Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent  //  Writer, editor, writing consultant, workshop leader. Author of Swimming with Maya: A mother's story (Capital Books, 2004). Lives and writes in Oakland, California.

Oct 23 / 5:40am

When children die

In the last 24 hours I have learned of two families who recently lost young children - their tragedies came at me out of the blue.  I find myself wishing I could sit with the parents and listen to their stories. Since my 19-year-old daughter died suddenly in 1992, I've learned many things. One is how sorrow can hollow you out and make space for a new life, one you might never choose for yourself, but one where you miraculously reweave what was torn apart. The other is that telling our stories is a profoundly healing act. And these two things are inextricably linked. It was through telling my story over and over - writing it down and rewriting it again and again - that I learned to live with Maya's death. When your child dies, the world ends. It literally stops. You don't believe you can ever be part of ordinary life again. And for a while you can't. I was as close to insane as I ever want to be for the first two years after Maya died. I sat in therapy sessions and grief support groups and Compassionate Friends meetings wondering how I would be able to draw another breath, let alone heal and move on with my life. The sight of a blond head moving through a crowd made me search frantically for my missing child. For years. I simply could not believe she was gone forever. I tried to imagine how I could live the rest of my life without Maya, and back then I couldn't see a way forward. Now I've lived through the grief and told the story and I know it is possible to survive. I wrote my way to recovery, making the unreal real. When I hear of a mother or father who has lost a child I want to sit down next to them in a quiet place. I want to extend comfort and hope even when there is none, even when each moment seems so fathomless, and the loss a bottomless pit you can never climb out of. Every bereaved parent travels this road in his or her own way. At our support group meetings we used to say that there is a word for a child who loses its parents - an orphan. But there is no word for a parent who loses a child. In our culture, we don't like to imagine what the death of a child feels like because it triggers all of our worst fears. I understand why we shy away from such a profound loss and yet I wish that grieving parents found more support in their daily lives. Swimming with Maya is my attempt to extend that support. I can't sit side by side with every grieving parent who may read my book, but I hope somehow that it brings comfort, and shows how it is possible to survive and ultimately live a new kind of life. I've also learned much from parents who have never lost a child and yet who choose to read the book. They say it's taught them to treasure the ordinary moments with their children, and to be more present even in difficult times. This makes me deeply happy. The children in my life now - my granddaughter Lucia, my neighbors Lily, Edim, and Logan, my great nieces and nephews, the children of my colleagues, even children in supermarkets and on airplanes whom I will never know - remind me that life goes on. There are always children to love in this world, spunky, unpredictable, lively little characters. Whether they are ours or not, we can honor their lives and the struggles and joys of their parents through the stories we listen to and the stories we tell.
Filed under  //  bereaved parents   death of a child   grief   love   mothers   recovery  
May 4 / 4:48am

Take a walk, save a life

Everyone seems to tap friends for money to cure AIDS, leukemia, or breast cancer - or in my case, cystic fibrosis.  Lately, I've been raising funds to support a walk-a-thon sponsored by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Why CF? Because my 22-month-old neighbor Lily has it. When I come  home from work, if Lily is playing outside with her mom, Lara, she blows me kisses with her chubby little fingers. She runs at me as if on the verge of falling she's so eager to see and do everything. Like a magpie, she loves any shiny object I happen to be wearing. She has blonde flyaway hair and a plastic tea set she points to excitedly any time I come to visit. I love Lily! When Lara told me that Lily had CF, I bit back tears. "I'm so sorry," I said. Words would never be enough. I was determined to do something. CF is a cruel killer. Typically, its victims are young. Over time, mucus builds up in the lungs causing infections that are ultimately fatal. The defective gene that is responsible for CF can also affect digestion and cause the pancreas to malfunction. I knew one family that lost two daughters to this disease, one in her teens, the other in her early twenties. They are buried side by side not far from my daughter Maya at Oakmont Cemetary. Maya died of an accidental fall from a horse, not CF, but once you have lost a child you realize - deep in your bones - it doesn't matter how your child dies. What matters is finding a way to survive  and be there for your other kids if you're lucky enough to have any. Eventually, I rebuilt my life. But I hate the idea of  other parents having to join the fraternity - or of children dying before they have a chance at a full life. That's how I found myself with a white T-shirt displaying an iron-on decal saying "Team Lily" emblazoned on the middle of my chest walking along the San Francisco Bay with a ragtag group of friends and neighbors last Saturday morning. Our team wasn't the biggest - we couldn't match Team Genentech - but we weren't the smallest either. In the group photo, about 40 of us crowd together behind a row of strollers and dogs at East Beach in Crissy Field. We set off on our three-mile walk in high spirits, quickly separated by the hundreds of other walkers, and dozens of strollers, wagons, and canines that promenaded up to Fort Point in a colorful and unruly mass. Lots of teams were named after kids that parents are desperately hoping will be saved. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, funded by the generousity of walkers and their supporters, has already helped to find treatments that can extend life into young adulthood - age 37, on average. I'm sorry. That's just not good enough. I want Lily to live to be an old lady - one that dusts off her plastic tea set and brings it out to play with her grandchildren. I want her laugh to last longer than three decades. I want to see her run into her future as confidently as she runs up the sidewalk toward me with mischief written all over her face. Last I checked, "Team Lily" had raised more than $7,000. Multiply that by the dozens of other teams at the "Great Strides" event and you've got a serious investment in hope, in healthy kids, and in parents who can breathe a little easier knowing that they are not alone in this fight.
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Filed under  //  Lily   bereaved parents   children   cystic firbrosis   fundraising   neighbors   walking