Grief Relief: How We Can Help Ourselves and Others Through Grief: Marilyn Heavlin

HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Grief Relief: How We Can Help Ourselves and Others Through Grief
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Marilyn Heavilin
February 9, 2006

G: Hello. I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley. Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. Loss is a universal experience. To live is to sometimes fail and to lose if you’ve risked the loss. The reality is that the longer we live, the more we lose. Family members we grew up with leave us. Some of us lose our marriages or our spouses and some of us are helped. Some of us are unlucky enough to even lose our children, siblings, or to grow up without a parent. The life you and I live may not be the life we planned, but it is the life we have and a great life it is. Healing the Grieving Heart is a show about healing and embracing the life you have been destined to live. My guests and I are here each week with wit, wisdom, and advice to give you the courage to move through the pain of loss and into the rich, wonderful life you deserve. It’s your turn. Please join us. Our topic today is Grief Relief: How We Can Help Ourselves and Others Through Grief and my guest today is Marilyn Heavilin. Please join us on the show by calling our toll-free number, 1-866, 369-3742 and we hope it is working because the show is having a bit of problems with that number but try us in 15 or 20 minutes and hopefully it will be working then. You may email me during the show at gchorsley@aol.com or through my website, www.healingthegrievingheart.org. These shows are all archived on www.thecompassionatefriends.org website. Today our topic is Grief Relief and my guest is Marilyn Heavilin. Hello, Marilyn, and welcome to the show.
M: Well, hello, Gloria. How are you today?
G: Great and it’s wonderful to have you on the show. Let me tell you about Marilyn before we get started. She is a woman with a love for the Word and God which has gifted her with the ability to express what she has learned from the Bible in practical terms. Marilyn is the author of the popular book Roses in December and is an inspiration to all with her positive attitude and zest for life. Marilyn has lost three children. In 1964, Marilyn’s son, Jimmy, died of crib death when he was seven weeks old. Twin sons, Nathan and Ethan were born a year later on Christmas Day. Ten days after birth, Ethan died of pneumonia. In 1983, Ethan’s twin brother, Nathan, was killed by a drunk driver. Nathan was 17. Marilyn, did you tell me this is an anniversary for Nathan?
M: Tomorrow will be the anniversary, actually, February 10 will be 23 years since Nathan left us.
G: Could you tell us a little about him and about that and about the other kids?
M: Certainly. Jimmy was our third child and we had hoped to have a boy, a girl, and a boy, and that’s what we had, so we thought we’d controlled that. My mother said, well, maybe God just let you want what you were going to get. That could be but Jimmy was seven weeks old. He was the largest of our babies and had acted a little bit lethargic the night before. I had the good sense of calling the doctor. He came and checked him and could find nothing. The next morning as Glenn went into the room he discovered that Jimmy had died in the night probably of what we would now call crib death. That was a long time ago, 41 years, and so we didn’t have all the names that we have today. But then I thought that the best thing to do was to have another baby. I really lived under the concept that your pain would go away if you had another child. I was wrong on that. The pain is always there, of course, for the loss of Jimmy, but then when we had twins I think that people expected that now we would be back to normal.
G: And how long was that in between?
M: It was 18 months in between.
G: Oh, my goodness, such a short time.
M: Yes, it was a short time and so I had had three babies and then Ethan died when he was 10 days old, so I had three babies and two funerals in 18 months and I was 28 at the time. But people had the response because I had twins, well, you’ve still got a baby left, as though having the baby was going to take the pain away and, of course, we had no idea what was lying ahead of us.
G: Now did they even deal with Jimmy’s death then or they just moved right on?
M: Not really. Yeah. They wanted us to move right on and you needed to get back to normal. Don’t you hate that statement? I don’t think there’s any bereaved parent who wouldn’t be delighted to get back to normal because normal means you have all your children. But that’s what they told me was just get on with it, have another baby, and you’ll forget all about this was the statement that they made after Jimmy’s death. Well, then, I noticed that the crowd thinned after Ethan died because people didn’t know what to say. Even today they don’t know what to say but 40 years ago they most definitely didn’t.
G: And they could also concentrate on Nathan. What a cute baby.
M: Yes, and you have another baby so everything should be fine. And Nathan was a delightful child and grew to the age of 17, was on his way home from a basketball game at a Christian high school when a drunk driver crossed a yellow line on a two-lane city road going 65 miles an hour and hit Nathan’s car head on and within an instant, Nathan was gone. And so we had to face it all over again. Obviously, I know that parents will understand that since he died on the 10th, I could tell you what I was doing 40 years ago on those days because it’s like they’re frozen in time. They do not change and even though it’s been 23 years, we still miss him terribly and every time our two remaining children, Matthew and Mellyn, had children, of course, it was a delight to have the grandchildren, but it was also a reminder of who wasn’t there.
G: Did you worry about your grandchildren at all as babies?
M: Oh, yeah. I’m a nervous Nellie. It’s probably just as well that I don’t live close to any of them. I have three teenagers now driving as grandchildren and I told my son I thought they should just lock us all up and let the kids go on their own and when they got past this stage maybe we’d make it if we just left them alone.
G: Right. I would think with the tiny babies you would have been nervous, too.
M: Well, I was. I tried very hard not to say anything to the kids but the minute I notice that their hands might be a little blue or I checked on them and couldn’t tell if they were breathing, I became very nervous and I think the only thing that saved us is the fact that I did not have the good fortune of being able to live close to any of my grandchildren when they were little and so it’s probably just as well that I didn’t because the kids still like me and that probably came from the fact that I wasn’t around too much and because I know that at home I worried a great deal and when any of the teenagers are late or I know they’re driving in bad weather, I have a very difficult time. I have begun to realize that it’s a blessing for those children that Grammy isn’t real close.
G: One of the things in reading your book, and I want to get into that, Roses in December, it’s a wonderful book and a very healing book. One of the things I noticed that I was so fascinated with is the ambivalence. I know you’re a Christian woman and very close to God and have found a lot of comfort in that. But you’ve also been angry – really angry.
M: You’d better believe it. Well, I think probably I allowed that in my own mind because I was close to God and I knew that he knew me whether people around me knew me or not and they get very nervous when I had any anger and yet in the scripture it says, “Be angry and sin not.” I think what that’s saying is it’s all right to be ticked off just watch what you do.
G: I love your anger because I want to tell those people out there if you have a belief in God and if that’s one of your touchstones that you have, God can take it.
M: Absolutely, and he knows us better than anyone else and that’s my personal thinking on this situation but I discovered that while my friends got nervous, God didn’t.
G: Could you talk about how angry you were after the accident at the families that were Christian families? I thought that was so good also and I’m sure you didn’t say a whole lot to them but you were frustrated because they wouldn’t settle.
M: Absolutely. The three families of whose children were in the car, the children all survived, none of them were in the hospital more than about a week and a half, I think. But right away we begin to realize that they were much more interested in how much insurance did the Heavilins have and then when they found out we had a great deal because my father was an insurance agent in Michigan and had advised us, he couldn’t write a policy for us, but he had advised us very well so we were well protected, but then the families begin to realize that maybe they could get a portion of that and it became very difficult because I wanted to say to them, “You’ve still got your kids, and I don’t.” It became a long drawn-out event because they would not provide the information that they needed to for the insurance and for me, someone who wants things to be just and fair, there was no justice and no fairness in that situation.
G: Right, and let me say for our audience, Nathan was driving and you said at the time that you hoped he prayed to God that it wasn’t his fault and indeed it wasn’t and he was hit head on by a drunk driver.
M: He was hit head on and I guess that’s a strange prayer, but I think it’s a mother’s prayer. I kept thinking if somebody else dies in that car, I don’t think Nathan can deal with it. That was the prayer that I prayed was just don’t let it be his fault, and it wasn’t. That was a great relief to me, but I thought that would take away any adversarial situations we might be in and I was wrong.
G: Absolutely, so let our audience know if it was your family member’s, I don’t want to say “fault,” if there was the accident, it looks like it was an error of judgment on their part, let’s say error of judgment, it still doesn’t make it great. It’s knowing that it wasn’t their error. It doesn’t clear it up.
M: No. I wanted him to be totally exonerated, and I wanted us to be totally exonerated. That was very difficult and you are right in the fact that I said very little to the families. Now if my husband were here, he would say, but you said a lot to me, and I did. I was very upset because my personality is one that wants things to be correct and just and fair. There was nothing in this that was just and fair as far as the insurance situation and then also the manslaughter trial. The man had a plea bargain, walked away with most of the charges being dropped, got three years probation, and $200 community service, and that was the price of a Nathan Heavilin.
G: Wow, and you didn’t even get to testify or even say anything which is very difficult.
M: Yes, and I know that people who know me find it hard to believe that I didn’t say anything but I really didn’t, except to my husband, and poor guy, I think he was wanting to just walk out.
G: When we come back from break, Marilyn Heavilin, let’s talk about your marriage and about the kind of strain the death of your son, Nathan, and your other two children put on your marriage.
I get wonderful emails from the people who listen to the show. This is one from Howard and he says: Hi Gloria. It’s been about two weeks since your archives have been updated. He accesses them through www.thecompassionatefriends.org website. You can get our archives through there. Howard says he looks forward to listening to the replays of your shows every night. I find them very comforting. I especially enjoyed your conversation for when sadness become depression. Keep up the great work. Your radio show is a life saver to a bereaved parent like myself who’s lost his way in life now that my daughter is dead. Thanks again, Howard, for listening to the show, and I’m glad it brings you comfort. We do have some wonderful guests on the show. Please keep sending the emails and letting us know you’re out there. Sometimes we’re sitting here and we wonder is there anybody out there?
I have another wonderful email from Christina and she says to whom it may concern. I really want to listen to the program on Thursday, February 9, or Saturday, February 11, but I have to work both days. I wanted to hear Marilyn Heavilin’s grief relief and I wanted her email or Dr. Gloria Horsley’s email. Is there a way of ordering the programs? Let me say again, the programs are all archived from when we started doing them in June and there are some wonderful shows you can hear day and night. All you have to do is go to www.thecompassionatefriends.org website and look for the internet radio shows and go into those. You can also get them through my website, www.healingthegrievingheart.org. My email is gchorsley@aol.com, but you can also get it through www.healingthegrievingheart.org and Marilyn, what’s your email?
M: My email should be easy for everyone to remember. It is rosesindecember1@aol.com.
G: When we went for break, we were talking about your three children dying. Just in case people have just tuned in, can you give us a quick snapshot of that?
M: Jimmy died in 1964 of SIDS when he was seven weeks old. I had identical twins born on Christmas morning of 1965. Ethan lived 10 days and died of pneumonia, and Nathan lived to 17 years and was killed by a drunk driver in 1983.
G: Wow. Thank you so much. You’re just an amazing person, really, you can keep trucking along with all of this. Literally, you’re in your mobile home traveling along.
M: Yes. We’re in our motor home and we travel coast to coast every year. So if anyone wants to let us know as far as speaking at a Compassionate Friends chapter, I am available as long as it’s on our route.
G: That’s wonderful. Now could you tell us about your marriage and the strain that having those children die has put on your marriage and maybe you can even review the earlier for our folks who have had young babies die.
M: I think as far as the two younger ones, as I look back, Gloria, I think I was so busy raising the three remaining children that I didn’t allow myself to breathe. While Glenn and I at the time Jimmy died had only been married seven years, or actually when the twins died, when Ethan died, we’d been married seven years. I think any problems we had we blamed on being newlyweds and it took me a long time really after Nathan died in 1983 before I realized that I had not actually grieved for Jimmy and Ethan. I had just put that on the back burner and I kept going. I think my husband did the same thing so I can’t say that we specifically had a lot of problems. We did have some certainly difficult times, but it didn’t dawn on us it was because of grief. Now I have to look back and try to figure that out and I’m not really sure.
G: And there weren’t really any support groups to help you with that.
M: Oh, no. There was nothing. And as a Christian, it was never acceptable for you to get any counseling, not at that time, not back in the 60s. So I didn’t even try to get any professional help and wasn’t sure that I needed it. Now I look back and I think, oh my gosh, did I ever need it, but no one talked to me about it at that time and even when Nathan was killed by a drunk driver in 1983, even at that time, no one suggested that we needed counseling. We needed counseling terribly. We had been married 25 years when Nathan died, almost 25 years, in October of that year, it would have been 25. Glenn and I really got to a point that we weren’t talking because Glenn’s approach to the insurance situation and everything was just, it’ll all work out. Well, my approach was, no way it’s all going to work out. You need to go down there and fix it. Somehow I didn’t see that I should do that but I thought Glenn should do it and it was not in his nature at all.
G: I know one of the things you talk about in your book, Roses in December, and I think it’s very appropriate is about people have different personality types and that was his approach, and one of the things you finally realized and we want our audience to know is that we do have different approaches in life. Everybody is not thinking the same we are.
M: We grieve differently and Glenn was grieving very quietly and I was grieving very loudly.
G: Not only do we grieve differently, but we live our lives differently and it just comes together over the loss.
M: Yes. Glenn’s personality is called phlegmatic, which means that he basically never changes his personality, but every once in a while I would say to him, you’re phlegging again, and it’s easier for him to ignore a problem and not face it. Now for me, I just go right in like a bowl in a china closet and I probably shouldn’t but that’s my approach to solving things.
G: That’s the way you deal with it, though. That’s kind of your function of life and then it all comes up when we. One of the things we’ve tried to talk about on this show and I just want to mention it now is how long have you been married?
M: In October it’ll be 48 years.
G: Ah, you beat me. I’ve been married for 45. So what we want to say to you people out there is keep on trucking. My husband and I also had problems when our son was killed feeling like we were moving in separate spaces in separate worlds, and just hang in.
M: Absolutely. What I figure is I have invested 47-1/2 years now and it would take an awful lot of effort to try to train somebody else. That’s what we say to each other all the time. I suggest that maybe there are times Glenn would like to trade me in and he says no, it’s too much work. It probably would be.
G: I also say, we’ve lost so much. Why would we want to lose our marriage, too? Plus I didn’t have the energy to get divorced, did you?
M: Oh, no. I didn’t either. I really just sort of tuned him out at the time and then I began to study the personalities and began to realize he was not acting this way just to make me miserable but it was the only way he knew.
G: They’re coping the way they cope. So how did you deal with it? Just in that knowledge. Did you get any help or therapy and what would you suggest to people?
M: I would certainly suggest therapy. My caution is make sure that whoever you talk with has gone through some kind of grief.
G: Absolutely, and there are a lot of wonderful grief centers now around. If you go on the internet, you can look up your area and look up grief centers.
M: And Gloria, there are books now. Even when Nathan died, there were very few. When Jimmy died, there were none. I remember one that I read after Nathan died, I was sitting up in bed and when I finished it, I threw the book right across the room and I just said, that woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and my husband said, well, write your own. So he’s probably sorry he said that. Six books later, I’m still doing it.
G: Oh, that’s great. Was the first book you wrote Roses in December?
M: Yes, it was.
G: I remember reading in the book that a friend of your’s actually gave you a tape of her responses and also had taken notes for you and she said here’s your book. I don’t know how I would have dealt with that.
M: Yes, she did. And at the time, I just sort of laughed. I thought, yeah, sure.
G: You didn’t want to strangle her?
M: No. I knew she meant well, and I still love her dearly. What was so surprising was Nancy’s point of view and her notes, I honestly had forgotten things. And I didn’t think I would ever forget anything about Nathan’s death, but I forgot much. She was able to look at our daughter and our son and write some comments about them, and I have to admit I was totally oblivious of them.
G: You really do miss a lot. One of the things I loved in the book was the fact that the woman came over and cooked breakfast for you. That was the best. What did you have?
M: We had scrambled eggs and bacon. I still remember.
G: One of the best things my friend did was came and sat while we ate and didn’t say anything and did not eat with us.
M: Well, this person didn’t either and I have some other things that are really my favorite.
G: Great, we’ll talk about that when we come back from break. We were talking about the special things that people did. I was just saying how fabulous I thought it was the woman came in and cooked breakfast for you. I thought that was a really wonderful thing and you said you had a couple of more things you would like to talk about.
M: One of the more touching things, I think, that her family did, I just found out by accident, actually, was that her two daughters were classmates of Nathan’s. She told me later that the two girls decided if there could be a moratorium on TV when President Kennedy died, there should be one when a Nathan Heavilin died. So they shut the TV off for two weeks and did not turn it on in memory of Nathan. The neatest thing about that is that I found out about it because it would have meant a lot to them but it didn’t mean near as much to me until I heard what they had done and it told me that Nathan was very important to them. And another lady from the church that we were involved with at that time did not know me but she came to the door and she just said I’m here for whatever I can do. Well, what she did that morning for us was press Nathan’s clothes to get ready to take to the funeral home. I could not have done that and I still can see her standing there doing that and I think what a beautiful gift that she gave and it was a very simple thing. That’s what I try to get across to people. You don’t have to do anything fancy, but your presence there means so much. It says that Nathan matters and that we matter to them and I was just so grateful for the people that just arrived. I realized that we probably had a very unusual situation in the fact that we had been at one church for 15 years, had just moved to another church and they were both large congregations, and then my son Matthew and I both taught at the school where Nathan attended.
G: Which was hard as well as wonderful, wasn’t it?
M: It was hard, yes, but strong reminders all the time. But it gave us such a strong community to be involved with. I remember one of the girls who was in the accident. I stayed friends with the kids through all of this. One of the girls I saw at a grocery store and she said, “How are you doing?” and I said, “I just wish that somebody would just mess up his room the way it used to be.” And about an hour later, she came to the door and she just said, “I came to mess up a room.” And I thought what a sweet thing that she understood. How many people have 17-year-old boys that keep their room perfectly neat? Never happens.
G: Absolutely. That’s so sweet. I just want to say one of the very special things that people listening to the show might consider doing, is one of my sponsors is www.thelibraryoflife.org and it’s a wonderful website that you can put on. It’s on the internet forever. For $50, you can create a website. I created one for a friend of mine who died. I created it in literally 15 minutes and everyone was able to log on and we had 250 people who made comments on the website that later on went to the family. So it’s really a wonderful thing. It’s not only a sponsor for me for the show but it’s something I really truly believe is a wonderful contribution. If you would like to go on there and do a tribute website, and you can also do a celebration website, it’s www.thelibraryoflife.org. Well, Marilyn, I wanted to talk about your book, Roses in December. Was that your first?
M: It was my first and I never dreamed there would be a first, but my husband challenged me to write your own and so I did. Roses in December has now been in print 18 consecutive years and it has sold over 200,000. It has had three different publishers during that time. Some people may not realize that authors get sold from one publishing company to another, but Roses has continued through that time and now Harvest House, the latest publisher, has decided that they would like to reintroduce Roses in December. So in April of this year, a new cover will be on the book, and they haven’t really changed the book itself except to update it, make it a little more current, but they did ask me to write two chapters in the appendices, one on losing a loved one by suicide, and another losing a loved one by AIDS. I wrote both of those chapters and I know that there’s not much writing on that so I felt it was very important those two topics be covered and they will be in this new book.
G: That’s great. Let me say something about the book, Roses in December, the way Marilyn has organized it is very lovely. She has roses of preparation, sorrow, comfort, forgiveness, so all the different things, friendship, understanding, innocence, hope, tenderness, farewell, and roses of victory. So you can actually drop into the book and read a chapter. If you’re feeling like you need forgiveness today or are thinking about it, you can drop into that. If you want to think about friendship, whatever.
M: And I would encourage people to. Quite often they get that book quite early. It’s a very truthful book but also very emotional because I tell of the death of my three children so if reading that story is too difficult for you, skip about two or three chapters. And then I get very practical and I just share the things that have helped me. I’m not saying you won’t cry, but it will be different than the first three chapters. Go ahead and read them later.
G: If it’s the holiday around Christmas or something, you can go to page 57 and read about Christmas and the fact that Marilyn talks about that you may need to establish some new traditions, and four years after Nathan’s death, she did establish some new ones. But let me say one thing, Marilyn, and I think you’ll agree with this, we’re at different places in our life that first year for you folks that are out there. Marilyn and I know how hard it is.
M: It is very hard, and I think that’s why I tell people just give yourself time, and the first year there should be no expectations. The goal should be to live through it and after that then you can just do whatever you’re comfortable with. But when you were talking about tributes, one of the things I have learned to do is every year I keep track in the back of my prayer journal the people who have passed away, not just children but anyone who has died that year that was a friend, and then at the end of the year, I make a special ornament with that person’s picture in it and send it to the family. I always get thank you notes for those because it’s such a nice tribute. I received a thank you note just this week from someone who said Phil will always be with me on the tree even at Christmastime, and I thought that’s something that you can do and let them know how much you care.
G: That is a very sweet idea. Could you say a little about your faith and as the death of your children over the years, has your faith changed?
M: Well, I’m sure it has. I think I feel in many ways that I lost my innocence when my children died and unfortunately people who tend to be involved in Christianity or any other strong faith have the feeling that as long as I’m good at this, nothing bad will happen and I wanted to buy into that concept, too. I’ve never been able to find that verse in the bible, however. I keep hunting for it. I think it should be there and it just seems that there should be some kind of merit for living a good life, but unfortunately, we live in this world and so I realize not only could one child die but unfortunately, it could happen again and I never, ever imagined that would happen to me and so my faith perhaps is different. I see it that the blinders are off and I do not blame God for these things. He and I are on a good relationship and I intend it to stay that way, but there’s still times that I just say, what were you thinking? And I discovered that God doesn’t zap me. Now my Christian friends get nervous but he doesn’t. I think basically there is a little quote I have that I give in one of my seminars, basically the idea of whatever your faith is, hang on to it. Yell at it, holler at it, do whatever you need to, but hang on to it.
G: And you may have to go back to it, too. You may want to look at the faith of your childhood.
M: Yes, and some people do, and I’ve certainly had to reexamine my faith. What was it based on? One time when I was giving a seminar on my faith, a help or a hassle, I tell people that my faith was a help, my Christian friends were a hassle, and that is true but someone asked me the question that you asked: Is your faith the same as it was? And my son was standing in the back of the room and Matthew has done some seminars for Compassionate Friends as well, and I said, well, what do you think, Matt? And he said, “Oh, Mom, we pray for you every day.”
G: On that note, Marilyn, we need to take a break. When we come back from break, I’d like to know if you feel we’ve missed anything today.
M: I did want to make sure that we mention that I will be a speaker at The Compassionate Friends National Conference in Dearborn in July. I believe I will be speaking on the 18th for the last day.
G: I want to say that it’s a wonderful conference. The Compassionate Friends conferences have just become amazing conferences and there are just so many wonderful speakers and workshops and just a lot going on. It’s a wonderful place to bring your kids, your siblings, and there’s the museum there, the Ford Museum in Dearborn, and it’s just going to be a wonderful event and we’re doing a professional day on Thursday, and I’m in charge of that. I’ll be presenting there. But I’ll also be presenting at the conference so I’ll see you there, Marilyn.
M: Great. Well, I’m looking forward to meeting you and I’m looking forward to that conference. I guess they’re trying to get speakers who were originally from Michigan and I was born in Flint, Michigan. So Pat Loder knew that. The other thing I would like to say is I want to encourage people that while you’ll always miss your child, yet it does get different. I hate to use the word “easier.” But the grief is different and you learn to walk with it and a friend of mine said that grief is like having a pebble in your shoe that you can’t take out. You just work it around until you can walk with it in there.
G: Oh, that’s a nice way to put it. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist also said, David Daniels, who was on our show, also made the point that grief and life go together, they go hand in hand.
M: Yes, they do, and I do believe that we become different people but hopefully better people because of what we walk through and at least more compassionate and understanding to others, and I am very grateful to Compassionate Friends and how they have helped me through the years. I’ve been involved since 1984 and it was a lifesaver to me. It was so refreshing to know that other people had the same responses I get.
G: Absolutely, that you’re not crazy. You feel so crazy those – how many years would you say you felt crazy? I would think I felt crazy for three years.
M: Oh, at least. Three years is about the right time. But when I went to Compassionate Friends, I remembered just before that, I had had a situation where I was on the freeway and all of a sudden I realized I had no idea where I was going and my mind was just so confused. I thought I’m never going to be able to tell anybody this because they’ll know that I really am crazy. And then that following week I went to Compassionate Friends and I listened to other parents talk about getting in situations and not remembering how they got there and I thought, oh, good, if I’m going crazy, I’m not alone at least. I’ve got good company. I think that’s very important. And then I would like people to understand that while there are times certainly that I can enjoy life and I can laugh, yet I was sharing with you at the break of how yesterday my husband and I had the privilege of attending the movie, The End of the Spear which talks about the death of the five men who were killed by the Alta Indians and they were missionaries. That movie has meant so much to me because I knew the story of Nate Saint who was the pilot and that is who our son Nathan was named for. Even though I never had the privilege of knowing him personally, I became personal friends with his daughter and with his wife. Watching that movie where it ended up that these men were killed, I just sat there and sobbed. I just thought, hey, it’s okay, and my friend sat next to me and I said where’s the Kleenex? And she said, I’d share mine, but it’s a mess because we were both just sobbing through this, and you see I’m allowing myself to share that pain that I probably wouldn’t have given myself permission to do.
G: Well, you may not have felt it was safe but now you know what you can live through.
M: I know it’s perfectly okay and I’m not going to fall into a million pieces.
G: And you’ll be able to come back from it.
M: Right. And I just tell people when we cry what we have to do in an audience is just blow our noses together and go on.
G: And also early on you need to give yourself permission to get up and leave. You don’t have to stay any where.
M: Have you ever noticed it? I have a theory that at churches and in any public place that bereaved parents sit on the aisle and the reason we sit on the aisle is we never know when we’re going to have to run and so it’s safe. When I’ve been speaking across the country and they knew that there was a bereaved parent coming, I honestly just checked the aisles and pretty soon I can find her and she was always sitting on the aisle because she’d say, I didn’t know if I was going to cry when I heard you.
G: Absolutely, and you can even stand up in the back or whatever you have to do and I always say to people, “Please ask your children’s school teachers to give them permission to leave the class if they need to.”
M: Oh, absolutely. One of the things that I have found with my faith is quite often people think that if you’re a strong Christian, you shouldn’t show a lot of emotion, and my response to that is poppycock. That’s not true. But I found that the students at the school were not allowed to grieve and I was their counselor but I was so involved in my own situation, I was not helping them very much and it happens now that one of the girls that was a close friend to Nathan is now my daughter-in-law and a wonderful blessing, but she shared with me how people would reprove any of the girls if they started to cry. And I just felt so bad because it’s so important and it’s healthy to get that out and it’s perfectly okay. Just carry lots of Kleenex and I remember one time when I was speaking at Compassionate Friends National Conference, I asked if there were any questions and one mom stood up in front and said, “Do you know where I can find waterproof mascara?” And I thought, “Oh, that is a national question.” I said, “Well, what I did is I just didn’t wear makeup for about three years. I just gave up on it.”
G: That’s great, Marilyn. It’s time for us to close our show today. I want to thank you so much for being on. It’s just been so fabulous and I do want to have you on again sometime. And I’m going to look forward to meeting you at the National Conference in Dearborn in July.
M: Thank you, Gloria, and God bless you all.