Subsequents was a term I learned from my online searches the week after Aaron died. I guess it was an easier way of saying “having another child after losing a child.”

But there was something about this clinical-sounding label that lent a controversial tone to the chat rooms in the various bereaved parent sites.

I never weighed in on any of these conversations. I’m not the online chatting kind of person, frankly, which makes this site a bit ironic for me.

The issue of subsequents had a long response chain, with parents, mostly mothers, offering their perspectives on how they were preparing for (and worrying about) their next child, and on their process behind considering the “right amount of time” after their child’s death.

There were also practical considerations: what to do with their baby’s clothes, the crib, their fears, the statistics of having it happen again in the same family.

And then there were the naysayers. The ones who interrupted these discussions with haughty, holier than thou (can you hear my bias?) diatribes against their decision against having a “replacement child.” I wondered how families whose firstborns died from SIDS felt about that.

Part of the grieving process is coming to terms with your own changes as a mother, as a family, as a woman.

We were a family of five and then we weren’t. Not technically, anyway. Aaron still held his position in our family, and we loved to rehash the special moments with him: his perfectly timed grunts in church, the magical effects of “Yellow Submarine” that would stop his screams in his car seat.

We talked about how much we missed him, but we acknowledged this loss as a move to a different location, not as a removal from our family. Tyler, who was only three when his brother died, was Aaron’s ardent supporter and would quietly correct me with, “Mommy, you have two boys” when people asked about our family.

But Aaron’s memories didn’t count when we were in line for movie tickets or planning a family vacation. I couldn’t let go of the reality that we were supposed to be a family with three children gathered around the Christmas tree, driving to Disneyland, arguing in the grocery store about who could sit in the cart.

Call it zone defense, call it one man down, call it slightly out of control -- I was desperate to return. I felt like a fraudulent mother of two.

By Kimberley Kwok

Labels: a child's death, artistic daughter, cute son, Disneyland, family, first-time mother, grieving, grieving process, Kimberley Kwok, SIDS, subsequents, Yellow Submarine

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When we got a puppy a few years ago, my friend, Mary, scolded me.

“Just what you need. Another thing to take care of,” she said shaking her head.

Mary had heard too many complaints about my frantic life as a busy mother – caring for two active boys, keeping house, maintaining a job outside the home, volunteering for various charities.

She was right, of course. As soon as the puppy passed through the doorway it was as if another toddler had been set loose and my workload increased exponentially.

So what was I thinking a few months back when I agreed to allow a Japanese foreign exchange student to live with us? I wasn’t thinking is the short answer.

I hadn’t considered that I’d be traveling back and forth to three schools instead of two. I wasn’t thinking the teenage girl would need shoes, underwear, a coat, and gloves, and that I’d have to guide her through the mystifying process of shopping in an American mall as she hunted for a dress for her first formal dance.

I was unprepared for the challenge her spotty English and my non-existent Japanese posed forcing us to struggle through conversations until I understood that she suffered period cramps and needed a couple of ibuprofen.

I was unprepared for dealing with the sorrows of another mother’s child, yet, when homesickness drew tears -- I instinctively pulled her toward me and held her until the weeping subsided.

I was even more surprised by the extent to which cultural barriers prevented us from understanding even the most simple of requests. She had been living with us for more than a month before we understood why she declined our offers for a ride to the mall or to the movies.

It wasn’t until a neighbor with family in Japan told us that eagerness was considered impolite there and our student had probably been trained to decline three times before accepting. I shook my head in sorrow at all the times we left her behind while we shopped.

After five months, Emi will soon be leaving us. She’ll be spending the second half of her ten-month American visit with another Sacramento family. As she prepares to go, I remind myself that my life will get easier. But that reminder doesn’t begin to fill the empty place I know will be there when she goes.

All I really think about is how much I’m going to miss her – her accented English, her laughter at our attempts to run a rice cooker, even her tears.

I can’t stop her from leaving. She doesn’t belong to me. Yet, I can take from her time with us the lesson that sometimes the hardest additions to life end up being the most rewarding.

I do, after all, love that damn dog.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: family, foreign student, Laura-Lynne Powell

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This is how I start my day.

I wake up and consider a concept for a novel. I have no plan to write it, but I am thinking about it. I listen as my husband struggles to get the kids out of bed. 

Notice me not rushing to help him.

I finally get up, forced by hunger. I am in the kitchen and my daughter, who is almost nine, confronts me. “Mom, do you know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of 1. Magic diamonds cereal 2. Apples for snack 3. Cheese toast for afternoons.”  She counts off each one with a finger slapped into her palm.

I look at her, hair unbrushed, jeans too baggy, and little freckles on her nose. I say, with a hint of mockery, “I am not surprised you are tired of those foods. They are all you eat.”

Undaunted, she counts down her list again slapping those fingers into her palm for each item, and stands there, chin up, hands on hips as if it were my fault she won’t eat anything. We agree she might be willing to try a new snack bar.

“The one with chocolate chips,” she says. Then she puts her school snack—an apple—in her sweatshirt pocket and leaps into an Arabesque in the kitchen.  “Laaa!” she sings off key and heads off to start her day.

Then my fuzzy headed son comes in. He crashes into me, knocking me back a step, buries his face into my stomach, and clutches my sweater sleeves.

“Mmm” he says. “Hi Mama.”  It is pretty hard to get mad at anyone who says hi like that. 

“Hi bunny,” I say, “Are you dressed?” He is clearly not dressed, still wearing his pajamas, holding his blanket (a bright orange square of fleece) and two or three sleeping buddies.

“I want YOU to get me dressed,” he says, poking me in the belly.  I point out that I have not eaten. He says he doesn’t care. I say that I need to eat first before I do anything, or else I might be tempted to -- “Eat my children!”

I tickle him and nuzzle his head. He has more hair than God, and it usually sticks straight out. He squeals and runs off.

After I eat, I stand at the door and watch my children scamper away. My long-legged daughter lopes next to her father, same lanky body type.  My son skips to catch up with them, I notice his arms are sticking out of his sleeves, and his pants are too short. Well, that’s what happens when you marry a tall skinny guy, I guess.

I have good kids, I think appreciatively.

Then I start the rest of my day.

By Lianna McSwain

Labels: family, Lianna McSwain

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My 7-year old son obsesses over television. When can he watch it? For how long? Can he have the cereal that looks like chocolate donuts? Please Mom, the commercial says the cereal is part of a nutritional breakfast.

I’m enjoying National TV-Turnoff Week. My family participated last year and is doing so again now. Numerous studies conclude that children are watching more and more TV and the impacts are negative. Children who watch lots of television are more obese, study less and are more likely to engage in violence than children who watch a little television. The cutoff between a lot and a little seems to be about 10 hours a week.

During last year’s TV-Turnoff Week, my family was more physically active. We went for more walks than usual and talked to neighbors. We planted flowers in the border of our front yard. We played card games and board games. Bottom line, we spent more time together talking and really enjoying each others’ company.

My son spent a couple of hours one morning creating a chart of his favorite shows. He wrote the start times of shows across the top of a page, and the days of the week down the left side. Then he slotted the shows he wanted to watch. What a great activity for a 6-year old. He needed to understand time, days of the week and how to organize data.

We all agreed, even my son, that no television for a week was a delightful change of pace. But it’s hard to continue. There’s pressure to keep up with the tube, from my son’s friends, from coworkers, and from the promotional ads on TV. I start to feel like I’m missing something. This week is a great reminder of how pleasant life without television can be.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Labels: cereal, family, mother, son, TV-Turnoff Week

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On a walk last summer, I discovered a note left with some flowers at a park bench. The bench memorialized a neighbor who had died. The note, and I assumed the flowers, were left by the dead neighbor’s widowed spouse. Again, this was something I assumed because the note was a love letter expressing the author’s profound grief, but it was unsigned.

The tribute to the woman moved me deeply and on subsequent walks I noticed that as the seasons changed so did the flowers. There were mums left in the fall, poinsettias at Christmas, shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day. But there was never another note, never another clue to the identity of the person
who mourned so.

Until today.

On my walk this morning as I passed the familiar bench shaded in a grove of redwoods. I noticed a new plant, a white Easter lily left for the holiday weeks before. The lily contained two large blooms, one upright and fresh, the other broken and hanging by a thread of its stem. Underneath the pot I saw a purple envelope, the first note since the summer before.

I rushed to the bench.

Across the front of the envelope someone had scrawled in black ink: “RIA.” I looked at the plaque at the foot of the bench and saw it honored Maria McAuliffe Johnson who died in 2004. I opened the envelope and pulled from it a card that read, “For my wife at Easter with love.”

Inside someone had written: “My Darling: I miss you more than I can say. You are always in my heart.” It was signed, “Love Dan” though it may have read, “Love Don.” I couldn’t be sure.

A lump clogged my throat. Three years since Maria’s death had not diminished Dan’s – or Don’s – love for her. Death may have claimed her body, but not the memory of who she had been to him -- the love of his life.

Of course, as it did that first time I came across the husband’s tribute to his dead wife, that knowledge made me think of the loved ones in my own life: My husband, Dave, my school-aged sons, Christopher and Timothy.

I never met Maria McAuliffe Johnson but I felt as if our lives had crossed paths. I had thought of her at nearly every holiday that had passed since first noticing her husband’s tributes last summer. I expect I’ll be thinking of her in the future as well when my walks take me past her bench and whatever tributes her grieving husband leaves for her there.

And each time I think of her, I’ll remember that time is short but love is long.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: Death, family, flowers, love, memories, remembrance, seasons

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The big bad wolf’s name is Schizophrenia. I know this because he tried to gobble up my older brother when he was just 14 young years old. Not in one gulp, but in an erratic pattern of gnawing and howling, followed by moments of satiation we could describe as calm (or at least calmer).

That wolf wreaked havoc on our family. When he was around he was just plain scary. And annoying. Being a kid I wanted to blame my brother for becoming a wolf, though he hadn’t and I knew that, too. Sometimes it was hard to tell by his actions whether it was the wolf’s fault or my brother’s or a combination of the two. How could he not take on wolf characteristics with that darn creature trying to invade him?

In 5th grade I made the mistake of confiding in a best friend about the big bad wolf. I felt incredible relief and trust. The next day on the playground while waiting in line for four square another girl called out, “Your brother is RETARDED.” Real loud. I was tempted to correct her and tell her to blame the blasted wolf but what did she know?

After all, how do you describe a big bad wolf trying to gobble up your brother in quiet suburbia? Who would understand? And who could understand? I closed off and told no one about the wolf invading our home. I was also afraid that my peer group would see me as part of some wolf pack rather than as a member of an actual real-life smiling, loving, healthy family.

Just like in the Three Little Pigs story that wolf has tried to “blow our house in.” But somehow, he’s never managed to crumble my parents’ marriage or dismantle our family tree. Thanks to modern medicine and the blessing that it is, medications have taken most of his huffing and puffing away. He’s just a weak wolf now, though he’s still there.

My brother has had that wolf at him for over 30 long years now. I wish it would just finally, finally go away.

By Maija Threlkeld

Labels: brothers, family, schizophrenia, sisters

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