After the memorial

After Jennifer's memorial, after everyone has gone back to their homes and to their lives, it just left my husband and I. We put all of the beautiful flowers that people had sent in her room. Her urn, we placed in the living room. 

So now it is just us. What do we do now? What is expected that we do now? I really don't have a clue as to what one should do after losing your child. I guess it is kind of like when you have a baby, you really have very little information about what happens next. You know the old saying, "children don't come with an owners manual". I guess this is like that in a way, except in reverse. Her services were on Friday, so we called our respective employers and told them we would be back to work on Monday. So we did the laundry, went to the grocery store for food for the week and went about our normal routine for a weekend.

But there has been nothing normal in our lives since December 5th, 2012. So even though we have done all of the usual things we do on the weekend, we would find ourselves overwhelmed, crying almost all the time, pretty much in shock.  I really don't remember much at all from that weekend. I actually don't remember much of anything  followed my daughter's death. Oh I vividly remember her at the hospital, and the planning of her services, and of that day we got to see her one last time at the funeral home, It was so quiet. My Jennifer lay there, and it was all wrong! My baby wasn't supposed to be there. She was not supposed to be gone.


So we prepared ourselves to go back to work on Monday. I had just started a new job in late November, so during the day, it was easy to be totally focused on my job. I was still in training, and I guess it made it easier to "pretend or act like nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred in our lives."  My boss was extremely understanding, checking in on me from time to time to see how I was holding up. Everyone at work, was kind and thankfully didn't keep asking me if I was alright. When someone asks that question, they  really don't want to full, raw truth. Let's face it, I wouldn't either. Not knowing what to say to someone. Because there really aren't words to express to someone who has lost a child.  My daughters birthday was about two weeks after her death. I didn't really know what to feel, and ended up crying so much, that I asked if I could just go home. 

I guess we were pretty much on auto pilot, we would get up in the morning, get ready to go to work, go there, do our jobs, check in on each other through the day to see if the other one was OK. For a while, (and actually still now) my husband would panic if I didn't call him when I got to work, and when I was leaving work, he was suddenly obsessed with knowing where I was at all times, and how I was holding up.  But if it helped him, it seemed like a very small thing that he was requesting from me.

When we got home, well that was a different situation all together. I guess because we were now home, that our grief would be inconsolable, we would just hold onto one anther, trying to lend each other a lifeline to hold onto, some support, anything. Then we would go to bed, tears either still wet on our cheeks, or flowing like an unending river down our faces.  I remember that after several days, (maybe weeks) of all this crying that my face was starting to feel "chapped", so extra moisturizer for me. I remember going to bed pretty early during the weeks after Jennifer died, I think it was an escape.....when you are asleep you don't have to think or remember.