EDITOR’S NOTE: Vicki Lea Parnell wrote this piece in memory of her sons, Jessi and Cody Parnell, who died on this day in 2010 in a vehicle wreck on Old Manning Road.
What is normal after your child dies?
Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family’s life.
Normal is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, July 4th and Passover.
Normal is feeling like you can’t sit another minute without getting up and screaming, because you just don’t like to sit through anything anymore.
Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what-ifs and why-didn’t-Is go through your head constantly.
Normal is reliving the accident continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away.
Normal is having the TV on the minute you walk into the house to have noise, because the silence is deafening.
Normal is staring at every boy who looks like he is Cody Parnell or Jessi James Parnell’s ages. And then thinking of the age they would be now. Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never happen.
Normal is every happy event in your life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole in your heart.
Normal is telling the story of your children’s deaths as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone’s eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of your “normal.”
Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your children’s memories and their birthdays and survive these days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fit’s the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really.
Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special Cody Parnell and Jessi James Parnell loved. Thinking how they would love it, but how they are not here to enjoy it.
Normal is having some people afraid to mention my sons, Cody Parnell and Jessi James Parnell.
Normal is making sure that others remember them.
Normal is after the funeral is over, everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever.
Normal is weeks, months and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse, not better.
Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss, unless they too have lost a child or children. Nothing compares.
Nothing.
Even if your child is in the remotest part of the earth away from you, it doesn’t compare.
Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unnatural.
Normal is trying not to cry all day, because you know your mental health depends on it.
Normal is realizing you do cry everyday.
Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone but someone stricken with grief over the loss of their child.
Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child.
Normal is not listening to people make excuses for God.
“God may have done this because … ”
I know Cody Parnell and Jessi James Parnell are in “heaven,” but hearing people trying to think up excuses as to why two fantastic young men were taken from this earth is not appreciated and makes absolutely no sense to this grieving mother.
Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house, did the laundry or if there is any food.
Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have two children or one child, because you will never see this person again and it is not worth explaining that Cody Parnell and Jessi James Parnell are dead.
And yet when you say you have one child to avoid that problem, you feel horrible as if you have betrayed the dead children.
Normal is asking God why he took your childrens lives instead of yours and asking if there even is a God.
Normal is knowing you will never get over this loss, not in a day nor a million years.
Normal is having therapists agree with you that you will never “really” get over the pain and that there is nothing they can do to help you because they know only bringing back your children back from the dead could possibly make it “better.”
Normal is learning to lie to everyone you meet and telling them you are fine. You lie because it makes others uncomfortable if you cry. You’ve learned it’s easier to lie to them then to tell them the truth that you still feel empty and it’s probably never going to get any better — ever.
And last of all …
Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are “normal.”
