The others

I attended a meeting with SANDS Victoria last week to help them out with a little project. They are re-writing all of their literature for bereaved parents and their families and they wanted my help with the job - given I am both a bereaved parent and somewhat of a writer. I was only too happy to help. Doing these things are the way I parent Hope now. There is nothing else I can do for her except say yes when these little opportunities come my way. And with almost four years of grieving under my belt, I feel strong enough to offer my services in this way. I don't need to go in to specifics about the meeting, only to say that I think when the project is complete, it will benefit all of the new members of this shitty club. A club you can only ever understand how horrendous it is if you are a member yourself. Others can only imagine and I'm quite sure their imaginations always fall short.

Along with the SANDS staff, there was one other bereaved mother there to provide input. She was just five months out from her loss. I was shocked. Five months. Five months is so desperately raw, so new, so painful, so all consuming. She had lost her first and only little boy late last year and was still in a place of absolute despair. I could see it in her eyes. I could see myself in her eyes, the me of three and a half years ago. I wanted to wrap her up and cocoon her from all the hurt. But I know that's not possible. Sadly, to get to any place of being able to fully function again, and to find any sort of healing, you have to go through it. It was amazing to talk to and connect with this woman. We were both surprised, but at the same time not surprised, at how many of the same thoughts and feelings we shared about our losses. There are so many universal truths and feelings when you join this club. We were constantly nodding and smiling at what one another said.

Seeing this woman at this meeting made me wonder though if I'd have been able to do something like that myself at five months out. My gut says no. Five months for me was pure hell. In fact I'm not sure it ever got any worse than that. I think I hit rock bottom around that time. I'd just had my first Christmas without her, the calendar had just ticked over to a fresh new year, meaning I'd left her and her year of 2008 behind, I wasn't pregnant again yet (though I was desperately trying to be) and things were just happening around me that made me spiral almost totally out of control with the grief.

And this was the time when several in my life up and walked away from me. It was too hard for them. MY grief was too much. And to a degree, I can almost understand. I made it borderline impossible for some people. But I was going through something that was practically impossible to deal with. Some days it still feels impossible to deal with. My baby girl died. Life doesn't get much worse than that and five months is such a short amount of time when I have the rest of my earthly days to be apart from her. The fact I've somehow muddled my way through almost four years without her is somewhat miraculous to me.

Yet I soldiered on. I put one foot in front of the other. I continued to live and breathe and make the best of my new shitty set of circumstances. What on earth else was there to do? I did the best I could. I think I did a bloody good job. I don't care what anyone else thinks.

And that's the thing with a grief like this - there is no right or wrong way to get through it. There aren't good grievers, bad grievers or ugly grievers - it's just us, the grieving. One big group, united by one awful thing, the death of our children. I didn't set out to grieve in a particular way. I simply walked the path as it twisted and turned and dipped in to the pits of hell in front of me. We all trod the path differently. Sometimes we crawl, sometimes we can get in to a bit of a canter, especially when things start to get rosy again. We all do the best we can. Just because one grieving mother is able to achieve one thing at a particular stage of her grief, just months from the most catastrophic event in her life, it doesn't mean she is grieving "better". And because I was still wallowing in a pit of hell at five months it doesn't mean I was worse at my grief, either. It is all about survival. And appearances can be a funny thing anyway. Because what might look like a more dignified, refined and more socially acceptable sort of grief on the outside, is most likely still a stifling and all-consumig sort of grief on the inside.  You just don't know, unless you are living it. And if you're not living it, lucky fucking you.

Hope is forever in the background of my thoughts. She's just always there. I mean her picture is the screen saver on my phone for crying out loud. Her little face is covered by the icons that clutter my screen and as a result, clutter my now busy living-children centred-life, but she is always there. Sometimes, like now though, thoughts of her come to the foreground. The missing becomes more pronounced, and I dip in to that well of sadness again. It is not hard to go back there. Seeing that poor, newly bereaved woman at the meeting last week just drove home for me how awful this is and that no matter how much time passes, there really is no getting over this. Of course I know that, but sometimes I think others need reminding of it.