Normal

From the heart of a bereaved mother... Angie Pfantz





Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone
important is missing from all the important events in your family's
life.

Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the
cemetery for Birthdays Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Valentine's
Day, July 4th and Easter.

Normal is feeling like you know how to
act and are more comfortable with a funeral than a wedding or birthday
party...yet feeling a stab of pain in your heart when you smell the
flowers and see the casket.

Normal is feeling like you can't sit
another minute without getting up and screaming, because you just don't
like to sit through anything.

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if's & why didn't I's go through your head constantly.

Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away.

Normal is having the TV on the minute I walk into the house to have noise, because the silence is deafening.

Normal
is staring at every baby who looks like he is my baby's age. And then
thinking of the age he would be now and not being able to imagine it.
Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will
never happen.

Normal is every happy event in my life always
being backed up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole
in my heart.

Normal is telling the story of your child's death
as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the
horror in someone's eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it
has become a part of my "normal".

Normal is each year coming up
with the difficult task of how to honor your child's memory and his
birthday and survive these days. And trying to find the balloon or flag
that fit's the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really.

Normal is
my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special my
baby loved. Thinking how she would love it, but how she is not here to
enjoy it.

Normal is having some people afraid to mention my baby.

Normal is making sure that others remember her.

Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever.

Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse sometimes, not better.

Normal
is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss,
unless they too have lost a child. NOTHING. Even if your child is in
the remotest part of the earth away from you - it doesn't compare.
Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is
unnatural.

Normal is taking pills, and trying not to cry all day, because I know my mental health depends on it.

Normal is realizing I do cry everyday.

Normal
is disliking jokes about death or funerals, bodies being referred to as
cadavers, when you know they were once someone's loved one.

Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone, but someone stricken with grief over the loss of your child.

Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child.

Normal
is feeling a common bond with friends on the computer in England,
Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and all over the USA, but yet never
having met any of them face to face.

Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother, talking and crying together over our children and our new lives.

Normal
is not listening to people make excuses for God. "God may have done
this because..." I love God, I know that my baby is in heaven, but
hearing people trying to think up excuses as to why healthy babies were
taken from this earth is not appreciated and makes absolutely no sense
to this grieving mother.

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house, did laundry or if there is any food.

Normal
is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have one
child or none, because you will never see this person again and it is
not worth explaining that my baby is in heaven. And yet when you say
you have no children to avoid that problem, you feel horrible as if you
have betrayed your baby.

Normal is avoiding McDonald's and
Burger King playgrounds because of small, happy children that break
your heart when you see them.


Normal is asking God why he took your child's life instead of yours and asking if there even is a God.

Normal is knowing I will never get over this loss, in a day or a million years.

And
last of all, Normal is hiding all the things that have become "normal"
for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are
"normal".