Today, Ty and I decide we’re going to take a two hour ride up to Columbus to attend the monthly meeting of a grief group for parents. I detest being a member of this club, but I’ve got to face the reality of where I am and it’s pretty clear I still need some help getting through this. The grief group we attended her didn’t really help me much. Most grief groups focus on your loss and trying to get over it, putting it in the past. I can’t do that. The difference between groups like Forever Family Foundation and Helping Parents Heal is they are focused on the fact our children never truly leave us and we can continue that bond spiritually until we leave our flesh for whatever is next and can be back in the same form as they are again.
The GPS says it’s going to be an 1 hour 45 minute trip. We leave early giving ourselves an extra 1 hour 20 minutes to grab something to eat before the meeting and for the inevitable traffic we will encounter driving into Columbus at 6:00 in the evening. This is a quick up and back trip. We haven’t told anyone we are coming because we don’t have time for visiting family as the dogs are waiting back here for us and it’s going to be 7 hours at the least with no stops for visits. So, if you’re Columbus family reading this, don’t be offended that we didn’t stop in. No time.
Inevitably, we hit major traffic on the north side of Columbus cutting 45 minutes off of our cushion. We have just enough time to snarf down some pizza at Pies & Pints and we get to the meeting a couple of minutes late after wandering the halls of the building the meeting room is in for a few minutes. When we walk in there are exactly two people in the room who we later find are the leaders of the group. They normally have anywhere between 4 and 15 people attending, but tonight it’s just the four of us.
We introduce ourselves then we do the thing where we all tell our stories of loss. Both women attending tonight lost their children suddenly. One woman’s son passed at the age of 29, the other at the age of 6. When you’re in these groups, the more you have in common with someone the tighter the bond it seems or the easier to empathize anyway. All of us in attendance tonight know what it’s like to wake up on a “normal” day and realize it’s actually the worst day of your life, you just don’t know it yet. Yet, they’re both still alive 3 and 6 years later. Maybe we can do this.
The thing I like about this group, as small as it is, is I can speak about all the woo-woo stuff with no fear of anyone judging me. I can talk about the things I blog about and I can see them nodding in agreement or even responding excitedly. When I talk about mediums, one woman shares her story of how her son led her to a medium who became a friend. It’s an amazing three step process he used. First he sent her a dream where she saw herself in a room and meeting with someone she hadn’t met before. Then, he sent a message to a friend to tell her that he had been telling her to contact his mother and tell her to go to this particular Spiritualist church and she would know who she was supposed to talk to. She goes to the church and a woman there approaches her, says her son’s name and tells her that her son has been telling her she was on her way. Other people here these stories and they try to find ways to dismiss them. It’s just coincidence, or you’re making it up. We hear these stories and say “Yeah. Let me tell you what happened to me.” I tell them the story of Kayla’s dream of the church Akiane had drawn and how the movie Heaven Is Real presented the opportunity for that to be revealed to us We all marvel at how spirit works. We confirm that all is as it’s supposed to be. Yes, that includes our children leaving us so soon. So, if it’s as it’s supposed to be, what does that mean we’re supposed to do/learn?
We talk about how our children are probably right here with us in the room right now and the nature of reality how one day we will able to detect them soon and how we get by day-to-day in the meantime. We came in strangers, but we talk for an 1 hour 45 minutes with barely a pause in the conversation.
One of the women brings up how we are all parents first. Yes! Someone else who gets this. Some people just happen to have kids. With some it happens by accident. Being a parent is just one of many aspects of their lives. For us, being parents was who we are/were primarily. Yeah, I guess there were other things for us to do, but our lives really started when our children came into them, we took that responsibility seriously and gladly. I’m so happy to talk to someone who gets that.
It’s good to finally be able to talk to someone face-to-face other than Ty who really knows what I’m going through and believes the same things I believe. The meeting’s been great. Who knows where the group will go from here? They seem to be kind of resetting at this point trying to decide an agenda/meeting format for the future. We’ll see, but it’s been a good night of talking with people who understand and that’s pretty cool.
