Dear Bel, My son died in hospital after undergoing treatment for a
life-threatening condition 25 years ago at the age of 3. Recently, I was
talking to a friend whose 26-year-old son had died 16 years ago in an
accident. We agreed that most of the time we manage really well, and then
suddenly a comment or memory can set us back and we feel overwhelmed by
grief again, just as we were immediately after our children died.
Later that day I began thinking that at least my friend had her son for
the 26 years of his life, whereas my son had only lived for three. Then I
felt guilty for thinking this, as I realise that her grief is no less. Do
you think that a parent can ever get over the death of a child? Carole
Oh, can we stop the rain from falling, or our days slipping forward into
night? Is it possible not to thirst if there is nothing around to drink? In
a world terrifying in its unpredictability, there are things which are
certain, and in some moods we may even take comfort from that — even though
the rain is sad, the darkness full of fear and the thirst unendurable. No, I
do not believe a parent can ever “get over” the death of a child, because
the flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, will always remain just that,
and therefore pain will always be there, beating within a vein just below
the surface of your skin.
Let me explain that I don’t say that to be a doomsayer, nor do I want readers
to think that I am being too bleak. On the contrary. One of my philosophies
is that we should not expect to “get over” any sort of loss. In particular,
surely we honour the beloved dead by carrying our losses with us, just as a
snowball rolled along picks up snow, and — in time and with the right help —
that process cannot but add to the sum total, the spiritual size, of who we
are. This is not a matter of choice. Yet it necessarily involves several
degrees of acceptance.
Your letter (so beautiful in its unusual economy that it reminds me of a
Japanese poem where each line contains a whole world of experience) raises
many important issues. As you acknowledge, there is no league table in
grief. When our second son was stillborn in 1975 I remember simultaneously
raging within at those who said, with well-meaning callousness, “But you can
have another one,” and feeling apologetic because I shouldn’t compare my
grief to that of a mother who had loved a living child for three whole
years. Of course, such comparisons are meaningless, aren’t they? Just as
there is no allotted time for the so-called stages of grief, as if money had
been put in a parking meter, so there are no levels of appropriate pain,
according to how long the dead one had been embraced within your life. It
just doesn’t work that way.
To lose a child is the most devastating experience any parent has to face. In
the UK alone 16,000 children under 19 die each year. Thousands more young
adults in their twenties and thirties also die, and grief is no less intense
for the parent of an adult child. Your child is your child, and the
75-year-old woman who loses her son to cancer at the age of 50 grieves for
her baby boy with the intensity of the young mother who endures a cot death.
It is because the natural order of things has been inverted. We do not
expect to outlive our children, but to be growing old as they reach
maturity; to have witnessed their lives unfold and build, birthday by
birthday, in all the complexity of sadness and success. The blunt truth that
human experience does not always deliver — indeed, that children and their
parents are (as this column knows) often at each others’ throats — does not
impinge on the expectations we are born with. Our children are the
messengers we send into the future — and indeed, if that thought were more
to the forefront of our minds, instead of deep, we might bring more creative
focus to our behaviour towards them, before it is too late. But no matter —
let us talk about solidarity in grief, because that is what you and your
friend share, different though your experiences have been. In December 1997
I carried out one of the hardest tasks of my life, which was to give the
address in the packed vastness of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, at a
Candle Service attended by bereaved parents, at which the roll-call of names
was read out: lost children of all ages who would always be grieved for.
Your letter made me dig out the text of my address that night, and I want to
quote it here: “I sometimes think that once you have experienced pain it
flickers around you for ever, like a sort of aura, or halo — or crown of
thorns. It is a ring of fire, which other people can cross more easily if
they have experienced it too. I know that’s why there are many of you here
who have only met and become friends through grief. It’s not something you
would have chosen — no, not ever — and yet the knowledge gained, and the
community shared, is not something that ever goes away.
“What we have here, in this huge space, is an invisible solidarity, one with
the other. Bereavement can leave you bleak and bitter; it can make some
people cry abuse at the universe, or at God; it can strengthen others in
their faith or acceptance. Whatever, and there are no rules, when we come
here tonight we know one thing — that we are not alone. Holding hands in our
imaginations, or actually holding them, what we do is this: we make a circle
of our own, private grief and share, even if briefly, the pain of others.
That is being part of humanity. That is one aspect of the power of love.
“And what is causing that power to come into being? The pure, the strong, the
permanent, the endless individual love for those children, of whatever age,
who ought to have outlived us, yet did not. The very fact that we are all
here, experiencing this circle of light together . . . proves beyond doubt .
. . the simple fact that love is stronger than death.
“There’s a pop song I like which contains the words: ‘I don’t know much but I
know I love you. And that may be all I need to know.’
“It may, in the end, be all there is to know. Our love is stronger than death.
The power of our individual love for our children, living and dead, goes on
and on. That is not just a source of grief — not now, not any more — but of
sweetness and certainty and strength, even on the blackest days. I can feel
all that in this great cathedral now.”
That Candle Service was organised by the Liverpool end (at Alder Hey Hospital)
of the National Child Death Helpline, and I want to share the important work
of this charity with readers who may not be aware of it. Also operated from
Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, this is so relevant to your letter in
that it develops my point about the nature of shared grief. The marvellous
helpline offers a valuable service which you and your friend, and countless
others like you, affected by the death of a child (and that includes
siblings, grandparents, teachers, friends) will find helpful.
For isn’t one of the problems that people don’t know what to say to you — and
all the more so as years pass? But the Child Death Helpline is a freephone
service operated by bereaved parents themselves — incredibly brave, generous
volunteers who have chosen to channel their grief, undertake a training, and
be at the end of a phone line to receive the pain of others. Those who
telephone know, in their turn, that they are talking to somebody who has
walked within the ring of fire, and understands the scars. Heavy with grief,
they can talk and be listened to by someone who has been there — every
evening from 7pm to 10pm, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, and
Wednesday afternoon. All I can say is, if you would like to talk about your
child, give them a ring on 0800 282986 (www.child-deathhelpline.co.uk).
This charity is especially close to my heart because I helped to launch it in
September 1995. One of the first callers was a retired GP, a widower, who
had lost both his (grown-up) children in a sailing accident 30 years
earlier, and never spoken about it until the day he read about the new
service. In that moment, surely, he became a part of a whole, listened to
and understood. And when you and your friend do that for each other, you
share the permanent love for children whose spirits can never die.
DO YOU NEED ADVICE?
Do you need advice about your relationships? E-mail your problems to:
bel.mooney@thetimes.co.uk or write to her at: times2, 1 Pennington Street,
London E98 1TT. Details such as your age are helpful. Please include your
real name, but we will use your chosen pseudonym if you wish. Bel Mooney
reads all letters but cannot enter into personal correspondence
