Of Grief and Mourning

I've been asked to write a blog.  I am not a writer.  I do not have any ambitions to be a writer.  I was a slightly-above-average English student.   As a general rule I don't read blogs unless someone posts on Facebook and it intrigues me.  So this will be a very scary adventure for me.  If anything, I try to be obedient.  I guess that is one thing I have going for me.

A little about me:  I am a wife and mother of five children and the second of ten children.  I was born in Barstow, California, but have lived in Utah since my freshman year of High School.  I attended Brigham Young University and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Clinical Laboratory Science.  I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  My membership and beliefs affect me from the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night and sometimes through the night.  I am not someone who thinks on my feet.  I mull something over for a while until I work out how I feel about it.  I have faith in and a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

When I was a child I was told that you should not be sad for someone when they die.  The deceased was going back to live with their Heavenly Father and that is a joyous thing.  I believed what I was taught.  It wasn't until my mother-in-law passed away that I questioned this teaching.  Her death was the first death I had experienced that affected my daily life.  I only lived four houses north of her house and spent at least part of every day with her since the birth of my first child.  That was three and a half years, and that is a lot of days.  As with what seems every major stressful event in my life I was alone with my children when the news of her unexpected death came.  I woke up my 3 year-old son in the middle of the night to tell him, and to hug and cry with him.  Of course, he did not really understand what had happened, but I needed someone to hug and my eight-month-old daughter was not an option.

I realized at that moment that the mourning you feel when someone passes is not for them, it is for you.  I mourned for the loss of my association with my mother-in-law but more deeply I mourned for the loss my children had in the association with their grandmother.  My son had an intimate relationship with her from the time he was born.  They cooked together, played together, worked together and went to the grocery store to get string cheese, being careful to walk down the pet food isle that led right to the cheese as to not be tempted with anything else in the store.  He was now separated from the love and training he was receiving from her (she had a great way of getting children to eat their vegetables!) 

And I mourned for my daughter who would never know her grandma.  She would not be there to make her little summer jumpers, or teach her how to make strawberry-rhubarb jam, or to make the rolls, or how to put the eyes and noses on the Ding-Dong Bunnies during Easter.  It was almost unbearable to imagine what I would do without her and how I was going to make up for her loss in the lives of my children.  But somehow life goes on and you live on.

I have had other losses in my life since her death.  This month I add to the list my brother, Fred.  Unlike the other losses in my life that have come to people of a more advanced age, my brother decided to take his own life at 29.  As per the normal, the only other person in the house when I received the news was my 15 year-old son who was sleeping.  I woke him and told him the news and we cried together.  Although my brother's death will not affect my everyday life, it will affect me throughout my life.  I mourn that he will never walk through my front (or back) door again, I will never get a hug from him, he will never tickle and tease my children again, or commiserate with them about the injustices of life.  I had him for Christmas this year.  I've been thinking about what to get him since before Christmas ended last year. It will be hard at Christmas time. But I have taken some comfort from a scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants.  It reads, "Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die..." (Section 42 verse 45)  I loved my brother.  I am sad that he is gone, but comforted in the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ that he has been welcomed home into the loving arms of those who have gone before him.  I know there is a work he must do while separated from those of us still living.  I know I will see him again, and hug him and our association will be restored.  Until that day I will be OK even if at times I cry and am sad.