Anatomy of Grief: An Inspirational Guide to Surviving the Death of Your Child

By Barbara Repczynski

One thing a parent should never have to deal with is the death of a child. When your child dies, your life, as you have known it, ends. Once the initial grief has past, we all have choices to make. How are we going to deal with this huge change in our lives? Do we curl up into a fetal position and stay there, nursing our grief, for the rest of our lives or do we take a deep breath and move forward. I cannot help you with the first option but, maybe, I can help you with the second.

Anatomy of Grief chronicles the path we took back to life. I know you cannot follow that same path, but am hoping my experiences will help you to see that there is a way back. I am also hoping to shorten the time you spend in the grip of grief by teaching you how to open your mind and follow your heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450255066

Barbara Repczynski

Barbara and her husband Tony are now living in Spring Hill, Florida where they can be close to their son Mark and his beautiful girls. They are also close enough to Tys family to visit oftenso life is good. Barbara has been writing as a hobby for twenty years and is already working on her next book.

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Barbara Repczynski

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Anatomy of Grief

An Inspirational Guide to Surviving

the Death of Your Child

Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Repczynski

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-5505-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-5506-6 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 08/31/2010

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

INTRODUCTION

One of the wonderful and beautiful things about this world is its diversity. Just as there are an amazing number of different flowers, trees, insects and animals, there is an amazing diversity of human beings. As in all of nature, there are no two people who are exactly alike. We all have a different life story to tell. Our families are each comprised of different individuals who spin our lives into something unique.

When I decided to attempt to write this book, I realized that my story is unique to me, as Tony’s story is unique to him. We are a couple, husband and wife, mother and father, but our emotions are not the same and our reactions to our daily life are usually quite different. Your story is unique to you but I am hoping that you will be able to glean something from the following pages that will help you on your journey through your grief and help to lead you back to peace.

I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist or a learned scholar. I am just an ordinary person. Some of the things that have happened to me and shaped my life story are not quite so ordinary but I don’t feel that they are extraordinary. I would like to suggest that you probably have things that have happened in your life that are similar. You just may not have been open enough to recognize them. Maybe my words will help you to do that. This is the account of the road I followed in the process of overcoming my grief. Now it is your turn to choose your path.

I know how you feel, I felt the same way; but here is what I found.

Obviously, I can’t know exactly how you feel, but…

CHAPTER 1

In the beginning…

I was born right in the middle of 1950. It was a wonderful time to be born and a wonderful time to grow up. I grew up safe, secure and so innocent of what the world could throw my way. My father was a truck driver and my mother stayed home and sewed our clothes and baked us cookies. We played outside in the street while our parents and, for some, grandparents watched from the porches. My parents loved each other and they loved us and we allowed that love to cocoon us in a false sense of happily ever after. There were never any arguments in our home and the only time I can remember any yelling was when Karen, my sister, or I (usually) were in trouble or trying to get our way about something. Sure life had its ups and downs but there were never really big ups or downs.

My grandparents on my mother’s side died before I was born so I never knew them. My grandparents on my father’s side lived on a farm in Minnesota so we rarely saw them but, when we did, it was always a great adventure. My grandmother died when I was three but I remember it well. The family all rushed to Minnesota (we were kind of scattered) to visit her in the hospital. Small children were not exposed to funerals back then so I have no memories of that. Later my uncle decided that Grandpa shouldn’t be living there all alone so Grandpa moved to Chicago with them and then came to stay with us. I adored him and loved having a grandparent living with us. Then he died one evening after dinner and my sister and I were sent to stay with a neighbor while mom and dad took him back to Minnesota to be buried. I guess the point I want to make is that I was exposed to death at an early age but my family never made a big fuss about it so I just accepted it as normal. I think somehow, at an early age, I learned that everyone is here for a predetermined amount of time and when it is your time to go, you go.

This philosophy was a little harder to hold on to a few years later, but I managed. You see, when I was eleven my father became very ill and went to the hospital. He never came home and died right after I turned twelve. Was that hard? Yes, but I learned some things about myself. My father was the center of my world and he left me. I had a hard time forgiving him for that. I also hated receiving sympathy from anyone. I would stay in the house for days playing solitaire just so I wouldn’t have to hear people say ‘I’m sorry" or see the look of pity in their eyes. After a couple of weeks I decided to start living again and began to take my cues from my mom and sister. I learned to be kind to those silly people who pitied me and I learned to hold my head up high, keep moving ahead and keep my sorrow to myself. I guess mom, Karen and I could have sat at home having a huge pity party together but that wasn’t going to change anything, was it? I also learned that time will heal your heart if you give it a chance. Little did I know how hard I would have to hold on to those lessons in later years.

Kids bounce back quickly and I went on to become a normal teenager (if there is any such thing). My mom did a great job of preparing us for adulthood, I think. We learned to cook, bake, sew, type and take shorthand. We also learned how to be self sufficient and were not allowed to marry or move out until we had a skill that we could use to support ourselves if necessary. She had been well educated and able to support us when dad died and she wanted to make sure we were both able to do that as well. She also managed to instill in me a great sense of self worth; pride in my family, my heritage and my abilities.

I met Tony when I was fourteen and fell instantly in love with him. We married when I was eighteen and began our family a year later. Ty was our first child and, even though I thought I was so grown up and mature at the time, I have to admit that I was not ready for him. He was such a handful! It took three years before I had enough nerve to try again. Mark was born when Ty was almost four. My kids were born in the seventies and the world had changed remarkably by then. I tried to raise them just like I was raised but things didn’t turn out the way I thought they would. We were a nice, middle class family but drugs, sex and rock and roll had moved into our lives and I didn’t realize the consequences until it was too late. I guess this is the basis for my story. We were a nice normal family living a middle class life and trying to do the best we could. Tony and I tried to raise our boys to be good people. We tried to provide them with good educations so they would be good citizens. And we always tried to make sure that they knew how much they were loved. When they were eighteen we let them fly from the nest and prayed that they would do well.

Shortly after the boys were grown with families of their own, my mother died. She had been battling cancer for several years and, I think, finally gave up. I put into practice all the things I had learned about grief but this was the most difficult of all. I was happy that her suffering was over and I knew that she was in a better place but I wasn’t ready for her to be gone. I knew deep inside I was being selfish and I knew that she would not be happy about causing me so much pain but it still took me a couple of weeks to get myself back on track. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not saying that I bounced back and all was well inside my soul. What I’m saying is that I allowed my inner training to assert itself and I held my head high and faced the world with a smile. I managed to bury my pain most of the time and only let it out when I was strong enough to deal with it. I knew that time would heal my heart and I resigned myself to accept the loss and move on. I found out many years later that the translation of that