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I have become a walker.
My walks have come out of a dire need and have become the antidote for that need. What I learned is I have a great need for peace in my life. I am learning to find it, and hope my experience can help anyone who feels overwhelmed or overburdened.
Our sixteen year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver 20 months ago. The lessons I learned from her remain very much alive. There was seldom a morning on the 6:45 a.m. drive to our respective schools that Rebecca did not have a comment on the beauty of the day; the cloud formations, the precision of a migrating flock of geese or the miracle of an early morning ray of sunshine.
In my grief, I had nearly forgotten.
"To grieve" is a verb, an action word, and "grieving" is just that, a physical as well as emotional action. We rant and rave, we scream and cry, we stamp our feet and pound the wall. It is a simultaneous state of exhaustion and agitation. And it is difficult to find peace for even a few minutes of the day or night.
I knew I needed to somehow bring relief to myself. Finally, remembering Rebecca's lesson of seeing the beauty available to us, combined with my need to move, I began walking.
As I walked, and sometimes cried, I decided that perhaps meditation would bring what I needed, not yet knowing what that elusive need was. All I knew about meditation was that one begins by clearing one's mind. I was doomed - my mind is as hyper as my body. I kept walking and searching.
I spite of myself, I began to see things. As I walked I began to take notice of things through Rebecca's eyes. The colors came first; the incredible blue of the sky as a backdrop for the dark green pines. The red blur of a cardinal as it whizzed by. I began to listen. What sounded like a lone bird's call, upon listening, became a conversation between 3 or 4 birds; a concert if I listened closely enough. There is a world of sound out there. As I opened my eyes, my ears and my sense of smell, wondrous things became evident. The smell of freshly mowed grass on one side of the street competes with the odd aroma of sulphur water of the other side. My focus began to shift from what I didn't have to what I did have. I began to find peace.
This simple act, the opening of my senses to the beauty around me, has made all the difference. I am writing this to share with perhaps a few of you a method of letting this peace ("grace", "thankfulness", whatever word one chooses) take some some of the pain and stress out of our lives. I try, even on days when I don't walk to find a few minutes to sit outside and just listen and observe. The gifts that are waiting are amazing. And a calm descends. We as a family have received an incredible amount of support from our family, our friends and acquaintances, and even some strangers. I would like to make a gift of what I discovered to all of you. I wish you peace, any way that you can find it, in the New Year.
~Diane C. Goldsmith, Mom to Rebecca; TCF, Heart of Florida Chapter
Healing After Tragedy of Drunken Driving
On April 25, 1998, two weeks after her 16th birthday, our daughter Rebecca was killed by a drunken driver. It is hard to believe that this is the fourth anniversary of her death. I remember the shock and the numbness that engulfed us in the weeks and month after her death. I look back now at the past four years and realize I have learned some life lessons that I do not think I would have learned if it not for this horrible tragedy.
The world was too complex after Rebecca's death. I tried to simplify my life by making a list of what was truly important. I could come up with only two things for my list.
The first item was easy: to love the people in my life as though they could be gone tomorrow. The second item came from the realization that what the word gives me is less important that what I give the world. My house, my money, my car, my clothes, my "image", are not important. As George Carlin said, "they are 'stuff'". My worth is in what I can give.
I found my first feelings of healing at a Compassionate Friends meeting. This remarkable organization is a support group of parents whose children have died. My husband and I went to our first meeting and found hope that we would survive this horror. After many weeks of attending meetings, I said something a newly grieving couple. Later, the woman came to me and said that my words had brought her comfort. I was stunned that I had anything to offer anyone. I found that reaching out to someone had begun the healing process in me.
I had discovered the second important item on my list: being of value in the world. I began to speak more at Compassionate Friends meetings. I sought our other ways to be of service. I discovered "New Hope: The Center for Grieving Children" in Maitland. This incredible organization is a place where children who have lost a loved one can come to get the support of others with pain that is like their own. The children work in groups with others of their age. This is often the only safe place they have to share their grief. By becoming a volunteer grief facilitator, I have learned more about giving and about myself from these brave children.
I have learned that I took for granted what I had. I considered my charitable job done when I wrote an annual check to the American Cancer Society or the March of Dimes. The world was there for the taking, not the giving.
I now know the important lessons. Love those who love you. Do what you can to make the world a better place. Smile at a stranger. Make your work meaningful; be kind to those in your office, smile at those you wait on. Be honest with the people with who you do business. If you are an employer, use compassion and understanding. Come out of your office and smile. Fine an agency that needs volunteers. You will feel useful and valuable.
These acts cost nothing; it makes not difference what socioeconomic level you belong. Give your time and your presence to others. The satisfaction is immeasurable and the rewards and the healing are amazing.
~Diane C. Goldsmith, Mom to Rebecca; TCF, Heart of Florida Chapter. Article reprinted from The Orlando Sentinel My Word column, April 25, 2002.
I want to be normal again. What's normal? Normal is not outliving my child. Normal is dancing at my daughter's wedding, not crying at her grave. Normal is being able to smile and say "I'm fine" and mean it. Normal is not having a hole in my heart (that will never heal) from sadness and grief. Normal is going a whole day with pleasant memories and not memories of sickness, dying and death.
~Shan Kihlman, Kentucky
Daughter Brenna died 3-7-02 at age 26 after a 10 year battle with cancer
Life Without Matt: A Daily Nightmare; Excruciating Pain Endures After Drunken Driver Kills Son
They told me it was a homicide. The medical examiner’s office would arrive shortly to take my son, Matthew, for an autopsy. I should leave the room where I watched him die so I didn’t see them take him away in a body bag. My son, my only child, was the victim of a homicide. My son was killed by a drunk driver.
Matt was a student at FSU, a senior with one short semester before graduation. He was looking forward to grad school. Home for winter break, he had just left to go scuba diving with friends. But on 12/21/06 instead of receiving a phone call that Matt had arrived at his destination I received the call that every parent dreads. I was told that Matt had been airlifted to the hospital because a drunk driver had crashed into the back of the car he was riding in. I arrived at the hospital to find Matthew in Trauma ICU hooked up to a respirator. The young man, whose response when I told him to slow down a bit was always, “Mom, I live life,” was in a coma and couldn’t breathe on his own. Matt’s sternum was fractured, his spleen ruptured, his lung collapsed. Worst of all was the severe brain injury, and the bolt in his head to relieve the pressure to his brain.
After days of waiting and never once giving up hope, I was told that my beautiful, brilliant son was brain dead. Matthew died on 12/29/06 at 12:33 A.M. No parent forgets the birth of their child, the exact moment they arrived into the world. I will never forget the exact moment my son left this world. There is nothing worse; no pain more excruciating.
I will never again hear my son’s voice, hear his laugh, see his beautiful face, hug him, or anxiously await his phone calls and visits home. No one is left to call me “Mom” again. I will never have grandchildren. The drunk driver took all of that away -- the extremely promising future of a young man ready to start his life as a marine scientist. The drunk driver took away Matt’s future, my future, and affected the lives of so many. Things will never be the same.
The drunk driver, who had just turned 21 weeks prior to killing Matt, is now sitting behind bars awaiting trial. His life will also never be the same, nor should it be. Matt did nothing wrong. He was a passenger wearing his seatbelt when he became the innocent victim of a drunk driver. This horrific nightmare is 100 percent preventable. Killing or injuring others while drinking and driving is not a mistake, but a choice. One who drinks and drives chooses to make their vehicle a deadly weapon, no different than a loaded gun.
If you plan to drink, please choose to make transportation arrangements with someone you trust not to drink. If you drink, please don’t drive
If not for yourself, do it for your parents, your loved ones, the parents and loved ones of the people you very well may end up killing. Do it so that my daily nightmare does not become theirs.
I still wait for my son to walk through the door. But he never does. He never will.
~Connie Beard, Matt’s Mom – My Son, My World, My Hero; TCF, Heart of Florida Chapter. Article reprinted from the FSVIEW (FSU News), August 27, 2007 and The Orlando Sentinel My Word Column, December 20, 2007.
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