Grief is like being Ship wrecked

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This time of year we find a little tricky because this is the week our baby Arthur was due to be born, and although we marked his official first birthday and day he died in September, I still feel a little tug that says we should be having a first birthday party for him in early January.

arthur grave
Our little boy Arthur

Why is grief harder for a TFMR?

Grieving for Arthur I find harder and more complicated than I do for Violet as the situation is much more complex:

  • We never knew Arthur not properly. Yes I felt him move and kick inside me (a lot) but we never got to met him alive.
  • We were the ones who decided to end his life prematurely based on medical facts and delivered him early sleeping. The hardest decision we’ve ever made.
  • The bittersweet this is that if we hadn’t decided to lose Arthur when we did then we wouldn’t have had Aurora and she wouldn’t be here today. So that is hard to swallow – how can you feel sad about someone who led to the creation of someone else?

Thank you Arthur

Anyway I saw my counselor this week and she said we should thank Arthur for giving us Aurora so tonight we will toast our little boy.  She also passed me a really lovely article that was taken from a guy called GSnow’s Reddit account.  Some of the original isn’t really relevant to child loss so I have edited it somewhat and also added some of my own words but you can read the full piece he wrote here.

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The Bay of Kotor

Grief is like being Ship wrecked

“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating for me luckily it was my husband and we clung to each other. Some of my family and friends also floated nearby providing sustenance for us to carry on. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

At the start

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, seeing another young family similar to yours on the street, the sound of a baby crying. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Eventually…

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or a family gathering. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out. Occasionally the wave can come from no where and totally overwhelm you but again you rise up, gasp and breathe again.

The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too.”

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Sunset over Auckland

Dianne Oxberry

I started to write and plan this article before I read the sad news today about local BBC newsreader Dianne Oxberry who sadly passed away.  I have lots of friends who were her friends and everyone who met her spoke fondly of her, so this article is dedicated to her friends and family.  May you ride the storm of grief and find some lovely memories from the beautiful ship to cling to.  If you know those close to her please help them to stay afloat.  Do this through kindness and compassion.

Big love and hugs,

Sarah x

Always Violet Skies

You might enjoy these blog posts –

More of a mother – does a natural birth make you more of a mother?

Somewhere after the rainbow – what happens if you lose your rainbow?

Mothering after loss

Guilt when a mother of loss

A Mother’s Guilt

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Guilty

I often hear parents with more than one child talk about the guilt they feel about spending more time with one over the other. About how guilty that makes them, as they try to give equal attention and time to each child. Well what happens when you have several children but they are no longer living?

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Their shared graveside

Second child syndrome

I frequently feel guilt over my second born Arthur because he gets forgotten in favour of his big sister Violet, who is centre stage in everything & poor Arthur as the second child is pushed to one side almost ignored.

Our rainbow Arthur

We never knew Arthur.

Yes I felt him move inside of me. People, our family & friends never met him. He never babbled at people. He never laughed or cried. He never pointed at anything he wanted looking for someone to fetch it for him. He never sighed and rolled his eyes when I attempted to sing poorly. He never looked annoyed when someone sang nursery rhymes to him out of tune. He never orchestrated control of a room full of toddlers & adults so they danced to his tune, despite not saying a word. He never made his displeasure felt through tantruming. He never banged a drum or read a book. He never smiled. He never held a balloon or shrieked with excitement if he spotted a cat or dog. He never saw or rode on an airplane or a boat. He never danced along to music. He never opened his eyes to look around. He never even took a breath or made a sound.

Legally he doesn’t exist

Technically & legally he doesn’t exist, as he was born sleeping at 22 weeks, so he doesn’t have a birth or a death certificate.  He did have his own crematorium service and his ashes were buried with his sister. He has his own name in flowers on their grave and in time his name will be written on their shared gravestone but bless him he doesn’t have a lot to remember that he was here.

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A photo of Arthur

Easier to talk about Violet

It’s much easier for us to remember and to talk about Violet as lots of people knew her. There are lots of shared memories we can all draw on. We have thousands of photos and some video footage of her. She even had her own circle of friends, who we always remember at Christmas and their birthdays, as that would be what she’d have wanted.

No shared memories or friends

Arthur bless him doesn’t have any shared memories or friends. He didn’t impact any people other than our immediate family but he is still special to us. We still fight to try to get answers for his condition, in the hope that research might help others out there too. In time we will probably fundraise for charity for him also so he has a legacy alongside his sister’s. We’ve chosen to focus on our first child for now, as there’s a clearer legacy path for her. In her memory we will focus on helping other babies to have life saving heart surgery either here in the UK at Alder Hey Hospital or overseas in third world countries through a great charity called Healing Little Hearts.

Photos

This blog is full of photos of Violet and that’s great because we have lots of her. She loved having her photo taken too.   It is important for us to recognise that just because we can’t share lots of photos of Arthur or share amusing anecdotes about what he was like as a person it doesn’t mean he isn’t thought about or loved by us.

Violet in a pretty dress
Violet at 1 year old

I like to think too that if they were both still alive today that Violet would definitely still be stealing the limelight away from her little brother, as much as humanely possible. She would certainly boss him around so maybe him playing second fiddle is just a symptom of him being second born, whether he is alive or not?

What do you think? Do you feel guilty about spending more time with one child over another? Does one of them hog the limelight over a shyer sibling?

Love, Sarah x