Here I am, stressing about music and concerts and whether I have enough thermal vests to do another outside gig and I’m still awake at 4am thinking about death and how bad we are as a society at talking about it.
Clive James, Gary Rhodes and Johnathan Miller died and the press and social media were awash with euphemisms. These people passed on, passed over, lost their battles, their relatives lost them, they collapsed and didn’t make it. Gary Rhodes relatives have been upset because people then speculated about the cause of his death. As the youngest of the heavenly trio, people just can’t understand how he could have died. We’ve lost our connection to the fact that it’s something we are all going to do and when and how is just a matter of luck. The pressure on medical staff to keep people alive at any cost has become immense.
The medical advances that stop people dying early are brilliant. My dad had another 32 years of healthy productive life after his first by-pass. Not only did that invention keep him alive, it also restored his fitness and meant that he could walk from Keswick to Barrow for charity and get kissed by Glorious Honeybunch (as he called her).
I have been thinking a lot about a friend and colleague, whose baby died shortly after birth. Everyone who knows her and her family is heartbroken for them. They are lost for words. Because we don’t talk about death, we are left floundering. We don’t know what to say and are fearful of saying the wrong thing. What we want to say is, “Oh my God, that is a shitty thing to happen.” We want to be angry for them. We want to shout and scream that it’s not bloody fair. And it’s not.
I am so proud of her, though. She is such a strong person. She has put a beautiful picture of her baby on Facebook and is having a proper funeral. She’s not hiding.
When I found out I came home and shed a tear or two for them and said to the Long Suffering Husband, “I just can’t imagine....”
He reminded me that I didn’t have to.
“But it was different.” I argued.
I was very lucky and never lost a baby but my Mum gave birth to my brother and sister when I was 3 and 4 and they died straight away. They were called Johnathan and Jennifer and although we have birth, death and burial certificates, society didn’t allow us to grieve.
Medical advances mean that nobody should have a child die at birth for the same reasons. These children died because of the Rhesus factor. My mum’s blood was negative for rhesus antibodies, my Dad’s was positive and when I was born some of my blood crossed into her blood, causing her to develop antibodies. These antibodies then destroyed the red blood cells of the next babies with rhesus positive blood. They were born with Hemolytic disease of the newborn: being anaemic and having difficulty breathing. Their liver’s and spleen’s may have been enlarged. They would have been yellow and probably puffy. Not that my mum knew any of that. Her children were whisked away and she never saw them again. Luckily, by the time my sister was born, they knew what it was and so were able to transfuse blood and save both their lives. Now that they know what causes this problem, blood tests allow Rhesus negative women to have a preventive Rh immunoglobulin injection at 28 weeks. However, not all causes of stillbirth have been eradicated and some babies die.
You would think that when you are pre-school you wouldn’t remember any of this. However, I do. I remember the first pregnancy and the excitement that I was going to be a big sister. I don’t remember what happened after but I do remember trying to run away in the late stages of the next pregnancy. I remember the midwife visiting and me slipping out the front door when no one was looking. I remember running down the road, away from the bungalow and I remember the midwife’s face close to my tear stained one telling me that I was a naughty little girl who had no right to worry my mum like that.
“She’s already worried enough. This baby is very precious, you mustn’t go spoiling it.”
There was no baby, after my visit to Nanny and Grandad’s, where we watched Tom and Jerry Cartoons and I played hide and seek with my Aunt in the shed (a brick outhouse that smelled of vim and washing powder and housed the tin bath). I don’t remember what happened after but I do remember thinking that I had to be extra good during Mum’s pregnancy with my sister. I also remember overhearing conversations my Nan had with women in shops about my sister’s difficult birth. I remember being thrilled that we could go out and buy presents and equally disappointed when the four booties I’d insisted on, weren’t needed because my sister was just a human baby and not an elephant. I had heard my Nan telling people that being an elephant had saved her. In fact, she was just a bigger baby (that would be considered small these days) and was still a little yellow and puffy when she arrived home. I remember having to wear a face mask (like the Chinese do now) for weeks.
My parents were brilliant. They were both strong. They didn’t openly grieve but they did talk about their babies, especially if I asked, which I did. I wanted to know all about how they died. I needed to understand. I could never understand how they hadn’t even been allowed to hold their children. I still can’t quite understand how they could risk it again. Twice. But that is human nature. We are eternally optimistic.
My colleague’s baby’s funeral is next week and she is asking for donations to Blossom Ward at Broomfield Hospital (instead of flowers). She says on the notice that it’s a place she didn’t even know existed but is so grateful that it did. It’s a room that is funded by charitable donations where families can spend time with their child, letting them go and grieving.
How I wish my parents had that. My Dad told me that when they were in their fifties, with no children at home to support and ‘travelling the world one weekend a month’ they were sitting in a Cafe in Vienna and reminiscing about their lives when for the first time they properly talked and cried about the death of their children.
“We must have looked such idiots,” he told me, “Sobbing our hearts out over nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing.
I told him that I thought it was lovely that they were able to have that moment and how sorry I was that they hadn’t been allowed to grieve sooner.
From what I know about grief, they could have still had that moment if there had been a Blossom Ward but at least it wouldn’t have been the first time.
I will be donating to Blossom Ward in memory of my colleague’s baby and also my siblings, Johnathan and Jennifer.
donate here
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