All posts filed under: Bereavement

Grief, galvanized

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I have been on the road that no parent ever wants to walk for a year and two months now. In the car today, Alex made a random remark that got me thinking and now, writing. “You have come a long way“, he said, not meaning it as a hurtful remark but as encouragement and praise. Have I truly? I suppose it all depends on the way one looks at things that molds one’s perception. Yes, it does seem we have travelled a long way on the grief path. Our life, post Georgie, has taken turns I have never known to have existed, let alone desired or planned to take before I lost my boy. If I were to put it simplistically and squeeze it all in two sentences, I guess I would say that: 1. grief has completely and utterly transformed me on the inside. 2. grief has(paradoxically and illogically to the non-bereaved) liberated me to see the world in a way I wouldn’t have been able to, had I not lost my son and …

A bereaved parent’s perspective: one year on

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This summer it has become obvious to me that our lives have been altered beyond recognition by the loss of our son. Like with any trauma, the first few months after Georgie died were a living nightmare.We had no energy for anything, we argued a lot, we raged at the world and at God and clung desperately to the hope that one day the pain would not be suffocating and all encompassing, feeling terribly guilty at the same time for wanting to emerge from that cloud of memories, as that was the only place where our son was still “alive” to us. Our first Christmas without Georgie, the Christmas of 2014 and the one we should have celebrated as a complete and perfectly balanced family of 4, was for me the closest I had come in my entire life to mental collapse. I could not see the sense of any of it. Not the sense in Christmas, as what is Christmas if not the ultimate opportunity to celebrate life, joy and enjoy your offspring and …

On Love: A Letter to God

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I will always think of our relationship in terms of before and after. Not in the “Christian” way of before and after I received you as my Lord and Saviour. No, Siree! But in the way of before and after my son died. It is no surprise to you, this redefinition of relationship terms on my part. I have never doubted that You had known from the very start what You had put in my womb. You knew my baby was only being lent to me for a very short time. You also knew me, as you had created me and You knew where his death would lead me. You had made me  head strong. You had given me the gift of questioning the givens. And the gift of writing. And the one of being loud about my upsets. So You had known, from the word go, that I would not stand by and accept the pain of losing my son with “dignity.” You had known that his death would transform me. Profoundly and forever. …

Silence

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I sat there, in silence, remembering the silence we shared two summers ago. When you were only a grain, in my pregnant belly. I sat there, willing my memory To go back and find you there, A squirming little life, Full of promise and joy. I sat there, in silence and I remembered the times, we shared, just you and me. Those dark nights at home, when your little bones were sore. Those long days on the ICU ward, with only each other and the beeping machines pumping chemo into your tiny frame as company. I sat there, with my precious memories of you, sweet baby boy, feeling you close, so very close to my very bruised heart. I sat there, in silence, and for a split moment in time, our love managed to transcend death and space and time, and we were together, once again.

When grief falls like a hammer

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I have been doing well. As well as a bereaved mother can be doing, shortly after such an important milestone, as Georgie’s death first anniversary. But grief is a wheel which keeps turning and keeps mauling your soul, over and over and over again. I know that talking about Georgie’s life helps other parents, finding themselves in the same horrific situation we have, a year and 30 days ago. I have been receiving messages from people all over the world. And Georgie’s story has been recently published by a women’s magazine in Romania, and I had the absolute honour to introduce my baby boy to a Romanian audience of caring new mothers. But the crust has been ripped off the wounds, once again. I have been waking up frequently during the night, tormented by the same questions. Why my boy? Why like this? Why was he allowed to cross the threshold of existence only to know excruciating pain? Why, Lord, oh, why? I have learned to live with the pain. I have learned to cope …