Bereavement due to traumatic death

I know, I think if anything I have, I have a strong faith, I believe in God and that helps me tremendously.

 

 

My faith in God?

 

 

It helps me because I think that it puts life and death into perspective when you look at it biblically. You know we know that we’re not going to be for ever, and we know that we are born with a purpose, everybody is, and , I have to put that and I think of the joy, when I think of the joy or the work that an individual has done in their lifetime, then their death, how tragic it can be, it may seem meaningless but there is a reason for it and I some times sit down and think “Why, what’s the reason, God?” Do you know what I mean, “What possibly is the reason for leaving three children on their own and that?” There is a purpose you know and we’re in a, we’re in a world where people do all acts of wickedness and evil and murder and rape and all these things you know? And it just reminds you that you never know what the day brings, our time is precious. You know we’re not promised tomorrow by anybody, no-one promises us tomorrow, though we make plans and we’ll say, next week, next Wednesday, every-one does it, we’re not promised that. So but why are we expecting it, you know so I think sometimes we have to know, my relationship with God helps me stay focused on what matters.

So how has all this had an impact on your life this year?

 

I’ll be glad when this year’s over, because I think this year, 2008 has been, has been a hard year, it has and I think, I think if I’m being honest… I think I’ve put up some barriers. You know and, I’m okay with that as well. Because I think I have to, I’m a mother of three children that I’m the only parent, and I can’t really crumble. I can’t really let what happened you know, I can’t crumble, there’s no, there’s no alternative, and that’s why I draw deeper on my faith because God’s got to see me through this process, he’s the only one, friends mean well, but they’re not there 24 hours a day, they can’t be. So you know you’re left to yourself aren’t you in the way that you interpret things around you, and I think some things I have to block myself off from, in order just to keep going, not to say I’m desensitized about it, I am, I have emotions but I just think I have to have that little barrier.

 

Well I’ve, it was strange really because when, both my children, our children went to the church school, and they used to always go to church when they were younger. And I’d go, and then as they got older it was the Methodist church or Church of England, and then I just found comfort in going to church, both the vicar from the Church of England gave a lovely service, and also the Chaplain from the Military, he spoke. And the Methodist Minister at the time, he was present at [our son’s] funeral, and everybody was so supportive from the church. It was quite amusing because the, the Chaplain from the Military, he’s Catholic, had the Methodist Minister and also the Anglican.

 

 

Yes, it was, very nice. Yes. I think we all had one belief and that’s the main thing. And I do go to church, and I do get comfort from that. There’s just the odd time that I can freeze and I sometimes think should I leave when they start speaking about forgiveness.

…but it depends in what context that’s being said, but sometimes I can feel myself freezing.

 

But no, I do believe and I’ve seen Spiritualists since then and I keep thinking, “Why keep going to spiritualists, because they’re not going to bring [our son] back.”

 

 

Yes. Yes I do.

 

But sometimes a lot more than others, and it’s amazing different things that have happened, that people might see as silly, but they’ve been personal to me and it convinces me. 

 

 

Well I went to church, it was different when we were younger, you know we were, my Dad was a lay preacher, he was, he was, he was a good person my Dad, he was a magistrate, but he came from the cobbled streets of [town] and he worked himself up, so he was a lay preacher and a magistrate, so he, he made me go to church every Sunday, but I never really had any strong convictions of, oh I certainly haven’t now.

 

 

No, no. The only, the only, one thing I remember doing was when I was talking earlier about the awful six or seven months I had with [my daughter], and her behaviour, I remember lying in bed one night and just, just for the first time in my complete adult life, I was praying, I said, “Please just help me Steph. God, whoever’s listening just help me get through these next few months, because I’m going under here, you know, and I’m going to lose [my daughter] You know so I’m not good with it, I can’t, I can’t cope.” And the next few weeks, her behaviour did kind of start to improve a bit, so that made me think; offer a little thank you to whoever.

 

 

Oh, I’d like, [sigh]. I don’t know. I’m still quite cynical about it, I think it’s a kind of self defense thing people have to make themselves feel better, a part of me thinks someone’s listening but, I still tend to believe it’s just a cruel difficult world and once someone’s gone you’re left on your own. And that’s the black and white situation. I’ve been to the cemetery and I’ve just, there’s, there’s, there’s a little walk of about three hundred yards from I parked the car, nice little walk, it’s a lovely cemetery where Steph is, and sometimes when I’m walking down this little path I think something’s going happen, you know, to make me feel better, or she is going be around, but when I get to the headstone, it’s just the same old headstone in the ground, and that’s what it’s always like for me, because I’m just looking at a piece of masonry stuck in the grass, and I’m thinking, “What am I doing here?” I only I only ever stay for five minutes at the most, because it, it just does nothing for me whatsoever, and, I don’t know if other people get any comfort from it, I, I don’t, it just makes me feel worse so, I rarely go now. The only time I go is just to refresh the flowers or just try to tidy up a little bit. Just do it out of respect for Steph really to try and make it look nice, but I don’t get anything spiritual from it at all.

 

Very much so. And I have to say if I wasn’t I don’t think I’d be sitting here now doing the interview, is the honest truth. Because I think the shock is so great. You have to have, you have to have something there I think to, to pull you through, you know. Otherwise I just think you just feel that you can’t do this.

 

You know, without a child. So, yes, certainly, my belief system has, has got me through. And will carry on.

 

 

Well, I very much, I have this belief of the birth and death process and it’s something that we all go through and, and, you know, if you look at it logically one can’t be without the other. And, you know, we’re constantly dying all the time anyway. Our cells are regenerating. If you look at us in children and teenage and early years that’s not what we look like now. So, you, you have your death of your childhood if you like in your teenage years and you carry on evolving. But I believe in karma as well and I believe in previous lives.

And what is meant to be and, and looking back now on what Kevin did the two weeks before he died, you could almost say that his, his soul knew he was going, although Kevin didn’t. And there were certain things that he did. He visited my family, and other things that he did and you just thought, no, some, some part of his psyche knew he was going and he was saying his goodbyes.

And looking back on that now that makes such perfect sense. And that you don’t’ just die. I know where he’s gone. I know that this is our learning experience here and, and that you go home. It’s the shock you have to deal with basically. And the missing of him, I think, which now even 15 months down the line hasn’t been dealt with. Because, and, and might never. You might never, ever move on from missing a child.

 

Oh he’s around us all the time. I don’t even believe that I have to wait through this lifetime. Because I think if I had to live another 50 years of this life thinking I might see him again I think you have to have the belief that he’s here.

That, you know, he’s, he’s passed on but he’s not dead. You know, he visits me in dream states. He tells me it was his time to go. And I do accept it was his time to go, because it’s too freaky. Other people are stabbed and they make it.

 

But it was, and, and it was his lifespan of 27 years on this, this plane, and, you know, it’s how we all have to deal with it afterwards….

 

…that’s helped me through, really. And will help carry through knowing that he is around. And I do sense him a lot of the time. And I, you know, you think, “Oh what would Kevin do in this situation?” And, and that, I, I draw great strength from that, yeah.

 

 

I don’t believe that any religion, no.

 

 

Just a spiritual…

 

I think growing up I had to go to various things. I, you know, I did my bit going through a spiritual church to start me off and, and then through a wonderful organisation called Brahma Kumaris, which I think are, are very, very good. And through reading and inner development and working on myself and, and my beliefs have, have got me to where I am now, to the extent that I can help other people now.

Now, for myself, I have thought about you know matters of life after death and religion and so on to the extent that you know there are times I feel like I’ve tied myself in knots. And I’ve been through years of having zealous Christian belief, and then I’ve undergone times of questioning. And if there’s one thing that would make one question the fairly black and white ideas of the Christian Bible it is when, I suppose in very simple terms, something really bad happens to a really good person. And I’ve been you know, that’s one aspect of the suffering from losing your child that I’ll never be free from. And I’ll never know the answer to until I die myself, and if I’ll ever see her again, you know, if I’ll ever be with her again. And I can’t buy into the you know the very simple version of the bible story, given what has happened, and I do believe that there is a continued existence after death, and in fact I believe that there are certain signs, having, having spoken to other people who have lost loved ones, not necessarily children, but loved ones, there seem to be certain signs which are acknowledged as having some merit, that there’s a continued existence, you know I many sound fairly bizarre but interference with electrical systems, lights going on and off, that kind of thing, in the immediate aftermath of the death, and it would appear that there is a crossing over period of approximately about 7 to 9 days when there tends to be these signs, and then the signs go. There’s put forward that that’s because the crossing over is taking place into another realm. Now I have specific thoughts and beliefs about, that you know that sort of thing in more detail.

So what sort of spiritual belief do you have yourself, would you describe yourself as a Christian or?

 

[Sigh] I would describe, I would describe myself as so confused that I almost feel like a, feel like a fool to describe myself as a Christian. I believe that…

 

 

I feel like a fool [laughs] to describe myself as a Christian because I’d probably be that, the notion of doing that would probably be dismissed by a traditional evangelical 21^st century Christian, because my belief system would be more complex and complicated than you know a man with a big white beard sitting on a cloud with his sort of staff and rod, and visiting then you know his wrath on the inequities of the evil ones, and you know showering blessings on those who follow his path, because things don’t seem to work that way. Having said that, you know I do still have beliefs and leanings towards the purpose of Christ’s life and death and resurrection. I don’t think that I buy the infallibility, is that the word, of the bible, the idea that the inspired word, notion, doctrine, I believe that well, do you really want to hear about this?

 

 

I believe that the continued existence beyond the, you know our bodies, and the existence of God and so on, is a lot more scientific as it were and complicated than the fairy stories of the you know of the New Testament, well the Old Testament in particular, and I think that there are glimmers of understanding of the true nature of God and of the true nature of our existence, and the true nature of consciousness and a consciousness beyond the physical body. And what is described as quantum physics and quantum mechanics, in that quantum mechanics experiments have demonstrated that the classical physics notions of, you know, just there being material things and nothing more are simply wrong, they’re, they’re not right. And in fact experiments in quantum mechanics demonstrate that the classical physics notions of, you know, just there being material things and nothing more are simply wrong, they’re, they’re not right. And in fact experiments in quantum mechanics demonstrate that that there are behaviours amongst particles that are influenced by the observer of the particle, and that consciousness of itself perhaps create what we perceive to be the known universe, you know so it’s, it’s the collective consciousness of mankind that that creates the notion of you know all these sorts of millions of galaxies and so on. But the, the reality I think that, I don’t really have the intellect to get my head around, is that apart from the dimensions that we’re aware of, that is up and down, and sideways and across, and the fourth dimension of time, there are other dimensions that exist in the same space that we’re completely oblivious to, and I think there are quantum mechanics experiments that demonstrate the existence of those other dimensions. …And there are, I mean related theories of parallel universes and so on, that that every time there’s a quantum, quantum event there are new universes and new parallel universes and existences created. What it boils down to is that consciousness is independent of physical existence, and that consciousness lives beyond you know our physical demise. And so there is a possibility that I mean that, you know conscious beings, as it were reincarnate, I don’t know.
 
It’s a possibility, but certainly that, pardon me, in other dimensions beyond our understanding what tends to be referred to as the transcendent realm, that’s where the consciousness of our loved ones go. And in the Christian religion of course what the scientist refers to as the Transcendent realm, is called Heaven. In the Christian religion, what is referred to as consciousness by the scientists is referred to as the Holy Spirit. So, rather than me buying into to you know, the nonsense of Mr. Dawkins and his atheism or theism, I’ll buy into the notion of consciousness and a transcendent realm and if someone else wants to describe it as Heaven and the work of the holy spirit and so on, so be it.