The New Normal - A Poem to Share

Someone on a PROM email list forwarded a really good poem on our new normals after a loss. I posted this on FB to deepen the understanding of my friends who have not been through a loss. Some new friends whom I have met after losing Joey are all in a different journey - as I have mentioned months before, one friend has filled her empty arms with the beauty of adoption, one friend is anxiously awaiting for her baby to be born full term, and another mom of beautiful daughters in heaven is still on the path of waiting like me. Just as the friend who adopted said, our normals are different too once we move forward to having a rainbow baby. However, I know that NO mom will ever forget her child even when her subsequent children bring much joy. Let me know what new normal you moms would write for yourselves if this resonates with you all. Here is the poem:


This is now what "normal" is...

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone
important is missing from all the important events in your family's life.

Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Birthdays
Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Valentine's Day, July 4th and Easter.

Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a
funeral than a wedding or birthday party...yet feeling a stab of pain in your
heart when you smell the flowers and see the casket.

Normal is feeling like you can't sit another minute without getting up and
screaming, because you just don't like to sit through anything.

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if's & why didn't I's
go through your head constantly.

Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind, holding
your head to make it go away.

Normal is having the TV on the minute I walk into the house to have noise,
because the silence is deafening.

Normal is staring at every baby who looks like he is my baby's age. And then
thinking of the age they would be now and not being able to imagine it. Then
wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never
happen.

Normal is every happy event in my life always being backed up with sadness
lurking close behind, because of the hole in my heart.
 
Normal is telling the story of your child's death as if it were an everyday,
commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone's eyes at how
awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of my "normal".

Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your
child's memory and their birthday and survive these days. And trying to find
the balloon or flag that fit's the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really.

Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special
my baby loved. Thinking how he would love it, but how he is not here to enjoy
it.

Normal is having some people afraid to mention my babies.

Normal is making sure that others remember them.

Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives,
but we continue to grieve our loss forever.

Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets
worse sometimes, not better.

Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss,
unless they too have lost a child. NOTHING. Even if your child is in the
remotest part of the earth away from you - it doesn't compare. Losing a parent
is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unnatural.

Normal is taking pills, and trying not to cry all day, because I know my
mental health depends on it.

Normal is realizing I do cry everyday.

Normal is disliking jokes about death or funerals, bodies being referred to as
cadavers, when you know they were once someone's loved one.

Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone, but someone stricken
with grief over the loss of your child.

Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat
buddies who have also lost a child.

Normal is feeling a common bond with friends on the computer in England,
Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and all over the USA, but yet never having
met any of them face to face.

Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother, talking and crying
together over our children and our new lives.

Normal is not listening to people make excuses for God. "God may have done
this because..." I love God, I know that my baby is in heaven, but hearing
people trying to think up excuses as to why healthy babies were taken from
this earth is not appreciated and makes absolutely no sense to this grieving
mother.

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house,
did laundry or if there is any food.

Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have two
children or one, because you will never see this person again and it is not
worth explaining that my baby is in heaven. And yet when you say you have 1
child to avoid that problem, you feel horrible as if you have betrayed your
baby.

Normal is avoiding McDonald's and Burger King playgrounds because of small,
happy children that break your heart when you see them.

Normal is asking God why he took your child's life instead of yours and asking
if there even is a God.

Normal is knowing I will never get over this loss, in a day or a million
years.And last of all,

Normal is hiding all the things that have become "normal" for you to feel, so
that everyone around you will think that you are "normal".

------ author unknown ------