Making Room

“Sometimes you just don’t know what you need until you need it.” 

While that can be true of anything, it was particularly true on Flynn’s last anniversary in May 2017.  I didn’t blog about the anniversary, the second time in 8 years. I thought that I had wanted Landy to observe the anniversary with me, in fact the year before I had asked that he spend the next anniversary with me and he agreed he would. That is what we did, we spent the day together and we both agreed it was awkward, anxious and disjointed. Admittedly, it was the third anniversary observed together in fifteen years and we didn’t really articulate our expectations; we would do it differently next time. However, this blog is not about May 3^rd, it is actually about May 5^th, the day we went for a visit with Landy’s grandma.

We haven’t often talked about Flynn with Landy’s grandma, he seemed off limits for her. When he was born and died she was in Winnipeg visiting her sister and so she did not make it home for the funeral. I don’t remember expecting her to be there and as anyone who has stood in the shock of death can attest, I didn’t even know who was there. It was approximately a month after the funeral before we had dinner with her and while I probably said Flynn’s name nearly twenty times, she would kindly and firmly change the subject and finally it was clear that he wasn’t going to be discussed further.

For years I was unsure how to “be” around Landy’s grandma. She had experienced the death of two adult children, her son (Landy’s dad) and after Flynn, her daughter. While I felt like an outsider in my family, my friend group and in general, I wanted to feel connected with someone who understood and had knowledge on how to cope with grief. It was an undiscerning need to make meaning and find community in our loss and it became clear that would not be Grandma’s role. Following Flynn’s death, I would experience anxiety or panic about visiting with her and it would take me many more years to gain the perspective that stories of death and grief could co-exist without invalidating each other. To be clear she never said anything dissuading me from looking to her in grief, quite the opposite, she said nothing. In some ways her silence around grief and Flynn’s death became a source of shame and insecurity around my own identity as a bereaved parent.

2017 was different. Landy made plans for us to visit, 2 days after Flynn’s anniversary and I had vocalized that I did not think I could go. The year had been particularly difficult for me and I did not want to set Flynn aside to visit with Grandma. Landy asked me to reconsider, his grandma is in her mid 90s and while he understood I was struggling, he wanted me to be there. I agreed that it would be better if I went. Dinner was nice, we made casual conversation, caught up on extended family news and after we were finished Landy took the kids to play in the facility's game room. I sat with Grandma and talked about some recent work success including an upcoming presentation at the International Grief and Bereavement Conference. This is the conversation that followed:

“The What? Oh my, that is not something we would have had in my day!” She continued, “I know you counsel people {about grief} but we just didn’t go out and talk about this.”

“Well Grandma, you likely found support at church or in your community which may have helped. Today we live in a secular society where people do not always have a sense of community or they are not geographically able to access it.” Grandma nodded and I am unsure what spurred me to continue but I did, “when Flynn died I felt isolated and lonely and counselling really helped me.”

It was then that she said the thing that I will be eternally grateful for, “it must have been devastating to go through that, it is never easy to lose a child.”

Through tears I told Grandma that he would have been 15 just 2 days before, she looked at me and I felt extraordinarily vulnerable, she said “I often think about Flynn and wonder who he would have been. I wish he was here and we would have gladly made room for him in this family.” Even as I write these words, I do so through tears.

Sometimes you don’t know what you need or what your heart has been missing until that moment comes along to fill it. That short but meaningful moment with Landy’s grandma, Flynn’s great grandma was an act of kindness and grace that filled a tiny hole in my heart. She made room for Flynn in her family that day and for that I am so thankful.