Grief is black, healing is color
Coloring Easter eggs was always one of my favorite times. Boiling the eggs, setting out the glasses, adding the vinegar, plopping in the fizzy tablets
and then slowly lowering (or sometimes dropping) the eggs into the colors bring back good memories with my kids. One thing I remember every time we did it was that one of them wanted to drop at least one egg (sometimes more) into all the colors. Are some of you flashing back to those fun times? As we went from yellow to orange to blue to red to green to purple and into whatever else was left, and then back again, the egg took on a dark, ugly brownish, almost black color. If for some reason the egg cracked along the way and we peeled it later, the egg looked rotten. It was entertainment to them, it was disgusting to me.
As parents, when our kids were alive they were our glasses filled with color. They were our fizzy tablets of fun. Their lives were vibrant and
beautiful. We didn’t pass them from glass to glass and change their color, we left them just as they were. You probably have a favorite color and maybe even associate a color with your child. Friends of mine have a son, Fabian (or Fabulous Fabian as we know him) who died as a little boy. Fabian is all about the color blue, so they celebrate his life with that color. On his birth and death day I’ve sent them a blue crayon, blue paint samples from the hardware store and a string of blue paper clips. They’re very appreciative of my simple gifts. It helps brighten their day and remind them of their colorful, beautiful Fabulous Fabian.
As we all know, the instant we found out, or were there, when our kids died, all the color drained from our lives. No more bright reds, pinks or
yellows of our daughters. No more blues, greens or oranges of our sons. Instead, our lives filled with black. The black of death, the black of grief. Nothing
shined anymore, no glitter or sparkle.
In the additive process of color in painting or printing inks, (or Easter egg coloring) black is the combination of all colors. So, when our kids died,
and their colors went away, they went into the blackness of our grief. They weren’t chased away by our grief, they were consumed by it. Following that line, it means that the colors of the lives of our kids live inside our grief. But more importantly, they live inside our healing. Every red, blue, orange, green, yellow, magenta, and purple child who was created, still live in those colors, but buried in our grief. The question is, how do we break open our grief and
release the colors of our children? How do we get to their colorful lives and bring them back to us? That’s where grief work comes in. Or, as I call it,
healing work. As we grieve we heal. If we don’t do our work, it makes it much harder to heal. It’s through our work that our colorful children can return; not
in the way we want them to return, back in our arms, but in the best possible way we let them return. What can we do to help us rediscover the beauty and color of our children?
I was talking with a group of fellow travelers the other day and the discussion was on memories. For many, the memories hurt, they really, really
hurt because they associated those memories with a child who had died. That’s suffering we all know and what happens when our kids die. Each memory is a painful reminder that our children will not be back to make more.
Our child’s life force or soul or spirit (whatever you may call it) also came up. It’s the child we think of when we put our head on our pillow at night.
It’s the feeling we get when we think about their energy, their aura and their wonderfulness.
We also talked about love. The newly bereaved added the “ed” on the end of the word. “I lovED my child so much.” That’s fine, that’s what we all do in the beginning because the death of our child is an ending. They’re gone, they’re now part of the past. I did the same after my son, Brendon, died. “Brendon “was” my wonderful son. I lovED him very much,” is what I too said. At that time I thought I would never again have him in my life in any way, shape or form. I now know differently.
As the discussion continued and we talked more about death and grief, I threw this out, “It’s impossible to have a memory of someone who never lived. We can’t have fond remembrances of a child who was never created. Our memories are of the living, the colorful, beautiful living, not of the dead.”
“Hmmmmm,” I heard a few people say.
I went on. “It’s called a‘life force’ for a reason. There can’t be a life force without a life, right? Our kids have created that wonderful feeling in us
because of the beauty of their colorful lives. I’ve never heard of someone having a death force, only a life force.”
“Hmmmmm,” I heard a few more people say.
I finished with, “We can’t love what we’ve never known. We can’t love someone who never lived, no matter how long or short that was. Our love is
because of the lives of our kids. That’s why it hurts so much, because we love them so much. We love their colorful lives and want them back."
“Hmmmmm,” I heard the rest of them say.
As much as the deaths of our kids have crushed us and swallowed the color of their lives (and ours too), that color still lives within us through our
memories, their life force and most importantly, our love. If we allow grief to keep our colorful children, then grief wins. And that’s just not acceptable. We
can’t let the black of our grief keep their color. We must fight for them, fight for the lives of our children. If we do, we can again live a joyful life of
yellows, blues, greens, purples, oranges and all the other beautiful colors of our kids. When the colorful lives of our children re-enter our lives, we will
smile a smile as big and broad and beautiful as them.
Coloring Easter eggs was always one of my favorite times. Boiling the eggs, setting out the glasses, adding the vinegar, plopping in the fizzy tablets
and then slowly lowering (or sometimes dropping) the eggs into the colors bring back good memories with my kids. One thing I remember every time we did it was that one of them wanted to drop at least one egg (sometimes more) into all the colors. Are some of you flashing back to those fun times? As we went from yellow to orange to blue to red to green to purple and into whatever else was left, and then back again, the egg took on a dark, ugly brownish, almost black color. If for some reason the egg cracked along the way and we peeled it later, the egg looked rotten. It was entertainment to them, it was disgusting to me.
As parents, when our kids were alive they were our glasses filled with color. They were our fizzy tablets of fun. Their lives were vibrant and
beautiful. We didn’t pass them from glass to glass and change their color, we left them just as they were. You probably have a favorite color and maybe even associate a color with your child. Friends of mine have a son, Fabian (or Fabulous Fabian as we know him) who died as a little boy. Fabian is all about the color blue, so they celebrate his life with that color. On his birth and death day I’ve sent them a blue crayon, blue paint samples from the hardware store and a string of blue paper clips. They’re very appreciative of my simple gifts. It helps brighten their day and remind them of their colorful, beautiful Fabulous Fabian.
As we all know, the instant we found out, or were there, when our kids died, all the color drained from our lives. No more bright reds, pinks or
yellows of our daughters. No more blues, greens or oranges of our sons. Instead, our lives filled with black. The black of death, the black of grief. Nothing
shined anymore, no glitter or sparkle.
In the additive process of color in painting or printing inks, (or Easter egg coloring) black is the combination of all colors. So, when our kids died,
and their colors went away, they went into the blackness of our grief. They weren’t chased away by our grief, they were consumed by it. Following that line, it means that the colors of the lives of our kids live inside our grief. But more importantly, they live inside our healing. Every red, blue, orange, green, yellow, magenta, and purple child who was created, still live in those colors, but buried in our grief. The question is, how do we break open our grief and
release the colors of our children? How do we get to their colorful lives and bring them back to us? That’s where grief work comes in. Or, as I call it,
healing work. As we grieve we heal. If we don’t do our work, it makes it much harder to heal. It’s through our work that our colorful children can return; not
in the way we want them to return, back in our arms, but in the best possible way we let them return. What can we do to help us rediscover the beauty and color of our children?
I was talking with a group of fellow travelers the other day and the discussion was on memories. For many, the memories hurt, they really, really
hurt because they associated those memories with a child who had died. That’s suffering we all know and what happens when our kids die. Each memory is a painful reminder that our children will not be back to make more.
Our child’s life force or soul or spirit (whatever you may call it) also came up. It’s the child we think of when we put our head on our pillow at night.
It’s the feeling we get when we think about their energy, their aura and their wonderfulness.
We also talked about love. The newly bereaved added the “ed” on the end of the word. “I lovED my child so much.” That’s fine, that’s what we all do in the beginning because the death of our child is an ending. They’re gone, they’re now part of the past. I did the same after my son, Brendon, died. “Brendon “was” my wonderful son. I lovED him very much,” is what I too said. At that time I thought I would never again have him in my life in any way, shape or form. I now know differently.
As the discussion continued and we talked more about death and grief, I threw this out, “It’s impossible to have a memory of someone who never lived. We can’t have fond remembrances of a child who was never created. Our memories are of the living, the colorful, beautiful living, not of the dead.”
“Hmmmmm,” I heard a few people say.
I went on. “It’s called a‘life force’ for a reason. There can’t be a life force without a life, right? Our kids have created that wonderful feeling in us
because of the beauty of their colorful lives. I’ve never heard of someone having a death force, only a life force.”
“Hmmmmm,” I heard a few more people say.
I finished with, “We can’t love what we’ve never known. We can’t love someone who never lived, no matter how long or short that was. Our love is
because of the lives of our kids. That’s why it hurts so much, because we love them so much. We love their colorful lives and want them back."
“Hmmmmm,” I heard the rest of them say.
As much as the deaths of our kids have crushed us and swallowed the color of their lives (and ours too), that color still lives within us through our
memories, their life force and most importantly, our love. If we allow grief to keep our colorful children, then grief wins. And that’s just not acceptable. We
can’t let the black of our grief keep their color. We must fight for them, fight for the lives of our children. If we do, we can again live a joyful life of
yellows, blues, greens, purples, oranges and all the other beautiful colors of our kids. When the colorful lives of our children re-enter our lives, we will
smile a smile as big and broad and beautiful as them.