There's no way anybody's going to heal from something they don't admit to having. Some things, we just don't want to face the reality that "it" is so. Whether that be a marriage that's no longer working, the need to live within limited means...or of course the end all be all...admitting our child is physically deceased.
I think as bereaved Moms, we try everything in our power to stave off admitting the final "reality"--our deceased child --(physically only-yet it seems 100% "in entirety" early on). We try to "find" them everywhere...often thinking we've succeeded...only to "remember"...and lapse into a kind of scattered state of mind. Our subconscious is working overtime to try to figure out how this could possibly be, since there's no way our children are really gone...All this just tires us out enormously...
How does one believe "the impossible" has happened? Slowly... and realizing that it is "a process"-- rather than a one time event. Just like forgiveness is also a process and not a one time event. They go hand in hand, I've found. I wasn't able to do one without the other...I found that Jesus often helped to soften the rock hard refusal I had, to admit to anything but not being a "good enough" mother or wife. Here and there, bits and pieces of "helping me" gifts of grace from others. And some confusing new battles from those I had previously trusted--boulders to go around...
I got along fairly well early on, with my subconscious fantasy that my children were still physically alive on this planet. There was a part of me that would not--no--could not, admit the harshest reality there can be. And not ever seeing them actually in their deceased state-- still recovering in the hospital and not able to attend the funeral--I think it was even harder to fully sink in.
They were just "away" for an indeterminate time.
I remember studying the news clippings, the funeral pamphlet, my husband's reunion booklet that listed him "In Memoriam" on the back page...all with some confusion and seeming unbelief...
I got busy, I kept myself as active as I could, believing that activity prevented excessive thinking. And thinking too much about my loss was never a good thing, always ending in tears and sadness. Truth that is seen one dimensionally-the only way I could see at that time--can often be a very bitter, painful and lonely, way to live.
I could only stave off the inevitable, for a certain period of time. When that time came for me to "hit rock(y) bottom" during my journey of sorrow --it was the height of my depth of grief. I couldn't go any lower...I was brought to the ground in the most profoundness of sorrow...finally "admitting" to myself it was true. They really were (physically) dead. All the "woulda, coulda, shoulda's hit full force at that point in time...
It was my belief in forgiveness, that God earnestly desires to offer us, that made me realize "Who am I to have the audacity to deny myself forgiveness?"...and started to truly heal from that point on. If Jesus would forgive me, how dare I not forgive myself! Who did I think I was?!
And now, after a long time on the journey, I realize that thinking of them as being on a trip "away"--for an undetermined time--isn't that far off the mark "of reality"...in fact, now I truly believe it IS reality...
My journey has evolved from dire loss, to my children's gain, to my gain of new compassions, to desiring to help others from fearing the looming future of bereavement without any "hope"...I've come full circle to feeling my children now are with me, in Spirit..until "an undetermined time"...when I will join them in their new "REAL-ity", where love is the Guiding force, permeating everything with the light and lovely fragrance of joy...There really is reason to hope for a better tomorrow!