All posts filed under: Letters to Georgie

#LiveItForGeorgie

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Many of my friends have asked recently about our plans for the 5th of July. On the day, we will mourn the loss of our baby boy afresh as the time will mark, cruelly, a year since Georgie left us. I know that this boy is loved by many more people than we will ever know and I decided to include you all in the marking of what has been the most difficult year of our lives. On the day, we will be on our own. We will spend the day remembering a sweet boy’s face, personality and character and will do things to honour his short life. This is where I want to invite you to take part. I want to launch a campaign called #LiveItForGeorgie. I want to invite you all, alongside family members and friends, to create a bank of memories in the memory of my boy. You see, Georgie never got to do many things on this earth. The simplest things, that we all take for granted. Like ….eating an ice …

This time last year…

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This is what I used to wake up to this time last year. And although the going was horribly hard and we were stuck in a hospital room and NEVER allowed out, for fear of infections, this little sweet face brightened my day. Every day. I have realised that most of you didn’t know us back then so this was meant to be an insightful blog post into what the cancer ward really is for a family. I wanted to tell you how exceptionally draining it was on our marriage, on our bodies, on our emotions to live apart. To not be together as a family for over two months. To live out of suitcases and plastic bags. To live off food that people kindly cooked for us all those weeks. To wish your daughter good night over the phone, with her crying and asking you to come home. To see your own mother crumble every time you walked in through that door, bone-weary and burdened to the ground with the load of your baby’s …

Grief is…

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…a whirlpool, we were told in counselling last week. It sucks you in, when you least expect it and it spits you out, exhausted and drained. …a maze, out of which you never quite manage to emerge, I read. You pass from one chamber to another, sometimes chased, just like in the Maze Runner, not by a griever but by Grief. Sometimes you crawl through it, from one chamber to another and back again where you started: shock, anger, acceptance, pain, shock, anger… …anger plus despair plus pain plus loneliness. All at once, on any given day. …a loud banging-like noise in your head that deafens you to any other noises of this world. All you feel like doing is shout back. But at whom? And to what effect? …never knowing how to play your emotions. Play them down and they come flooding over, like a tsunami, when you least expect it. Play them up and people drain away from you, like water off the surface of dry, parched up land. Grieving emotions are inconvenient …

Advice for when you have a bereaved friend

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Georgie has been gone for 11 weeks now and of course we have encountered a large array of reactions to the fact that we are now bereaved parents. 5 things and approaches I have been finding helpful: 1. Let me take the lead I have found very liberating the fact that many friends and acquaintances have allowed me to take the lead in this. A simple “sorry for your loss” usually has sufficed but for me the most precious reaction has been the utterance, either verbal or non-verbal “it is ok to feel whatever you need to feel when I am around.” I have been very honest with my emotions. In my own terms. in my personal space, which is either my home or my blog. The chances are slim that I will burst into tears on the street or in a random conversation. But if I lead the conversation towards Georgie and either rant about a baby blankie, shed a tear or tell you about one of our horrific hospital experiences, the most you …

I am it all…

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For those who know me in person, I know that you find it strange. I am sure you asked yourself how come my posts and pictures are so emotionally heavy yet my day-to-day countenance so “normal.” How come I can joke and be silly and give off about the most banal of things while in the same time I mourn the loss of my precious son. I do because I am it all: 1. I am the grieving mother who cracks up every single day in the safety of her home and the sacredness of her kitchen and cries until the knot of pain unties, just for that day, just to be able to breathe. 2. I am the angry mother who beeps her horn( I did it on Monday, in my weak defense) and calls you “lazy bum” if you park in the middle of the road at school run times. Because I have no tolerance not patience, nor do I understand why apparently healthy individuals choose to not walk an extra fifty steps. …