Portrait of Grief – Coping With Loss of a Child
Christy Lowry shares her personal experience after the accidental death of her young daughter.
Austin, TX (PRWEB) February 27, 2006
Government statistics estimate that each year 228,000 children and young adults die in the United States. These statistics do not include miscarriages or still births. In an NFO Research, Inc. survey 19% of the adult population has suffered the death of a child, and 22% the death of a sibling. Death by accident claims 13% of these children.
Grief comes in many personas for families whose lives are challenged by a death of a child – the loss of hopes and dreams. Grief is a process not easily acknowledged in our society, however, grief is an integral part of accepting the death. Families who can acknowledge their grief and learn alternative ways to express their pain can free their emotional energies to focus on life ahead. Grief that is not allowed a healthy release frequently finds expression in anger, abuse and/or neglect of a loved one, substance abuse, and illness.
Christy Lowry’s daughter Pam died in an auto-pedestrian accident the first day of school. The family was poised on the brink of despair and loss. New fields of experience rippled out to include the most mundane everyday details of their lives and those of their extended families. “Those first hours, days, and weeks—even up to five months—I panicked that I could never stop crying, except to come up for air. That’s how I felt,” claims Christy. “I vividly remember, just days after losing Pam, making a conscious choice as I looked down the flight of stairs to the front door. How steep they looked! And how easily I could fall down them—both literally and figuratively. Would I just give up and go with the flow of gravity? Or consciously choose to flow through my grief?”
It’s comforting to know that, as affirmed by many experienced grievers, this intense phase of early grief does pass. And we heal. Grief is one's own personal experience of loss, however, importance is also placed that outward sharing and expression of the pain is part of the process.
“My grief process was anything but linear, was instead characterized by sharp jagged lines zigzagging up and down, with no rhyme nor reason—at first,” laments Christy. “It took weeks and months for me to discern small but gradually growing breaks in our cloud cover of grief.” As she gradually began living out the precedent of life without Pam, Christy found that new and surprising insights came to her, such as the difference between shock and disbelief; the pitfalls of unresolved anger; the real causes of fear, blame, regret, and guilt.
In Christy’s family a miracle unfolded as healing and restoration powerfully emerged to transform hopeless grief into inspired conviction. “After God miraculously intervened in our tragic loss to heal and restore us, I new it was selfish to withhold our journey of comfort and hope from other hurting grievers,” Christy explains. “I felt both inspired and impelled to share our story, and its resulting growth.” She recounts the loss of her daughter and the families’ grieving process in “PAM: Life Beyond Death, Joy Beyond Grief (ISBN 188812573). PAM unites comforters and grievers as together they face one of life’s most inexplicable losses: the death of a child.
Christy Lowry lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband Paul. She received her BA in history, with English minor, from California State University at Long Beach.
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