The Grief Olympics
Day 1533.
As I glanced at a photo of 2 year old Luke cradling his newborn brother I realize how much I yearn for 2 year old Luke, Luke the toddler, Luke the teenager, Luke the man. So many Lukes. I miss all the Lukes.
I note that the same emotion does not envelope me about George, because I have the living George to behold and so I do not yearn for a time past.
I think of the Mothers who lost children older than Luke - are there more versions of their child to miss?
I think of the Mothers who lost children younger than Luke - are there less versions of their child to miss?
Which is worse?
We call this the Grief Olympics.
Our grief group had a panel of Mothers who had all lost their children in very different ways and at different ages. Each in turn they told their tragic stories. We wept, we gasped.
It was the early days for me and as each story unfolded I unconsciously evaluated each loss as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than my own.
But as the discussion grew I saw that No matter how their children had died, whether it be by suicide, drugs, birth defect, heart disease, cancer, ski accident, murder - the grief brought the same devastating pain filled with the familiar ‘shoulda, woulda, couldas’ of parental guilt and that the holes in our respective souls were equal.
The siblings, like George, now only children, spoke of the agony of watching their Mothers fall, in the terror that they may not survive the breaking of their hearts, at a time when they needed their Mothers most in the devastating loss of the person they were supposed to walk through life with. Now there’s a double whammy! Should be a podium position right there.
Then there’s the Drug Death Olympics.
There’s a ranking.
Prescription drugs v street drugs.
And right at the bottom of this ranking is heroin.
Death from a ‘lesser’ drug like cocaine, LSD or molly, that was spiked with fentanyl, ranks higher than us heroin deaths .
Perceived innocence ranks you higher.
And then there’s high functioning v full messy.
Oh the stigma is alive and well even down here and it is bullshit!
Not everyone sees it this way.
One Mother lost her boy, Chris “not from drugs, but because of drugs”. She would rank higher than me but rejects the differentiation. She is a major force for destigmatization.
And over time, those who are active within this field, change their views from:
“he wasn’t an addict, it was an accident” to:
“he didn’t die an addict, but if he had survived that fentanyl he would have likely ended up one”.
And those of us who lost high functioning children realize that it can often be a sliding scale and the messiness was only a decimal point away, or not, or that successful recovery could have happened too.
So, is it worse to lose your child at 3 or 23 or 53?
Is it worse if it was your only child? There are specialized grief groups for this.
Is it worse to lose them to accident or illness?
Protracted or sudden?
Murder or overdose?
The answer is not mine to give, but as you read this I am sure you may sense your own opinions, however fleeting.
All I know is - Luke is irreplaceable to me,
as Chris is to Laura, Gidi is to Jesse, Charlie is to Liz, Alex is to Minoo, Freddy is to Annie, Anthony is to Jenn, Clinton is to his sister Jaclyn...... I could write their names all day long.
This irreplaceable loss is the binding factor that the grieving carry, every day, every hour, every second, missing and longing with every breath. No matter how or why or at what age they left us.
Because in the Grief Olympics there are no winners.