Happy Birthday Kevin!

You didn’t think I would forget did you? You’ve been foremost in my mind - since last night actually. You would be 41 years old today. Happy Birthday son. I love you, as much today as the day you were born. You’ve been gone for 27 years and it doesn’t make a smidge of difference in how much I love you and still miss you. I can’t help but wonder every time your birthday comes around where your life would have led you had it been a longer one.

You know, you’ve been a great help to me lately. Your life and death and how I’ve lived through grief has taught me a lot more than any books or teachers could ever have. There’s no measurable time-line for grief, is what I’ve come to realize. It comes and goes like the wind blowing through one’s hair. There are days when the wind is barely noticeable, other times when it is stronger and on some days, the wind hurls around the corner with enough force to knock one off their feet. But, over time, the wind of grief is less powerful and less frequent and it doesn’t carry the impact it had in the beginning.

Here I am, 27 years after your death, still sending you birthday greetings across the cosmos. Will there ever come a time when I don’t do that? I doubt it very much. For as long as I am here, you will hear the echo of my Happy Birthday cheer.

Writing these words to you reminds me of some of my clients who have gone through the loss of a loved one, some in horrific ways and how after a 6 month or 1 year, employers, friends, and doctors feel it’s their duty to move these people along because they think they should be done with their grief by now. Things need to go back to normal and life needs to move on!

Sometimes I would like to shout at these people, “What the hell do you know?” Normal is not a word which makes sense to people who have lost someone who was a huge part of their life. Things can never be the same as they were and to try to convince a grieving person of that, is like trying to sell snow to and Eskimo. Then grieving people are told that life moves on. Uh, ya! They are very much aware that life moves on. In fact that is where a lot of their pain comes from. They see life keeping on as usual when inside they feel as if the world out there should have stopped because theirs’ has.

Clients come to me feeling harassed by family, friends, and doctors who want them to get on anti-depressants because they look at the calendar and they say “it’s been 6 months,” or “it’s been a year” and they tell them they should be back to “normal.” Hogwash! I hear stories like this and my insides feel like they’re dancing on a hot bed of coals.

Grief isn’t instantaneous enough to match our fast paced world. People think there needs to be a quick fix and that people should, get over it and get on with life. So another prescription for another bottle of anti-depressants is given to dull the pain, mask the symptoms. And if the person tosses and turns during the night, well there’s a pill for that as well - one which will knock you out and take your dreams away too. Armed with a fist full of pills, grieving people can step back into their life without disturbing or instilling fear in other members of society. who are petrified to feel anything more than a hiccup and therefore cannot be around people who are hurting.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times when medication is necessary and often helpful, depending what the circumstances are, but for God’s sake, please allow people time to grieve. Allow people to embrace their humanness and to feel.