A sweet story about my cousin's difficult child son

[buddy]

This is actually my cousins daughter. But we have grown up as cousins. Her son came to them after they were married...a social worker showed up and told her hubby he had a son. They of course took him but he was very very broken.

She is a blogger and becoming pretty successful. I hope this inspires you. I bawled, because I know them and love them, and also there have been a couple of times Q has done a small thing like that...and it makes a big difference.

Here you go...

This past year has been a very difficult one for my family. When someone says that death usually comes in threes, they are usually right. We just didn’t realize that these 3 deaths would be so close to our family.

Within six months we lost my husband’s grandfather, my grandfather and my great-grandmother. They had all lived very long, full lives. My great-grandmother would’ve been 95 if she would’ve made it a few more weeks. Even though they had lived such long lives it still doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

I really think that the hardest death was my grandfather’s. We sat with him for weeks but he just refused to let go. The day he finally let go was the day after Easter. I found out as I was heading out of town for a week long work conference. That was so hard.

I really didn’t have time to grieve his death. I was busy from the time that I woke up until the time that I went to bed. NO exaggeration here. Now trust me, I did dull the pain with plenty of alcohol. Work conference + men with expense accounts = LOTS of free alcohol. I just couldn’t pass it up. I just couldn’t let myself feel the pain of another loss. Not in this setting. Not at this time.

I arrived home that Thursday and was immediately rushed off to the funeral home for the showing. If you are not familiar with a showing it is where family and friends come to pay their respects to the family of the deceased the day(s) before the funeral.

I walked in to the funeral home and I broke. My sister-in-law literally had to hold me because the grief overtook me. After I sobbed heavily for a few minutes I felt so much better. I made it through the rest of the day and was able to hold myself together.

The funeral was another story. I thought that I got it all out during the showing but I didn’t. I held it together pretty well during the funeral. It was very sweet. It was a very small funeral, held in the funeral home, where everyone could stand up and share stories about my grandfather. Jacob, my son, even got up and said that my grandfather was always “giving him a hard time about the ladies”. (Jacob was only 9 at the time.)

The funeral went along and I was holding myself together when all of the sudden some of the war veterans walked in to pay their respects. They spoke about him being a WWII veteran and then they played Taps. That was it. I was done. I was sobbing so hysterically.

All of the sudden I felt this hand in mine. It was Jacob’s. He held my hand and started rubbing my back. Then he put his arms around me and hugged me. Of course, that made me start bawling even harder. I couldn’t have been more proud of him than I was at that moment.

I did not birth Jacob. I was lucky enough to have him become a bonus child when he was five years old. He has had severe emotional problems due to the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his birth mom, so for him to show some sort of emotion was an incredible break through. I will never forget that day!

this post is from a when she was a recent guest on kircorner at : http://www.thekircorner.com/2011/11/proud-mommy-momentsjayme-from-random.html

she has her own blog and is usually known for her humor, but this was heartfelt. Jake is still really tricky and they have some battles as we all know from our own homes. But I am so proud of her. and Jake is a great kid! Q loved him and they shared a room when we were there, first time he ever had a sleep over. (I was in the next room supervising, tee hee)

The links to her blogs are at the site this is from she is the "random blogette" but that is not the point of this, just wanted to share an experience I know many of us can understand.

 

[TeDo]

WOW! That is powerful. When we've been in a similar situation, difficult child 1 just stares at me like he can't quite figure out what to do. difficult child 2 holds on to me. He's my emotionally sentimental one.

 

[Wiped Out]

What a sweet story, how great that her difficult child was able to show such compassion at such a time.

 

[exhausted]

Don't know how I missed this one until now. How lovely and how timely. I needed to see that today. Thank you for sharing.

 

[DammitJanet]

That is so sweet. Death is so hard for all of us and it hits many of the grandchildren very hard too. I was very comforted to have my kids with me when my dad died.