The heart broken by a child’s death — when will it heal?

Thank you, readers, for your very candid comments recently about the excruciating loneliness and pain you continue to feel for days, weeks, months and years after a child dies. Thank you for the courage to tell it like it is, so that we can talk about it.

A recent (2011) University of Michigan Study has concluded that the feeling of a broken heart is real, experienced as intense physical agony that hurts “even more than pain”, complete with brain chemistry and electrical changes. Ethan Kross, lead author of the paper written about the Michigan experiment, says research points to increased brain activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex and dorsal posterior insula. Others suggest the vagas nerve becomes overstimulated, causing pain, nausea or muscle tightness in the chest region. Regardless of the causes, loss triggers these responses, with real and sometimes significant physical outcomes.

What all of this medical jargon really means is that loss of love hurts.

It isn’t a phantom pain, it is real pain — as real as it gets, as bereaved parents can testify to.

Studying people after romantic breakups, researchers conclude that loss of love resembles, to the brain, a pain similar to the sensations of  burning or searing in the heart. And the death of a child can literally cripple parents.

This grief can trigger the deepest pain we humans are able to tolerate – both emotional and physical — and sometimes it hurts more than we can bear. Harvard researchers have discovered that, on average, one in 10 heart attack survivors had lost a loved one within the previous six months. The risk of heart attack was 21 times higher the first day after a death, eight times higher the week after, and four times higher a month after.

Time is, in fact, grief’s aspirin. I realize that my own grief is well worn now, and most days the pain is dulled. The edges aren’t so sharp and I can recall my son’s face without heart palpitations now. I can do it with a steady heartbeat and a full breath again. I can bear the great sadness, so many years after losing Daniel-Paul, with a grace or acceptance that I simply could not manage in the early years — not because my love for him has lessened, or because I feel his loss any less keenly, but because time has passed and I have learned to accommodate this parallel universe without him in somewhat the same way one learns to live with phantom pain.

I think of my grief now like this because phantom pain is a side effect of an amputation, and when my son died, I suffered an emotional amputation, and a part of my core self died. I was left to stumble on without my legs, to see without my eyes, to feel without my heart — that is the way I felt.

Today, I can walk again, and I can see — though still through tears some nights or mornings or odd afternoons when I’m caught by surprise with the playing of  “Daniel” or “Danny Boy” on the radio (that always gets to me). Or when I see his namesake nephew doing something that so very much reminds me of him at that young age, climbing a tree or shyly bringing me a flower. There are a million holes in this sidewalk that I am expected to walk down without him, and sometimes I avoid the cracks, and sometimes I stumble, but the path gets a little smoother year by year.

There are coping suggestions in many of the other blogs posted on this site, so I’m going to briefly highlight a little well-intentioned concern:

1. Let go. If you are fighting tears, find a private place and shed them. Crying sheds stress hormones and helps restore brain chemistry balance, in addition to helping you focus again. Fighting tears means you have a buildup of stress hormones and yes, real men cry, too. It’s healthy.
2. Forgive your crazy thoughts. Forgive your outbursts. Forgive you lapses. You aren’t a bad person for questioning faith, your sanity, or for flashes of anger or high emotionality. It’s time to get emotional support if these behaviors are hurtful to others, but don’t label yourself. Become your own best friend when other friends fail or stumble or avoid.
3. Purposefully seek out a way to remember your child that is healthy for you and respectful of their memory. Honestly, that wouldn’t really include drug addiction or self mutilation…. This is a time for honesty, and I well understand that both “escapes” can be tempting, but getting drunk or trying to off yourself only creates problems for other people — it won’t bring your child back or change things for the better. While it really sucks to be you right now, you can do this a minute at a time, which becomes an hour, which becomes a day. You can do this.

My thoughts and prayers are with you all as you make your way. You are not alone. Legions of bereaved parents, who understand and send love and support your way, walk in the shadows of this blog to help prop you up.