Traumatic experiences never really leave you. I tend to downplay this since it’s not a pleasant topic. I survive by filing it away and controlling the amount of time I spend thinking about it. Usually this works.
My class assignment this week was on Crisis Counseling. Almost every week I have to write a research paper. I have to find references to support what I write about. Sometimes this is easy and other times it’s like pulling teeth. Last week I found 10-15 articles to pull from. This week I had the bare minimum of 3.
Sometimes I will find articles that aren’t relevant to my current assignment but I save them for future reference. I am interested in grief and trauma counseling so I have saved a lot of those. This week I found one on a program in Washington DC that provides crisis support and bereavement counseling for families who arrive at the morgue to identify someone who died suddenly from homicide, suicide, or accidents. This sounded similar to the Village of Support concept that I have talked about so I was eager to read it.
To clarify, I did not have to identify Patrick and did not see him until the funeral home had prepared him for viewing. I didn’t go through the process discussed in the article but as I read it, I still found myself back in that viewing room at the funeral home with my legs crumbling beneath me. I’ve told this story before. I realize I did not have to see him. This is a deeply personal decision, and for me, it was important to have that closure.
I was escorted into the room and I honestly can’t remember who was with me. I know it was one or all of my siblings. My Dad followed and as I sank to the floor he was suddenly there to hold me up. For some reason all I could say was, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. I was telling Patrick that I was sorry that this happened to him but I know it was also an expression of my grief. They had him on a table, and this was somehow easier than seeing him in the casket. His skin felt soft, yet cold. His wedding band had a scrape on it when it was returned to me so I had to check his hand and there was an injury but it didn’t look bad. He looked peaceful but it wasn’t him. He had never looked like that in life. I knew he was gone.
There were many moments of trauma that I relive. The moment I saw the breaking news alert with the words fatal and bicycle jumping out at me. The phone call to tell Sierra. Being handed his watch and wedding band. Seeing him at the funeral home, then taking the girls in to see him (their choice). These memories aren’t endless, and they pop up less frequently now, but usually I’m caught a little off guard.
Yesterday, I was headed to an early morning appointment with my counselor. I got to Shaw and Locan, and BOOM, it was that day again. I wished i could go back to that exact moment, when I thought I was driving to find my husband walking his bike with a flat tire. One of the last moments before my life changed.
Today, as part of my interview to become a court appointed special advocate for foster children, I had to describe a traumatic experience and how I had gotten through it. The interviewer was aware of my background and made it clear that I didn’t need to discuss that experience. The thing is, I’m okay talking about it and it gets easier every time. I was able to recount all of the love and support I had that day and explain that my gratitude for that is the reason I am doing many of the things I am doing with my life.
Tonight, I read a comment from a widow/widower forum. A widower explained that a friend told him he needed to tell the story of his wife’s death more than 300 times. This suggestion came from a book by Kathryn Mannix, titled With the End in Mind. The author explains this by saying;
Bereaved people, even those who have witnessed the apparently peaceful death of a loved one, often need to tell their story repeatedly, and that is an important part of transferring the experience they endured into a memory, instead of reliving it like a parallel reality every time they think about it.
We need to be more comfortable talking about death. We will all lose someone and we will all die. It’s okay to acknowledge that. Tell your story, listen to mine. Each time it will get a little easier.