Re: Roller Coaster Life

On Jul 9, 7:48 am, MelMenzies <aut...@melmenzies.co.uk> wrote:
> On Jul 3, 7:43 pm, Liliana <xen...@rogers.com> wrote:
>
> >Metaphorically the highs are a relief or an
> > absence of pain for a while. Since I lost my son , the days are black
> > and white and merge one into the other.
>
> Dear Liliana,
> I could cry for you.  Your pain is so tangible, and you write of it so
> eloquently.  As an author, myself, I know the power of the written
> word - but as a mother, I know the power of pain in the loss of a
> child.  My daughter died as a young adult.  Her death had not been
> unexpected.  For thirteen years I had grieved - because she had 'lost
> her life' to the thrall of a heroin addiction.  Every day of my life I
> expected the phone to ring to tell me she was no more: that she'd been
> found, dead in a doorway; or worse, that she had not been found at all
> but had quietly and irretrievably slipped from my life.
>
> When she finally straightened her life out, she did so dramatically.
> Academically, domestically - in every sense there was a turn around.
> She lived a happy, fulfilled life for five years.  And I learned to
> let go the demons that had plagued me.  Then one morning, came the
> phone call I had once dreaded so much.  It was a worse pain than I
> could possibly have imagined - the more so, because it was no longer
> an expected pain.
>
> Like you, I experienced the sense of 'otherness', of isolation from a
> society that doesn't know how to deal with death; that shrinks from
> communicating at any meaningful level with the bereaved - because it
> has nothing meaningful to say.
>
> Yet you ask 'Who am I?', and in this respect I differ from you.  I
> know little about you, your opinions, your philosophy on life, your
> belief system.  Note I don't say 'or lack of' because everyone
> believes in something; we're unable to operate in a vacuum.  But what
> I'm about to tell you is from my belief system, and it works for me,
> and has worked for hundreds of others.  It's this.  You are someone o
f
> worth.  You are not defined simply by your relationship to a lost
> child, nor by your grief and loss.  You are you.  You are precious.
> And your worth is absolute.  It does not depend on what you do.  Nor
> on how you feel.
>
> Nevertheless, there is something you can do which will alleviate your
> pain.  I know because I practice it daily.  It's a verse which I
> adopted when my marriage broke up, and it stood me in good stead when
> my daughter went on her heroin binge.  It's this: comfort others with
> the comfort we have received from God.  'I haven't received any
> comfort,' do I hear you say?  Well you have, actually.  You have a
> gift with words.  At the moment you are using them to grieve, to look
> inward, to examine and re-examine the pain within.  May I suggest,
> Liliana, that you use your gift to look upward and outward.  To seek
> out others who could be comforted by your gift.  To use it, not to
> reinforce your pain and theirs, but to encourage them, too, to look
> upward and outward.
>
> I have been writing for the past twenty five years.  Books.  Magazine
> articles.  And now blogs.  I took a course in counselling so I could
> help others.  I learned to draw and paint so I could design cards with
> a verse of encouragement.  I went to night school to learn how to be a
> public speaker - and gradually changed from a frightened mouse with
> shaking hands and quaking knees, into someone with confidence and
> joy.  Yes, real JOY.  Because it is such a delight when you know you
> have been used to lighten someone else's load.
>
> Yes, I still weep.  Yes, I still grieve.  How could I not?  I shall
> never see my daughter marry or raise a child.  I shall never feel her
> hand on my brow when I grow old and frail.  But I know I shall see her
> again.  And I've written a poem to that effect.  A poem titled 'Death
> is But a Door.'  You can find it in my latest book, A Painful Post
> Mortem,.  It's a work of fiction.  But it's based on what I have
> learned.  And one of the prime lessons, is that we all have choices.
> We can choose to let our adversities shape our lives.  Or we can
> choose to use them for others.  And, in my belief system, for God.
>
> So, Lilliana, I have prayed for you this morning.  That you will
> choose to let go of the pain.  Choose to look up from your downcast
> state.  Choose to look out instead of in.  And I have prayed that you
> will find joy.  Real joy.
>
> With love,
> Mel Menzies
> Author of: A Painful Post Mortem - a contemporary story of love
> stretched to its limits.

Thank you thank you thank you

What beautiful hearfelt words.  I have just read your post and am
still absorbing all that you have said.  I will respond... soon and I
thank you Mel.
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