You Can Always Learn

I decided to write an academic paper on the death of a child, more specifically on the death of a baby.  I wanted to have a better understanding of how people in a supportive role may view the experience of parental grief based on the academic theory that is out there.  While some journal articles and texts were excellent in accurately describing what I knew to be my experience, other papers described grief in terms of coming to an end or unhealthy if not drawn to a conclusive close.  While interpretation is subjective and even the topic of grief is an individual experience, it was concerning to think that a support system might put expectations on grievers that were neither empathetic or helpful in their approach.
Another interesting theme in the literature was the differential between death of a baby and death of a child. It was because of the distinction that I had to pick a focus for my paper that I originally intended to be generally on the death of a child.  I was not surprised by the separation of death experiences, I have witnessed that need for distinction in my work offering support to bereaved parents and it both fascinates and concerns me that a differential is made.  The importance of the age of the child at the time of death plays into the societal ambivalence surrounding perinatal death, stillbirth, and infant death as well as impacting bereaved parents of older adult children.  The more specific the death "credentials" to the legitimacy of the experience the more difficult it may be for parents to find support through common losses.  For instance a support worker may feel challenged to find peer support for a bereaved parent who wants to meet with a parent who has experienced the death of a 16 year old to a car accident where there was no illegal activity involved in the death.  This may seem like a specific and unlikely scenario but I have seen the affects of differentiating and how it can lead to more and more distinctions, which ultimately have the ability to isolate and alienate the parents who seek the inclusiveness and the parents who are excluded.
I have even read in a text for clinicians on how to support a bereaved parent, that parents who have experienced the death of a baby "have a briefer period of grief than parents of an older child."  I would counter this literature and say that parents of a child of any age have their own unique experience with grief.  The death of a child, no matter the circumstances of the death or the age of the deceased presents parents with the unimaginable task of continuing their life with the knowledge that your child will never meet the milestones, have the experiences, create the memories that the parent themselves have experienced.  To challenge how long it takes for a parent to learn to cope with grief based on the amount of time that the parent interacted with the child (how long the child was alive) assumes that a parent's love and value for the child begins at a time distinguished by society. What about the parent who dreamed of having children since they were young, in the delivery room with a list of names they started in their early teens, shocked by the stillbirth of their baby?  Is the death of that new life less valid because the parents did not hear them cry?
Here is what I know.  I loved my son from the time I was a young girl playing with dolls, imagining my future family.  I sat with doctors and nurses as they explained that he would have a fraction of a chance at a life that was sustainable and that we, as his parents, would need to make decisions to use extraordinary measures to keep him alive or to discontinue care so that he would die.  I held his tiny, warm body, just seconds after going through the physical experience of his delivery, seeing how perfect his fingers and toes were, how his face looked just like that of his older brother and watched as nurses put a stethoscope to his chest to confirm a heartbeat.  I heard the paediatrician tell me that there was nothing more that they could do for him and that we could hold him as he painlessly succumbed to his tiny body, lungs that could not breathe, his brain deprived of oxygen would stop sending messages for his heart to continue.
I sat with a funeral director and discussed burial versus cremation, picked out flowers, wrote a service, created a headstone and picked out a spot in a cemetery.  I watched the tiny white casket carried from the funeral car by my husband, sit above the small rectangular hole dug into the ground while we described his short life to friends and family who never had the opportunity to see or hold him.
I know what day I found out I was pregnant, the day that I found out things would forever change, the day he was due and the day he was born.  I knew the year that he should have started kindergarten and I will know when it is the year that he should be graduating.
I am not stuck in my grief, but his little life rides side care to mine.  I am constantly reminded where he is not.  He was my child, dreamt years before his conception, grown in my womb, born into my arms and taken from my heart.  His age only matters to the theorists and studies that believe that impact is measurable through technology and science, to me a future without him start at his birth and will last my lifetime.

Missing Flynn

The thing about grief is, even if you think that you are coping and your grief is a part of the past, so much so that at times it seems unrelatable to the present, it can and will still knock you on your ass.
Not to say that these waves of grief are not predictable.  As you become more familiar with your vulnerabilities and triggers, you become more aware of when a grief burst will hit. But even if you can see it coming, it is unavoidable, you are going to face it and it is going to hurt.
When I am tired, not eating and sleeping properly, maybe starting on a cold and creating more stress in an already stressful situation, that is when I am most susceptible to feeling a grief burst.
Right now, full time at school, new situation, new roles and responsibilities, I am definitely run down and under more pressure than usual.  Add to that the fact that Kinley is turning three, there does not appear to be room for another child in our family right now, and lets face it I am not getting any younger and  you have created my perfect storm of emotion.
I feel similar to how I did right after Flynn died too, noticing every pregnant woman at school, in the grocery store, on Facebook!  I obsessively look through pictures of newborns and dream about what it would be like to hold a baby again.
Then I realize how different I would feel if Flynn were alive.  How I might feel more complete if he were here right now.  Eight years old, filling up our all boy clan, contributing to my parenting woes, that although I complain about them I secretly love being needed and loved by my boys.  What if he were here, how would I be different, how would our family be and feel?
All this thinking about what could be has made me sad, realizing how much I missed getting the opportunity to know our second son.  To see what sports he would be into, to meet his friends, to help him with his school work, to break up fights with his brothers and to hear about his wishes and dreams.
Today I cannot think about the fact that if he were here my path would look different too. I most likely would not be in school pursuing a degree in social work and specializing in the study of grief and bereavement.  Today I just need to miss him and I do.

Anticipation

What can I say about anticipation?
Well first of all it depends what you are anticipating.  Anticipation of a dreaded event or anxiously awaiting a special day may have similar physical and psychological symptoms. There may be the nervousness, the sleepless nights, appetite issues (both eating and not), and the unfocused energy, but ultimately dreaded anticipation and eager anticipation could not be more different.  Afterall the outcome is either rewarding or difficult.

This post is about the dreaded anticipation.  Knowing that a date is looming, one that you hoped would never come or one that marks an anniversary of a date you wish you could forget.  This type of anticipation produces its own neurosis and this summer has been filled with that type of anticipation for me.

I recently decided to leave my job (which I thoroughly enjoy) to complete my degree and pursue my Masters.  Something that my readers may think would or should be exciting, new and an anxiously awaited event.  Well reader, to my surprise it was anything but.  Announcing my decision to leave work and pursue my education was the first dreaded anticipation.  That one admittedly was short, the decision and the announcement were only a week apart but once the announcement was made fear set it, almost immediately.  Each day at work became a realization that I was even closer to my last day and that I would need to embrace a new endeavour, I was leaving something I understood and did well, this was a completely new lifestyle and my family was counting on me to be a success.
IN fact my family was putting their complete faith in me to succeed. This was not their idea, for me to return to school, I had to ask them to buy into this pursuit too.

Anticipation of my last day of work led to sleepless nights, nausea, heart burn, headaches, every physical symptom that can leave you feeling battered, bruised and doubting the initial decision to leave.  Every day I wanted to throw in the towel, continue on the road I had been travelling.  Stick with the job I was comfortable at, continue the role that I had started, knowing full well that this job would limit my future opportunities in my field.  Anticipation was overshadowing rational thinking.  Somedays it even took over for the rational side of my brain all together, leaving me bartering with myself to try to juggle a full time job, full time school, motherhood and a marriage, really who was I kidding?
As the last week of work approached I started with panic attacks, forseeing an unrealistic amount of expectations and workload looming on my desk.  Whether real or fictional I began to believe that the anxiety I was feeling could be alleviated if I just decided to stay.  I began to question my ability as a student, as a future social worker, even convincing myself that any education or ability that I had already obtained was all for not, because I could not do it.
And then the last day came.
I showed up to work at regular time, did my regular work, had regular conversations, maybe a couple of conversations were out of the ordinary because they were discussing my departure.  Ultimately though, my day was regular.  Nothing horrible happened.  I went home that night and everything about that day felt the same as the day before.
Actually that is not completely true, the day did have a couple of abnormal moments.  I felt some residual grief.  I think I said Flynn's name in reference to one of my other boys about four times. Maybe that was because this job had so much of Flynn's life invested in it and maybe I felt like a part of me was being left behind.  I did find it hard to concentrate on one thing for too long, my mind needed a break.  I could also feel my emotions closer to the surface ready to spring forth if given an opportunity.  It was all manageable though, I recognized that I needed to be patient with myself and allow for whatever my spirit needed that day and I got through it.

So the last dreaded anticipation surrounded the first day of school.  The big unknown, the thing that I have given up so much to pursue and complete.  That day was today.  It started with my dog having an accident in my bedroom at 6am in the morning and I could have taken that as a sign of a bad day to come but I got up and decided that it was a good time to start my daily workout.  I got that done before my boys were even out of bed.  I got them off to school and before I knew it I was late leaving the house and had to change my plans to get a coffee on the way to school.  Again considering that this was a dreaded day, it could have really put me in a foul mood, but I knew that I could do without until class was over and that I would feel much more confident if I was in class early.
I made it to class, with ten minutes to spare and when I looked around the classroom I realized that I did not look any different than my classmates, we were all nervously checking over our books, rearranging our pencils.  That is when I appreciated this minor journey in my bigger path.  I could do this, I could overcome the anxiety in anticipation and when I recognized that I began to appreciate that I had arrived.  I was a student and what a powerful and motivating feeling that left me with for the remainder of today.

Anticipation is a journey that is met so many times in grief.  Anticipation of a death, or of a milestone, like a birthday, due date, etc.  Anticipation is overwhelming around anniversaries, especially the first after the death.  I have always said that anticipation is often worse than the day and usually that is true but respecting the anticipation and honouring the emotions that follow can help in making the dreaded day what it needs to be for that person at that time.
Now I am anxiously awaiting my second day of school as a student.... for now.

Coping

Disclaimer:  I truly believe that substance abuse is a serious and important societal and social issue.  I do not advocate or condone the use of drugs or alcohol as a mode of coping but I recognize it is a commonly used method.  It was a part of my journey and in order to remain authentic to my experience it is a part of this blog.

In grief we discover coping mechanism that help us to manage the day to day, relationships, the memories and the pain that follow the death of someone we love.  Some coping mechanisms are healthy and help us to work on our grief while others can create complications, even compound the grief and send us backward in the journey.  The mechanisms themselves are not static, they are fluid and they change and adapt as our journey progresses.  They are the foundation of our resiliency.

My coping mechanisms have changed with my grief experience.  They have provided me with an outlet, relief and at times, additional stress.
Flynn died in May and because of legislation in Ontario surrounding maternity leave I was entitled to 17 weeks from work.  This provided me with a reprieve from the chaos of my workplace but also a large amount of time to be home and think.  This type of time created an anxiety in me about leaving the house and I found it incredibly debilitating to venture out of the comfort of my space.  I was trapped in my little house and confined to our gated backyard.  What began as anxiety ended with me in a lawn chair and a cold beer in one hand most of the time.

• side note here-I do not even like beer, never have.

It may have been the convenience of beer, the fact that it was Landy's drink of choice, it may have even been the notion that it was different from my norm, but for whatever reason I became comfortable drinking.  The conflict for me at the time was that I did not enjoy the chemical change in my brain but I needed the numbing relief from the torment of my thoughts.  Beer (alcohol) made the reality of Flynn's death a figment of a dream and the longer my reality was altered the easier it was to convince myself that I was okay.
By midsummer it was becoming difficult to continue the substance alternative to coping.  Hangovers were not helpful with a preschooler in the morning and the guilt of responsibility weighed heavy on me.  It was becoming expensive to support the amount I consumed in a week and it took more and more beer to keep the pain of the grief at bay.  I stopped drinking.

That is when the flood hit, like a tsunami wave that had been building off shore I was hit with all of the emotion, reality and depth of sadness that I had been keeping at a distance.  It came in and destroyed all the weak coping mechanisms that I had created and swept them back out to sea.  I needed to start again and build myself better this time.
That is when I started writing.  Journalling about missing Flynn, about how I was feeling and about what I needed to get through that day.  I began to write poetry to let go of the intense sensations that would wash over me.  I wrote the story of Flynn's birth just as I had done when Rhys was born and I created a baby book for Flynn as a memorial to his life.  Soon writing was not enough, I needed to share the pain of my experience, I began to wonder if I was going crazy or if it was normal to dream of a life I had known so briefly.
I began looking for people to talk to, first in virtual chat rooms and eventually through local bereavement organizations.  I told the story of how difficult Flynn had been to conceive, the doctors, the infertility, the drugs.  I told people about the five weeks in and out of the hospital, sifting through blood, praying for a heartbeat.  I would experience the trauma of his birth, people yelling, doctors talking, an ambulance gernie, my mother crying, my senses numb, his mute cries as I wrapped him in a blanket, the weight of him in my arms, he gripped my finger, and waking up in recovery to the news of his death.
I told his story over and over and my heart, which had fiercely beat against the chest wall when I told Flynn's story for the first time, began to reside deeper in my body again, thudding to a beat less aggressive every time until finally his story became my story and I found comfort in it.
Eventually coping turns into managing and the grief needs less attention.  That is when my path intersected with providing support to people experiencing grief.  I could be that person that people needed to tell their story to, to validate the love and the life that they had experienced, to remember the death.  Flynn's life and death took on a new importance, one beyond being my son, his life created a human connection in the world of grief, a growth and maturity in my journey of life.

The Pit

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The day that Flynn died a cavity opened in my body, a painful dark hole in the centre of my being.  I called it the pit.  It was such a physical feeling that at times I felt that I could reach into my torso and grab it, hold it but never release it from myself.  At the time of Flynn's death I was undernourished, sleep deprived and ravished with grief,  I thought I was going crazy, possibly developing a tumor possibly a figment of my challenged mind.  I was terrified to tell people, support people, about the physicality of the pit, the emptiness that was not a feeling but a presence.
The location of the pit was exactly in my centre, two inches below my sternum and two inches above my belly button.  It was not an organ either, it was too low to be my heart (although that ached) and too high to be my stomach (because that grumbled).  It started out the size of an orange, although on any given day it could vary in size from a grapefruit to an apricot and I could feel it in my torso when I moved, breathed or ate.  IN fact it was so solid that most days it filled me and I could not eat, it contaminated my insides and made it impossible to want anything more inside.  It was the physical feeling of grief that I did not expect or hear about.  It created a sense of distress in me that only fed the hollowness of the pit.
With days, weeks and then months of processing the pit ebbed and with a narrative of my story being shared with others who were bereaved the pit began to heal.  The hollowness went from the size of an orange pressing on my heart, lungs and stomach to a walnut sized reminder of where I had been and what I had survived.  Again the physicality of that pit became the scar tissue that I could touch and feel when I encountered a grief burst or was struck by a trigger.  It would ache or pulse just enough to say "I am here."
As I began my work to support other people who experience grief, I began to hear stories of other people's pits.  Those physical holes that present themselves in our bodies as a reminder, a painful reality check, a touchstone.  It became therapeutic for me and the people who shared their pits to know that this was not a sign of dementia but one more affect of grief on the body and spirit.
My pit shows itself still, eight years later, normally as a growing pain in my journey, a touchstone in reality.  But at times, when I am feeling vulnerable, overtired, undernourished, it can feel like scar tissue stretched and exposed to remind me that it is there and I need to take care of me and it.
I used to feel abnormal and terrified of the pit and with time I have come to know it as my gauge of self awareness and self care.  The reminder to look after me on this journey.  Thank you pit.