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5 things I didn't want to hear when I was grieving and 1 thing that helped

Here are my top five things not to say to a grieving parent — and the thing I love to hear instead.


In 2013, I found out I was pregnant with triplets.

Image via iStock.

My husband and I were in shock but thrilled at the news after dealing with infertility for years. And it didn't take long for the comments to begin. When people found out, the usual remarks followed: "Triplets?! What are you going to do? Three kids at once?! Glad it's not me!"

After mastering my response (and an evil look reserved for the rudest comments), I figured that was the worst of it. But little did I know I would be facing far worse comments after two of my triplets passed away.

On June 23, 2013, I gave birth to my triplets, more than four months premature.

My daughter, Abigail, passed away that same day; my son, Parker, died just shy of 2 months old. Before then, I didn't know much about child loss; it was uncharted territory. Like most people, I wouldn't know how to respond or what to say if a friend's child passed away.

Image via iStock.

But two years later, I have found that some things are better left unsaid. These comments come from a good place, and I know people mean well, but they sure do sting.

Here are my top five things not to say to a grieving parent — and the thing I love to hear instead.

1. "Everything happens for a reason."

It's a cringeworthy comment for those of us who have lost a child. Sometimes, there is no rhyme or reason for why things happen in life. A parent should not outlive their child. I don't know why my body couldn't handle my pregnancy or why I went into labor at 22 weeks.

This phrase goes along with another I often hear: "God only gives us what we can handle." I remember talking with my childhood rabbi the night before my son passed away, and I asked her, "Why me?" Her response is something I now live by every single day. She said, "God doesn't give us only what we can handle. He helps us handle what we've been given."

2. "They are in a better place."

Instead of comforting, this is a phrase that makes me feel down in the dumps. I longed to be a parent for so many years. And children are meant to be in the loving arms of their parents.

I think I speak for every grieving mother and father when I say, we would give anything to hold our babies again.

3. "At least you have one survivor. Count your blessings."

I like to think of myself as a positive person. But even two years later, my heart still aches for Parker and Abby. And on the most difficult, dark days of grief, it's hard to "count my blessings."

Yes, I am blessed. I have a gorgeous miracle child who is the light of my life. But Peyton should be playing with her brother and sister in our home, not just waving to their pictures and blowing kisses to heaven.

4. "You are still young. You can have more children."

It doesn't matter whether or not our biological clock is ticking. Many people have no idea what couples go through to have a child: Some can't have children of their own; others may face years of infertility or miscarriages. And for people like me, trying for more children may be something too scary to even think about. I came close to death after delivering my children — that's enough to scar me for life.

5. "I don't know how you do it. I couldn't imagine losing two children."

Some days I don't know how I do it either. But we learn how to live with it. We learn a "new normal," and in those tough moments, we celebrate that we survived the day. This comment is a difficult reminder of our grief and the children who were sent to heaven.

So, what should you say to a grieving parent?

Image via iStock.

There are no words to take the pain away, of course, but simply letting that person know you are there for them is more than enough.

For me, the best thing someone can do is to talk about my angels. Say Parker and Abby by name, and don't be afraid to ask questions about them.

While they were only here for a short time, they left a huge imprint on this world. I love talking about my angels, and simply hearing someone else mention them by name is enough to wipe away the grief and warm my heart for days.


This article was written by Stacey Skrysak and originally appeared on 7.15.16

How performing little acts of kindness is helping grieving parents move forward.

Joanne Cacciatore's daughter, Cheyenne, was stillborn in July 1994. She says it was the worst day of her life.

Photo via Joanne Cacciatore, used with permission.

She briefly held her baby girl in her arms, but that was all the time she'd get with her.

It was then that Cacciatore decided to dedicate her life to helping parents like herself deal with grief.

But first, she had her own grief to contend with. She says in the months that followed, she couldn't stop crying and found parenting her other three children to be an impossible task.

That Christmas, which would've been Cheyenne's first, Cacciatore took the money she would have spent on presents and did something a little different with it. She bought a bunch of toys for underprivileged kids through a local charity.

"And in that moment [Cheyenne] was very much alive, because my love for her continued, and I was able to enact that love in the world," she told Yahoo! News.

That's when she first became aware of the immense healing power of giving. From there, she started The Kindness Project.

The Kindness Project asks grieving parents to do good deeds in their communities in memory of a lost child (or parent, friend, or spouse).

They then leave behind a small note card so the recipient can channel their gratitude toward the deceased and know that person's life and death continues to matter.

All photos provided by The Kindness Project.

Cacciatore says so far, over 2,000,000 acts of kindness have occurred because of the project around the world.

There's Kamaria McDonald, who donated toys, baby supplies, and more to a domestic violence shelter in honor of her late-son, Dane.

There's young Mackenzie's mother, who paid for and left two giant stuffed animals for some unsuspecting kids at a Kohl's in memory of her daughter.

A first-grade class in Richmond, California, wrote kind notes to their neighbors in honor of Teddy, a young boy who died of cancer.

Michael's mom donated basketballs to her local community center in honor of her son, who loved to shoot hoops.

And then there's Ann, whose story has stuck with Cacciatore for many years.

Ann tragically lost her baby, Joshua, to sudden infant death syndrome. One day, at one of her favorite restaurants, Ann stumbled across a young pregnant woman enjoying a baby shower. In her grief, it was almost too much to bear.

Ann headed for the door, feeling confused, overwhelmed, and inexplicably angry at this complete stranger. But "she paused, took a deep breath, took out a Kindness Project card, wrote Joshua's name on it, pre-paid the bill of the shower party in full, and called me weeping," Cacciatore wrote in the book Techniques of Grief Therapy.

It was a painful thing for Ann to do but an important step in her healing process.

The Kindness Project's Facebook page is flooded with incredible stories of giving — from cups of coffee to massive donations.

As beautiful as it is for a stranger to experience an unexpected act of kindness, the project is really about parents finding constructive ways to heal.

"While these good deeds do not eradicate grief, nor should they do so," Cacciatore wrote, "They do provide a means through which the mourner can redirect painful emotions into feelings of love and compassion and hope."

Losing a child is one of the most difficult things a person can go through. Cacciatore just hopes that all of that pain and suffering won't be totally in vain, and we remember that every life deserves to be remembered, no matter how short it might be.

More

How complete strangers helped this single dad decode a final message from his dead wife.

After his wife died during childbirth, Jared discovered comfort in the unfinished things she left behind.

June 16, 2016, was meant to be the best day of Jared and Sharry Buhanan-Decker's lives. It turned out to be the worst.

On that morning a few months ago, the Utah couple of 12 years drove to the hospital. They were full of anticipation for the arrival of their firstborn child.

It had taken almost three years and an expensive IVF process for them to conceive, and Sharry had excitedly blogged about their plans for parenthood during her pregnancy.

All photos via Jared Buhanan-Decker, used with permission.

As the couple was cuddling and dozing on a hospital bed, waiting for the delivery to begin, things turned horribly wrong.

"I woke up to hear one of the monitors beeping. Doctors and surgeons came out from all over and wheeled Sharry into surgery," Jared said. "I was terrified for the baby, but I didn’t ever consider Sharry’s life was at stake."

Shortly after, doctors gave Jared news he could never have prepared for: Their baby had been delivered by emergency C-section, but Sharry was in cardiac arrest.

30-year-old Sharry had experienced a rare allergic reaction to the baby’s amniotic fluid entering her bloodstream, which caused her vital organs to shut down.

"My whole world came crashing down," Jared said.

In the dark weeks that followed Sharry’s death, Jared was forced to come to terms with his future as a single father and the loss of his best friend.

Sleepless nights weeping at Sharry’s gravestone, reading her journals, and listening to old voicemails became survival mechanisms.

“I wanted to feel her in any way,” he said.

In his search for comfort, Jared came across several audio files on Sharry’s laptop, but without buying expensive software, he had no way of opening them.

He took his dilemma to Reddit and requested help to convert the files, and the response was overwhelming.

"I was hoping for just one or two responses and received dozens. The kindness and compassion of strangers has been amazing," he said.

Reddit users came to the rescue, quickly returning several mp3 files to Jared, each revealing original songs Sharry had composed and recorded herself.

In one of her songs, Sharry sings, "Baby, don’t you worry about me," urging her listener to wipe away their tears and "softly close the door."

"That is a message for me right now in my life," Jared said. "I could never have anticipated the meaning her songs would have."

Since receiving the mp3 files, Jared has kept them on his phone so he can listen to them with baby JJ whenever grief strikes.

"I still have a lot of tough nights, and JJ as a new baby has struggles to stay asleep, so I use those songs to comfort both of us," he said.

"Science tells us babies respond to their mother’s voice because for nine months that’s the main voice they hear, and Sharry was always talking to him and singing to JJ."

But Sharry’s music wasn’t all she left behind. As Jared continued to comb through her computer files and journals, he also found something else left unfinished: a bucket list.

Between items like dancing naked in the rain, traveling to India, and overcoming anxiety, Sharry’s list is full of bold dreams to help other people.

Jared said her bucket list is now a roadmap for him and JJ, compelling them to fulfill Sharry’s dreams and to honor her memory as the years go by.

"It is good for me, to push me outside my comfort zone because she was always the one to do that, and in a way she still will be," he said.

The first goal Jared hopes to fulfill is the creation of a treasure hunt scholarship fund for disadvantaged children.

"It’d be so easy, when tragedy happens, to withdraw and become cynical … but I cannot do that," he said.

"I need to lead my life as a legacy to Sharry. I need to cherish experiences, relationships, and life. I need to be a force for good and light in the world just like she always was and is."

Heroes

How a nontraditional funeral helped this mom process her daughter's tragic death.

Lucia Maya remembers getting a phone call from her 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. She was in agony.

A creative writing student at the University of Arizona, Elizabeth had been dealing with intense pain in her chest for weeks, along with swelling in her neck and face. The student health clinic told her it was probably bad allergies.

"She called me one day in tears because she was in a lot of pain," Lucia said. "She wasn't one to cry or complain. I said, 'OK, something is clearly wrong.'"

Elizabeth was rushed to the emergency room, where an X-ray revealed a tumor in her chest the size of a baseball. The diagnosis was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Lucia (right) and her daughter, Elizabeth. Photo by Jade Beall, used with permission.

Six rounds of chemotherapy initially beat the cancer back, but soon it had spread to Elizabeth's brain. Not even a year after first discovering the pain, Elizabeth was placed in hospice care. She'd spend her final days in her mother's home.

There was nothing more the doctors could do.

Lucia was suddenly in the strange and tragic position of having to plan a funeral for her daughter while she was still alive.

The first step for many people who are grieving is to make arrangements with a funeral home. But there's another option gaining popularity with many families: home funerals.

Joanne Cacciatore, a research professor at Arizona State University who studies traumatic death, wants people to remember that caring for our own dead used to be, well, just the way things were done. It was around the Victorian Era (the mid- to late 1800s) that both birth and death were institutionalized, or shopped out to experts who had special tools and training.

She said more and more people are now bucking that norm and skipping the mortician altogether.

Photo by Jade Beall, used with permission.

A home funeral often involves bypassing the usual embalming process, instead opting for more gentle methods of preserving the body: keeping it cool with dry ice and bathing it, for example. Some families will hold a viewing at home before sending the body off to be prepared for a traditional burial or cremated. Others, depending on local laws, bury their loved ones on family land instead of in a cemetery.

While home funerals are often much less expensive then traditional ceremonies, Cacciatore said this choice isn't usually about money. For many people, it's about healing.

"I think it has a therapeutic effect, in that when the person you love has died, and they're at home, you can check in with that reality as often as you need," she said. "You can go in that room, you can sit in that room 24 hours a day for three or four days, and you can watch their body, and see that they're not there."

For other people, they wouldn't dream of doing things any other way.

"Who better to take care of someone you love so much than you?" Cacciatore said.

After two months of being cared for by her mother, Elizabeth passed away on a Sunday in late 2012.

Elizabeth's body was kept at home for two days and covered in silks and fabrics. Photo by Lucia Maya, used with permission.

Elizabeth hadn't eaten for weeks. Her mother woke up at 4 a.m. the day she passed away, sensing the moment was about to arrive. Lucia held her daughter's hand as she took her last breath.

By this point, Lucia, her partner, Elizabeth's father, and even Elizabeth herself had decided a home funeral was right for them, though Elizabeth didn't like talking about it much. She was at peace with whatever was going to happen.

"What was so lovely was that we knew there was no rush to call the funeral home to come pick up her body," Lucia said. "We knew that we had time."

Lucia and her sister bathed Elizabeth. Anointed her body with oils. Laid her on a table with dry ice packed underneath. Wrapped her in beautiful silks and cloths, with rose petals sprinkled on top.

Photo by Lucia Maya, used with permission.

On Monday, family and friends came and went, saying their goodbyes in the place Elizabeth called home. A friend brought a cardboard box that would later be used to transport Elizabeth's body, and visitors decorated it and filled it with notes of love.

On Tuesday, Lucia and close family members placed Elizabeth in the box and drove her to the crematory. They watched as her body entered the cremation chamber. Lucia thought it might be too difficult to watch, but she said when the moment came, she was ready.

By then, she felt her daughter's body was nothing but an empty vessel.

"It felt so healing to be able to do those last things to take care of her," Lucia said.

"To be the one to bathe her, gently, to be the last one to dress her, to cover her with these beautiful silks that I know she would have loved — it would have felt very, very strange to send her body off and have some strangers doing those things for her, no matter how loving and caring they might have been."

She knows a home funeral isn't the right choice for everybody, but she shared her story because she wants people to at least know that it is a choice.

For Lucia, being able to make that choice means she gets to live without a single regret about how she spent her final days with her daughter.

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