December 23, 2004

Holidays can be bittersweet for parents who lost kids

Photos by lauren heaton

Parents like Tami Smith, top, and Rodney Bean say that it is impossible to return to life as it was before their children died.

By Lauren Heaton

As Rodney Bean watches Christmas flourish around him, he hears the message: it is the season to be jolly.

But in the 13 years since his son Leonard died at the age of 23, Bean has grieved at Christmas more than any other time of year and has sometimes resented those who expect otherwise.

Christmas, according to Charles Dickens and Jimmy Stewart, is a time when “goodness transcends and the world is supposed to get right for people,” Bean said. The movies say everything is going to be fine in the end, and everyone goes along in this blissful mode, he said.

“It’s like they’re demonstrating an act of insensitivity,” he said. “When you’ve lost a child you know you’re not going to get that child back and it’s not going to work out fine for you in the end.”

For Tami Smith, whose daughter, Arla, died in a car accident in April, this year doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. Everything she does reminds her of Arla, she said, and the pain is exactly the same as it was seven months ago. Christmas won’t be different than any other day, when Smith walks the thin line between grief and numbness.

She has avoided the spectacle of lights at Ra Mar Estates and the Clifton Mill, where she and Arla used to drive around together to ooh and aah. She avoids turning on the car radio and hearing the Christmas music she and Arla used to sing as they drove. She and her parents, Shelbert and Frances Smith, have also not had the energy to put up a tree, she said.

“It’s not about avoiding reminders,” Smith said, because she has accepted that even when she goes to sleep to stop thinking, all she can see is images of her daughter and the accident scene. And things won’t get any easier after the holidays when the snow that Arla loved so much will no longer be something they share, she said.

When Rosemary and Jim Bailey lost their 14-year-old daughter, Emily, in 2001, Rosemary lost her reason to celebrate Christmas.

“Christmas is for children, and Emily leaving basically took the Christmas out of our life,” she said. “What are you celebrating without the child?”

Christmas culture lives and breathes in every work party, TV commercial and grocery aisle in this country, and the commercial lights, tunes and decor is an assault on the senses, she said, especially for those whose acuity is raw from the intense hurt of losing a child.

All the families agreed that the holidays are a time when life slows down and people are afforded the space for reflection and connecting to others. Having lost a loved one is scary at the holidays, they said, because it emphasizes the absence of the one who should be there and gives them time and space to focus on their loss.

“Christmas brings into focus the strength of the connection I had with [Leonard] and the loss of that,” Bean said.

But the intensity of the loss comes from the strength of the happy memories, he said. Leonard, for instance, was into Radio Shack equipment and once bought a microphone that connected to a stereo system. With his characteristic quirkiness, Leonard placed the end of the cord on his dad’s forehead and put the microphone up to his own ear.

“He validated my goofiness, and I validated his goofiness,” Bean recalled. “It’s that whole ‘it’s OK to be different’ attitude, and if you take life too seriously you’re missing something.”

Smith also finds that winter brings memories of snow days when she and Arla would stay home to watch movies all day and order pizza or Chinese food. Then they would pull on boots and drag their sleds out to Gaunt Park for a romp in the snow before returning home for hot chocolate.

Christmas reflections for Bailey immediately raise memories of Emily, who loved to celebrate the holiday.

A big part of Christmas for Emily was performing in the Pontecorvo Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker every year with her friends. She played a mouse one year, and the next she was the Chinese tea and then the Italian ice, and she would always catch the sniffles from sharing lipstick with the other girls, Bailey recalled.

Almost four years after Emily’s death, this Christmas the Baileys have for the first time put up a few small holiday decorations on the mantle and on the wall.

“The memories are less painful now and have become soothing and even helpful,” Bailey said. “My biggest fear is that the memories would fade, and we’ve done a lot of things to not let that happen.”

This Christmas, though, she feels less withdrawn and more comfortable wishing someone a happy Christmas, she said.

After forcing himself to go through the motions for so many years for his wife, Michelle Giguere, and their two children, Kirsten and Erik, Bean can now enjoy in a different way having his friends and family over to celebrate.

Smith has decided to blow up a charcoal drawing of a hand that Arla made in school and give it to Arla’s father for Christmas. Last weekend, Smith also forced herself to go to her first basketball game at YSHS, where Arla used to be a cheerleader. Many of Arla’s friends were home from their first year of college and overwhelmed Smith with warm greetings and tears.

“It was like the heat hit me, the cheerleaders, all the kids in the stands, and I was talking to Arla like, ‘Why don’t you be in college too?’ ” she said.

Rage swelled in her, and she was mad at all the decisions she and Arla and Arla’s friends made leading up to her death that allowed the accident to happen. But Smith knew that the anger wouldn’t ease the pain.

“I could be bitter if I dwell on it, but I’ve had too much support to keep it too long,” she said. “The support I’ve had has been astronomical.”

Angela Schenck, the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, held a special service last Christmas for families who had lost their loved ones. The service focused on a quote, “Remember this, we keep their light alive in our hearts,” which she hoped would give people permission to remember the good times with their families, she said. Schenck was unable to organize a service this year, but hopes to continue to hold them for future holidays.

Bailey remembered what Emily told her when she was little. “Emily said to me, ‘if anything ever happened to you, you wouldn’t have to worry because you’ll always be in my heart,’ ” she said. “Emily will always be in my heart.”

Going back to life as it was before the death of their children is impossible, the families said. But they trust that in time they can learn to cope with a different perspective on life and focus on the happy memories they created with their children.

Getting Christmas back is not something Bean can or is willing to do. If someone could wave a magic wand for him and make the holiday the way it was before, he would say no.

“Loss is a funny thing. It’s hard, but if it was easy to get over, then what would that say about the closeness to the person you lost?” Bean said. “It’s bittersweet.”