Grief work through service

Brock and I have been going to a private one on one grief counselor for about 4 months. Most of the time she helps by reassuring me that I am not going crazy. It’s a big worry of mine for some reason. I can see how easy it would be to go crazy after something tragic like losing a child consumes your every thought. Another thing that our counselor talks about is grief work. It’s weird to think about doing work for your grief that you are having. I thought so at first. She wouldn’t start off the session by saying what grief work have you been doing. She simply will ask “how’s it going, or what have you been doing that has helped you lately?” After I tell her that I have been writing to Corby in his journal just so that I can talk to him or tell her that I have started blogging my grief journey she always tells me “you are doing grief work”. So what I have gathered is grief work is stuff you do to help lessen the pain of your grief. I say lessen the pain because I am still grieving for my son just as I was that night in the ER and every day since then. The level of grief has not gotten less, but when I do the grief work during that time my pain lessens slightly. I recently listened to a talk given by a member in my ward from conference talk given by David S. Baxter titled Faith, Service, Constancy .  That was the first Sunday that I had gone back to our own ward. During the days leading up to Corby’s funeral we stayed at my parent’s house for several reasons. One, being that I could not go home to a house that didn’t have my little boy in it, but had all of his belongings there. I felt like I was tricking my mind in some way if we stayed with my parents that he was just being taken care of by another family member. I knew that wouldn’t last forever and I knew that we needed to eventually go home. That afternoon after his funeral I was in a state of mind that I just wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to act like I was fine and strong like everyone kept telling me. So because of that we went home. It was so hard for me to walk in there and have all of the memories of that night flood into my mind, but at the same time I felt him there. I felt calm and at peace for the first time since all of this happened. Anyway so that Sunday I knew that I needed to go to church even if it was just for sacrament so that I could feel that comfort of my Savior and take the sacrament. I didn’t want to go and sit down in the chapel because I knew that having all the people looking at me with such sorrow in their eyes would have been enough to put me overboard and not be able to control my tears. So I sat out in the foyer. As I listened to this young woman talked that was new to our ward. She talked about the talk I referenced above and talked about her own personal sufferings with grief by losing her sister. I’m sure she will never know that she was giving that talk for me, but I knew that was my Savior speaking directly to me. Anyway, I remember part of the talk being about serving others to lessen your pains. I never really thought that serving others would help my grief pain, but I am here to tell you that it has. A couple of days ago I was having a very low dark day and my mom again repeated about the service. I remember thinking “yeah, yeah, I don’t have enough energy to serve someone else when I can barely function for myself” and left it at that.

 Yesterday I found out that one of my little brother’s childhood friends passed away unexpectedly. My first thought went straight to his mother, and my heart started to ache uncontrollably. Not only for the aching that it has everyday anyway, but for this mother. I knew that this was the time to implement my idea of the Corby basket. I have wanted to do this for a while now because it was all stuff that would have been nice to have during my time of suffering and chaos. I immediately started preparing for this Corby basket and once I did my entire attitude and emotion changed. For once in a very long time I felt happy. I felt like I was in control of something which I haven’t felt for a very long time. I remember standing in one of the checkout lines and actually smiling. Not just smiling on the outside, but on the inside too. It was so noticeable to me because the feelings I was having were a drastic change from what they have been recently. I needed this FOR ME! Even though I was serving someone else I was helping myself in ways that I didn’t think were possible. I delivered the basket and all this mother could tell me was how much all of these things were needed, but they didn’t have a moment to even simply find a piece of paper to write some of the stuff down. I’m so glad that I was able to do that and to show that mother the love and ache I had for her. I know now that grief work through service is so real and unbelievably amazing!