THE CLUB

By Karen Grover

In January, 1987, my husband and I became member of a very exclusive Club. We had been only vaguely aware of its existence, and we thought that surely a chapter in a city the size of ours wouldn’t have many members.

We had seen a few people who belonged to the club but we didn’t seem to have anything in common with them. Occasionally we read stories in the newspaper about new members being initiated into the club but it didn’t seem likely that we would ever be eligible to join so we paid no attention.

The price of membership is so dear that we couldn’t imagine being a part of the club. We must have realized in the backs of our minds that people didn’t choose to join and pay the dues – it was done for them somehow. In fact, no one really has any ideas of how members are selected. There are a lot of theories; but much of the time the theories come from non-members who don’t understand much about the situation.

The “club” we are now in (although it is not an organized group) is known as “bereaved parents.” The cost of our membership was the life of our son; and we, like all other members have no idea why we were selected for membership.

No one wants to be in the club. Even now moths afterwards, inside our hearts and minds we continue to fight membership but there is no resigning from it. It is an automatic lifetime membership. There was no way to avoid it – we did the best we could to keep our son safe. For 14 years we guided him through the dangers only to have him die in a seemingly minor auto accident. Though we lay awake night after night and think of it day after day, there is no answer as to why we have been thrust into this select group. We hate it and we cry out in protest but there is no way to change it.

We have learned a lot since our membership began. We now understand much about the other members. In fact, we seek to be with them, have regular get-togethers, to discuss our membership and try to understand its value.

Sometimes those outside the club are afraid of us fearing that if they come near us or talk with us, they will be selected to become members too! Acquaintances often try to ignore the membership, pretending that it doesn’t exist. They seem to think that makes thing easier and the members won’t feel “different,” but it really makes things much worse.

So many times I have wanted someone to say hello or to tell me she has been thinking of me or to mention something about the absent child who still lives inside me and overshadows all my thoughts. I have heard people say, “I don’t want to upset her or remind her of her son or say something that will make her cry.”

I want to tell them; “The only way you can make me feel worse than I already do is to pretend that the loss does not exist or as deep and painful as you surely know it is.”

Have you ever experienced the feeling of having one terrible incident go through your mind day after day, week after week, month after month, wondering why it happened and how you could have prevented it? Well don’t worry about reminding me of my son. I am thinking about him nearly 24 hours a day.

“Sure, sometimes my mind is temporarily distracted – it would have to be to function at all. But if you think there is even one day that goes by without my child’s death tearing up my heart, then you have no idea what the club is all about.

I appreciate your talking about my child or at least letting me talk about him. He was a very large part of my life and ignoring him now will really hurt me. It makes me think that you feel he is no longer important because he’s gone. It hurts to think that people don’t want to think about him or remember good things about him just because he has died.

For More information about the Compassionate Friends, visit the national Web site at: www.thecompassionatefriends.org

Send mail to webmaster@tcfstpaul.org with questions or comments about the Saint Paul Chapter web site.