Always With Me: Parents talk about the death of a child

By Sharkey Donna McCart

How does a parent cope after the death of a child? Each essay in Always With Me: Parents Talk about the Death of a Child reveals the experiences of parents who have lived through the devastation and upheaval of their child’s death. Parents describe the maelstrom they face in their inner landscapes, coping strategies, and realigned place in the world. The writers in this collection of stories take on such topics as shock and isolation, despair, guilt, and how they attempt to make sense of their shattered lives. They offer insights into how their grief and loss are worked through, and why certain personal connections are severed, others strengthened. Importantly, they describe how, with lives altered indelibly, they try to press forward to find a new place in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781772581928

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Me

Copyright © 2018 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Funded by the Government of Canada

Financé par la gouvernement du Canada

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Always with me : parents talk about the death of a child / Donna McCart Sharkey, editor.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-77258-169-0 (softcover)

1. Children—Death—Psychological aspects. 2. Parents—Psychology. 3. Bereavement—Psychological aspects. I. Sharkey, Donna, editor

BF575.G7A38 2018 155.9’37085 C2018-903959-0

Always with Me

Parents Talk about the Death of a Child

EDITED BY

Donna McCart Sharkey

DEMETER PRESS

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Donna McCart Sharkey

1.

Objects We Hold

Martha Royea

2.

Jesse’s Story

Stephanie Gilman

3.

Different Worlds

Suzanne Corbeil

4.

I Can’t Imagine It

Lorna Thomas

5.

Crash

Lisa Whiteside

6.

Alessandra

Donna McCart Sharkey

7.

Airborne

Martha Royea

8.

Something I Want You to Know

Martha Royea

9.

Ten Days Apart

Jacquelyn Johnston

10.

Kevin

Roy Patterson

11.

Sorrow Seasons

Tara McGuire

12.

Worlds Apart

Becky Livingston

13.

Christmases

Jane Davey-Keogh

14.

Memory Box

Judy Lynne

15.

When David Was Killed

Randie Clark

16.

What I Never Knew

Antoine Babinsky

17.

Four Poems

Laura Apol

18.

Randy

Bonnie Hardy

19.

Guess It’s Time to Put it Down

Barb Duncan

20.

Hole in My Heart

Micheline Lepage

21.

Still

Linda Turner

22.

Living My Best Life for My Son, Chris

Elaine Dean

23.

Goodnight Irene

Susan Doyle Lawrence

24.

Life after Losing My Son

Ingrid Draayer

25.

Evensong

Martha Royea

26.

Don’t Worry about Getting Old, Mum

Bonnie Waterstone

27.

Joy Reclaimed—Twenty Years After

Cathy Sosnowsky

28.

In Memory

Barb Hayduk

29.

However Did We Survive?

Andy Bond

30.

Daniel

Sylvia Pasher

31.

The Bird

Judith Maguet

About the Contributors

Acknowledgements

From the bottom of my heart, I thank the contributors to this anthology for sharing their poignant stories and for doing so with such openheartedness. I owe tremendous gratitude to my Bereaved Families group—Madeleine, Michel, Kim, Barb, Sylvie, Antoine, Elaine, Sean, Ingrid, Jane, and Dilys—who embraced the idea of this book from the beginning and never stopped asking how it was coming along. My heartfelt thanks to Maureen Cullingham, whose editing in the early stages was invaluable and to Chris Fox, who provided critical comments and suggestions. For their guidance and encouragement, my gratitude goes to Lynne van Luven and Kitty Lewis. Thank you to Carolyn Smart for the use of her lines in the epigraph. Much appreciation and a huge thank you to Andrea O’Reilly, my publisher at Demeter Press, who strongly supported this project, worked wonders, and did so at lightning speed. It was a privilege to work with Andrea, who has devoted so much of her life to issues surrounding motherhood. It is an honour to have my book included in her outstanding press. Enormous thanks to my sister, Arleen Pare, with whom I had many conversations about this project and who has been a wellspring of inspiration. Her encouragement, support, and clarity have sustained me throughout. Finally, my appreciation to my late parents, Tom and Irene McCart, and deep gratitude to my daughter, Renata, who is a woman of courage, and who knew and loved her older sister, Alessandra.

To parents whose children have died before them

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

—Zelda Fitzgerald

When one’s own heart-child goes to death

What’s left?

—Carolyn Smart

Introduction

DONNA MCCART SHARKEY

When a child dies, you bury the child in your heart.

—Korean proverb

WHEN I LOST MY DAUGHTER, I was still a mother, but different—a mother whose child has died. When people ask me now how many children do you have? I pause. What to say to this person?

A parent’s worst nightmare—the death of a child.

I have lived every parent’s worst nightmare, which is true of every parent in this anthology.

When my daughter, Alessandra, died three years ago, I was unmoored from reality. I clenched to life like someone stranded at sea. My breathing became shallow. My life emptied out. I needed to not forget my daughter’s voice, her big smile, her effervescence, her deep loyalty, and how she mostly loved life, except when she didn’t. Some friends surprised me with kindness and compassion. Others never acknowledged my child’s death, the unsaid dangling in the air.

I started to make notes about my feelings, about my daughter and about life, on envelopes in my car, on scraps of paper beside my bed in the middle of the night—anytime, anywhere. Writing and reading were the places I went to. They were my way to try to come to terms with the impossible and untenable. I read every book I could find in the Ottawa Public Library and the University of Ottawa library on grief, on dying, on loss, and I still could not find any resonating personal account from a grieving mother’s point of view. Nothing spoke to me about my own sadness, and I could find few examples of parents telling their own stories of this type of pain. This inspired me to produce that book myself.

This book is what my reading became. Like me, parents contributing to this book wanted and needed to know other parents’ experiences: how life goes on, how the pain is handled, and if it can be transformed. The book further opens these discussions, so often closeted. I hope this dialogue will extend beyond the closed doors of bereavement group meeting rooms and counsellor offices.

From the beginning, this project felt right. I was reassured by responses I received when I talked to people about the book. Some people looked horrified and said such things as: How morbid, you shouldn’t be talking about it or Couldn’t you do something less dismal, less depressing? or Why would you ever do this? I appreciated these comments. They set my resolve, and spurred me on just as much as the encouraging responses I got about the project. I thank all those who took the time to talk with me about this book.

This book confronts a life experience many people find hard to imagine. Everyone thinks of death at some point—at times, even their own death. Many people, at some point, imagine the death of their child, although almost no one wants to think it could ever happen. They say, I can’t imagine it. They say, it’s too painful to think about. We who have lost a child are the fear of every parent. We are the ones other parents never want to be. We are who we never wanted to be. Others may be afraid to say our child’s name in front of us. And whereas other family members who have experienced loss have names like orphans or widows, we have no designation.

This anthology was borne of love and grief, each story written through tears and into deep memories. It was also borne of change—family structure that has fractured, holidays that will never be the same, a Mother’s Day or a birthday six years later that can sideswipe. Tears come, even much later, unexpectedly. The emotional shock can return and can still numb.

Some parents told me they wanted to write their story, but then they found it too heartbreaking. One mother said to me, after much thought, I just can’t do it. I sit down and try to write, but I just cry. I understood. Writing my own story left me depleted each time I wrote. At times, I sobbed looking at the words as they formed on my computer screen.

For all of us who contributed to the book, writing these stories was a return to raw emotion. We were on our own, writing. During the writing process, parents told me what it was like for them. One woman said, Writing my story makes me realize I’m one of the walking wounded. Another said, As I’m writing this, I’m moving through some dark times. We all know these times so well. And another mother said, I’m struggling to express in words my ineffable experience of grief. I’ve been procrastinating. It’s not easy, but I need to tell the story.

The writers in this anthology tell how the death of a child is different from other losses. They describe the shock and devastation, their emergence from mourning, the maelstrom of their inner landscapes, and how grief and loss are worked through. They detail their coping strategies. They talk about their isolation. Guilt, despair, fear, depression, regrets, and relationship changes are dissected. Life after six months, one year, ten years. Sorrow that brings them to their knees.

They chronicle how it takes time to be comfortable again in large groups, to breathe more loosely, to taste food, to sit up straight, to make a joke, and to be with people without thinking that what’s going through their mind is I’m talking to a mother whose child has died. Authors talk about how they attempt to make sense of their lives, their new perspectives on the world, and their place in it—their indelibly altered lives.

For each parent, the story is a labour of love and a labour of grief. Barb Duncan starts her chapter Guess It’s Time to Put It Down by talking about the difficulty of writing about this topic. Suzanne Corbeil talks about the pull of how much of a child’s life story ought to be told in order to understand the parent’s grief: How can I begin to talk about the grieving process without telling the story of the life that was lost?

Others talk about the shock of being told their child is dead. A police officer knocked on Tara McGuire’s door and asked her if William Holden Courage is her son: That was all I needed to hear. In that instant, looking in his damp reluctant eyes, I knew it was the worst possible news. When those words hit my heart…the world, the universe as I knew it, shattered. Randie Clark received a phone call from her son’s friend. David was robbed tonight, and there was a knife, and he was stabbed, and he’s dead.

Cathy Sosnowsky asks if she and her husband could have saved their child from death at the same time as knowing they could not have. Her son died in the late evening: If we’d stayed awake, could we have saved him? Of course not.

The last time Stephanie Gilman spoke with her daughter was during a phone conversation. She told her that they would continue talking when she got home: We would never talk again. Before I got home that afternoon, Jesse hanged herself in her bedroom.

Jacquelyn Johnston asks the reader a hard question. What if your two children died ten days apart in separate accidents? How would you feel?

Some parents discuss the difficulty of going on after their child’s death. Becky Livingston gives her reason: But there’s Charlotte. My living daughter.

Parents discuss what life is like shortly after the funeral and then afterward. Lorna Thomas tells us that she was barely able to leave the house: I lost interest in everything…. I cried constantly, retreating to the spare room in our house. One day I could not stop crying, a whole day of tears. And Judith Maguet faced her first Christmas without her son with trepidation.

Three years after her son died, Martha Royea sometimes thinks, I don’t believe he’s gone. I think, Rick hasn’t called for a while. I think, one of these days the phone will ring. Nine years after her son Jesse died, Ingrid Draayer describes life as living in a parallel universe among the whole nuclear families. For Micheline Lepage, the pain and emptiness never go away—they just get more manageable.

Most stories we read on other topics end with a resolution. The lonely adolescent comes out of her shell. The couple, unhappy for years, do get a divorce and happily start anew. The shy woman lands a dream job. We all cheer. But after the death of a child, there is rarely this kind of turnaround. The usual story arc is more like a beleaguered and ill-equipped march through an unknown land, a long slough. The story rarely wraps up tidily. Nevertheless, as Leonard Cohen wrote, "There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."

I am grateful to all the contributors for their openness in sharing intimate and difficult aspects of their lives. Each of these stories is an act of courage, each an act of generosity. I trust that this book will support those who have experienced a child’s death in their own lives. Whether you are reading this because you have a child who has died, or you’re a family member, a friend, colleague, or someone with a professional or a general interest in the topic, I hope that reading this anthology will inform and open up the topic more naturally and candidly.

1.

Objects We Hold

MARTHA ROYEA

We set such store by objects. They’re what we have left of the dead: vestiges of the person we knew. We touch these things and our bodies remember their faces, their voices, their flesh. We dance with a box of ashes in our arms, and the one we loved breathes into our neck, or suckles at our breast, or tells us a story we didn’t know before, of need and longing, or of happiness or hope, or of going away now, or not quite yet. We wear their rings, the bracelets they gave us, and their old shirts or hats or jackets—clothing where the smell of them lingers. We hold them and we dance, and over time they become lighter, lighter as our arms and our hearts make room.

2.

Jesse’s Story

STEPHANIE GILMAN

MY DAUGHTER’S STORY STARTS at her birth—two months early, 1480 grams (three pounds two ounces), and with some health challenges. Although she came home after only a month in hospital, it soon became apparent that her development lagged. She was late to crawl, walk, and talk. Communication was especially difficult, leading to group and private speech therapy, and special education classes. Despite these challenges, Jesse loved learning. She would observe and listen intently. Reading came easily to her, and she devoured books, reading her favourite ones many times. She would get excited about an idea or concept, dragging the closest adult to examine and share in her discovery. The connection would often need to be interpreted, and she would beam with pleasure when her intention was understood. She particularly enjoyed history and the natural world, and desired to be an archaeologist—a career of which she could dream, if not pronounce.

Then at age twelve, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Though no picnic, the disease was diagnosed in its early stages, and the treatment regimen was a limited round of chemotherapy followed by a cord blood stem cell transplant. She met this demanding challenge with determination, finding enjoyment in the most difficult circumstances. Being confined to a hospital bed meant few limits on television and the Discovery Channel. Recovery included some setbacks, including infections and a feeding tube, and was exhausting for her. Jesse was often fatigued, reading and napping on the couch after school. She persevered, as she knew that when she was well enough she would be given a dog—she eventually chose a dachshund who loved to cuddle with her on the couch. She also enjoyed a Children’s Wish trip to Greece. She saw for herself the source of history and myth at the Acropolis, Crete, Mount Olympus, and Delphi.

Her interest in history and in myth developed into a love of fantasy. She loved comics and movies, such as The Avengers and Lord of the Rings, which led to her participating in medieval sword fighting and festivals. She was a member and volunteer with Girl Guides and for a camp for kids with cancer. She played the piano and sang in the school choir. She expressed herself creatively through art and crafts.

In many ways Jesse was a typical teenager. She shirked her chores and her schoolwork, and preferred to either read or watch videos online. But her needs and desires were often difficult to understand. She continued to be stubborn, and although she did not communicate well with verbal or written language, she seemed to expect everyone to understand her. When she couldn’t find the words to express herself she would scowl, stamp her foot, and give a harrumph of displeasure. She relied on her actions and body to communicate her feelings. What any teenager is thinking is a mystery to most parents, and Jesse often remained an enigma.

With support, Jesse was working toward her high school diploma. One exam week, she insisted that she had completed all of her work and was looking forward to a few days of break prior to her one exam. I wondered aloud if her teachers would agree and if she should return to school to ensure that everything was complete. Jesse assured me that if she needed to complete anything, she still had two days to return to school. I agreed a day’s break was fair. We had just celebrated her five-years-cancer-free milestone, and we were tired from that excitement and the end of term.

I checked with the teachers. Jesse had one outstanding assignment. She had completed the art project, but the written explanation was missing. Since written expression was Jesse’s particular difficulty, it did not surprise me that this portion of the assignment was incomplete. What concerned me was the teacher’s report of Jesse’s poor attitude and behaviour in the class regarding the assignment.

On my lunch break, I called Jesse to discuss the missing assignment and expressed my disappointment over her behaviour in class. I suggested that she forgo the Internet that afternoon and consider her assignment. Jesse reacted very strongly, growling into the phone. She could not communicate clearly. I changed my tactic and said that she seemed very upset, and I made some suggestions for calming activities, such as a walk or playing music. I said not to worry about it, and we would talk when I got home. Jesse did not say much in response but sullenly agreed.

We never talked again. Before I got home that afternoon, Jesse hanged herself in her bedroom. She was seventeen.

Jesse did not leave any explanation. Many believe she did not understand the permanence of her act. I would like to believe this is true. In the fantasy world, heroes live to see another day. There was some writing in her room in the fan fiction genre expressing how she had failed her fellow superheroes, but I do not know when she wrote it or if it was intended as a message.

Being a mother means guiding, encouraging, and disciplining when necessary, but above all, it means protecting. I did not protect my daughter from her difficulties. I encouraged her to put forth her best effort every day. Perhaps she felt that she had given her best effort and that she had failed. Or perhaps she felt a loss of identity after recovery from cancer. Or perhaps she was angry—at me, school, or others in her life. I will never know.

I continually review our last few days and conversations. Was there something I missed? What if I had said things differently? Would it have made a difference? I will never know. It is the not knowing that seems so hard and that fuels the guilt.

I was her mother, but we were buddies. I thought I knew her better than anyone. I had come to realize that it would be very difficult for Jesse to participate in a traditional workplace environment or to live independently any time soon. I hoped that she would be able to go to college, but that would have taken considerable time and effort. We would face our difficulties and problem solve together. We would