Child Loss: How it Feels to Lose a Child

Last month my BIL and his family came to visit us. Their eldest daughter is the same age as my Zaara. I got a chance to taste what having three daughters would have been like. My niece is perfectly four years old. I couldn’t stop wondering what my Zaara would have been like. Would she have been like her cousin or would she have become like her brother? My son kept arguing and scolding his cousin… Would D and Zaara have gotten along? My toddler took to her from the minute they came in. The baby too loved her cousin. She was with us for a whole week. I made her a hat… we went places… played and watched TV together but then… they went back… leaving me to remember that she wasn’t mine.

Ever since Lil’ One (my second daughter) was born, I always wondered what two daughters would have been like. As if to answer me, God gave me my Cuppy Cake within a year. I am not ungrateful… He knows my heart.

How it feels to lose a child

Grief is like a wave on an ocean. It keeps coming… it keeps getting stronger… it keeps coming and building till it gets all huge and then it breaks with all force on to you. You’re drenched… hit… hurt. You don’t know what to do because you’re just stuck there… on that shore and you can’t move away. For a few days or weeks afterwards, you go back to being normal. You see… that crying helped. The wave is broken and gone for now. But it starts to build again when you see something… or you remember… It is not easy to forget because sooner someone’s child will remind you … a memory flashes… you hear of a child’s death, or you have to go the hospital and you see the words ‘ER’… the wave starts to build again…

A friend lost her 18month old son recently. The friend who informed me said, ‘You’ve been there… you’d know…’

Yes, I know. I know what child loss is like. I know what a mother feels. I know the pain. I also know that it never really goes away.

A few months after Zaara died, I had taken a vacation. One of my cousins who came to visit me had asked: ‘what does it feel like to lose a child’. I was shocked by her question but I know she meant well. She wanted me to cry… to open up to her. I only said, it is like you have been stabbed in the chest. Like someone snatched your baby from you and ran. You couldn’t catch them but now you cry for the rest of your life. You keep thinking that you couldn’t protect your child. When the world sleeps, you hear yourself singing the songs you sang to her. You even wonder if you have the right to sing those songs… you cry but then, you wipe your tears because you don’t want the world to know that you have been crying.

I called the friend who lost her baby today. ‘He was okay Aysh…’, she said.’… one moment he was alive and then he hiccuped and died… I don’t understand she said over and over on the phone. ‘He wasn’t ill.. he was sick the past two days but he was okkay.’

‘I now’, I said. I didn’t know what to say. We were all pregnant together. We were both having our third. Me, after my loss. She after a long time. We had celebrated by having our baby shower together. My daughter turns two this week. Her son died the previous week.

What to say to a mom who has lost a child

Never tell her that it will be okay when she has more kids. It will not be okay. That is a lie. Just as you cannot have more parents for your lost parent… just as there can never be another lover or spouse … there can never be another child to match the one they have lost. Each child is unique.. he or she is a personality… a person. You can’t replace someone. Don’t hurt her by telling her that she should be thankful she has other children too. You don’t know what you are saying.

If you know a mom who has lost a child, never say she has (X-1) child either. Never ever foget her dead child. It kills me every time someone ‘reminds’ me that I have three kids. I have four: three live with me, one in heaven. When they ask me how old they are, I prefer to say a 6yr old, would have been 4, a 2yr old and a baby. That is how it should be.

No, she is not supposed to get over it because it has been so many years. When a mother gives birth, she chose to let a part of herself live outside her body. You cannot cut off an arm and get over it!

I am sorry if you read this and felt as sad as me… this is a blog… I live here.

I am stuck.

In this sticky position… I can’t lift my foot to move forward.

Though only figuratively speaking but I really am stuck. I am not sure what it is but it is…

The surgery getting postponed or the doctor that we chose to trust betraying us…?
An empty appointment book or the fact that I closed my door on opportunity and let the phone go unanswered…
The guests or the work of a houseful of people wanting my attention…
The lack of ideas for the post…
The stillness…
Words… where are the words?

Something isn’t right…
I wish, I could say I was depressed… but I am not.
I am just speechless…
Stunned…
Unable to move…

I just can’t bring myself to pour those ideas… let the words flow.

When words don’t flow…
When ideas just bounce about…
There is only one thing that has worked and I swear by: Retreat, Rest and Retrace … those steps. Go back a few places, sit down and find out what went wrong. Get up and then walk the path again. Hopefully, you’ll find what went amiss.

Self motivation. That is what it is called I believe. I have a post written somewhere on a Life Skill called Survival. (I am not sure if it went online yet… not in the mood to check right now… I’ll come back and tag later.) I am on that skill right now. You have to keep polishing yourself, you know. I guess, when I am done, I’ll have it all sharp and shiny!

In the meanwhile, I am off to take my 10 minutes of nothing.

photo credit: Thomas Leth-Olsen via photopin cc