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Written by Corinne O'Flynn
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Page 1 of 2  Trying to remain objective in the face of emotion
I asked my husband the other day if he thought about our deceased
daughter daily. His response was that he did not. I respect the fact
that he answered the question honestly, considering he must have known
it might upset me. He had an apologetic tone as he did so because I am
sure he knew it was not what I was hoping to hear. I suppressed the
knee-jerk flare up of righteous-indignant defense of our daughter's
memory, and tried instead to make sense of why this is the case. But
since then I had been troubled by the knowledge that she doesn't occupy
his mind in the same way that she does mine.
Many of the things my husband and I have gone through after losing Rowan have not been unique to us. In fact, much our grief experience as a couple has been rather typical - if it is even possible to truly compare anyone's grief experiences to another. I have to wonder where this disparity fits into that, and I now feel curious to know if there are other husbands out there who are equally unoccupied by these thoughts that never leave my own mind.
Losing a spouse or a parent is different than losing a child in just about every way, but since I think about my mother every day as well my daughter, I was curious to test my initial theory that perhaps it was a male experience: Not being consumed by thoughts of deceased loved ones.
My mother died the year before we lost Rowan, and so I called my father to ask him if he thought about my mother every day. He responded quickly that "I do, absolutely." Then he asked me why I wanted to know. When I explained about my dilemma, it caused my father to expand upon his answer. "Things come up that remind me of her", he said. "Situations come up when I wonder what she would do or say." He added. "It is not like I sit and contemplate her on a daily basis, I think it is because we were together so long that a lot of things that happen in a day remind me of things we did together."
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Upon reflection, I see that my experience as it relates to my mother is the same as my father's. My daily thoughts of my mother are like little vignettes from the past, reliving shared experiences or poignant moments that are cemented in my mind. I frequently wonder how she would have felt about or reacted to one thing or another.
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