Issue # 2
Meeting Time: Thursday, Februry 2, 2012 @ 7:00 p.m.
Program: Ask It Basket
Meeting Location: Pekin Hospital
National Website: www.compassionatefriends.org
Pekin Chapter Voice Mail Number: 309-352-6000
The Month of February
This is the month that a whole day is dedicated to love. In our sorrow, let us not forget that one emotion which above all else, can comfort and console us.
LET US THINK OF THE THINGS WE LOVE –
1) Our child – whom we loved – still love – and always will love – here in our hearts as long as we live.
2) Our families – hurting like us – lonely – needing each other – needing us.
3) Our true friends – listening – trying to help – wanting to lighten our load, but not knowing how – not always understanding, but there.
4) Our memories – of wonderful times gone by – some that make us laugh – some that make us cry – but all part of the fabric of our lives and of our love for each other.
5) Our quiet times – to get away by ourselves and think – to read – to note again the world around us – to let peace enter.
6) Our Compassionate Friends – who are there – who know – who understand when others do not.
“Love makes the world go round” and when our world comes to a sudden, grinding, heart-shattering stop, love is the glue that keeps us from falling off.
By Fran Mac Arthur Southern MD TCF
Valentine Day in Heaven
If there’s a Valentine Day in Heaven Lord, please give a red rose to my son for me. Place it in Shayne’s hand and tell him it’s from me. Tell him how much we love and miss him. And when he turns to smile, place a kiss upon his cheek from me and hold him for a while. Always know not a day goes by that you are always on my mind, and in my heart. I miss you more than anyone could know.
”Happy Valentine’s Day”
All my love, Mom XO
By Carol Hamm, Auburn, IL
Fractured Heart
My heart has been fractured and shattered into a million pieces by the death of my beautiful daughter. A fracture more terrible than the crushing of any physical bone. Fractures take a long time to heal. They require extra special care and can put the victim out of action for many months. They heal, cell by cell, slowly and painfully, some leaving a lifetime disability. My shattered heart will heal “cell by cell”. It will take a long time, and will require extra special care. In some areas of life, I will be “out of action”. Even when new tissue forms its scar, I will always walk with a limp.
By Elsie Myers TCF/ Melborne, Australia
President’s Day Reminds Us Grief Can Strike Anyone
BEREAVED PRESIDENTS
As we look at presidents day, perhaps it is a time to remember that death does not discriminate between the powerful and the powerless. Twenty presidents experienced the heartache and loss of one or more children.
· John Adams, lost his son Charles, 20, while he was president.
· Thomas Jefferson had 6 children and only 2 lived to maturity. One daughter , May, 26, died while he was president.
· James Monroe lost a son of two years of age.
· John Quincy Adams lost a 1 year old daughter, a son died while Adams was president, and another son died 5 years later.
· William Harrison had 10 children, 6 died before he became president.
· John Tyler had a baby girl, Anne, die.
· Zachary Taylor had 6 children, 2 died as infants and a daughter died three months after her wedding.
· Millard Fillmore’s daughter , Abigail, died at 22.
· Franklin Pierce lost 2 sons in infancy. Two months before his inauguration to the presidency, their only child,Benjamin, 11 years old, was killed in a railroad accident.
· Abraham Lincoln lost two sons. Edward was 4 yrs old, William 11 yrs old. The president’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, unable to cope with her husband’s assassination and the death of yet another son, Thomas, 18 yrs old, was confined to a sanitarium for a few months.
· Rutherford Hayes experienced the death of three of his eight children.
· James Garfield had seven children, two died while infants.
· Chester Arther experienced the death of a two year-old.
· Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth died at 13 years of age.
· William McKinley lost Ida, 4 months old, and Katherine, 4 years old.· Theodore Roosevelt’s son died at 21 years of age.
· Calvin Coolidge had a son Calvin Jr., who died at 16 while he was in office.
· Franklin Roosevelt’s son, Franklin Jr. died in infancy, one of their six children.
· Dwight Eisenhower’s son Doug died when he was 3 years old.
· John Kennedy had an infant daughter die. A 2 year-old son, Patrick, died while JFK was president and John Jr. died in 1999.
· George & Barbara Bush lost their daughter Robin to cancer.
Lifted from Miami-Whitewater & East Central Indiana Satellite Group Newsletter 2-2000
The Suicide Battlefield
Our friend died at his own battlefield. He was killed in action fighting a civil war. He fought against adversities that were as real to him as his casket is real to us. They were powerful adversaries. They took toll of his energies and endurance. They exhausted the last vestiges of his courage and his strength. At last these adversaries overwhelmed him. And it appeared that he had lost the war. But did he? I see a host of victories that he has son!
For one thing—he has won our admiration—because even if he lost the war, we give him credit for his bravery on the battlefield. And we give him credit for the courage and pride and hope that he used as his weapons as long as he could. We shall remember not his death, but his daily victories gained through his kindness and thoughtfulness, through his love for his family and friends. . . For all things beautiful, lovely, and honorable. We shall remember not his last day of defeat, but we shall remember the many days that he was victorious over overwhelming odds. We shall remember not the years we thought he had left, but the intensity with which he lived the years that he had. Only God knows what this child of His suffered in the silent skirmishes that took place in his soul. But our consolation is that God does know, and understands.
Author: Rev. Wes Stephens at the funeral of a friend who had completed suicide.
Lovingly lifted from TCF, Miami Valley Chapter
SIBLING'S CORNER
What about Me
Have you ever felt that, as a surviving brother or sister, we are often forgotten? I have felt this way quite often in the last six years.
Over time, the feeling becomes less and less. Our parents’ grief is so much different from ours. No more or less hurtful than ours, but different. They lost their child. I hope that in my lifetime, I never have to know how that feels. I KNOW how painful it was when Sean died. I don’t want to know the pain of having a child die.
But, often times, we are the “forgotten mourners”. I love my brother very much and miss him just as much. I think people sometimes forget that we are hurting also. My parents were offenders of that too.
I know they know my sister and I were hurting, but they were so wrapped up in what they were feeling that they didn’t have time to worry about what we were feeling. I tried so hard to make my parents well again that I neglected my grief. Pretty much denied it. We really want to make our families “normal” again.
I have had some awful things said to me over the last six years. Two weeks after Sean died, someone said to me, “Well, you do still have a sister”. Well yes, I do still have a sister, but that still doesn’t lessen the pain of my brother’s death and my sister can’t possibly replace my brother. Probably the worst thing anyone has said to me is “Why aren't you over this? Sean has been dead for six months”. Well, it is not something you just “get over”.
I have learned a lot of things over the years and if I hadn’t been in such a state of shock, maybe I would have had some good responses. When I think back on it, I wish I had. I have decided that, from what I have learned, I need to educate people and make them understand that siblings and friends have the right to greive too.
As surviving siblings and friends, we also have to realize that we need to find a new “normal”. We also need to know that it’s okay to feel all of the things that we feel, be it anger, sadness, gilt or any other emotion. Just know that you’re not crazy or wrong to grieve. Know also that it is all right to think ad talk about them when you’re ready, not when someone else says or thinks you should be ready. Death and grieving are, unfortunately, a part of life.
By Traci Morlock St. Louis Chapter BP/USA
