My younger brother is buried here in Louisiana.
Three years ago I was a contributor to a motherhood blog called Get Born. In the first post that I wrote for the site I explored my darkest fear – losing my son. I won’t go too much into the backstory that fuels this fear (you can see the photo above and read the post I linked to in the previous sentence) except that I think these fears can be even stronger among those of us who have experienced a significant loss in our lives. It’s not abstract to us. We truly know what it feels like when someone we love is gone. We know the impact that it has and how our lives are completely altered by the experience, for better or worse.
Recently I listened to two episodes of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast that dealt with the death of a child. In 2000, mother/baby registered nurse Lisa Solis DeLong lost her first-born son when he was just 15 years old. He had been in a ten-year remission from leukemia before the cancer returned. On top of that in 2006, her youngest son was diagnosed with leukemia. He has now completed treatments and is in remission, but to go through all of that AGAIN…wow.
Lisa wrote about her experience and her newfound perspectives on God, living with fear, and regaining joy in her life in her first memoir titled Blood Brothers: A Memoir of Faith and Loss While Raising Two Sons With Cancer. I haven’t read the book yet, but after listening to the podcast I’ve added it to my Goodreads list. There were a lot of things about Lisa’s perspective that I liked and was comforted by, in a way.
While Lisa was raised in a traditional Christian church and remains connected to some of those teachings, she has also opened up to exploring other types of spirituality which are part of her beliefs and spiritual identity. One of the things that the interview touches on is how to raise a healthy-minded child when it comes to the acceptance of death as part of life. Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.
If we don’t instill fear in them about dying, that child can die very gracefully. That teenager can die very gracefully. It doesn’t mean that they are not emoting what they feel about the experience. It just means that they’re going to feel it fully and that they’re able to do that….We have the opportunity to teach young children to accept the reality that we and all living things die on the planet. If we can teach them that one concept…that death is normal. It’s a naturally occurring experience in the cells in our body…and if we can diffuse the fear around that one aspect of life, we’re giving them a great gift and a solid take on perspective for the rest of their life.
As someone who was born a VERY anxious kid afraid of everything, even ants, I like this idea a lot.
Here are some other outtakes that spoke to me.
Become a VERY good listener to children. If you are so busy instructing them all the time you’re going to miss learning from them some of the most priceless gems that we have at our disposal.
With children, if you give them the opportunity, especially if they’re sick, to say what they feel without stopping them, you’ll learn so much more about what is going on.
She gave an example of this by quoting what her son Jacob said when he was having a horrible time with his treatment. “I want to be like J.D. He’s all light and I’m just half-light and half-darkness.” This statement was something that came from him – not from anything that he’d heard described by anyone else.
When a baby is born I look at him or her and think, “Who is it that you’re here to teach?” …Who’s going to love them the most? Who’s going to learn from them the most?
I’m not afraid of dying. I’m not afraid of other people I love dying…I just see it as part of the natural process.
Lisa’s mantra when she can’t turn her mind off is a passage from The Bible, 2 Timothy 1:7: He has not given us a spirit of fear but of love and of power and sound mind.
You can listen to the entire podcast (broken up into two episodes) here.
The Unmistakable Creative: Overcoming the Loss of a Child Part 1 with Lisa DeLong
The Unmistakable Creative: Overcoming the Loss of a Child Part 2 with Lisa Delong