The worst happened. We lost a child.

So does this mean we are more at risk for divorce? Doing some research the data is not clear showing how much more at risk a marriage is after child loss. An often quoted statistic reports a 90% chance of marriage ending in divorce after losing a child. But more recent data shows the rate is not that high.

Scott and I will be celebrating 25 years of marriage this next month.

When I look at our wedding photo I see the promise of hope, youth and naivety.

Our marriage was strong before Nolan left us. Of course we had our difficulties. We are still in love but we found ourselves busy in our jobs, being parents and trying to survive the chaos of life. We had our lives as husband and wife be low on the priority list.

Some things we do now in our life with grief:

• We acknowledge we are grieving differently. I cry openly, I talk. A lot. He is quiet and rarely shares his thoughts. He does when he wants to.
• He is my first source for comfort and sharing of thoughts. I often share with my friends and family how I feel. But at my lowest I go straight to him. He is heart-broken with me. He understands.
• We do not blame each other. This is our biggest strength. How can I blame him or he I? We are not at fault for Nolan’s disease or his ending his life. Nolan made that decision. We each find ourselves trying to feel the guilt a parent has when their child takes his/her life. (that is another blog topic to come) We remind each other we are not to have guilt.
• We allow each other space. Especially in the first months. I found I would want him to have the same feelings of grief as I would have – however I understood quickly that grief is individually experienced. Sometimes you do better alone for a bit then you come together.
• We make each other laugh. Oh – how I love to laugh! Now more than ever. And he can make me laugh until I pee. 

When you look at how our lives are now and the strength we have with our grief, I can’t see this loss and trauma as a tearing apart of our marriage. It is rather a bond in the union of husband and wife, of being parents. WE lost Nolan – together.

And aren’t the above practices what all married couples should try to do?

I plan to continue with Scott … if one believes the research, we can continue against the odds.

Scott plays the odds well (sometimes he benefits at the  Horseshoe) and I am rather lucky – so he says.

I drive by the site where Nolan took his life almost every day.

I drive down this road every weekday morning to get Sam to school. We tend to be late and it is the most direct way to school. When it happened there was no road there. A big dirt pile remains and that is around where it happened. For months I did not know details other than the general area. Many months after they put in the road I asked Scott to show me. You see he went to the site the day after. He said he had to. No way I could. I said I would I not even exit the subdivision that way.

Weeks later I got enough courage to take that exit near the site. I didn’t cry. I didn’t break down. Wow. I can do this. I am not paralyzed with grief.

When I go down this road I tend to look towards the dirt pile. I do not think of what happened there. His last act is not the summary of his life.

I look and I remember him. I remember his smile. His laugh. He had a great laugh.

I don’t know if Sam thinks about Nolan when we drive this road. Maybe… maybe not. His grief is so different than mine. Sam told me he was done grieving about two weeks after Nolan passed. He was fourteen when Nolan took his life. I think he will grieve not having his older brother when he is an adult.

Someday the dirt pile will be gone. It will be part of someone’s front yard.

Life goes on.

I will still go down that road and think of Nolan.

Please don’t think I am a control freak. I am not. I just need the well oiled machine of a working mom’s life to flow with as little trouble and minimal breakdown.

Up at 4:30am, back home at 10pm some call days.. many nights end with charting on the few outpatient visits I did not finish during office hours. Add meetings, your son’s school activities, “mom taxi” responsibilities….

Now put some grief into the picture.

Grief clouds your mind. Especially when you push it away for all your hours of work. In the beginning months it was hard to not cry at work. Your doctor should not cry about her personal life. When I am working I need to think about my patients and their care, not my loss. During the years of medical training you are in a culture where you do not show your fatigue, negative emotion or distress.  These are signs of weakness.  Especially as a woman in medicine. A grieving doctor? Do that on your own time. 

Now months after Nolan’s passing I have little difficulty in pushing my personal thoughts aside and attending to my responsibilities. It is my life and I enjoy my practice. I have purpose. I find my healing in helping others.

But when I go home I need to grieve. 

I have so little free time. Who doesn’t?  I plan those precious hours or weekend days with productive to-dos. Grief is waiting for you… Sometimes things go as planned and other times… well the train derails by a photo of Nolan that pops up on my computer. Or a song on the radio. This triggers a grief attack. Ugh. Now I am a crying mess.

I know I need to cry. But when you can’t stop crying it sucks. And I have days of that. Sometimes my brain is a fog from grief. I can’t focus on anything I want or need to do. It is frustrating. I push a reset button with sleep (thankfully I sleep well most nights) and if it is a work day I push the grief away and tell my mind to focus and be in control.  I am slowly learning that grief cannot be scheduled. That I cannot always control it. 

Today marks 18 months since Nolan passed. 546 days.

Nolan left home and lived on campus at Valpo U. Exactly one month later he took his life. I knew I had no control in his decisions as he was not under my roof and my watch.  We had to trust his decision. He said he was ready to try again.  I had faith that he was in God’s hands.

That is where he is now.

I am trying to find my balance of control in my life and my faith in God’s plan … the veil of grief clouds my view at times.  So I continue on…

When the police and coroner told me Nolan was gone, time stood still.

For some of my grieving parent friends time remains at that heartbreaking moment.

I would never say I want to go back to that day and relive it. Even now I can feel the disbelief – “this is not happening, this is not happening” I said aloud over and over while I searched for Nolan’s last visit summary from the psychiatrist to show the coroner what meds he was taking. I just couldn’t think.

The weeks that followed Nolan’s death are not easy to remember with full detail. Anyone that has lived through a loss or shock to your life understands.  Bits of sleep you try to take with many hours laying in bed wondering how and why and what you missed or could have done differently. Day after day of little to no sleep and such high emotion and trauma puts your brain on overdrive.

But I do remember … the weeks after he died I had the gift of living in the moment.

Those weeks that came after Nolan died I would wake up and only be able to have the goal of making it through the day. To think about the future was impossible. The past too painful.

I had to live in the moment to survive.

When you have your life turn completely upside down you look at things in a different light. I am unbelievably blessed to be in a practice where I was able to take as much time off as I needed. I have the best partners= friends at my practice who covered my office, my call and took care of ALL of my responsibilities. ALL OF IT.

All that responsibility, pressure, stress of work and Continue reading “Present living” →

To start my blog I want to share the poem I wrote the night before Nolan’s first Angelversary. Nolan took his life 9/19/2016. He is forever 19 years old. Since then I have awoken every morning to remember he is gone. 

I live my life now with the heavy coat of grief.

I continue my life as mother to my remaining son, wife, sister, pediatrician and friend to many.  

Thank you for joining me as I  continue serving God in my practice of medicine and still see the sunrise as a reminder that I  have HOPE.

The promise of a new life 
Has the mother hold her newborn and smile
Dreams of the child’s future
Whispered in the baby’s ear
Childhood goes fleeting fast
The chaos of joy and learning and growth