Telling the Real Story...

Faceless by Naomi Labuscagne

I waited a long time to watch the film The Rabbit Hole. It was intentional. There was too much media frenzy around the film, and I wanted to allow that to settle, wanted to be clear and present with the film in an unadulterated way.

The film didn't really move me. I shed some tears but there was an emotional lacking for me, an inauthenticity in Kidman's character with which I simply could not relate. But of course. How could a Hollywood actor possibly capture a mother's grief? It reminds me of a myth I'd heard long ago about Michelangelo's Pieta; he was hesitant to sculpt Mary's face for fear he could not possibly carve, with requisite honesty, the pain of a grieving mother.

After the film, I contemplated the many movies I've watched since my induction into bereaved parenthood in 1994. Many depicted traumatic death, and some even child death. Yet, none of the Hollywood enactments resonated any degree of substantive authenticity.

So, what is my real story, one I've been hearing from other parents since starting this work in 1996- the one I wish Hollywood would tell- so the non-bereaved could really experience some of the more authentic aspects of grief many families report after the death of a child?

- I wish they would tell the story of how every single cell in our body hurts. Literally, it hurts from the tips of our toes to the ends of our hair. The pain is indescribably physical and merciless.

- I wish they would tell how difficult even basic bodily functions are: drinking becomes work as our throat is constantly tight and closes off to water, or food, or oxygen, or sustenance. Or how we are unable to carry groceries or the mail or the sadness in our arms as they ache with the phantom weight of our children. Or how we cannot breathe because of the concrete slabs on our chest, heavy and dense and gray. Or how our legs buckle and we cannot bear to see other children, especially the ones who are their age and with their names walking gleefully with their parents; parents who may or may not take a moment or two for granted but who will tuck them into bed tonight as we lay sobbing, our salty tears saturating the shag carpeting, in our dead child's room.

- I wish they would tell the story of early grief and how, on the rare occasion when we do sleep, we awaken in the morning, wishing we hadn't.

- I wish they would tell the story of how we look in the mirror at our unrecognizable self and wonder at the stranger we see. And how every relationship in our lives changes, even our conflicted relationship to the imposter-self. And how all the others- family, friends, colleagues- want us to be the person we were previously, but we know that person is irretrievably lost.

- I wish they would tell the story of how the primal mourning is most often done alone and that the supernatural sound of this mourning frightens us, like an wild animal being killed and eaten or like the flogging of human flesh or like the torturing of a prisoner or like Satan being cast from G*d's presence.

- I wish they would tell the story of grief's incessant state of craze: pacing the hallways late at night, the inability to focus, the intolerance of music, or laughing, or expressions of joy, sensitivity to lights and other benign stimuli, racing video tapes that replay in our heads as we wish-for-changed outcomes, the constant self-accusations of blame and responsibility, the unconscious roulette of risk with Death as our challenger.

- I wish they would tell the story of how we are terrorized by insidious ruminations of our other children dying, and we may over-protect to maintain illusory control or under-love to maintain illusory protection from recurrent grief. And how trauma stays in the body and, even if we have processed the acute agony, returns the minute we feel concern for one of our other children because there is something in us that reminds us of our vulnerability. This something whispers, "you are not exempt".

- I wish they would tell the story of the dark and ugly thoughts about other people and their happy and naive lives. Or how we become fierce imaginary protectors of children who are neglected, or unloved, or scolded, or abused by their "parents".

- I wish they would tell the story of how a mere turn of a corner in the grocery store that confronts us with baby food, or car magazines, or cereals can unhinge us to the point of utter helplessness and madness, frantically abandoning $200 worth of unpurchased frozen foods for an exit sign .

- I wish they would tell the story of how this brings us to our wounded knees. On the floor. Face in the dirt. How we may beg and plead for a different life, willing to do anything, anything to turn time back and go through another door. Or how we fantasize about time machines and contemplate self-institutionalization.

- I wish they would tell the story of a pain so deep and so wide that no word in the English language can begin to express it. That no subsequent child, no new job or house, no distraction- no pill- no drug - no joy- no self-induced suffering is sufficient to fill the chasm of the loss.

- I wish they would tell the story of how we pray, even in the absence of a belief in a Creator- we pray, that the suffering would end, by any means.

-I wish they would tell the story of how well-meaning others cause us to recoil with their platitudes, meant to comfort but coming from outside our hearts often do not, and mindless remarks about G*d's will and His garden, the one which needs tending, and something idiotic about making lemonade. And how others may treat us as if we are lepers, turn the other way when we walk in a room, pretend that our child did not exist.

-I wish they would tell how even religious people may have two lenses through which they view the world.  Yes, even if we have a belief in the afterlife and our spirituality eases some of the angst, it often doesn't ease all of it. For most of us, there is no "better place" for our child than our own arms.

- I wish they would tell the story of how life goes on, and we can feel content and happy again, but that everything has changed, and that we have died in a sense, and must choose to be reborn when we are ready. And that the things that help us along- when we are ready- are unique to us but that we need nonjudgmental support and unrushed compassion, as oxygen and nourishment, along the way.

- Mostly, I wish that they would tell the story of a bittersweet survival that does not include a fallacious or contrived "end" to the grief after a prescribed six months. This is not reality for most of us.

Tonight, I watched a movie called The Greatest for a second time. The first time I watched it, I found it to be one of the most sincere portrayals of parental grief and, though it still felt inadequate, I noticed that some memories unearthed during the second watching. Memories of the real story which had fallen victim to an ad hoc amnesiac state, but which were rapidly resurrected. These memories evoked powerful emotions tonight.

I wish that somehow they could tell the true story of the anguish of loss without a contrived happy ending into the sunset. Not that we, at some point, aren't capable of pure love and joy, in fact, sometimes more than we could have ever imagined. Having really "looked into the eyes of such sorrow" is the only way to such pure joy, as Gibran says. But there is no bypassing the tortures of child death, it's effects perennial and relentless for much longer than the unsuspecting world believes.

And there is so much more I wish they would tell.

I wish they would tell the story because I wish others knew. Certainly, if the others knew, they would have to be kinder, more compassionate, more loving to bereaved parents. Wouldn't they?

Wouldn't they? And wouldn't they appreciate, more fully, all they have, every moment?

Yet, I find even my own words fall woefully short of the real story.

As the Michelangelo-myth goes, some things cannot be expressed in sculpture or form or film or with words. The real story is one we can never truly tell.