Guest Author - Neville Sexton
It’s a strange thing time. On one hand it is the so called Great Healer; its relentless forward run bringing you with it, taking you slowly away from the raw unforgiving pain of a moment of tragedy. It doesn’t really take the pain away of course; dulls it at best perhaps, but nothing more. Then there’s the other side. It takes you away from your old life, whether you want it or not, and delivers you into a new one. You are distanced from the life you once knew and loved, from the loved ones that you still love but can no longer see. Time pushes you away from those cherished days of contentment and peace; it drags you kicking and screaming from a period of your life where everything made sense and normality was ‘the norm’. For all the things that your new life IS, it can never be what it WAS. For the loss of a child is beyond fixing, and time, like everything else, can never change that.
I overheard a poet on the radio the other day. I was coming back from the gym and was just about to change the station when I heard this guy mentioning bereavement. What he said resonated with me so profoundly that I want to mention it here. The presenter had quite casually asked him how he dealt with his bereavement, after losing his 4yr old child. The poet’s reply was perfect. He corrected the presenter for applying the word ‘bereavement’ to any parent who loses a child. He said that ‘bereavement’ applies when we lose an elderly parent, a husband or wife, a sister or brother perhaps or even a good friend. But bereavement doesn’t apply when a parent loses a child. He said it was an ‘apocalypse’. He was so right. Everything that applies to that word, applies to the loss a parent feels when their child dies. It is the end of all things. It is the end of time itself. Your reality changes in an instant and you are birthed into some new foreign existence devoid of any meaning or point, but plentiful in pain, regret and sorrow. Your old life is no more and your new life is unwanted.
But time complicates everything too. When my son died, I had no desire for my life. I cared not for anything. I only wished that time would fly by and hasten my reunion with my son. But in the slow burn of real-time I was blessed with a new baby boy and this changed it all. My new life now has purpose and the joy that my son has brought with him, the love that he shows me, has opened my heart once more to a life of love. But this new life is so different, so much more complex and scarred than the simple innocent life of before. Every thought of love, of joy, of happiness, of laughter is filtered through an underbelly of deep-seated unbridled pain. And for all the new love and hope that came with my newborn, I still yearn to be with my beautiful Craig.
Those parents who are in a similar situation to mine will understand. We live two lives now: the past and the present; with everything in the present tethered so strongly to the past and leaving the old life and the new life forever struggling for their place.
