The worst thing about this is how it turns you into a downright bitch. Oh, i know it. I don’t know if there is any way round the raging bitterness that leaks out into the most ordinary of moments. The happy moments.
Unexpected announcements. Hate them. Photo contests. Hate them. Talking about how long it is until all the children in the house leave home. Hate it. Knowing Freddie will never be the 7th grandchild, not properly, not really. That maybe we’ll never say “that’s my son over there.” Even if we do, it will never be for him. I’ll never know, not ever, if he was from the winter or the summer side of our family. His due date fell just on the cusp of birth dates and personality splits in the house. How ironic.
Raging at everything, even the people i love, because even though i am one of the luckiest women on the planet, everyone is going to say something that hurts. And they can only avoid that by ignoring me, which would be awful and unbearable and how can i possibly avoid driving people to exhausted insanity with the impossibility of that?
“I’m a bitch, I’m a lover
I’m a child, I’m a mother
I’m a sinner, I’m a saint.”
The aptly (for me) Meredith Brookes.
Keeping the lid on my temper. Coping with the flicked glances from my children when anything happens they think might upset me. Upset me. When they’ve lost their brother and are doing so very much better than i am.
Being patient. Being brave. Being strong. Being plain fucking angry all the time with no-one to lash it out at.
Going to baby loss services and someone taking their beautiful, gorgeous 2 1/2 month old boy to it.
Service being lovely and thoughtful and just right if you are anyone but me. The forgotten remembered, the obvious forgotten. My own unmentioned ignored even by me because i was too slow to alter my mind set and make it something bearable.
The unnecessary tyranny of circumstance meaning the neonatal transfer team turned up at the door of the hospital just as i was walking in and wheeled a baby in a travel incubator (just as Freddie did) past the chapel while i was stood outside sobbing at the baby boy inside.
Candles and Flowers and the space that got left next to Freddie’s, the only space on the display, that i could have lit another candle in and didn’t because i’m ashamed. Of myself. Of having to scratch off the scab from all that again and try to seal it back down over another baby.
This is just the most enormous mountain to climb. And still, STILL, i keep stopping in mid thought, mid-sentence and thinking. “Oh Fuck. My baby died.”
Hugs. And I’m sorry about the photos.
HUGS….. and an understanding that the anger and the injustice is overwhelming but healthy.
YOU had freddie inside you for 9 mths, you nurtured him, protected and cared for him, loved and enveloped him with your whole being for almost a year before he was a brother you have no less right to grieve than your girls. Yes your baby died, but he wasnt just your baby…. he was so wanted so loved and you werent selfish in wanting him, nurturing him, caring, cherishing… even before his birth.
You have every right to be the most angry person in this whole universe right now you have more right than anyone….its the mark of the amazing person you are that your posts are STILL full of someone else, everyone else, BEFORE you… and you can hate me if you like because its ok…. Ill say it you are entitled to hurt first, hurt most, hurt in the most all encompassing way
We just all want to take it away from you and we cant…. that makes me feel inadequate as an online friend…. youre all hurting together… hold each other… keep keeping on… youre amazing
In the anger that comes with grief I have thought and felt the most violent and cruel thoughts imaginable. Even now I’m ashamed to voice most of them. For a long time I barely trusted myself in civilised company as I had no real idea how I would keep my urge to destroy in check. I had an endless commentary of cruelty running in my mind and my hands itched to slap scratch and punch. With hindsight I think it was normal :-/ I’m not sure if it helps to know that or not, but it frightened and disorientated me at the time, and it did pass. The grief reshaped itself into something more bearable. I can’t tell you how sorry I am this happened to you. Lots of love.
love you hun xx
*hugs*
I’ve experienced the most overwhelming, uncontrollable, all encompassing fury – really quite terrifying. Nasty & dark & bitter. It does go – the sadness I think is forever but the fury burns itself out eventually.
Don’t hate yourself for being angry.
Taking a baby to a dead baby service isn’t good.
The best thing I’ve done, certainly, is just write everything. A combination of that and the support it has brought and just a bit of life experience and self knowledge, has made a world of difference. I’ve had times in the past where I’ve just felt lost and drowning in a sea of it; mostly I’m closer to being adrift in a rather leaky life raft at the moment but at least it isn’t washing around in my head. And not having the focus of it being myself or Max is a big difference.
I really would go mad if I let myself become hateful but I have to admit the temptation is huge and the effort involved is enormous. More than anything, it scares me that that bit may even just be yet to come and that I can’t heal without it.
But I must admit, rage as a bit close at the person with a baby at the service, not just for having him or bringing him but for still needing to come to the service when she had him to comfort her. There is no comfort for anyone in this position to have it so firmly pointed out that another baby will not fix it.
i think shock sustains one for only so long (but thankfully?! long enough to not die curled up in a ball) and then the every day ‘normality’ carrying on brings out everything, drip by drip, but with no predictable timescale.
and really, there can only be one kind of thought in bereavement as you try and wait for all the pieces of the puzzle to unfold. just like when a baby is born healthy and well it is only the beginning, so too when your baby dies. it’s not an end that can be said to be final./
have you come across the book: An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination?
It’s written by a woman whose first baby died before birth and expresses something of her survival.
You also have the SCBU ‘experience’/grief/triggers to process, so you’re really dealing with more than just the loss of your boy Merry. And you’re surviving it all and it’s ok to not be not survivng sometimes.
I hope I’m not being insensitive here to say that I partly enjoyed, in a strange way, the rage and anger. I was aware of the dangers of it, but within limits, it was a welcome change from being the nice kind person I usually am. I felt I was entitled to rage at the world and nobody should mind, and if they did, well that was tough. It was quite liberating! Not that I let rip at everybody, but spoke my mind much more forcefully than I usually did. I was kind of sad when those feelings faded and I started caring what everybody thought of me again. Or maybe I just don’t remember it clearly now, and it was worse than I am thinking.