My grief is heavy today. There is no one to tell. No one to turn to. I must be resilient and self-reliant. The clock stopped long ago on my grief. No one wants to hear it. It’s old news. Everyone else has moved on.
Days like to today mean I suffer alone, holding myself together, pasting a smile upon my face, and hoping tomorrow will be better. Days like today could be borne so much better if there was someone I could talk to. To know there was someone still thinking of me and my grief all these years later.
Grief is different for everyone.
When an older person dies, that grief looks different from the loss of a child, infant, or baby. When a baby dies, you are left to grieve a future that will never be. When an older person dies you have a lifetime to look back on, of memories shared, of artifacts you collected. When your baby dies, you have nothing, except an empty future.
As the years go by that emptiness gets heavier and heavier. The milestones that will never be build up. Learning to walk, learning to talk, 1st birthday, beginning preschool, 5th birthday, starting school, 10th birthday, and soon the 21st birthday rolls around and you have missed a lifetime. No one realizes these milestones cut at your heart. That sometimes your grief is as raw as the day you heard your child had died. That sometimes your grief can bring you to your knees without warning.
People forget that because you carry your grief well and cover your grief with a smile, that your grief still sits just below the surface. That sometimes you need someone to check-in, to acknowledge your grief is still there.
A member of my support group once said, ‘how are you’ needs to be spilt into sections. ‘How are you’ in general and ‘how is your grief.’ I think this sums up the grief journey succinctly. Loss parents will understand that you can be ok and having a good day, even as your grief can be overwhelming. By separating the questions, it gives loss parents a chance to be honest about how their grief is affecting them while going about their day. Loss parents can find it so hard to be honest about their grief because they feel others won’t understand or will give a cliched response. Non-loss parents will struggle to understand how joy and sadness can be held together in the same moment — that it is possible to do your job with happiness and feel like you’re drowning in sorrow at the same time.
Understanding requires effort on both sides. It requires non-loss parents being open-minded enough to think about the long-term effects of baby loss, and loss parents being honest enough to share their true thoughts and feelings. I think both sides have a tendency to blame the other but we actually need to work together to make the topic less taboo for everyone.
That is what I hope for future generations. That loss and non-loss parents are able to be open with each other and the feelings of parenthood. We are all in this together. Our paths just look different.
I am nearly three years on from the loss of my first son. I will always miss him and his siblings. I will always feel like a piece of me is missing. I will always see them grow in my mind and count the years I live without them. Nothing will ever replace them and the life I have lost. Not pet. Not more children. Nothing. I may look ok on the outside but inside I will always be broken and hurting.
You may not be able to see, acknowledge or recognize my children anymore. But I do. I am still a mother. I am still parenting my children. You just don’t take the time to see how I do it. I hope that one day you will. This journey is hard enough without feeling more alone and isolated than I already do.
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Steph is a mother to 7 angels; all died before the end of the first trimester with no reasons known. Steph writes to share her journey with others and to make sense of her feelings and identity in a world that celebrates family.
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