10 years ago, following the passing of my much-wanted daughter Alice at 17 week gestation I realised how poor some bereavement care can be and the effects it can have on families mental health. I began to volunteer with various maternity hospitals and baby loss charities whilst still working my ‘normal’ job in dentistry, caring for my older son and striving for my rainbow. Slowly things have begun to change, the taboo is breaking, families are speaking their children’s names loud and proud. I recently left dentistry after 30 years to work with The Alder Centre in Liverpool co-ordinating the re launch of Child Death Helpline which is a national helpline for anyone affected by the loss of a child (any age). I am proud to be a small part of The Bereaved Parents’ Club in Alice’s name and support families.
This episode is for newly bereaved parents. We hope to offer you some reassurance, some gentle words of support, and to help you perhaps find some further sources of help and advice.
Our guest is Michelle Meredith from the Child Death Helpline, and she and I will be guiding you through some aspects of this early period of loss and grief.
To find out about the Child Death Helpline, click here. To contact them for support, call 0800 282 986.
To understand Edward’s Syndrome, click here.
For support relating to Edward’s Syndrome, click here.
‘Grief of the Newly Bereaved’ leaflet, produced by the Compassionate Friends.
The Justin Bieber song hat Michelle mentioned is this one: ‘What Do You Mean?’
This is the shoes poem.
For more details about any resources mentioned in the programme, visit the Bereaved Parents’ Club podcast website.
Child Death Helpline https://www.childdeathhelpline.org.uk/ or call 0800 282 986
https://www.tcf.org.uk/support-sibling/
https://www.cruse.org.uk/understanding-grief/grief-experiences/losing-a-sibling/
https://www.sueryder.org/grief-support/about-bereavement-and-grief/sibling/
https://www.talkgrief.org/
https://www.childbereavementuk.org/Listing/Category/support-for-young-people
https://www.tcf.org.uk/resources/Remembering-Our-Child-Handbook.pdf
https://hov.org/media/1083/ns_5543_creating_meaningful_mem.pdf
https://www.winstonswish.org/activities/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwztOwBhD7ARIsAPDKnkDJ3-7JY_gpNdQOZSi0PyohPBnXGMN6SfTnx5-JlbY7gLu7mEIHb9EaAoppEALw_wcB
SANDS United Sands United is a unique way for bereaved men to come together through a shared love of sport, find a support network, and feel at ease talking about their grief when they’re ready.
Angels United Manchester based peer to peer bereavement support group, football club & family co-founded by a group of dad’s that all have one thing in common, they have all suffered the heartbreak and devastation of losing a child at any stage of life.
Dad Still Standing podcast
Men Do Talk podcast (this is the one I couldn’t recall!)
Reuben’s Retreat Dad’s group
Care for the Family Helping parents to face the future when an only child has died.
The Compassionate Friends has a page for childless parents.
The Compassionate Friends also produce a leaflet for single parents, The Bereaved Lone Parent.
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Debbie, podcast host
Michelle Meredith, guest
[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Bereaved Parents’ Club podcast. It’s the club none of us want to be members of, but here we are. My name is Debbie and I’m a bereaved parent. This podcast is for all of us, to share and celebrate the stories of our children and offer support to each other. Each episode will explore topics that have relevance to us as we navigate the world as bereaved parents.
Whether your loss was last week, last month, last year, or even last century, you are welcome here. And whether your child was a baby, a youngster, a teenager, an adult, or even a parent themselves, you are welcome here. Please be aware that each episode will deal with themes of death and loss.[00:01:00]
Today’s episode, The Newly Bereaved. If you’re listening to this, chances are you’re recently bereaved by the loss of your child. So firstly, I want to extend my sincere condolences and to let you know that you’re not alone, and support is available. Please do look at our webpage for links to many organisations.
This episode is quite a lengthy one, and I considered splitting it in two. Instead, I’ve indicated a good time to go and have a break. But you are in control, and you can hit pause whenever you want, and pick it up again when you’re ready. In the first half, we’ll address initial shock, expressing emotions, setting up routines, asking for help, and finding support.
After the pause, we touch on what it’s like when we grieve differently to our partners, sibling loss, fear of [00:02:00] forgetting your child, and finding hope. By way of a brief introduction, I’m your host, Debbie, and my 15 year old son, Dan, was knocked down and killed in a road traffic accident in May 2018. He was my only child.
Michelle, who you’ll meet in a moment, is our guest today. She lost her daughter Alice in 2014 to a condition called Edward’s Syndrome. And although we lost our children in different ways at different times, we both vividly remember being newly bereaved, and we seek to share with you some empathy and even a little hope.
So, let’s begin. I’m joined by Michelle Meredith, who is the Child Death Helpline Coordinator at the Alder Centre. which is part of Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. Michelle, hello. Hello. Today’s episode is about being newly bereaved. So, we’re going to be considering the challenges that face us in those first few days, weeks, [00:03:00] and even months after the death of a child.
But before we go any further, Michelle, would you mind introducing yourself and then telling us your own story, please? And perhaps how you became involved with the Child Death Helpline.
Yeah, so in October 2013, whilst I was at work delivering training, I suffered an early miscarriage. So, I was scanned and to our amazement, I’d lost one, but still was pregnant.
It was twins, didn’t know, but we were still excited because we still had the baby. the other twin. That was hard, but we carried on with the pregnancy. And then fast forward to January 2014, so only like eight or nine weeks later, our world just fell apart and we lost our baby to Edward’s Syndrome. Um, so I had to deliver her.
We found out it was a little girl when they found out it was Edward’s Syndrome because they’d done the testing. So, I was [00:04:00] brought in to deliver her. It just felt like our world fell apart then. So, for the past 10 years, I’ve been involved in volunteering at local hospitals. in various charities to raise awareness of baby and child loss.
And then recently I’ve become employed as the Coordinator for the Child Death Helpline, which is merging both my skills, my volunteering and my child loss empathy skills with my management skills of my normal job. I used to have a previous job in dentistry, so I’ve completely changed jobs. So, I’m now based at the Alder Centre at Alder Hay Hospital in Liverpool, but the helpline is national, so that’s been my 10 year journey.
Well, thank you very much for sharing your story. That’s really important, I’m sure, for other people to hear too. I want to gently move us on to looking at those first really raw days and weeks and maybe months [00:05:00] after the death of a child. Much of what we cover here is inspired by a helpful leaflet produced by The Compassionate Friends and I will put a link to that on the website, but I think we’re going to talk beyond that too here.
I guess we’re going to start with considering what sort of thoughts and feelings we might be likely to experience. When we’re first bereaved, because it’s such a new thing for us, it can be quite overwhelming. I don’t know what thoughts you’ve got about that, Michelle.
I’m speaking to families and it’s the shock, the shock that this has happened. It’s a shock that the reality that you find yourself in this situation, that your baby or your child has gone before you. They say, don’t they, you know, no parent should have ever have to bury their child and it’s the shock that that is a reality. So, you’re immediately going to that shock mode, disbelief, anger as well.
Quite a few parents bury that anger though, because they think, well, I’m still here. My [00:06:00] partner’s still here. I’ve got other children. I’ve got, lots to be thankful for to suppress that anger, but it will come out and you’ve got to let that anger out. I’ve just recently looked at play therapy, even though you’re an adult.
I was let loose on a punch bag and 10 years on, I still, you know, went for that punch bag. And this feeling lost and alone that you feel isolated if, especially if there’s nobody else in your circle that has ever lost a child. It’s like a big mixture, a melting pot of emotions and at the time when it happened to me, my partner said – this sounds crazy, but the Justin Bieber song, What Do You Mean?
You know, cause you’re contradicting yourself all the time. You want people to be close, but you don’t want them near. And that’s what we ended up laughing about that. That’s what I was like. I wanted people, you know, around me, but just leave me alone. Cause I want to be left in it. For me, it is so contradictory and extreme.
You know, one minute you’re sort of staring at your shoes for an [00:07:00] hour, and the next minute you’re in like a mad hot panic, or you’ve suddenly got a splitting headache, or some other kind of random pain occurs. Then you’re dissociating and thinking, ‘oh, what am I doing here? Why am I at the shops?’ You’ve got these huge gaps in your memory.
You can feel, you know, so discombobulated by all of these disparate and strange emotions and thoughts and behaviours. I think sleep is another thing that gets really affected. I mean, I was out like someone had just switched the lights out as soon as my head hit the pillow. And then 10 hours later, I pinged my eyes open.
But, um, I know other people struggled to even find sleep in those early weeks or have found that their sleep has just been terribly, terribly disturbed. All of which can make you feel hypersensitive to everything, which is completely exhausting, because it isn’t normal. This isn’t how you expect the run of things to go, to lose a child, and everything feels unworldly and unreal.
The evenings were always the worst for me, because in the early days as well, you’ve got [00:08:00] people coming round, friends, family, ringing you up or sending you messages. But obviously their life carries on, everything becomes a lot quieter, and you can’t sleep because your mind is going at a million mile an hour with questions and conversations with yourself as well.
So, do you find that the evenings are the times when the helpline is most used then? Yes, and that’s when the majority of our calls do come through between seven and ten at night.
I think something to emphasize here is that there are no shortcuts through grief. So, although it’s incredibly difficult, and you can feel that your mind and your body are all over the place, you’re not missing a trick. There isn’t a faster way to process this. It’s all perfectly reasonable mind and body responses to terrible sadness and trauma, and it just will take its time. You can’t grieve more one day to be [00:09:00] less sad the next. It just doesn’t work like that. I liken it to something like adolescence, which is a really difficult period of our lives, and no one can go through it for us. We just have to kind of find our own way and grief is really similar, in the sense that we have to learn how to deal with these difficult emotions and feelings and behaviours and there isn’t a quicker way of getting through those early stages.
No, there isn’t and it’s learning your own coping mechanisms with things. Just like parenthood doesn’t come with a book, neither does grief or losing your child. I always say it, there’s this thread running through bereaved parents. We can identify with each other, but our stories are different, and our losses are different. But there’s this thread that keeps us together in this club.
You know, they say, you know, it’s a club no one wants to be part of. But sometimes, you know what? I’m glad of the people I have met on the journey. It’s a tough journey, [00:10:00] but I’m thankful for the people that I’ve met. When a family does tell me their story, their child’s name, I’m honoured by that.
Definitely. Someone once described grief to me like a huge hole that was in them, and the hole never gets any smaller. You just learn how to grow around it. Um, and someone else described it as a jagged stone inside them that never dissolves, but over time simply gets smoother edges. And I think those sorts of analogies are really quite helpful in giving us ways of trying to manage this seemingly overwhelming sensation. Once you can imagine your grief as an object, it helps you see that other things can live alongside it without compromise. So, you can have that hole, and that stone, but you can also have a pocket of happiness, or a handful of hope, if that makes sense. Um, it becomes possible to accept that you can be grieving and still be happy [00:11:00] alongside that.
So yeah, I think when you’re newly bereaved, you just think, ‘oh my God, is this what it’s going to be like forever?’ And it won’t be exactly the same like that forever. There are ways forward, but it’s one minute at a time, one breath at a time when you’re newly bereaved. It’s not going to go away. You are always going to grieve for that child, but you will, like you’ve just said, you grow around it, and you learn to sort of cope with it. So yeah, newly bereaved, you think, if this is how it’s always going to be, I cannot cope.
Yeah. I think for newly bereaved parents listening to this, what we’re trying to say is that you won’t feel as bad as you do, or as confused and bewildered and shocked and surprised as you do right now, as time progresses. But you’ll always have that, the wrongness of what’s happened won’t ever leave you. But it’s okay because you’ll hopefully have learned some other strategies to let you get on with your life as well. [00:12:00] So it won’t be the one thing that is in your vision like it is at the start.
We’ve talked about how we might express ourselves or behave in this early period, but simply just acknowledging that crying is a really obvious way that you might want to express yourself, letting it out is always helpful. And it might be that sometimes this comes like a big flood and sometimes it’s like a leaky tap. It might take you a long time to start. I didn’t really cry for quite a long time. And then once I did, I just, I cried whatever I was doing. I cried going around the shop, I cried driving the car, I cried walking the dog. It just seemed that I did everything with tears in my eyes for, for several months. That’s a fairly natural way to express how you’re feeling at the time. It’s definitely not the time to worry about what other people might think about you crying all the time.
It’s like a pressure cooker with the valve on it. And I always say the crying bit is like your valve. It releases the pressure within that pressure cooker. I’ve learned that I am a crier. I cry when I’m [00:13:00] happy, I cry when I’m sad, I cry when I’m upset, I cry when I’m angry. But now I’ve learned to love the fact that I cry because that’s my that’s my pressure cooker valve, letting off the steam, rather than trying to suppress it, you know, and thinking, I can’t cry, keep it together.
That’s why sometimes funerals, you know, people seem to think, oh, yes, she’ll cry at the funeral, but then after that, you know, oh, got to get over it type thing. Now, you cry, as you’ve just said, walking around the shop. If you feel like a cry, have a cry. Don’t be worried about other people’s reactions, that’s another thing I’ve learned. It says more about them than it does about you.
One of the other things that might be something that’s happening for the newly bereaved people is the difficulty about, you might want to talk about your child and what’s just happened over and over. Because you’re trying to make sense of it in your mind and you want to talk about them, but other people around you can be [00:14:00] more reluctant to mention your child’s name because they don’t want to upset you and they don’t want to go over things that they think might be upsetting for you.
What I would say is, if you can, tell people that you want to talk about it and you want to talk about your child. Give them the permission to listen and support you and to bring up your child’s name if they can. That’s going to be okay, or not. Whatever works for you, but other people won’t know. And although you don’t feel like you’re in control, you are, particularly you are in terms of telling people how much you want to talk about your child, or how little. Talk about your child as much as you want, but let other people know if you do or don’t want to do that. Yeah, and I think people will take their lead from you as well. Because they don’t know what to do, and sometimes they can’t do right for doing wrong.
And they think they’re doing the right thing. I had this go on quite early on, when I lost my daughter. You know, I just [00:15:00] said, you can’t say her name. And, you know, friends said, well, I didn’t, you know, know whether to, whether it would upset you. You cannot upset me any more than I am already. And by you saying her name or acknowledging the fact that she was here very briefly, but she was here, that lightens my heart a little bit when it’s feeling so heavy.
It’s so hard in the early days for you to get your head right. So how is everyone around you meant to know how to deal with you? Sometimes they don’t mean to say the wrong thing or behave in a certain way. It’s more they don’t know what to do.
And you can be hypersensitive. You’re very sensitive at that time to everything. So, things that might not previously have bothered you about what someone said, you can feel much more wounded in this sensitive state. And that’s okay. Hopefully that level of wounding will heal a little as well as time passes. But it is all very tricky around what the right [00:16:00] thing is to do and what the wrong thing is. And people will make mistakes, but they’re genuinely coming from a good place. I think that’s what you need to recognise, is that even if they’re cocking it up, they’re not trying to, they really are trying to make things better for you.
One of the other points that I wanted to touch on was how and where can newly bereaved parents find support when they might not even really have a clue what they need. What are your thoughts around that?
I think support groups and talking to other parents. It sometimes blows me away, especially now, being in the Alder Centre and the Child Death Helpline, because that’s manned by bereaved parents. It’s the empathy there, so the support groups are really, really good. Even if there is waiting lists, put your name down for counselling first as well. When it comes round to your name getting there, you might feel like, no, I’ve talked it through, I’ve found a support group. Doing something for yourself as well. You know, I tried [00:17:00] lots of different things, yoga, you know, things like that. Religion and your faith can sometimes help as well. And taking a bit of time for you.
Cause for me, it was, it was the conversations in my head all the time. Oh, should I be doing this? Should I be feeling this? Should I be doing this? Should I have moved on? And you’re just going, well, yeah, no. And your brain just doesn’t stop. I went back to church, and I used to like sitting in church for an hour just to still my mind and then I was able to carry on with my day. It was that stilling your mind and then I just replaced going to church with yoga.
Yeah, it can be reading a book, can be watching telly. I stared at the entire 22 series of Criminal Minds, I think, in that first year after Dan died. I couldn’t tell you the plot or anything that happened in any of them, but they moved in front of my eyes, and it stopped me thinking or it allowed my brain to just pause for a bit anyway. So, I did a lot of that. God only knows how many hours that all adds up to. [00:18:00] That’s what kind of got me through – that, and going for walks out in nature because I found the simple act of putting one foot in front of another was like, well I am going somewhere, I am moving, I am getting some fresh air. That, I found, valuable, just physically moving my body from one place to another was a good thing to do.
Like you say, there’s more groups now and there are things like online forums, closed Facebook groups for bereaved parents, so they’re very supportive and welcoming environments. So, if you don’t quite know what to do or where to go, something like an online forum that you can observe or join in or vent, whatever you want to do, that can be quite a helpful way of finding some support quite gently, really.
There are organisations, like you say, like Cruse, for example, who do counselling, and I know that that’s a different experience, depending on where you are, and again, waiting lists might be higher in some areas than others. And then there’s helplines too, so maybe now’s a good time for you to tell us more about the Child Death [00:19:00] Helpline.
The Child Death Helpline is open every day of the year, and we are bereaved parents at the end of the phone, but that’s not to say the line is just for bereaved parents. We deal with anyone, any questions, any queries. We are mainly there for bereaved parents, but we have had grandparents ring up as well, it’s anyone affected by a child loss at any stage.
So, if that child was lost in pregnancy, or infant, or adult, we’ve had elderly parents ring up who have lost their middle aged child and they’re just reaching out to talk to another parent at how awful it feels when your child has gone before you.
That’s great, Michelle. And I guess, aside from those formal kinds of support, there’s the practical things that friends and family can maybe help with. I don’t know how to do the shopping anymore, or I don’t want to go around the supermarket, because I used to do that with my child. [00:20:00] So, saying to people, can you go and do it for me? Because people are desperate to do something. You know, often just saying to them, well, this is the practical help that I need, or these are the bits I’m not coping with, and asking somebody to help you. That can be something that you can do.
Yeah, and I think we do people. a disservice by not asking them, because as you’ve just said, they are desperate to help in whatever small way they can. So, reaching out, I think, you know, as a bereaved parent, that initial reaching out. is just the biggest thing. And once you’ve done it once, you know, and I’ve talked it through or I’ve gone to yoga or I’ve gone for a walk and you come back and you go, yeah, I feel better.
And it’s just, as you’ve said, putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward and moving forward through your grief. That’s what you’re doing.
Yeah, I think when everything is difficult and everything is confusing, if you can simply focus on the basics, like trying to get sleep, just taking some food on board, [00:21:00] because you might not feel that you need or you want it, but like you will have found speaking to other bereaved families, a little bit of routine offers a little bit of stability in a world that’s become really quite unstable for you.
And even if you just see food and sleep as kind of necessary fuel, so that you can just be, you know, still here and present, then fine, view them like that. Don’t worry about the emotions, this is just biology that we’re talking about. But a simple routine, a little bit of fresh air every day, even if it’s just a walk to the shop and back to get a Twix, whatever. Just very simple routines, very simple self-care routines, I think. Focus on those, the rest will follow.
We’ve talked through quite a lot already, and listeners might be finding it all a bit overwhelming, so we’ll have a short break. Now’s the time to press pause. Go and get a brew and a biscuit, take a breath of fresh air, and just give yourself a moment.
Come back when you’re ready, and we’ll carry on.[00:22:00]
Okay, Michelle, we’ve all had a moment to refresh ourselves, so let’s carry on. Quite a common thing that happens, which is, you know, why is my partner grieving differently to me? Is that something that you get coming up on the helpline at all?
Definitely. We do see a difference in the grief patterns between partners. The onus is on the mother at first, and especially in the early days, you know, I can remember people coming to the house and asking me, Partner, is Michelle okay? How is Michelle? And he stood there, and it’s not until a while afterwards when you start picking things apart, That you suddenly go, how must he have felt?
They’re coming in and they’re saying to him, How’s Michelle? But he’s lost his daughter as well. We lost her [00:23:00] together as a family. But when you’re newly bereaved, I always say this, a little bit, not selfish, but, wrapped up in your grief bubble. You’re not thinking of your partner at that time. With my partner initially, you know, we went through some tough times, I’ll be honest, where it felt to me at that time he didn’t care.
And now I know that’s totally wrong. It’s because we were grieving totally differently. And that was hard, and all I can say to newly bereaved couples is keep them lines of communication open and they may not feel or voice it the same as you, but they are feeling it, and it will eventually come together.
It can bring a couple together, yeah, and make them a bit stronger. I think that’s what it done with me, eventually, not originally.
I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how many partnerships have survived child [00:24:00] loss. Testament to some of the strength of partnerships and the good communication and the patience and the tolerance that people have shown to each other and it’s a really wonderful, reassuring thing to know if you’re in those early stages and you actually feel like not only are you on different pages, you’ve been reading different books, you know, then it’s okay. You know, you might find out that actually you can talk to each other about those books and share what you’ve learned from those books and that actually you’ve gained twice the insight.
I think it’s hard when, um, one person is perhaps throwing themselves back into work really quickly and appears to be getting on with life while the other one can’t get off the settee and get a shower. It is difficult, but I think if you’re both able to acknowledge that that’s just what each of you needs to do right now, then that’s a good starting point.
But like you said, the lines of communication, even if it’s just to acknowledge what each other’s doing. Not necessarily understand it, but I acknowledge it. I couldn’t leave the house, I couldn’t get washed, and my partner went [00:25:00] back to work quite quickly, and I really struggled with that. You know, how can he just ping back to work?
I don’t know whether he was going into the bathroom at work and having a quiet cry, and then coming back to his, you know, the facade. But that was his coping mechanism. And don’t get me wrong, we did have some clashes, but ultimately it was them lines of communication and understanding. When I did go for counselling, he never entered into counselling, still hasn’t to today.
It’s now he’s started to sort of ask more questions, and plus ten years ago it was around the mums. Now dads are getting more support as well, you know, there’s the football groups that are popping up, up and down the country, with Sands, For Louis.
There’s a lot more for dads out there now. There’s a couple of podcasts, called Dad Still Standing, and there’s another one that I forget, but I will put a link to. And I know one of the organizations that I’ll be speaking to, somebody [00:26:00] from, from Reuben’s Retreat, who, as part of the podcast series, and they’ve got a Dad’s group. There’s definitely been a swing towards recognizing men’s specific needs as grieving dads.
So yeah, it is much better now, definitely. You’ve got a son as well. Yes. Um, how did you help him? How can people help their other children if they’ve, they’ve experienced child loss?
My son was nine at the time when, and he was excited about becoming a big brother. Still gets to me now and I can still picture it, having to give him that information, that she would not be coming home, he would not be that big brother.
It was like my world crumpled again because I broke his world. Then you see the look on the face that he was worried about me. And I took advice from the school, if they’re school aged children, I would advise speaking to the school. And there’s like Winston’s Wish out there. They’re really good with the schools.
And the school, the headmaster was really good. And [00:27:00] he said,‘go at his speed. And if he wants to come back to school, that’s great. And then if he, if he did want to come home, we would ring you’. The teacher then opened up and told me he’d suffered a bereavement as a child, and he remembered going to school because it was normality.
Because he said, ‘everything’s going on at home. People are coming and going, speaking in whispers. Children sometimes get sent to their rooms because, you know, mum’s become upset or dad’s become upset. Going to school can be a bit of normality to them’. So, my son did go back to school a couple of days later.
That also instilled a little bit of routine for me, even though sometimes I didn’t want to drive him to school. Don’t get me wrong, I still drove him to school on the days I didn’t feel like it, but I was in my pyjamas. Didn’t get out the car. It was later on when he knew I was going for counselling, he asked me about the counselling.
So, I told him. Well, what do you do? So I tell him, you know, I talk about Alice and what went on and it was [00:28:00] only then he said to me, well can children go? And I felt a bit of mum guilt then, I hadn’t even asked and, you know, I asked my own counsellor, and he was able to go for counselling and I think that’s why he is so balanced now as a young adult.
He does talk about it and, you know, we’ve, we’ve had other bereavements in the family since then and he’s dealt with them really well. He’s very open with his emotions, and I think it’s because of that in the early years, because he wasn’t sort of told to suppress it, you know, and just shoved in the corner.
So, I think for siblings, it’s hard, and it’s age dependent as well. How much information do you give them? You know, we’d told him that Alice was sick. He was nine. We didn’t want to go into the gory details. We just said she’s sick and she’s passed away. We are going to see her, and we are going to have a funeral for her, but she won’t be coming home with us.
How we put it over to them. It does depend on how old your child is and how you might explain it. [00:29:00] And there’ll be lots of hints and tips within those resources that we put links to, to help you start those conversations or to build on what you’ve already begun.
One of the things I think that children of any age can feel is that they’ve got to be strong for their mum and dad, um, and actually they don’t have to stay strong. They can be sad too and finding ways to make sure they understand that permission and that, yeah, they can go back to school and see their friends if they want to or whatever. I think there’s, there’s lots of conversations to be had and, and there is some support out there too, to have those now, which is good.
I want to touch on some other considerations that often arise when you’re newly bereaved. Firstly, um, the idea that people can feel very conflicted about the prospect of having more children.
I have gone on to have another son and that was hard as well to make that decision to try again after Alice, but you’ve got to do what’s right for you and there’s no right or wrong in this for anything.
I think one of the other things [00:30:00] that I’d want to mention for any newly bereaved parents is that if you’ve lost your only child, it can feel like that future has been completely ripped away, particularly if you’re not in a position to have other children, and it can be really hard to find a point or a purpose to anything.
You know, I was a parent to an only child. And it feels like you drop off a cliff because your one line to the future has gone and that can feel quite specifically difficult to deal with, particularly if you’re not part of a big family, or, you know, it can be incredibly isolating, especially if you’re a single parent like I was too. But there are mechanisms for support out there. Again, we’ll put links on for that.
What you got to remember, you are still a mum. And you still honour them children or that child.
Yeah, definitely. I think it took me quite a while to accept that I wasn’t Dan’s mum in the day-to-day sense [00:31:00] of making his tea and washing his athletics kit. But I know now I’ll always be Dan’s mum. And that’s a great thing. He’s still with me in my thoughts. And he drives quite a lot of my actions in everyday life too. So, his impact on my life continues, just in a very, very different way. But I think it’s important to realize that your child will still be with you.
That sort of moves me on, really, to the next part about when you’re newly bereaved, there’s that worry about, ‘I’m frightened that I’ll forget my child’. And I can remember thinking I had to have Dan’s memorial, we had his funeral, his cremation, which was a very private event for just a few immediate friends and family. But then we had a bigger memorial, and I remember thinking, he died at the end of May. If we don’t have it by mid-June, everyone will have forgotten about him. And I mean, now looking back up, it was a few weeks afterwards, and of course they wouldn’t. But at the time, in that place where you feel that young people’s lives particularly move so fast, Dan was 15, and I felt like his friends would have moved [00:32:00] on really quickly, but obviously not.
And, and actually just a few weeks after the event of losing Dan is not very long at all. And the fear of forgetting is very, very real.
Yeah, totally. And photographs is another one. You know, I can remember having a meltdown obviously because I was pregnant, and we did take photographs of Alice after she’d arrived.
I hadn’t took a photograph of just her face. And I remember ringing my mum frantic. Mum, mum, on your phone, have you took one? And my mum was like, oh, I’ll have a look through. And she got caught up in the franticness of it. And looking back now, it doesn’t matter really. I’ve got photographs, and at the end of the day, I won’t forget she was here.
You know, no one will forget them. It is like you’ve just said about Dan, you think, oh, people have forgotten. And I’d always, in my own mind, I’d sort of set up these goals, when it got to 10 year anniversary, that’s it. I will stop me [00:33:00] volunteering, I will stop doing this. I have got to move on, as people say to you.
And here I am in this job now, so I’m not moving on. But I just, in my own head, I’d had that goal, and it got to her 10th birthday, which was in January this year. I thought, no, I want to do something to finish it. So I thought, right, I’m going to invite the people. The funeral was very small. I’m going to invite the people that were at the funeral to just come and have their tea with us.
And then, being, you know, typical Scouser, it sort of grew arms and legs a little bit, so I bought an illuminated ‘ten’ sign to put up in the little room that the local restaurant done for us, and there was only about 15 of us invited, and it amazed me. I don’t know what I thought I was going to feel when I walked into that room, but I was just overwhelmed and I did burst out crying, again, my pressure valve.
Um, but it wasn’t because it made me [00:34:00] sad. I was so touched that people had taken the time to come. And of course, I’ve got no photographs of Alice for the past ten years. And my friends had done a, like a memory wall, which is all different photographs from the past 10 years of different events I’ve done, or fundraisers I’d done and put them all together on like a six foot wall it was, with the number 10.
And that just blew me away seeing the past 10 years, what we’d achieved because of Alice. And in Alice’s name, and Alice’s legacy, and her story. Because I don’t say it’s my story, I say it’s her story. Because this is still her journey, that’s how I bring her along, and that’s how we remember her. Um, she’s still very much a part of things.
People don’t forget, and what amazed me is on her [00:35:00] 10th birthday thing that we done, friends were talking to me about her actual funeral. I was in a daze, to be honest with you, so some of it I was hearing for the first time, and how they felt, they were finally, 10 years on, telling me how they felt at the funeral, which just amazed me.
So, yeah, you may feel like you may forget them, but you won’t, and others will keep that memory alive as well. They will.
Yeah, definitely. And I think it’s important to hear that now when you’re newly bereaved, your child will not be forgotten. And it might be that in the earlier days, you want to create memorials of all sorts of kinds to try and keep the memory alive, to kind of do something very practical. So that can be anything from framing bits of their artwork that they might have done, or planting trees, or making stickers out of their faces to give to their friends. There’s so many different active memorials that [00:36:00] you can do, and we’re going to put lots of links to things like that on the web page.
How can I find hope? I think that’s something that when you’re newly bereaved, as the numbness wears off, you’re like, where is the hope in the world for me? Am I going to feel like this forever? And I think that’s a terrifying existential sort of thought. And it’s the thing that I see when I look at bereaved parent forums. That’s what people are reaching out for in the early days. ‘Please give me some hope that I won’t feel this awful forever’. And I’m sure that’s something that comes up for you at the helpline.
Most definitely. And in the support groups and in the peer support, you feel stuck. At the beginning, you know, ‘oh my gosh, is this gonna be me?’
But it won’t always be like this. I can remember in the early days thinking, oh, I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud. And then the first time that you do laugh out loud, you beat yourself up over it because you think, I shouldn’t be laughing out loud because I’m a, you know, bereaved parent.
But that’s [00:37:00] part of taking them with you. That’s the only way I can support it. They will always be there and it’s how you choose to bring them along on this journey as well. They will be part of the laughter, they will be part of the tears, they’ll be part of the celebrations. There’s a thing at one of the support groups that I used to go to about shoes and I know there’s a well-known poem about walking in my shoes.
They want, you know, these shoes of our grief, basically. I really identified with the shoe one because I always say before Alice, I was a bit of a party girl and, you know, used to be out quite a lot and I had these lovely red satin shoes that I used to go out in, and I just couldn’t bring myself to wear them after Alice.
I wasn’t going out there often, but I just could not wear them because that was like the old me. But when I’d done a sponsored walk for SANDS, I decorated a pair of trainers with Alice’s name on. And then I’d also bought a small pair [00:38:00] of pink shoes when I was pregnant that’s in her memory box. And through the support group that I was at, at the local maternity hospital, I took a picture of all three sets of shoes together.
Because that’s my journey. The red satin shoes. There was the trainers with her name on, and ultimately there’s her little pink shoes that she never got to wear. Yeah, you’ll move on. You won’t forget them. They’re with you.
I know for me that, like, hope just comes from just knowing that I’ve got Dan in my head and my heart. He’s just a constant sort of source of comfort and joy. He’s on the journey with me now. And it takes time to reach that level of comfort with Dan. With that sort of acceptance, but I also know that the hope for me came from just knowing that I wasn’t alone, and the others have already been here and they haven’t just survived, they’ve thrived despite having lost a child, that actually it is survivable. It’s okay, you can have a worthwhile, interesting, vibrant, fun, loving [00:39:00] life, and it doesn’t lessen the sadness you have for your child. And I feel like I honour Dan by every sort of positive thing I do.
Yeah, that’s it. Like you were saying about in the initial days, I took to walking as well, and I’m lucky enough to be by the beach, and I used to absolutely love to walk down to the beach and watch the sunset, and it’s just beautiful, and I think yeah, okay, She didn’t get to see that and she doesn’t get to experience that with me. But I’m doing things in her memory. You take your pleasure there on that journey with you. Also the people, you know, I have met some absolutely amazing people on this journey, families that I just think, how have you got through this?
And then I have to remind myself, I’m a bereaved parent as well. I honour each one of them and during Baby Loss Awareness Week, this year, I asked for them to send their names in and I wrote names on [00:40:00] ribbons and tied them to the local bandstand. And as I was tying them on, each and every one of them, you know, thinking of the story behind each of them names just blew me away.
And I’m thankful to have been a little bit of a part of that child’s journey and honouring their memory as well. And I’m thankful for Alice and her twin. They both taught me different things. They’ve both put me on this journey. It mightn’t have been the journey I thought I would be on years ago, but I’m here.
And, I’m thankful that she did come into my life, that she did choose me to be her mum. I’m not here doing the girly parties for her for her 10th birthday, but I’m still honouring her memory and I will continue to do that. And that’s something quite wonderful to hold on to, I think.
Well, we’ve covered some heavy ground, so it’s time to lighten our step again now. I’ll be asking each guest to tell us something they’re grateful for, and the flimsier and more lighthearted the [00:41:00] better. So, Michelle, what have you chosen?
I am absolutely grateful for cake and biscuits because even in the early days I may have forgotten to eat a meal but I would never forget to eat a chocolate bar and I still do that now.
That’s my go to. If I’m feeling sad or lonely or just wanna reward myself, it’s chocolate. And when I used to sometimes do peer support and I would go and visit the families sometimes if they weren’t up to coming to the centers or the, or the hospitals. And I’d make it my business to get some luxury biscuits.
And what I used to say to them when they’d open the door, put the kettle on, and we’re going to treat ourselves. We might not be able to get out the door, but we can treat ourselves to some luxury biscuits. So yeah, biscuits, chocolate and cake.
Me too. That’s perfect. Thank you so much, Michelle.
Well, listeners, I hope that if you’re newly bereaved, you’ve found some comfort, some [00:42:00] support, some reassurance, and just a little bit of hope. All the organizations we’ve mentioned are listed on our episode listing and there are even more resources on our webpage. You can reach me with any of your feedback or thoughts at hello@bereavedparentsclub.org.uk and please do share the podcast amongst your networks so that we can reach everyone who might benefit.
Finally, if you want to know more about my grief journey, you can find a link to my book, Midowed: A Mother’s Grief, on our webpage.
Thank you for listening. This episode is dedicated to Alice.