Shauna Matheson - Reflections on an anniversary

Shauna Mary Catherine Matheson

Feb. 13, 1983 – June 7, 1997 

Each year on this date, we publish an in memoriam for our daughter Shauna. Today is the 23rd time we have done this, as it was 23 years ago today that, at the age of 14, coming home from a movie with friends, she was hit by a car and died. This is part of our effort to keep her memory alive. 

As I look over the files from earlier in memoriams, an annual review that never fails to make my eyes water, I can see the transition. Those early essays were so raw and painful focusing on our grief. Later ones were more reflective, focusing not on the hurt but on our wonderful memories. Still later we tried to make then less about us, and more on perhaps providing a message that could help others who are struggling with losing a loved one. 

So today, I want to paraphrase comments on grief I came across by someone identified only as an old guy. His words are wise and comforting. I changed them a bit, but not much. Here’s what he wrote: 

“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, there’s wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some peace of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while all you can do is float. Stay alive.”

“In the beginning the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall but they come further apart. When they come they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a location, a smell. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.”

“Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, birthday, Christmas, the lilacs in the yard bursting into bloom. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging onto some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.” 

“Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them.” 

From our experience, we can tell you that old guy speaks from a voice of wisdom. 

Our Shauna would have been 37 now, no longer a teenager finding her way, but an adult making her mark. The grief of her death long ago stopped being all-consuming for us, of course, but we still can’t help but dwell sometimes, on just what kind of mark Shauna would be making in the world.  Based on the impression she left during her short 14 years, we like to think it would have been a great one. 

Sadly missed, forever loved, and never to be forgotten. How could she be? She’s embedded in our hearts,

Mom and Dad, Quentin, Richard, Alex and Coleen.

Thanks for reading.