Find the candles of life for the dark moments

Tragedy doesn’t make an appointment. Attack! A terrifying surprise that explodes in the middle of a family. Tragedy also brings with it multiple consequences…financial disaster, depression, guilt, and guilt. Devastating fall! Marriages fall apart, family members commit suicide, personalities change. However, tragedies happen daily. Tornadoes and earthquakes tear communities apart, as accidents claim thousands of lives and children drink poisons or drown in swimming pools. People kill their friends and family, co-workers and partners. This is what got me through a terrible time, so it should happen to you or a close friend. You have some suggestions to fall back on.

Words are not necessary: ​​a loving presence conveys support. The initial shock and denial are numb and intensely painful. When we received the terrible news of our daughter-in-law’s murder, we immediately called our minister. He and his wife came and sat with us quietly in the middle of the night. They made coffee, lived our grievance and consoled us with his presence.

Ask people you trust to handle immediate logistical problems. We had to cancel plane reservations and make new ones. Airlines offer a reduced fare for situations where bereaved families need to rush in an emergency. My brother, who travels a lot, made reservations for us. Caring friends wanted to stay with our children and pets. Don’t hesitate to ask or accept.

Keep inspiring reading with you. Ask your minister or a caring friend to lend you an inspirational book if you need to. I found the book of Psalms particularly helpful, as well as a book lent to me by an Al-Anon friend. Our minister mailed a wonderful book that he had written. Another minister had

words of comfort about the sweet relief of dying.

Keep a journal. I bought a thick spiral notebook and kept it with me. In it put information, as well as feelings, events and questions. I wrote business cards for cops and investigators and took down addresses of helpful strangers. My portable office became invaluable.

Buy thank you notes. Thank you notes help him focus on the love and support he receives during this painful time rather than on his helplessness or loneliness. Strangers brought us food and took us out to dinner. Our church sends flowers to our hotel room. Friends celebrated mass at home for our daughter-in-law. People who admired her came to see us, gave us religious paintings and bought us soft drinks. I focused on building a new support system by writing immediate thank you notes. When we returned home, more consideration awaited us, including food, vitamins, and an invitation to go cherry picking (a perfect thing to do when processing a complaint).

Stay connected to home. If tragedy takes you away from home, set up a time when you will speak daily with a calm and clear-headed family member. My brother called me at four every afternoon. I waited for his call and found comfort in his familiar voice. I took my laptop with me, which allowed me to receive messages of love by email. With phone calls and emails from my brother, our home community was kept informed about our trauma. They organized the necessary support as soon as we got back. The church’s “pan brigade” had food ready, gift baskets, cards and prayers. A special service at our church and a prayer service with our Marriage Encounter Group provided us with loving friends who listened and wept with us as we worked through our emotional pain. One cannot carry that burden alone.

In the months to come… Tragedies attract the media, the curious, the gossipers, and those intrigued by life’s dramatic events. Sometimes people who had nothing to do with the tragedy obsess over the details. With our tragedy, information constantly changed altering our perspectives and tearing our shreds of hope. The phone calls and emails came from strange sources. Be careful not to answer questions from the media or give information to the wrong people.

A year may not be enough… Grieving takes time. Any healing does. For us, the ongoing legal trials rankle with guilt, doubt, and confusion. Although life is basically back to “normal,” my energy level has not. It seems that I achieve much less than before. Having remembered a long “to do” list and happily ticking off task after task. Now, I mark two. (Three if I count my exercise.) My focus has become a wild animal, difficult to train. Yesterday, I had to write take a shower. Initially, I asked my friends to take me places as a distraction. Immediately after asking, it seemed like I had no time to go anywhere. Time became unmanageable. I put aside my professional goals, a difficult challenge for an achiever like me. Making sales presentations and reservations no longer seemed relevant.

Even now, a year and a half later, I am still in the healing process, only now I have a deep understanding of what other people are going through.

Let go of what you didn’t do to avoid tragedy. Focus on what you can help others now. Both my husband and I have felt called to serve people in new ways. A year after the tragedy occurred, my husband was fired from his lucrative job as an IT consultant. He wants to make a career change to teach high school. He took volunteer training to answer hotline phones for sexual assault and family violence. The experience has been rewarding, I’m sorry I waited until now to do this. Both activities stem from the helplessness we feel after our tragedy. Even our children respect us for accepting them. We know that our values ​​are changing.

It has been said that our tragedies make us who we are. We would agree with Corita Kent, “Flowers come out of dark times.”