Introduction
The trouble
with losing a child is that it simply isn't in the natural order of things. In
fact, it is so far removed from the natural order of things that everything
else in one's life suddenly goes through a seismic shift as well. All the
patterns and conventions of everyday life become meaningless and irrelevant as
grief picks you up and shakes you by the neck as efficiently as any earthquake.
However the death occurs, whether suddenly or at the end of a long illness,
that first shock ripples through your being and rattles all the nerve endings.
Then, just as you think the dust is settling, just a little bit, the
aftershocks begin. And they do even more damage, shattering your defences and
your confidence and eating away at your ability to see beyond anything but the
fact that the bedroom is empty, the possessions undisturbed - and the silence
is permanent.
For a mother,
the mental anguish of losing her baby (at whatever age) is exacerbated both by
the physical pain of his absence and by the guilt of not being able to prevent
it. To an onlooker, this sense of guilt is often totally inexplicable, and many
friends will try to ease a mother's burden by pointing out the fact that
everything she could have done, was done. But that is to negate the very basis
of human life: that a mother's job is to nurture her child as he grows and
protect him from all misadventure. Any woman losing a child is going to feel
some sense of failure at the most basic of levels and to try to dismiss that to
fail to acknowledge a very real distress.
I know. For my
child is dead. As I write this, Michael has been apart from me for 26 days. He
died, aged 14 years, 9 1/2 months, of a brain tumour, which he had been
fighting for nearly a year, always aware that it was a battle which he was
unlikely to win. His family and friends have watched with pride, admiration
and, in the end, deep distress as he moved through the year, adjusting to his
changing circumstances but never once retreating from anything he wanted to do.
Over the last weeks of his life, and since his death, I have been trying to
make some sense of it all. I don't suppose I ever will, in truth, but I know
that in order to try, I need to tell Michael's story. Over the last year of his
life, we maintained a website so that his friends, and THEIR friends, could see
how he was coping and understand what he was having to experience in dealing
with cancer. Michael kept his own diary for part of that time, and I, too, kept
some private notes and a scrapbook in the hope that it would help me if I ever
had to face losing him.
Now I am
facing that loss. Just as Michael's father is, and just as his 11 year old
brother is, too. We all have to come to terms with it in the best way that we
can. For me, that way is to write this book. Although the experiences I am
writing about are essentially family experiences, I am writing from my own
point of view, as Michael's mother. In a way, this is the last thing I can ever
do for him and I owe it to him to tell him how I have felt it; after all, his
story is in so many ways my story too. Although he and I were so often at odds
over the years (which mother and elder child are not?!) the one great blessing
which has come out of his last illness is the fact that he and I were able to
spend so much time together. During that time we became very close, very
forgiving each of the other and very prepared to be honest and open in a way
which few parents of adolescent children are lucky enough to experience. If I
have one abiding personal memory of the end of Michael's life, it will be of
the night, 36 hours before he died, when I had half-helped, half-carried him
back from the bathroom and propped him beside his bed in the hospital while I
tried to explain to him how to sit down on it. As I steadied myself against the
bed so that I could try to lower him gently down, knowing that Michael was
blind, unable to stand unaided, as far as I knew no longer able to know who I
was or to talk, suddenly a pair of arms shot round my neck and hugged me for
all I was worth. There were no words, nor were they necessary. I hugged him
back and for those 20 or 30 seconds, he and I were at total peace.
Michael, this
book is for you. I hope you feel that I have done you justice.
With love.
No comments:
Post a Comment