Each year, CURE holds its annual Hope and Healing where families who have lost their child to cancer gather together to celebrate the lives of their children and attend workshops and presentations designed to assist them in their grief process. This year, Mark and Robin Myers, along with their daughter, Meredith, opened the weekend by sharing their story of loss and grief after losing Kylie. The session closed with Mark issuing special “licenses” to the 55 families in attendance.
Following rules has never been a big deal for me. I don’t gravitate toward the wrong side of the rules, I just tend to end up there somehow. This failing did not bode well for me in Mrs. Kleinstuber’s class. I remember her as a kind woman. But with her Germanic tendencies of order and structure, we butted heads at times.
Mrs. Kleinstuber didn’t give hall passes; she issued a license to visit the restroom. A big believer in semantics, she felt like a pass didn’t carry with it the weight of responsibility necessary for one to be trusted to go to the bathroom alone. But a license.
A license means you are granted permission by an authority to carry out a certain action or privilege.
We have to grant ourselves licenses at times and never as often as when we are grieving. The loss of a child is an abnormal occurrence in our western society, and grieving is made more difficult by the fact that most people will never understand that type of unnatural loss.
Winston Churchill said, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
There are all kinds of things I have to do to keep going in wake of Kylie’s loss. It has been almost five years now, and most of the time I feel like I’m able to keep going. But sometimes, I need a break. In those times, I have learned to grant myself many licenses. These licenses allow me to exist in a world that sometimes doesn’t understand who I am now or what I am going through.
Maybe you need one or two of them – maybe not. Some stand alone and some have a flipside that might be more relevant at times.
I’d like to issue these licenses to you – feel free to take any that will help you “keep going” in your grief.
License to abandon a grocery cart because your child’s favorite cereal is buy-one-get-one-free.
License to stay in your jammies.
Also, a license to congratulate yourself for getting dressed.
License to go to war against cancer.
Also, a license to sit it out without guilt.
Also, a license to reengage whenever you’re ready… or never.
License to close your mouth and smile when someone says something really stupid.
Also, a license to speak up when you need to (using discretion – which can be difficult.)
A license to look at someone like they have three heads if they use either the word tragic or devastating regarding a sporting event.
A license to look at someone like they have three heads if they compare your loss to the loss of their grandfather, great uncle, or dog.
License to respond to texts.
Also, a license to not answer a single text for any reason whatsoever with no explanation.
License to listen to all the songs that well-meaning people send you.
Also, a license to block the well-meaning person who keeps sending you songs.
License to cry.
Also, a license to not cry and not feel guilty (it will happen someday, and you might feel like you should have cried if you still cared about your child.)
Mark Myers is the Director of Communications for CURE Childhood Cancer. He lost his 12-year-old daughter, Kylie, to Ewing sarcoma on 2/13/15.
