Pineapple popped her head out of her bedroom door to wonder.
‘Well, I did have a boy….’
‘Who ?’
‘Matt’.
‘No, but he’s not really your child’ . The ‘child’ was emphasised, long and drawn out.
This was not as stark as it reads, and from her point view I knew just what she had meant.
‘oh, you mean, a jumping about, being cheeky, talking, joking, kind of boy ? I smiled.
‘yeah, like wearing a spiderman suit….but why did Matt die in your tummy ? wasn’t he healthy ?’
‘I don’t know why he died, the doctors tried to find out, but they never found an answer. He was healthy, but maybe he caught a very bad cold. We just don’t know I’m afraid.’
‘Sometimes babies can get germs from their mummies’ she told me gravely.
‘I know ! I have a book about it. Guillaume and I can find the answer for you’
She was on the case with Guillaume, her current best, invincible, invisible friend. She sat on the bed with a copy of ‘How your Body Works’ (Usborne – great book!).
‘here, lets look together and talk about it….’I suggested, assuming that’s what was required, and what she wanted.
‘No! no! NO! Guillaume and I know all about it. We can tell you everything, and get the answer ourselves’.
After a quite a 5-year-old-while of staring at illustrations of a baby growing, a mummy and daddy looking pleased, she declared :
‘I’ve got it ! that’s it ! I know what happened…….Matt got to here….and went backwards‘.
I went to have a look at the explanation. She pointed to a picture of a four month old baby in the womb. Her theory was that at that point he stopped and went into a kind of backward development, back to an egg.
Not bad. And so much better than the reality.
‘Actually he got to this point’ and I showed her another illustration, of the perfectly formed baby at five months.
*******
As ever there was so much in that little conversation…
These ideas come to me straight away – others will no doubt spot more.
The human need to have an answer ‘why’ to tragedies, and to not be able to accept no explanation. This is as strong in a 5 year old as anyone. Also, not for the first time, she showed the great extent of her overall understanding, which needs to be treated with respect.
The reality is that we had a baby boy, but not finally ‘a child’, as Pineapple defined it. Her thinking is in line with most peoples, but not those who have suffered a similar loss.This difference between being pregnant, giving birth, and having a child develop to get to the point they can, say, wear a spiderman outfit (that is what counts) is at the heart of much of babyloss grief.
So - our knowledge that we have had a son, will never quite tally with the way the outside world can ever hope to see it. To claim more verges on the unhealthy. We are left only with our grief. At the worst moments I have willed the grief, as unbearable as it is, to live on. Coaxing it, drawing it out, feeling it. At least there is something of him then. I know that six months after losing him I am still allowed to say that. 5 years on however I would be likened to a Miss Havisham figure. There is still a way to go. And I mean there is a journey here for me personally, but also for the wider world to start to appreciate the particular suffering caused by stillbirth and neonatal death.
The last few weeks or so have been intensely hard. One theme that has come up with force is the need to acknowledge Matt, not just in my head, but in daily life. Hence this writing, the memorial site and more things I am sure.
Thankfully I was able to be charmed by Pineapple’s thought process, and happy that we can talk about it naturally. But only because I have been thinking so hard about all this in recent weeks was it an uplifting, not crushing, conversation. Grief needs work sometimes to enable us to deal with the everyday.
Pineapple wanted to make me feel better with her theory. That’s great empathy, but this is not her job long term. However much the points above will hurt us at times, she should not have to suffer this any more than she has already.
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