowing it was the first Tuesday of the month and the SIDS meeting was here.\u201d<\/p>\n And we were just two months out. Listening to him, it was inconceivable how one comes to learn to live with this versus merely trying getting better. It was at this point that we discovered how we were just touching the surface of what it means to not get over our loss, but to make it part of our lives.<\/p>\n And then this Church showed up. Pam knew of this place from Jen Brown, a member of this congregation. Back in 2003, after having our third son Andrew, we still had not resolved what would be the formal faith our children would participate in. Then Andrew died, and the need to set aside family time for these big questions came front and center. The morning of Drew\u2019s death, the hospital clergy phoned a good friend of ours who is a minister from Chestnut Hill. Fourteen years earlier, Reverend Basset helped Pam and me write our wedding vows. We remained in touch over the years and wanted him with us that morning in the emergency room. Over the next few weeks, he visited our home regularly and we started attending his Unitarian service in Chestnut Hill. Being around him helped us just be with each other and our loss.<\/p>\n As we approached Christmas, he suggested that his Church may not be able to provide the community that we needed. He suggested that we consider the Unitarian Church in Sherborn, a place he called a \u201cMeeting House\u201d, presumably for my Jewish filtered listening. During one particular Sunday service, I leaned over to Pam and gave her the Elaine push from Seinfeld, you know the one where Elaine says \u201cGet Outta here!\u201d around something she can\u2019t believe. I was saying to Pam \u201cI love this place\u201d, and would push her the way Elaine pushed Jerry. I often felt this way when watching our two boys leave us to sit on the floor to hear the children\u2019s message, then go to their classrooms.<\/p>\n Finding a place we could turn our children over to others was more than we could ever ask. We joined the congregation shortly after that. We do feel like we\u2019ve been living in two different worlds, on the one side in private despair and coming out of a sustained period of shock, and the other, learning to deal with, to be honest \u201cPeople\u201d.<\/p>\n There is an understandable, yet difficult perception of loss in this culture. It feels alittle like \u201cAre they better yet?\u201d No one wants to see those they love in pain, but for us, it has become not about getting better, but finding ways to make Andrew\u2019s life and death part of us. That must have been hard for others to watch and be a part of, but many did stick with us through it, and are even with us this morning. Thanks for all you\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n Sometimes we\u2019d leave a neighbors house and feel like we should be singing the Adams family theme, but The Teibel Family instead. We can be abit dark sometimes. Life is different now \u2013 Whereas a fog shrouded us every day, every hour for many months at a time, it now comes less frequently, and in unexpected ways. At the risk of having people humming REM\u2019s song, I titled this sermon \u201cLosing My Religion While Gaining My Faith\u201d. The title is accurate. I did lose my religion. A matter a fact, I\u2019ve been losing my religion for years, searching instead for a place WE, our family, could say we share. Not hers, not mine, but ours.<\/p>\n And in this shared place, we\u2019re learning what faith is. If Andrew\u2019s death has taught me anything, it\u2019s that we\u2019re not alone. When he died, prayer took on a quality that I had never experienced and that is, being profoundly angry with God, and questioning the unfairness of life. But in another way, our loss connected us to a bigger reality in our communities, country and world.<\/p>\n When the Tsunami hit Southeast Asia, it affected me in an unexpected way. I remember standing in a bookstore looking at a photograph of a man wailing while holding his child. I couldn\u2019t even look at the picture. It hurt at a level I had never experienced before. It was if a string was tied between me and this father, a man I would never know personally but could feel his pain. Our loss is part of a global experience that I feel both detached from and also personally connected to.<\/p>\n Have I lost my faith? Yes, but not in the faith I was aspiring to. I have a connection to a tested faith, to losing faith and having to find it in myself with the help of others. I have borrowed strength from watching Pam and it has been a privilege being in her life. I could not have come this far without her, and she has led me, the children, family and friends down a brutally honest, difficult path. Most remarkably, while staying in all of our lives.<\/p>\n Max, Philip and I owe her a debt of gratitude that she loves so strongly, and was able to come back from the depths of despair.<\/p>\n Last Tuesday, I woke up at 11 pm and changed the channel, fell back asleep, then woke up again 45 minutes later. In a groggy state, I realized I was watching Ted Coppel\u2019s interview with Morrie Schwartz. It was a week earlier that I was eagerly looking for a reading for today\u2019s service and finally thought maybe I\u2019d find something in the attic. The only book I found was \u201cTuesdays with Morrie\u201d. So now it\u2019s a week later, I\u2019m half asleep listening to my reading come alive. I woke Pam and said \u201cthat\u2019s Morrie.\u201d We watched him talk about losing his body and how the spirit of living lives in a different place.<\/p>\n At a commercial, Pam turned to me and said this is Andrew\u2019s way of telling you \u201cYou\u2019re on the right track\u201d. I was already thinking this before she said it. I\u2019m sorry, this was no coincidence.<\/p>\n As Morrie stated \u201cDeath ends a life, not a relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n We take this relationship with Andrew into our future. My faith is whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One way we can try to help each other is to share our stories. 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\nTo the sorrowful, I will never return.
\nTo the angry, I was cheated,
\nBut to the happy, I am at peace,
\nAnd to the faithful, I have never left.<\/p>\n
\nAnd then as is necessary, the food came less, the visits and calls decreased, and we were left with having to learn how to put our lives back together. We were a broken, fragile family.<\/p>\n
\nBeing Jewish, I was holding out for the \u201cperfect temple\u201d, one with just the right amount of Judaism to satisfy my needs, while allowing for a genuine appreciation of our interfaith family circumstances. Pam was in her own process, having been raised Catholic, also with a strong faith in God. She was searching for a place we could practice our beliefs as a family. Needless to say, we were ripe for the UU experience. We just didn\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n
\nOur first time here was the Christmas Eve service, a month after Andrew died. Reverent Basset informed Nathan of our circumstances, and we were greeted warmly. After that first service, we decided to come back the following Sunday, then the week after, and the week after that.<\/p>\n
\nWe are members of this church in part because we lost a child. Is it possible that something positive can come out of his death? One day, Pam and Max walked to the cemetery from our house. Max noticed Pam crying and said to her \u201cMom, everything happens for a reason. We wouldn\u2019t have our church, we wouldn\u2019t have taken some of the trips we\u2019ve taken if Drew hadn\u2019t die. I\u2019d give them all up to get him back, but that can\u2019t happen.\u201d What an uncomplicated, straight way to look at the world.<\/p>\n
\nThis church has grown on me and some remarkable things have happened here. One particular Sunday Pam couldn\u2019t bring herself to get out of bed so I came alone with the children. I sat in that corner Pew and during a quiet portion of the service, a ray of light shone through the blinds, basking me in a warm feeling. I felt Andrew\u2019s presence and tears came down my face. Unlike therapy, which is intended to get you back on your feet, this became a place to grow into and not out of. Our healing took shape each Sunday; sitting, listening, crying, holding each other and singing hymns. As Carol Kerrissey said to me a few weeks back \u201cThere\u2019s nothing so whole as a broken heart.\u201d We felt whole each Sunday sitting in those pews.<\/p>\n