Put This Behind You and Move On

Someone emailed this to me so I thought I would share.

Put This Behind You and Move On

When you say to someone who has lost a child, "You must put this behind you and move on with your life", I am wondering in what way do you mean that? Perhaps it is something that we need to start asking you. We are continuing to live our lives, so it should be explained to us in terms that we can understand. "Put this behind you", is the part that I really have a problem understanding. What are we to put behind us? Our life? Our memories? Or the fact that we had another child? The fact that they have died? Are you telling us we must totally forget those things and go on as if our children never existed? I think it is time to ask you to define exactly what you are saying. You want us to go back to the past and return to being happy? Give us back our children and we will do that. But since you cannot return the things that made us happy, how do you expect us to do that? Forget them? That would be to say they had no value in our lives. For me, what you are saying is they lived for no reason. Their lives had great value, whether you choose to recognize it or not. It is a thoughtless and insensitive thing to say to someone who has lost the most important part of his or her life. When you see someone who has lost a leg, or an arm, would you say "You must forget this and move on with your life"? No matter how much time has passed would you believe this is an appropriate thing to say to them? Why then when we have lost something more important to us than our arms, legs, or our lives, would you feel it is appropriate to say it to us? Don't you realize we would gladly give those things to have them back again. Or to say it to someone else, when you are talking about us, as if you must find some way to blame us for our grief; that is even worse. This is one of those senseless statements made by people who do not stop to think of how ignorant and how foolish it is. If you must speak that way, at least think it through and define what you are saying. Is that person holding a job or raising other children? Are they sharing a marriage and doing the normal things in their lives? Then how are they failing to move on with their lives? Is it because they are still grieving? That does not stop us from moving on with our lives ~ ~ Life continues whether we want it to or not. We have not stopped living!! Put what behind us? Have you forgotten any one of your children? When they have moved away from home do you stop remembering them? Have you forgotten all the special days of celebration or the foods they enjoy when they come to visit? Why would you believe we should and how are we to do that? Explain it to us. I believe it is time for some honesty and that we need to examine what is being said. I believe the truth is that YOU cannot deal with our unhappiness. You are still looking for that person that you knew before tragedy hit our lives. Can you return to the person you were two years ago? Or four years ago? Or any time in the past? No, none of us can. We are shaped by the circumstances of our lives and there is no going backward. We do move on with our lives. Forever changed and forever different but still we are moving on. We simply cannot move backward...... back to who we were before. We can no longer be the joyful , happy people that we once were. We have suffered pain that you can never comprehend and we pray that you never do. We are forever changed and if you feel that you must say things "for our own good", at least think it through and define what you mean by them. That statement makes no sense and is only something you have heard and something people believe is appropriate. Those words have no meaning.

by Netta Wilson with the help of Mary Catherine Jones