This blog entry was first shared on Co-Founder Susan Simpson’s blog on 5th Oct 2016 ~ you can visit Susan’s blog HERE
“I am With You Mum”
"If I should ever leave you whom I love
To go along the Silent Way, grieve not,
Nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk
Of me as if I were beside you, for
Who knows but that I shall be oftentimes? ..."
~Isla Paschal Richardson
My darling Eilidh Beth,
It's six years ago yesterday that we took your final earthly journey with you. I completely shut down in some ways after your death and there are so many regrets that still haunt me my love. The biggest one surrounding your funeral was not allowing those who wanted to be there to come because I didn't want a heavily pregnant relative there. That breaks my heart that because we didn't just explain why that was too difficult to cope with I put a complete ban on those who wanted to
support and stand by us.
They had wanted to visit me in hospital just after you passed away and the thought of that, I'm ashamed to admit, caused near hysteria. They would not have known the pain it would have caused to have them come stand by my bedside and offer their condolences. They would not have known how taken aback I was that' they never even thought about how their happy state would have been too much to cope with at that time.
Words cannot actually describe how hard it is when you've had to accept the death of your baby, the loss of all your hopes and dreams for you and your family, the complete anguish of seeing your children bereft, trying to come to terms with the bare facts that their baby sister died and is not coming home.
Because it's a subject that is not as openly discussed as say cancer or altzheiners people don't know how to act around beeeaved parents, or how to react around them. For such a modern society we've gone backwards in our ways of dealing with things - the Victirians for instance had a completely different view on death. In an article I read it said, "For the death of a close relative, mourning dress would be worn in varying states for up to two and a half years. Photographs of dead relatives became an increasingly popular feature of family albums, often in a lifelike pose with a rosy colouring and even open eyes painted over eyelids.."
I'm not suggesting our society needs to return to these ways of dealing with death my love. When Prince Albert died Queen Victoria spent the next 40 years laying out his clothes and medicine every day, dressing in black to symbolise her grief. That's not a good way to grieve at all but it was her way of showing those around her that she was completely grief stricken and it was accepted, not just because she was Queen, but because death and dying was spoken about as a matter of course.
Och Eilidh Beth, I know ... I'm rambling because it's 4am and I can't sleep. But your funeral lay heavy on my mind yesterday even though it was 6 years ago. How I would do things differently now than I did then! Six years on I still feel bad for shutting out those who wanted to be with us, who shared our deep sorrow. Six years on I still feel bad about making your Dad tell close friends that they couldn't come and say goodbye to you at the chapel in Raigmore. Six years on I still feel I let you down my sweet girl - I let you down by not fighting for more intervention in the weeks and months prior to your death - I let you down by not letting all who knew and loved you come and say goodbye.
One of the reasons I'm so grateful fir SiMBA is that the charity empowers midwives and health professionals to come alongside bereaved parents and facilitate to enable them right choices for them and their baby. That's an incredibly important and vital part of the grieving process otherwise parents and families end up living with so many regrets about that short time they had with their baby.
My darling girl, some days I feel you so close and other days the pain of not having you or your sister here is so hard.
Love be you to the moon and back and round again.
Mum xxx