A new support group

We went to a new support group today. The one that we were in, changed their meeting frequency to quarterly, and we really do need a group that meets more often. This group meets every week. 

When we went to group on Monday, the weather was terrible, it was raining which made it a little bit harder to find it, and we drove right past the address the first time. And of course, there was a great deal of construction going on...orange cone lanes, and those signs everywhere. Anyways we finally turned around and backtracked, and found the address without further incidents. 

In the support group it usually begins with the leader of the group having someone begin by telling about their loss. There are a lot of support groups for different losses that people experience, we are in one that is specifically for bereaved parents, no matter what the age of your child, or how they died. We are all just parents who have had to experience the hardest loss that a person will ever have to go through. So it starts going around the room, each person telling of their loss, and talking a bit about what they are going through now. You don't have to share if you don't feel up to it. The support group is a safe place where you are with others who are on the same path that you are on. 

When it rolls around to me, I talk about my daughter, Jennifer. She was my best friend, our only child. We aren't getting better, even though it has almost been nine months since she passed. I am still frozen for the most part, going through the motions every day, My husband, Tony, seems to be getting worse. I bury myself in books, escaping into other people's lives so I can escape my own. 

Sharing my/our story about how we lost our daughter is heart wrenching...I feel, as I am talking, that my heart and soul are being ripped out of my chest. The pain still has the power to cripple me, and steal my breath away, leaving nothing behind. I would give just about everything to have her back. I truly don't know how to survive this, or if we can survive this. I take it one day at a time, because I don't know how else to take it, I don't know what is ahead for us. Am I always going to be frozen like this? Never again feeling anything?  Will my husband always be a tight rope walk away from a nervous breakdown?  How do parents get through this, when all you want to do is die, to be with your child? 

I don't know what lies ahead. I only know that my daughter is gone, and that her Dad and I are completely lost. Everyday our hearts break again, each morning when we are once more confronted with her absence. Each morning is just another day without her.