Parents Left Behind

Cameron was blonde. She was extremely smart, had a good memory and loved books -- her favorites were about the adventure of the pig Olivia.

She participated in gymnastics, dancing, basketball and T-ball -- and learned them all easily.

She memorized the Lord's Prayer before she was 4 and said it aloud before her church congregation.

She was extremely compassionate and sweet, showing a maturity beyond her years.

Cameron Averitt Bobbitt, age 5, was killed Jan. 19, 2006, in a school crosswalk in a small Oklahoma town.

Her mother, Susan Averitt, and grandmother, Ann Averitt, shared memories of their child Wednesday evening in the front yard of the home Susan shares with her husband, Derrick Bobbitt, and three other daughters. The memories brought tears to the eyes of both women.

Eleven years after that fateful day, Susan Averitt, a pediatrician at Northwest Medical Center's Willow Creek location, has come to a place in her grief journey where she wants to help others. She has organized the third annual Parents Left Behind grief seminar April 8at Central United Methodist Church in Rogers.

"I want to support parents in the lifelong journey of grief," she said. "They're not going to get through it to the other side."

SUPPORT GROUP

Averitt and her parents also participate in the grieving parents support group at Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville. The group is for parents who have lost children at any age, by any means.

"I love this group," said Samantha, who chose not to share her last name. Her teenage daughter, Daisy, shot herself Sept. 18, 2014. "Her room has an echo in it that's pretty terrible," Samantha said. "We took the carpet out of her room last week."

Samantha also shared an update on her 13-year-old daughter who had been cutting herself to deal with the pain of her older sister's death. "She's been in a therapeutic day care," Samantha said. "We've gotten her to come talk to me instead of cutting herself. I no longer walk in her room and worry that she's not going to be alive. Her scars are now pink instead of red."

Susan Averitt said she understands that fear. She still closely watches her daughters in parking lots, and trick-or-treating and crossing the street on Halloween night spur a different kind of haunting. She also recommended Samantha attend a session on parenting grieving children in the upcoming seminar.

Sitting next to Samantha, Carolyn Robinson reached to move a box of Kleenex closer to the young mother, then grabbed her hand and held on tightly.

Robinson mourns her grandson, who battled leukemia and died at age 2. "He went in because he was having trouble breathing," she said. "Twenty-four hours later, he was gone.

"I came to the [support group] because I was not delighted with the situation," she said. "At the beginning, I did not know there would be other good things to come along."

Robinson said she now attends the group mostly to help others. "Any way I can help will take a load off my heart," she said. "I'm not specific. I will do whatever I can do."

"I love this group. I don't have to worry about holding back tears," Samantha said as she wiped her eyes.

"I doesn't matter how you lost your child," said Becky Ivey. Her son, Alex, was 24 when depression led him to take his own life 20 months ago. "There are people in the room who understand, who know."

"You're in a room full of people you don't know, but it's a room full of people who understand," Susan Averitt said. "Some counselors and pastors aren't good at bereavement. It's hard to get help for bereavement. You don't want to pour your heart out to someone who doesn't understand."

Robinson said she was directing traffic for a past Parents Left Behind seminar because another event was being held at the church at the same time.

"But I would see the look on their faces, and I knew they were coming to our group," she said. "They all had that same look. They came from all over, very much needing anything to help them get over their loss."

Susan Averitt and other grieving parents spoke of the overwhelming feeling of being alone after their children died.

"Sometimes when I sit in a big group of people -- like in a church -- I feel so alone," she wrote in an article in the March issue of the local Peekaboo magazine. "Despite the crowd of familiar and unfamiliar faces all around, I feel like I don't belong. I felt this way all the time after I lost Cameron 11 years ago. I couldn't relate to normal people anymore. My loss was too big, and my heart was too broken to connect with the greater community around me."

To compound the situation, other people will avoid grieving parents because they don't know what to say, because they fear saying the wrong thing and opening a wound, Averitt said.

"Like you don't think about it 24 hours a day anyway," she said. "My prayer is that I don't make other people uncomfortable. I try to give them grace [if they say the wrong thing]."

NAN Religion on 04/01/2017