A Bereaved Parent's Grief

Grief is different for everyone, that’s been well established. It’s also been well established that the loss of your child is its own unique monster; a clawing parasite of a beast that then lives with and feeds off of you for the rest of your life. What’s more is that it’s a taboo creature, not widely spoken of because a child’s death makes most uncomfortable. But that’s the new life of the parent or parents that get left behind; that daily pain and struggle to even just exist, that’s our new life. The only others to understand this are also living it on an intimate level, they’re the ones in the same ‘club’ as the rest of us; they too have suffered the pain of a child’s death.

And believe me, none of us ever wish to be a part of such an exclusive ‘club’. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish I could give back my membership, especially if it means I’d get to hold any of my precious babies. What I wouldn’t give to have watched my twins grow up or to see what their three younger siblings would grow to be. I’d give any and everything to not have to feel this unending grief.

It’s hard for some to understand how it feels to lose your child, especially to someone who may not have had to experience the same thing. But I’ll try to describe it to the best of my abilities so that you have some point of reference. Just know that even the words I choose can’t encompass the full scope of what it is we bereaved parents feel.

You ever have the feeling where, no matter how deep a breath you try and take, it doesn’t feel like it’s ever enough oxygen? Like you can feel your lungs expanding, but then they stop, they reach their capacity, and you still feel like you can’t breathe, like it’s not enough and you’re drowning in the lack of oxygen. It feels like there are iron bands around your lungs, constantly restricting how much air you can get. Take that feeling and add it to every single breath you take for the rest of your life.

Now take those very same iron bands that restrict your breathing and feel them wrap up and squeeze your heart. There’s this constant pain, sometimes an ache and sometimes sharp, in your chest where your heart struggles to continue beating. And it is a struggle. I can feel the way my heart sometimes stutters in my chest, like the beat of a drum falling out of sync with the rest of the band. It stutters so bad that sometimes I worry it’ll stop for good. Sometimes, when it’s a really bad day, I have a stray thought that, if it does stop, I’ll at least get to see them again. Hold them again. But it never truly stops.

Then there’s the exhaustion. The best way that it can be put into words is that it feels like there’s the constant feel of weight dragging your body down, as if someone or something has strapped hundreds of pounds onto all of your limbs, your chest and your back, and you have no way of removing them. They’re slowly crushing you. You drag so hard some days that you even trip over nothing; your own feet betray you. It feels as if you can do nothing but fall to your knees and sob, but you know that if you do you might never get up again. Even the simplest of tasks, like getting out of bed or putting away the dishes, feel as if they take everything you have to even just gather the willpower and energy to start them. And then when you do finally manage to start something, there’s no guarantee that you’ll follow through to the completion of that task; not because you don’t want to, but because you simply just can’t.

There’s also the distinct lack of appetite most days; food no longer holds the same appeal as it may have before everything happened. Flavors are muted, as if your tongue is coated in some kind of film and it doesn’t truly taste what food you try. Food is forgotten about until it’s brought to your attention that it’s already seven or eight o’clock in the evening and you should probably eat something before you go the full day without. Hunger isn’t registered the same way it used to be.

Then, if you’re the one that had to give birth, on top of all of that, your body is spending what little bit of energy you had left trying to heal and recover. You’re losing various amounts of blood for an undetermined amount of time, after already having lost blood while giving birth, and that in and of itself is exhausting. Then you’ll also have to deal with the ‘normal’ postpartum things. Your milk coming in, which is both physically painful and feels almost like a slap in the face because it is a stark reminder of what you’re missing; not that you weren’t acutely aware already. The rush and sudden withdrawal of hormones, which then leave you in a tailspin; the postpartum depression that’ll leave you numb, angry, sad and confused in the same moment. All of the ‘usual’ postpartum feelings but without the reward of being able to mother your child here and now.

And that’s just the physical side of things.

Mentally and emotionally, your whole world is like a minefield and you’re just wading through; trying to find the safe steps each day in hopes that you won’t suddenly break apart. And in the beginning, at least every other step sets off something. Every little thing holds the potential to cause untold amounts of pain. A family walking by with their child; a pregnant woman minding her business and waiting for the bus; a parent smiling at their child who did something endearing; all of it, every single bit of it causes your breath to catch, you mind to spin out and tears to well in your eyes.

Even worse than the triggers, however, is the soul wrenching guilt that eats away at you; especially if you were the one carrying that precious child. You start asking, even if just in your head, the unending ‘what if’ questions. Or, even worse, you start cataloging what it is you or your body failed at. The rub of it all is that you know on an intellectual level that you didn’t cause this; you didn’t actively try to end your child’s life. But even that knowing doesn’t stop the guilt that eats away at you. For me, I know I didn’t want things to end the way they did. We wanted our daughter more than we wanted air to breathe, we wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize that; and yet, my body failed. My body failed to do the one thing that it has been programmed to do. My cervix failed. Did I want this? No, no I didn’t. But it still happened; my body still failed and so, on some level, it’s my fault. And that guilt eats at me.

And, on top of the guilt, comes fear. Imagine suffering everything here and then still, somehow, having the courage to continue trying after it all. Your mind will be filled with what could happen, since you’ve already experienced it once. What should be the most joyous moments of your life turn into what feels like the first half of a horror movie; you’ll feel like you still can’t breathe and you’ll worry every second of every day that everything will take a turn for the worst. Even a small part of you might just expect it; because you’re trying to guard yourself from this pain all over again.

Eventually your coping mechanisms kick in; helping you get through the seconds, minutes, hours and then days. For some people, myself included, that coping mechanism is anger. It becomes your constant companion, that little voice in the back of your head egging you on and goading you to react one way or another. If anger becomes your mechanism of choice, you’re liable to lash out at any second, for any little reason, at any one. And that includes yourself. Internalizing becomes a thing, and not necessarily a good thing. And, of course, you’ll be the harshest person when it comes to berating yourself. As they say, we are our own worst critics.

Jealousy comes next. Jealousy that others can have so easily what it is you struggled and strived for only to have it ripped away from you. Joining the growing number of constant companions, the green eyed monster can be especially nasty. You’ll want to be happy for others; you’ll wish them all the happiness and health in the world while secretly thinking ‘why you and not me?’. Jealousy will add to the ever growing guilt that eats its way into your heart.

To make matters that much harder, the majority of bereaved parents also lose the ability to focus. Words rush away as if a flood has run itself through your mind and taken them in the flow; eventually they all start to trickle back, but it takes time and until then you’re left trying to express something that you don’t have the verbiage for. Work then becomes a monolith that you have to climb without gear; no purchase for your hands and feet, no lines to keep you safe. Thoughts and words slip through your fingers before you can even grasp them. You’re lucky if you can get through even the simplest of tasks without having to stop and collect yourself again. Cleaning becomes something that either becomes your escape or it falls by the wayside completely; if you’re like me you just simply don’t care whether the dog fur piles up in the corners or the dishes start to stack up like a game of Jenga on the counter. Because you can’t find the point to doing it over and over again, this same thing you did constantly before your world fell apart.

What’s more is you’ll constantly wonder how it is that no one else seems to feel that the world has stopped moving, stopped rotating on its axis; leaving you suspended in this perpetual whirlwind of grief while everyone else keeps going. For you, every day drags, seconds feel like minutes feel like hours feel like days as you try to muster your way through, somehow; you’ll wonder how is it that everyone else seems to keep going so easily.  You’ll wonder how everyone else can’t see how you’re being left behind, stuck in the quagmire of guilt, pain and just soul wrenching grief.

And then, unbelievably so, the same world that’s left you behind will start telling you to ‘let it go’ and to ‘move on’. They’ll say that it was ‘God’s will’ or ‘their time’, and what’s worse is that they’ll think they’re helping. This, this is something that you can’t just get over or let go; this is a part of your soul that’s missing and you feel it. Physically and emotionally you feel the sharp edges where that part of you has been shattered and ripped away; and you’ll feel it until you breathe your last breath.

The death of your child isn’t something that gets better with time; it never gets ‘better’. With time you can learn how to live with the pain that is your new constant but it doesn’t take it away, it doesn’t make that pain stop. Eventually you’ll be able to breathe through it, be able to get through a day where the pain doesn’t make you cry. And that first day you’ll feel guilt over it, tremendous guilt, because you’ll feel that you’re dishonoring your child and their short life, but then you’ll remember that it’s okay to not cry every day. Sure, there’ll be some days where you feel that crushing grief again, as if it’s that first day all over again, and the tears will come, but you’ll still remember that it’s okay.

Hardest of all, even after everything you’ve already gone through, is gathering the courage and the hope to keep going. For me, it means finding the courage to try again; it means figuring out how to rise up and hold tight to that hope once more. Because, when that positive pregnancy result happens again, the hardest part will be finding the joy and excitement for what that little life will be; instead of thinking about everything that could take that life from us again. Because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, the ones that were already taken from us would want us to find joy again, even alongside the pain.