Summer– this wonderful time when people relax, enjoy each other’s company, and celebrate with family. This can be a difficult time for the bereaved. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded with images of families together, enjoying each other’s company. If you’re newly bereaved, it’s likely you had images of yourself during these warm, lazy months– whether those were images of yourself nine months pregnant, or toting a newborn to Cape Cod, it’s hard to shed the knowledge of what we “should” be doing.
When I was newly bereaved, the times that were most difficult were the very concrete places where I’d planned to take my new baby. On a daily basis, while I knew Charlotte would have been with me, I didn’t know exactly what I’d be doing with her. But when the time came to go up to our family cottage in Ontario, I was overwhelmed by how difficult it was to go there without her. This was a place I’d come to every year of my own life, and for the duration of the school year, I had envisioned bringing my own baby there to begin her own lifetime of summers on the lake. When we arrived empty armed, my heart broke all over again.
It had been ten weeks and I somehow didn’t expect this new wave of sudden, super intense grief. But looking back it made perfect sense– I had envisioned this moment a thousand times. Pulling up in the car, cousins and aunts surrounding me as I stepped out, proudly displaying my new baby. Instead, here I was, trying as inconspicuously as possible to sneak into the back door of the cottage without being spotted. I walked onto the front porch, took in the view that was so familiar to me, and broke into a thousand pieces more harshly than I had when I returned to my own home after Charlotte died.
Here I was. I was no longer in shock. I had no cushion of the disarray and confusion that the first weeks after a baby’s death brings. I was simply alone, at my ancestral family home, without my baby. Sometimes, the fact that a loss is not new makes it even harder to bear.
Not all of you will have moments that you remember or experience that are this stark. But I’m certain that you’ve all noticed that there are certain times and places that feel harder to exist in without your baby. While all our stories are different, all of us who have experienced the death of a baby know that sometimes a new situation can bring about sudden waves of grief we hadn’t anticipated. The waves can rock us for quite some time, and all we can do is cling to the sides of the boat and hope that smoother waters lie ahead. Thank you for being in my boat, because knowing I am not alone does bring me great comfort.
Carol.