Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Wednesday's Woe - Child-Loss Grief and Trauma Throws You Back In Time... ~Tommy and Angie Prince






Wednesday's Woe


Child-Loss Grief and Trauma

Throws You Back In Time...


~Tommy and Angie Prince





In grieving Merry Katherine, we have noticed in our Loss-of-Child Grief and Trauma, this Grief is unlike anything we have ever experienced.



When we are so much in the throes of grief, as such intense grief is occurring, it feels like the devastating emotion will never end...



We are thrown back in time...


To as far back as the day we first found out...


Day One.


Ground Zero.


...We become debilitated and upset to the degree that we feel we will never come out of it again.



(And indeed, at some deep level in our bodies and souls, we never will completely come out of our deep sadness.)




But reprieves do come.


You just cannot envision such devastating emotion ever letting up as you are going through it.



All time melts away to nothing,



and you are Back There...




facing that Stark Reality in all its force:





My child is GONE.




Our world,



STOPPED.




Our hearts,



BROKEN.















Pictures thanks to Grieving Mothers (Facebook)

Tuesday's Trust - Betrayed by Authorities







Tuesday's Trust


Betrayed by Authorities





When you're at your most vulnerable because of the severe threat of possibly losing your child to a violent crime committed against him, you're at your weakest point, you are barely functioning, and you would like to think you can trust the authorities to do their job. What is the job of law enforcement if not to investigate allegations of criminal acts, wrongful acts, even acts that could be affecting a whole group of our at-risk children, all of whom are citizens of the local county. If you have a child who is confiding in you, his mother, of criminal acts that have been done to him as well as to other teens in your community, and law enforcement chooses to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the allegations, not even interviewing your child whose life is hanging in the balance, then whom are you as a parent to trust?



Your child's case appears to be totally mishandled, or virtually, not handled at all... You as a child-loss parent can barely function amidst your child's devastating physical losses, and you are running up against people who have been elected into sacred positions of trust who are not even practicing the core protocols of investigations. What are you to do? What is your community to do? And what hope do the children-at-risk have if the powers-that-be choose not to intervene on their behalf? What if law enforcement chooses not to enforce the law, and chooses not to defend the teens from blatant criminal violations?


The system at that point is not working. Are there compromised people at its helm? Is there corruption within? Is it a case of total incompetence? What is it?


Your child by this time now succumbs to his injuries. You are now a child-loss parent. How are you as a child-loss parent supposed to figure out how to handle the improper legal proceedings when your whole world has been torn out from under you?





We went through some court proceedings with our child's death in a different state than our own. A grand jury was held, and duties were carried out. It was painful. Things were blatantly promised to us by the legal authorities that these officials did not fulfill. But we felt the grand jury was fair, and that their logic was reasonable. I cannot even imagine if all of these people had refused to carry out their jobs. It is unfathomable.





So when jobs are NOT being carried out, affecting the outcome of your child's case, and perhaps many more children in the same at-risk predicament as your child, what is a parent to do, and whom are they to trust? Apparently we have such a case going on in our community now. Our hearts go out to the child-loss mother as we watch her child's case be bungled at best, if not totally sabotaged... We helplessly stand by, signing petitions to the courts to please initiate a thorough investigation...



What about you? Did you have investigations and court proceedings? Were you treated fairly? Were you okay with the way things were handled? Were you okay with the outcome?



Did any of you feel betrayed by the very people you thought you could trust?










Picture thanks to FotSearch

Monday, May 30, 2011

Grieving Mother Alert!


Grieving Mother Alert!



Dear Blog Readers,

Please read my fellow grieving mother and blog friend's blog post regarding her child's death and of the local officials' inaction to thoroughly investigate her child's death:

http://mamapundit.com/


Please check out this precious grieving-mother friend's petition to our courts to get her child's death thoroughly investigated. If you find it in your heart to do so, please sign your name to her petition either today or tomorrow! (No matter where you live, you may sign her petition.) Below is my note that I added when I signed her petition today:


http://www.change.org/petitions/justice-for-henry-granju


Dearest Katie,


I am so sorry that your precious child's death has not been thoroughly investigated here in Knox County. It is a travesty and an outrage that a death so heinous and so callously treated by adults who had every resource available to them to assist your son to get the help he needed when he was completely unable to help himself has continued to be cruelly and callously treated, to my understanding, by our local officials whom we helped to vote into office who also have every resource at hand to bring justice to your son and to your family but are refusing to do so.


I am appalled and outraged by such despicable treatment by those who are in a position to take the due course of action that justice demands. If the "powers that be" do not do their jobs to protect our citizens and work to bring about justice when they could not protect our citizens, may all our voices continue to be heard in the voting booths and in the public forum.


Your friend and fellow grieving mother,


Angie



To sign the petition, click "Sign Petition" in left side bar of my blog, or cut and paste the following to your browser :


http://www.change.org/petitions/justice-for-henry-granju





Thank you!




Sunday, May 29, 2011

Monday Mourning Ministry - I Go to the Rock ~The Crabb Family





Monday's Mourning Ministry


I Go to the Rock


~The Crabb Family


(written by Dottie Rambo)



Verse 1

Where can I turn when there's no one else I can turn to?

Who am I gonna talk to when nobody wants to listen?

Who am I gonna lean on when there's no foundation stable?

I go to the Rock I know that's able

I go to the Rock


Chorus

I go to the Rock of my salvation

I go to the Stone that the builders rejected

Run to the Mountain and the Mountain stands by me

The earth all around me is sinking sand

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand

When I need a shelter

When I need a friend

I go to the Rock


Verse 2

Where can I hide 'til the storms have all passed over?

Where am I gonna run to when the winds of sorrow threaten?

Is there a refuge in those times of great tribulation?

When my soul needs consolation

I go to the Rock


Chorus

I go to the Rock of my salvation

I go to the Stone that the builders rejected

Run to the Mountain and the Mountain stands by me

The earth all around me is sinking sand

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand

When I need a shelter

When I need a friend

I go to the Rock


Chorus

I go to the Rock of my salvation

I go to the Stone that the builders rejected

Run to the Mountain and the Mountain stands by me

The earth all around me is sinking sand

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand

When I need a shelter

When I need a friend

I go to the Rock


Vamp

(I go to the Rock) When I need a friend

(I go to the Rock) When I need some joy

(I go to the Rock) When my body needs healin'










video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zatv-VqobA

Friday, May 27, 2011

Saturday's Sayings - "There is No Name..."






Saturday's Sayings

There is No Name...




The child that loses a parent is an orphan.

A man who loses his wife is a widower.

A woman who loses her husband is a widow.

There is no name for a parent that loses a child,

for there is no word to describe this pain.


~Author Unknown



*****



"We lose the person we were..."

Grief is a strange journey. Each time we embark upon it, it is as though we have never taken its roads before....For we do not only lose another person; we lose the person we were with the one we lost.


~Patricia Monaghan



*****



"I think of nothing but my grief..."



Alas! I am so unhappy
that I cannot speak my misery
except to say that it's hopeless:
despair is already at the door
to throw me to the bottom of the well
where it seems there is no escape.


My eyes are throwing out so many tears
that they don't see the earth or the sky,
there is such an abundance of weeping.
My mouth is lamenting everywhere,
from my heart nothing better comes out
than sighs with no relief.


Sadness with its great efforts
has made my body so weak
that it has no energy or power.
It is like one of the dead,
so that seeing it from the outside,
one loses all recognition.


I have nothing left but the sad voice
that I hear myself crying with,
lamenting the terrible absence.
Alas! I have lost the happy presence
of the one I lived for
and saw with such good heart!


I am sure that his spirit
reigns with his ruler Jesus Christ
contemplating the divine essence.
How much will his body be ordered
the promises of the Holy Writ
will make it live in heaven without doubt.


While he was healthy and strong,
faith was his comfort.
His God he possessed by belief.
In this lively faith he died,
which has brought him to the very sure port
where he has the knowledge of God.


But alas! my body is banished
from him with whom it was united
since the time of our childhood!
My hope also is punished,
when it finds itself stripped
of his, full of all knowledge.


Mind and body are full of mourning,
so much that they are changed to laments;
only weeping is my face.
I cry in the woods and in the plains,
to heaven and earth I complain,
I think of nothing but my grief.


Death, who has played me such an evil trick
to beat down my force and my tower,
all my refuge and my defense,
has not known how to ruin my love
which I feel growing night and day,
which my sorrow makes grow and advance.


My pain cannot be revealed
and it is so hard for me to swallow it
that I lose all patience about it.
I must not talk about it any more,
but think about going soon
to where God has put him through his mercy....


~Marguerite d'Angouleme



*****


"Grief fills the room up of my absent child..."


CARDINAL PANDULPH:

You hold too heinous a respect of grief.


CONSTANCE:

He talks to me that never had a son.


KING PHILIP:

You are as fond of grief as of your child.


CONSTANCE:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do...
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!


~Shakespeare











~Patricia Monaghan (1946- ), in The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog

~Marguerite d'Angouleme (also known as Marguerite de Navarre) after the death of her beloved brother, French king Francois I, whom she had once rescued from captivity in Spain.

~Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John, Act III


Thursday, May 26, 2011

Friday's Faith - Can "Faith Street Bridge" Be Rebuilt Without Closing It Down? ~by Tommy Prince








Friday's Faith


Can "Faith Street Bridge"

Be Rebuilt

Without

Closing It Down?


~by Tommy Prince





My faith is being totally reconstructed right after I have gone through the worst crisis of a parent's life. What a time to have to rebuild and start all over.


At the time when I most need God, the Bridge is DOWN???


Do I totally shut it down?


Do I leave one lane open?


CAN I leave one lane open?



I trusted Someone who I felt totally let me down, and now I'm to leave one lane OPEN??? How is that even to be done?


When you pray diligently for your child's safety, and the Answer is... She Got Killed???!!!


NOW what do you do?



My faith has to be totally reconstructed.


Can I do this without everything crashing down and me falling off?




The Henley Street Bridge is an old bridge that is a major thoroughfare in our city of Knoxville, yet it is, right at this moment, totally closed down for major reconstruction. There is no possibility for one lane to be open. So for months and even years, this major thoroughfare will be shut down. The conservative estimate for reconstruction is TWO YEARS.




So, in facing a Major Reconstruction of my faith, I have had to close down my life to many things so that the major reconstruction can take place.


Can I trust that God will find a way to meet me when all roads have been shut off?









Picture, thanks to "Grieving Mothers" on Facebook