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And then their world was shattered.
Their 23-year-old son, Matt, was killed in a car crash on Good Friday.
What they learned about grieving was there is no “normal” way to grieve. Jane threw all the food — the ham, the cream cheese cake, everything — into the garbage. That’s how she dealt with the shock at the time.
“I never went through all those grieving stages, anger, grief, denial,” Clough said. “I just compare grief to a blackout. One moment the sun is shining brightly, and the next moment you are plunged into total darkness. And there’s nothing you can do except to keep moving until you get out of the dark hole.”
But there are reminders every day. John and Jane run an electrical contracting business, and Matt was helping them almost seven days a week. Clough meets people, at meetings and elsewhere, who tell her they remember her son because he wired their house, or some similar story that brings Matt to mind.
Now she helps others through their grief by sharing her story and her feelings and providing the space for others to share. A month after Matt was killed, she received a letter from the local chapter of The Compassionate Friends group.
The national organization of The Compassionate Friends is a 40-year-old support organization with 627 local chapters for families that have experienced the death of a child. The local group meets once a month at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in La Crosse.
Twenty-nine years ago, Judie and Mark Doolittle of La Crosse lost their son Tod when he was struck by a car at age 11. They were living in Onalaska along Highway OT.
There was no support group at the time. Judie started the local chapter and was head of it for 20 years.
“It took over my life,” Doolittle said. “And in the process of doing it, God blessed me with meeting so many people and
knowing it helped many people.
“My faith sustained me throughout the whole process,” Doolittle continued. “And it is a process. You go through it. You don’t get over it. It’s always there. My son’s birthday is tomorrow.”
The good news is the local group is growing in size. The bad news is the group is growing in size. The area has been hit recently with deaths, especially untimely deaths of babies and children.
The meetings offer friendship, understanding and hope to families grieving the death a child of any age, by any cause. There are no membership dues.
Bereaved families that attend are made up of not only parents, but siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The local chapter has a mailing list of about 160 to which they send a monthly newsletter. Sometimes there are six people at the meeting, and other times there are 30. Members live as far away as Eau Claire, Rochester and Viroqua.
Clough writes a letter in the monthly communication.
“I was never a writer,” she said. “Somehow I just started writing on random topics. And people tell me they love it. That’s because it’s so personal.”
“It’s a great organization, Clough continued. “It’s made up of people who have been there. We can help others because we’ve been there. We’re not counselors or psychotherapists. We’re just ordinary folks.”
When Jane attended her first Compassionate Friends meeting, she was amazed at how many people in the group shared her feelings. “I sat and listened and watched, and I realized all their feelings were just like mine,” Clough said. “I’m not alone. I’m not weird. I felt really connected.”
The heart of the group is sharing of experiences. While there are topics chosen for each meeting, what’s really important is the sharing.
“Sharing is healing,” Clough said. “The death of a child changes your life forever.”
Grieving is a deeply personal experience, Clough said. “Some people are afraid they’ll forget what their loved one looked like or sounded like,” she said. “But you can never forget. It’s embedded in your heart. There is no normal way of grieving. Everyone grieves differently and we have to accept that.”
The key to moving past her grief, Clough said, was acceptance. “I just had to learn to accept this,” she said. “I could choose to stay in that dark hole. But I chose to get out of it and live the best life I could. My heart breaks every single day. But you learn to live a new normal.”
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