What does grief looks like?

February 2019

A quick google of the grief process will often bring up the 5 stages! Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It seems so abstract to me that grief can be defined in just 5 stages even if professional sites reference that grief is a very personal process. If you look at the image you will see a circle and in the middle is arrows jumping from one stage to another in no order as shown below.

Being a self reflective person I am very aware that throughout my grief I have indeed experienced the above however I wanted to talk about the complexities of grief and the areas talked about least. I want to share the struggles that even a well intentioned kind hearted person may stumble over. To explore the differences in grief that are often overlooked or maybe not consciously realised.

I and my husband have experienced grief through the loss of our identical twin girls Kora and Ava. We have both also grieved the loss of our mothers who unfortunately died at what would be considered young ages. It is these situations that got me thinking about my grief and how it felt so different.

My mum died of lung cancer at 62 years of age. She was diagnosed immediately with terminal cancer and fought the disease for a further 3 years. I remember the publicity around cancer at that time was about living with cancer rather than dying of cancer. My mum certainly lived with cancer. The doctors only gave her less than 2 years but she surpassed that! In hindsight I feel that she was vivacious, determined and possibly in denial of the word terminal. I always remember her constantly asking the consultant if he shrunk the tumour could it be removed? No matter how many times he explained to her that ship had well and truly sailed, it never stopped her asking him again.

When my mum died it was of course expected as we had been given the terminal diagnosis yet somehow it still came as a shock to me. I guess I didn’t expect her to die that weekend. My mum had made me promise that I would celebrate her life starting the day she died. Her instructions were to go the pub, put on music, sing and dance. I did indeed follow her request albeit feeling unreal. We had time to discuss her wishes and although I didn’t feel prepared for the loss I had her instructions and wishes to hold onto. She had made it very clear she wanted me to grief but celebrate her life.

Over the years I certainly went through numerous feelings and emotions including the 5 steps of grief. I did not always deal with this very well especially the anger part. I was bitter. I felt cheated that she had died so young when I had so many things I still wanted to ask. I felt anger towards her as I blamed her for smoking. All of this I know is grief and there really isn’t a right or wrong way to grief.

Losing your mum (if you are lucky enough to have one in your life) is heartbreaking. Losing your child/children is heartbreakingly devastating! I am not saying that one is worse than the other I’m merely trying to express the differences I felt.

When Neil (my husband) and I were told our babies had no heart beat I was very quick to accept that fact. Whether this was due to denial, practicality (needing time to deliver Kora and Ava so we could cremate them) or because in the back of mind the words high risk pregnancy had resonated even if my mindset was positive. However over the 10 days we were in hospital we felt as if our world as we had come to know it, had been shattered.

It is often said that a picture can paint a thousand words and for me there has been an image that I see regularly appearing in posts that perfectly sums up how I felt when Kora and Ava died. It is a picture of a statue created by a grieving parent. I am thankful for such a powerful image.

The grief caused by losing our babies was all consuming. Our lives have not been the same since. I think I have learnt to live in other people’s world as my world (and I’m sure Neil’s too) will never be the same again.

That feeling I had when my mum died in relation to feeling cheated because she died young now overwhelmed me again however this time I felt a different kind of cheated. I had longed for longer with my mum yet now I appreciated the time I had been given as I had very little time and memories with Kora and Ava. We would never know if they got Neil’s nose or whose colour hair they would have. We had mapped out our lives with them as an integral part. Why had our babies been taken so young? Why didn’t we have the right to the happy family we expected?

The biggest difference I found in the grief was the friends I lost, the people that avoided us, the inability to find what to say or how to say it. We were also new to this and it was clear we had a lot to learn. A death of a child is a taboo subject. Maybe because it is a grief that most of us fear the most, or maybe it is because we fear the reaction of the people suffering. Whatever it is we all know that nobody expects their child to go before them.

I soon realised that whilst grieving I was going to have to learn that others would find this so very difficult. We would somehow have to find a strength from inside to deal with their awkwardness of what to say or even worse, that wish that they had not just said that statement!

Whether it was comments like “how many weeks were you”? Is this significant? Does my grief not count if I was 3 weeks pregnant? Does my grief bare more importance if I delivered my babies? Don’t even get me started on the medical jargon of non viable foetus! I’ll save that for another blog. If Kora and Ava had passed at 3 years old or older is that worse as I had them for more time with more memories? Either way it’s grief and what I found was I was not only grieving their death but also the moments and lives we would never get to have.

I also had a friend whose mum had recently passed away state to me that her life was worse as she was grieving her mum whereas I could go on to have another baby. Again that’s grief for you! I’m unsure what step of the grief process she was encountering but I could see her loss so clearly. However I am human and did react in the heat of the moment! We have since spoken and I have had time to reflect. It’s strange that this was her comment as I too had lost my mum and she had previously had miscarriages. We are all guilty of opening our mouths before we stop and think.

A family member said to Neil and I that there is nothing worse than losing a dog. This was just under a year from Kora and Ava being delivered. I remember my first raging emotion was that of disbelief and possibly anguish. However everything is relative and at that moment in time her dog had died young and suddenly. Her wounds were fresh and her pain and grief were very real. I guess I learnt at that point that we all go through situations and experiences that mould us into the person we become and we all deal with things very differently. I don’t believe she maliciously made this comment and I don’t believe she thought about our grief when she said this. I know for a fact I have on many occasions said something that I soon regretted due to lack of thought about others. This does not make me or her a bad person.

What I do know is I have never felt so alone in my grief even though I was fortunate enough to have a husband through this. Our grief was different too. Neil has a beautiful daughter (Amy, 21 this year) and is a biological father. I love Amy with all my heart and feel blessed to have in my life. Our relationship is warm and heartfelt. I guess what I felt was twinges of jealousy. Neil has a very loving relationship with his daughter and it a love that shines through when they are together. I was envious of the bond, the memories, the fact that he is already a dad and I was still desperately wanting to be a biological mum. Jealous even though I am the luckiest person to have such a wonderful step daughter!

I guess as the grief process suggests we go between a range of emotions and one day we can feel anger the next denial or isolation. Ultimately grief is something we feel when we have suffered a loss. A loss is a loss and we can not compare our grief. My grief for my mum is very different to my grief for Kora and Ava. What I know is it overlaps, I have never needed my mum as much as I needed her when I found out I was pregnant and when we lost Kora and Ava. Yet I carry on and face each day somehow with what has been the hardest thing Neil and I have ever had to endure – our children’s death. a grief that is only to real but unimaginable.