I took several months off work after we lost our son Cooper to suicide. I found in myself that I needed slow reflective time to process on a very deep level. I walked, I prayed, I cried, and I listened to music on my trail of tears (a local walking path I renamed). I don’t even think at a year I was thinking well. In the support groups I visit, new parents will often show up several weeks after losing their child. I recall my place at those early weeks and I know I was simply running on brain patterns and hardwiring. Not completely oblivious, but also not all there.

Then, after about six months off work leaning into this painfully deep work, I went back to work specifically part-time. I wanted to ease back into work. The truth is, I probably went back to work too early. But, given the visscitudes of life, it was time to go back to work.

I ended up working for an amazing fire department in the Kansas City metro area. I worked part-time in community risk reduction, to include teaching fire and life safety to all ages in the community. It was brilliant, right up my alley. What made the time particularly enjoyable was the great group of teammates I was working with. Honestly, one of the best teams I have worked with in my entire career.

One day, I had the opportunity to visit and teach CPR at the Kansas School for the Deaf. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. The environment spoke to me. It was a bit uncanny during my teaching during this time in public education. For whatever the reason, I taught a lot or came across several audiences who had certain physical or intellectual disabilities. Like a lot. It always felt spiritual to me, like perhaps God was saying, “Kelly, this is your audience, don’t miss this.”

Have you ever had a thing you wanted to do and you don’t really know why but it’s an interest you can’t shake? There are things I am interested in life and I don’t really know why. They just bubble up from the deep well within me and there they are. Most of theses bubbles I pursue, and some I don’t have the capacity for.

I have always had a desire to learn sign language, it’s just there, an interest, and I don’t know where it came from. I know, I hear you. Go learn it you say. I have over the years tried, very unsuccessfully, to enroll in a sign language class at the local college and the classes fill up a nano second after semester registration opens. I am not the only one with the bubbles. Sign language is an idea that trickles around my brain. Same for ceramics.

There I was, at the school for deaf and hard of hearing. At one point, I am alone and standing there and I am observing a small group of students. They are smiling and signing and having what appears to be a great conversation. No sound. I see art and skill and personality, hands and arms and facial expressions flinging here and there and everywhere. I am thinking of my pigeons I had when I was a kid, when I let them out of the cage and they scattered with abandon. There they are, birds on arms, flying, scattering. These students, flinging pigeons out of their hands, everyone smiling.

I also knew as I was standing there watching in fascination, that even if I ever learned to signed, I would never really be a part of this silent pigeon flinging club. How could I be? I hear. You understand? I speak with a voice. I could go over to this group and they would speak with me, signing, and I did. They were kind to me, I had fun. But I knew. I knew this was a unique culture that could not be my own.

I view being a bereaved parent like this. If you are a parent and you have not lost a child, and you see a group or bereaved parents vociferously flinging pigeons- talking their smack- you can and should come over and talk, and you will be invited and welcomed. But you will never be a part of the club. Not because the bereaved parents are mean, it’s because they know something only another bereaved parent knows. And the truth is, there is no bereaved parent I know of that wants you in our club. We don’t, because then you will know. And trust me, you don’t want to know.

So the paradox is this: you will never know, and, I don’t want you to ever know. Hence, I fling pigeons with my crew and you don’t get to be a part of the inner sanctum of the secret sign language club, and this is a special grace for you. Count your blessings, and I mean this sincerely.

While I speak of being a bereaved parent, I know this analogy applies to siblings, and to my special friends who have lost father’s to suicide. They are on my mind as I write this. But ya’ll got your own club, mine is the bereaved parent vociferous pigeon flinging club. More blabbering, than hands flinging..