All posts filed under: Bereavement

Inside Out- A Bereaved Mother’s Review

Yesterday, we had one of those Sundays when we were too tired to get into the car and drive somewhere so we decided to go and watch the Inside Out movie instead. I had heard loads about it and read various reviews, especially by bereaved mothers who had found it brilliant and I was curious to watch it and form an opinion myself. The plot is deceptively simple: a little girl, a life changing move to the big city, the emotional turmoil that follows, all seen from inside out, through the prism of her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger. But the movie is far from being simplistic in the message it tries to convey: emotions make us who we are and that by trying to repress one or another, we end up ruining our whole system of reference and risk to become emotionally dead, like the little girl does, for a short while. As bereaved parents, we watched the movie through the lens of our loss, of course. We heard things that made …

A Season For Change

I need to make some changes in my life and I need time to understand what they need to be. I have been waking up again at night, for the past week. Every SINGLE night! It is the sort of full wakefulness that gets me up at 3 a.m. and keeps my head busy for hours. It got me so desperate for head peace that I had to ask work for a redistribution of my working hours, so that I can have two days a week to rest and think and decide what the next stage of my life is supposed to be. Decision is pending and my sanity does seem to be pending on the decision, to a degree. It does feel like my grief has reached a new stage. Our wonderful social workers, from the Royal and the Hospice, both had warned me that grief changes and stages like this are completely natural. Ha, the natural of the completely unnatural process of grieving for your lost child… Shortly after I lost Georgie, I …

September was…Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

But I could not bring myself to write Georgie’s story down until tonight. I got pregnant with Georgie in late spring 2013. I had been longing for another child, to complete our family unit, for years but hadn’t had the courage until then as I had been plagued with severe antenatal and postnatal depression with my first pregnancy with Emma. From the very beginning, my body knew something was amiss with the pregnancy. I had very strong pains in my belly, ended up in the A&E but was dismissed home with pain killers and the advice to return if the pain didn’t subside. It did. I also started waking up at night, shortly after that. If only I had known that this was my “borrowed time”, I would have used it to pour all my love and affection on my unborn baby, much more than I did… There were also other signs no-one could interpret then but in my heart, I know that they were all related to my baby being sick, even from the …

14 months and 20 days later

It has been 14 months and 20 days since my son died but it is only recently that I have realised that grief is going to be part of my life, of me, of who I am until I die. Yes, I did read the books, listened to the stories, talked to other bereaved parents but it has only recently become obvious to me that grief is never going to leave my life and that it is here to stay. For good. That I will have good days always followed, as a rule, by bad, really bad days. That I will get ill much more often than I even did before. That my mind will never be the same; that I have become a head sieve. I forget often and I need constant reminders of appointments and meetings. Loads and loads of patience and understanding too. That I will be sad. Often and deeply and sometimes furiously. That anger will be my closest companion. An existential anger that cannot be directed at any-one, as the …

Dear Sweet Boy…

Dear sweet boy who broke our hearts, with your tiny lifeless frame resting on the sand. I am so very sorry. I am so very sorry you had to die in order for the world to fully understand the cruelty of this war you were trying to escape with your mummy and daddy and big brother. I have been thinking of you all day today. I have been thinking at how meaningless this world and all its cruelties must have seemed to you. I have been thinking at how you should have been playing on a warm beach right now, chasing the waves and splashing in delight. You have made a big difference into this world, you know? Your tragic, oh so tragic death, has shown us that there is no limit to evil and that even the most beautiful little boys can die in the most senseless and cruel of ways. Your tragic death has shown us that, in the 11th hour, and after having had watched so many other mummies and daddies and …