“You never get over the loss of a child”

I was re-reading some of my old emails from Mum the other day when one comment she made struck me.  The email is from November 8, 2012.

“I was playing some songs on my iPad, and one was Frankie Valli singing Rag Doll and Dad cried.

“Rag Doll was on the album we got in the mail the day of Debbie’s funeral, and it struck a chord with us both.  Whenever we hear it, it has that effect on us.  I hugged him and he sobbed for a while.  You never get over the loss of a child.  Debbie turned 39 this year and we both recall her stillbirth like it was yesterday.”

I re-read the email with a fresh significance given our loss of Nathanael — who was stillborn eight years ago next Sunday (October 30).

Having read the email, I quickly played Rag Doll on YouTube and it immediately struck a chord for me, too.  Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons takes me back to my earliest years.  Mum and Dad would play the LPs on the stereogram and my brothers and I would play. I was only 6 when Mum and Dad lost Debbie and my little brother was 4 and a half.  Our youngest brother arrived 15 months after Debbie was stillborn.

Music such as this, with the loss of Mum, with the loss of Nathanael, with the loss of Debbie farther back in the background, elicits such paradoxically tangible but unreachable emotion.

As I type these words, I have Rag Doll playing on a YouTube loop.

I know that Mum and Dad struggled a lot with our loss of Nathanael.  Like most parents and grandparents, their sadness was always a little hidden from us, and this was because Mum especially sought to support us.  But Mum was always up for truth talk in terms of loss.  And these days, with Mum gone, Dad is too.

Note the words of my dearly departed mother: “You never get over the loss of a child... we recall her stillbirth like it was yesterday.”  Nearly 40 years after.  Sadly for Mum and Dad, less than two years into the future at the point of her saying this in the email (2012) they had to endure another stillbirth; Nathanael.  A true vicarious grief of a son losing a child.  I’m so thankful for my mother’s faithfulness during this period of our lives, a faithfulness we enjoyed from all four parents, mine and Sarah’s.

I’m not sure everyone understands the grief we speak of.  Many try to make comparisons between losses and what grief is harder and easier to bear.  Many also imagine that grief should ebb away over the years.  In some ways it might.  But what is lost is lost and what is lost ought to be remembered and honoured.

Debbie would have been 50 next September, and at least one solace we have is that Mum’s with both Debbie and Nathanael now.

Thank you, Mum, again, for bearing your losses so authentically well, that is in tears and in support of Dad and all of us, during your life.

IMAGE: Mum holding Nathanael, October 31, 2014, which would have taken much strength, but her and Dad did it for us.