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I’ve been doing some reading lately and one of the things I’ve come across is this: When A Child Dies 2006 Survey, by The Compassionate Friends. It’s an interesting read overall, but the most interesting part to me was this finding:
married to the same person. Of that 57, eight were widowed, yielding a divorce
rate of 16%, far below the national divorce rate of approximately 50%.5. … The figures indicate that the death of a child actually appears to draw bereaved parents together as they travel life’s grief journey.
I am certainly finding this to be true. My relationship with Den has always been a very close one, though it hasn’t always been without its issues. But there is no time in the past that I felt as close to him as I do now.
Another article I found was this one on expectations of your grief by the Sudden Infant Death Services of Illinois. I found myself checking items off in my head as I read through them.
Like grieving of things symbolic. The loss of dreams. The identity confusion.
The loss of a child is so much about the symbolism that changes: my first child; my mental image of this family; my concept of motherhood. My expectations of life involved these things in a certain, specific way. Everything changed when he died. I have had to adjust to a whole new future, and all of these things now have different meanings. It did not evolve naturally over time like life generally does… my image of motherhood did not adapt to trial and error, did not grow as my experience grew. It all changed in an instant. A clap of thunder, a flash of lightening, and everything in my life was scrambled and I was spit back out into a totally new landscape.
I do feel that someday I’ll get used to this new role. Someday it won’t feel so raw, I won’t feel like I’m still spinning. I’m willing to bet that after time even such huge losses as this fades into your history. It becomes a part of who you are, woven into your timeline. It really does change your identity. Right now I can look back and see who I used to be just over that hill, and it’s very disorienting. I’m just waiting to grow into it. I’m waiting for everything to sort itself out.
Nat, I have just started reading your blog in the last few days, and I am so touched by what has happened to you. I am heartbroken for you. I am glad it is bringing you and your husband closer together as you try and find a way forward.
My friend lost her baby Mia during delivery a few weeks after I had my own daughter and I know she said that while it hurt to see my daughter over the next couple of years, knowing that mine was growing up while hers never would, she did take comfort from seeing what Mia would have been doing and how she would be changing and what she would be learning – and also from us treating her as a mum who had been unfortunate enough to lose her child rather than as a woman who didn’t have a child.
I don’t know you, but I am thinking of you daily.
I can’t imagine the grief you are going through over the loss of Devin, and I most definitely won’t pretend to.
I just wanted to say that realizing the loss of dreams is often the most difficult thing to deal with when you lose any loved one. My father was only 46 when we died and I didn’t realize what was hurting and aching so much deep within me until I went to a grief seminar. The speaker talked about loss of dreams and a future you thought you would have. I didn’t have children at the time but I finally realized I wasn’t just mourning the loss of my father but all those dreams I had for a future , things I hadn’t even really considered. I always thought of my dad being a grandpa one day and enjoying his grandchildren, of him getting to see us buy our first house, of little things like picking up the phone to ask him opinion on a decision that I needed to make. Until someone really said it out loud I had no idea that my mind was dealing with all those things somewhere deep inside.
I am so very sorry that you are dealing with those things now but please know that I think of your Devin often and he will never be forgotten.
The identity confusion is terrible. And you’re right — it’s not like we get time to mature into it and figure it out, or even choose. It just happens. And we’re left to deal. I’ve said this before, but I’m hoping this doesn’t define me. I hope in the end, years from now, that who I am defines the event and how I got through it. I have changed, no doubt about that. But I hope I’m dragging enough of the old me over to the new side to put some stamp on how I proceed from here.
I’m glad you’re finding some comfort in words. Sometimes meaningful words are hard to come by. Oh, and my grief therapist said that whole “people divorce when a child dies” thing is sort of a myth — like any big event, it will bring what already exists to the surface. And like the stats show, it doesn’t really rate on the scale as any worse to marriage than any other life changing issue.
I saw firsthand how fertility struggles and loss could make for relationship difficulties. But, in the end – when it all comes down to it, I am completely bound to my dh if not for the sheer fact that those were our babies we lost and no one else is biologically or as intensely bound to them as we are. Those angel babies would have been part him and part me – so I guess hanging onto him allows me at least some part of them still.
Your last two paragraphs really resonated with me – you describe aptly how it has been for me the over the last 13 years since I lost my first baby. I always told people I never would get/got over losing my babies, I just learned how to live with it.
Peace.
Natalie you hit the nail on the head with this post, as usual. You are thrown into it all and sooner or later it does become woven into the fabric of your being. You are Devin’s mother, Natalie, Den’s wife, a daughter, etc.
As for your marriage, I believe too that I became closer to my husband once we lost one of our twins. We had this common bond–this thing to grieve over but more importantly it wasn’t something I lost or something he lost it was something we lost. We were his parents. We lost him together.