24 Mar The unbearable weight of emptiness!

March 2023

“Grief is love’s shadow. 
The presence of absence. 
An unbearable weight of emptiness” 
- John Mark Green

If you have recently lost your darling child – I’m so so sorry.

Right now you can probably hardly breathe; you’re numb yet everything hurts; you’ve probably cried more tears than you ever thought possible (or maybe you’re so completely numb the tears are trapped inside – afraid that if they start they’ll never stop) and your soul is physically mentally and emotionally exhausted. It’s like you’ve been washed up on a beach – alive, but only just.

You can’t imagine how you’re going to get through another day – let alone a week, month, year, the rest of your life, without your child. Every atom in your body screams for them and you think you could be going crazy. You’re agitated, in denial and angry at the unfairness of it all. You wonder how any parent can possibly survive such pain.

This year (October 2023) we will have survived five years without Ben (the youngest of our four children). Grief is very personal – we’re doing it our way, at our pace and will keep doing it for as long as we need. There are no rules and what works for us, might not work for you.

Losing a child is agonising, brutal, annihilating and survival isn’t easy. Words can’t adequately describe the devastation that literally turns your world upside down and inside out! It hurts deep down in the very core of your soul and leaves an empty space that nothing and no one can fill.

An empty space that will stay forever!

Ben was 25 when he suddenly died. He wasn’t ill, had no health conditions and was very fit. One day, without any warning his heart just stopped (SADS). We never even got the chance to say goodbye.

In those hazy early days all we could feel was the most excruciating debilitating pain. I couldn’t sit still, sleep at the right time or hold down a conversation. I walked round in a daze – like a zombie. I remember looking around and wondering how everyone could act so normally when something so cataclysmic had happened. How could they not notice – our world had abruptly dropped into a chasm. I expected a kind of reverent hush but unbelievably life carried on.

When your child dies the fragility of life is like a lightening bolt of reality that rips through your world – the safely net (that you thought was there) is torn away – nothing will ever feel safe again. Once broken – it can never go back to how it was. Every single morning I wake up to a reality I don’t want to be real. I’m sort of getting used to it and sort of not!!

“The only thing I knew to do was lean into everything, to not close my heart and to unconditionally feel whatever I felt, including the pain. 
Especially the pain.”
- Benjamin Allen 

But the effort of trying to hold it together when inside you’re falling apart is exhausting. Sometimes we manage…sometimes we don’t.

I’ve picked out a few extracts that I wrote during our first year without Ben; I wanted to compare the then to the now…

1 month after:

I feel numb… can’t answer questions or make decisions. I’m so distracted I can’t focus on normal everyday things. I’m unable to cook, shop or think clearly. There is no respite in sleep. I relive the shock and horror every time I wake up and realise it isn’t just a terrible nightmare. My mind frantically tries to rationalise what has happened. It must somehow be my fault. I’m his mum! Did I miss something? Is God punishing me? Why our family? Why Ben??

12 weeks after:

Nothing will bring Ben back!! The constant realisation of that makes me feel physically sick and leaves the most awful gut wrenching pain. Some days I just feel empty and numb – others I want to howl and rage at God about the unfairness of it all

6 months after:

Ben’s death has left us heartbroken without an antidote. We scramble through each day; clutching at random reserves of strength that somehow keep us going – loving and holding tightly to what’s left of our awesome family. It’s only love that is keeping me sane – my love for Ben and our love for each other. I know he would want us to do that. He loved so well and that love carries us.

1 year after:

This last year has been a million times worse than anything we could have anticipated. We have just about survived our most unimaginable living nightmare and are quite frankly hanging on by a thread!

Ben’s death hasn’t just shattered our hearts it has affected everything – our friendships, our work, our confidence, our concentration, our faith, our emotions, our happiness, our sleep, our health … I could go on and on.

Nearly five years after:

Living without Ben is still unbearable. But I’ve noticed recently that the balance has shifted. Love is very slowly and gently starting to outweigh pain. I don’t know how, or at what point that started to happen. The sadness remains and the pain is still as painful…but love has taken precedence and I’m definitely calmer (most days) and better able to focus on living. My love for Ben is actually growing stronger not weaker. He’s never ever out of my mind! I see him everywhere – in everything that’s beautiful.

But this doesn’t mean I’m ‘getting over it’ or ‘moving on’. Grief is not something you recover from. It just means that my brain is simply finding ways to cope.

I used to panic that if I looked happy people would think I was ok or had forgotten (as if that is even possible!!). If I laughed I felt guilty – like I was betraying Ben or trivialising the enormity of his death. It felt wrong to entertain a happy emotion when my precious boy had died.

The pain was like a force shield that was doggedly determined to block out all the good things in my life. People would tell me how strong I was. They didn’t understand that I was simply going through the motions because I had no choice! I wasn’t strong – I was broken.

I’m still broken!

I worry about that less now – partly because I’ve realised it doesn’t matter what other people think (I’ve no control over it anyway) and partly because I’m learning that you actually can be happy and sad at the same time.

Inevitably our friendship group has changed. We are strengthened by the friends who stayed – those who try to understand our pain and are simply there when we need them. Friends who don’t try to hurry us along – who talk about Ben, who don’t judge or make us feel guilty; who don’t seem awkward or uncomfortable when we cry – and sometimes even cry with us.

I remember reading that the death of a child changes you and thinking I wouldn’t let that happen. But of course it does! Some things are simply out of our control. Apparently the trauma of the death of a child actually alters the brain function. Hearts and brains and souls were simply not designed to deal with such pain.

“The death of a child is considered the single worst stressor a person can go through,” says Deborah Carr, Ph.D., chair of the sociology department at Boston University. “Parents feel responsible for their child’s well-being. So when they lose a child, they’re not just losing a person they loved. They’re also losing the years of promise they had looked forward to.”

Grief is confusing – it’s unpredictable, complicated and messy. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to work it out!! And to add insult to injury – it changes from day to day. Even as I’m writing – one paragraph might sound upbeat – the next full of despair. There are days I cope and others I don’t.

We try to keep busy, spend time with friends, go on holiday, go to work and savour every precious moment with our beautiful family. This year my husband and I are taking a three month career break to go travelling around Europe in our camper van – leaving on Ben’s 30th birthday to live out a Ben inspired adventure in his honour.

All these things help – but sadness follows. It’s simply part of us. Ben is there – we talk about him… think about him… and cry because we miss him. We have four children – always four NOT three. Each one as special as the other. The reality that one isn’t physically here still feels very very wrong. There is no escaping the pain – nor would we want to.

Right now I’m sitting in Ben’s bedroom. It’s still his – will always be his. His invisible fingerprints remain and I feel him. The clothes he was wearing the day he left are rolled up in a ball on the dresser – just as the hospital gave them to us. I bury my face in them, breathe in his smell and sob.

I’ve been doing this for nearly five years. It’s my private thing and it helps – grieving parents will understand!

I try not to feel jealous of families who are wonderfully complete – but sometimes can’t help it. It’s like a knife piercing my heart. I find myself shutting down as I try to block out the pain. I want to tell them to never take the ordinary for granted; to savour every beautiful moment – but usually I can’t speak as I try desperately to hold it together.

Flashbacks still have the power to immobilise… to take me right back to the worst day of my life. I don’t want to… but I relive it over and over again.

Never underestimate the enormous effort it takes for grieving families to simply keep living! No one sees the deep anguish on the inside – but I can assure you it’s there.

The Ben shaped hole is my heart is a permanent fixture that can’t be filled by wonderful things. Joy that once was easy and pure and lovely is so often overshadowed by sadness. Ben’s absence always as powerful as his presence is sometimes just a gentle whisper but other times screams hysterically… ‘I’m not here!!’

The death of a child is just wrong wrong wrong….

The other day, someone (who I haven’t seen for ages) asked me how I was doing, how I kept going and if it was getting easier. I knew she was asking because she cared but as I tried to explain my paranoid self kept telling me she was probably saying – ‘aren’t you over it yet?’

I didn’t realize that “getting over it” and “moving on” weren’t even a part of the grief process. I didn’t know that a person could bring their loved one with them as they move forward in life. I didn’t know that my grief would eventually become a part of my okay-ness –

UNDERSTANDING GRIEF : ELEANOR HALEY

In my almost five years of living as a bereaved mum, I’ve discovered there comes a time when we’re expected to stop talking about it!! Too often I mention something about a difficult date and there is a horrible awkward uncomfortable silence.

I’ve been told that I’m not the only person carrying pain (which of course I know); that I need to learn to leave mine at home; that I think everything is about me; that I’m selfish; that I should just remember the happy memories and be thankful for the years we had (which I am); that at least I have children…

Maybe they’re right – maybe not!! But it hurts because I know I’m doing the best I can.

So I question myself…

Is it getting easier?

Should I be getting over it?

What does that even mean?

I actually miss my child more as the years go by, not less. Grief is heavy and I can’t pretend otherwise. I wonder why I should have to. Plus I can’t help mentioning the biggest most horrific life changing event that has ever happened to me. Whether I like it or not I am defined by the fact that my child has died. It makes me the person I am today.

And though a beautiful light went out when Ben left – his light is actually burning brighter than ever because light and love go hand in hand!

Love keeps our children alive!

Years ago when my children were young I remember hearing about two families in our village whose child had died in a tragic accident. I didn’t know them but knew who they were and couldn’t get them out of my mind. In an invisible token of empathy my heart broke for them – though I’m ashamed to say I never even tried to make contact. I would see them out and about and long to go and give them a hug – to say how sorry I was. But something stopped me – I was probably afraid of saying the wrong thing or making a fool of myself – which is no excuse. I know now how much I appreciated the random interactions with strangers, who were brave enough to come up to me.

But I never forgot their children! I used to wonder how they kept going – how they functioned and looked normal when they couldn’t be! They were living every parent’s worst nightmare – an uncomfortable reminder that if it happened to them it could happen to any one of us!

The nightmare came closer when two families I did know were torn apart by the tragic death of their child. My heart broke again as I felt their pain. Its so hard to know what to do or what to say – I hugged them, tried to find the right words, wrote cards, cried with them and for them …

I thought – if that were to happen to me I would just die. I didn’t think I would be able to keep living…

Then the one day it did – and even though I wanted to – I didn’t die. I’m still here. Still looking normal. Still functioning. Still struggling but somehow still surviving and…

getting good (better) at feeling bad!!

Ben died but that doesn’t mean he stays in the past – neatly locked away in a box called grief. Absolutely not!!! Ben will always be in my present even if he’s not physically here – which means the box stays open and I live hand in hand with grief. Albeit a grief that ebbs and flows – that may be getting easier to live with but still has the power to make me want to curl up in a ball and howl. A grief that reminds me every single day that part of us is missing and my beautiful family is incomplete. A grief that still hurts so much I can’t even give it words…

a grief that is born out of love – and love never ever dies!!

I hold on to hope – it keeps me going. I believe we will all be together again one day. I long for things to be different – for life to go back to how it was. But I can’t change the past so force myself to keep looking forward… to be thankful for what I have!

So for now… we simply keep living his adventures for him, keep loving as he did and keep making one moments in his honour 💛

CREDIT: Ruth McDonald 2023

I want to finish with these beautiful words written by Sigmund Freud…

Nine years after the loss of his daughter

Sigmund Freud wrote that he still hadn’t been able to come to terms with the experience…

“We know that the acute pain we feel following a loss takes its course, but it will remain inconsolable and we will never find a replacement. No matter what happens, no matter what we do, the pain is always there. And that's how it should be. It is the only way to make eternal a love that we do not want to abandon. "

⁃ Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ludwig Binswanger