Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Author Tom Crider Describes Losing His Daughter

The writer's only child, Gretchen, died in an apartment fire at age twenty-one. From Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief -by Tom Crider

At night when he can't sleep, he reads books on death and religion. Some of them say she is not really dead. Some say God has other plans for her. He has never believed in a God who controls human lives or decrees their deaths. Now, with his mind and emotions in turmoil, he seems to be scavenging for ways to keep her from having vanished. He finds himself ready to believe just about anything. He's like a beggar in winter, clawing through box after box of old coats, look for one that fits....

I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but unlike the psalmist, I fear evil everywhere.

It's deeper than fear, really, it's dread. He feels like a dog who's lived through being run over once and who jumps at the slightest sound to make sure nothing is coming at him again. When the phone rings, his heart bounds. He thinks someone else has died; his mother, his brother, a friend. In a store or on a street, he hears a child scream, but instead of delight, he hears horror, and turns to see if the child needs help. Several times a day, spurts of fright splash up from a sea of dread.

In addition to the expected definition of dread- "to anticipate with anxiety, alarm, or apprehension; fear intensely," he finds this also; "fear mixed with awe or reverence."

Yes, there is awe in what I feel. It's what I imagine a mole might feel when the top of its burrow is scraped away by a grizzly. It comes from being one who is tiny in the presence of a greater, malevolent power. This power snatched my daughter Gretchen away from me. What will it do next?...

At the health club a guy asks him "Do you have any children?" He hesitates before saying, "No." Would someone waiting to play racquetball want to hear what happened to Gretchen?

He feels the role of father, a silk robe he once wore, slipping from his shoulders. Everything it meant to be a father is gone, suddenly and forever.

When Gretchen was born, her infant life gave his a bright new purpose. She depended upon him for shelter, food, guidance, and love. Her development into genius or ignoramus, aggressor or peacemaker, may not have been entirely up to him, but it felt that way. And he believed he'd have some influence, through his child, her children, and her children's children, on the future of the human race.

Now for him, in addition to his only child, his fatherhood and all that it meant has vanished. He has no daughter or son to care for a and no lineage going out from himself into the future. He still has a lingering fatherly pride and love, but the object of it is gone, and he stands on a severed branch of the family tree. -Tom Crider
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Tom's honesty goes to the core of this type of loss. It brings to focus the deeply personal feelings trapped inside our souls. Our child represented the future. A legacy from which we defined the continuum of life. There is something about this bond and the broken chain that creates this unique agony. It often triggers an intense search for the meaning of life, a connection and understanding about what exists beyond this world. -Marsha

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2 comments:

  1. Thank you for the words that I also am feeling: our future, our hopes and dreams have changed forever.

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  2. We lost our only child Jenna(22)in a weather-related car accident in February 2011. I lost my faith in god because I prayed he watch over her 2,000 miles away living her life and loving it. So when our worst fear came to pass I felt either god hated me, didn't listen to my prayers or he didn't exist. He wasn't the loving god I had been praying to if he could do something so cruel to her --- bright, beautiful, funny and the center of our universe. It's been even harder to take this terrible loss without my faith. But I have found hope with other parents like you who understand what we are going through and have found hope to survive. Groups like BPUSA, Alive Alone with Kay Bevington,and another TCF group I meet with for bereaved parents without any surviving children. I will definitely look into getting your book. My heart breaks for you in the loss of your Gretchen, I understand...

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