molting

Our 8 year old grandson has a pet spider named Chuck.  Nathaniel got Chuck when he was just a tiny speck of a thing, but now he has grown big, eats crickets and lives in a plastic box in Nathaniel’s bedroom.  No spider is as loved and well cared for as Chuck.  

   

Yesterday Nathaniel very excitedly took me to his room, asked me to close my eyes and then proudly showed me Chuck’s exoskeleton.   There in Nathaniel’s palm lay this inert, shriveled spider shell.  He carefully explained how important it is for Chuck to shed his skin, because “if he didn’t do that, he couldn’t grow”.  He also tenderly explained that as Chuck’s new skin grew, he was “vulnerable and needed lots of water”.

Living with the grief of losing a child is something like this.  It requires us to molt our old skin and grow a new one.   

Who we were before our child died, how we saw the world, the very scope and balance of our lives all changes.  The process of grief, in one sense at least, is the rearranging of who we are and how we live -  the growing of a new skin.   

And like Chuck, while that new skin is forming, we are vulnerable . . . unprotected . . . . exposed.  It is a raw time of feeling like someone else.  To accept that change, to patiently allow it to occur, to bravely suffer the rearranging of our lives is the exhausting work of grief.  There simply is no other way to grow an interior space big enough to hold this new truth we are living. 

What helps?  

A loved one like Nathaniel who tenderly understands that this is a special time of need . . . and patiently offers us lots of water.