Sue White

Losing a child at any age brings specific problems; a parent whose child dies at 4 years old will find their grief intensifies as the ages their child will not see pass; first day at school even simple events such as a friend's child losing teeth can provoke extreme emotion. 

It is the same for a parent whose child dies as a young adult.  The world of the young adult is fast moving, populated by events such as leaving school, going to university, learning to drive, first holiday alone and girlfriends/boyfriends.  The list seems never-ending as our child begins to find a life of independence, the lead up to separation from the parent/child relationship that had protected and guided them all those years.

It is a time when decision making becomes their choice and a parent must stand back and watch the results.

The bond between a parent and a young adult will have changed into a more mature relationship, often ‘children' of that age will be more a parent's friend than the child they once were.  Conversations are often more relaxed and on an equal level as parent and child find an exchange of views and ideas that bring an insight into each other's lives.

It is wonderful to see all those years of hard work building a foundation on which our child can grow come together.  Here is the child as an adult.  We have made mistakes and they will make mistakes - we are only human - but we have given them life and a chance to create their own future.

It is unbearable for a parent to have had a taste of the love and friendship a young adult can give only to lose them before they have taken more than a few steps into the adult world.

Some relationships between parent and child will be fraught with the problems that can arise as children try to make their mark on the world.  Parents who have not had an easy time during these years will often feel guilt and anger at their loss.

The loss of an older child will often mean that the parent's other children will also be adults.  These parents may be of an age when bearing another child, not as a replacement but as a focus for their love, will be unlikely or impossible.  They may also be faced with other children leaving home and so the loss becomes a loss of more than one child.

The time when our children leave home is always difficult, for a mother especially there is the loss of a nurturing role that has been part of her life for many years and  she will need to find herself again and fill the void left.  If a child dies at this crucial point in life she will be faced with a struggle on many fronts. 

A father will not fare any better - he will have lost a friend, a future drinking partner, a son who shared his passion for football or a daughter who was his joy.

Between them, mother and father, will have seen their future with that child destroyed.   There will be no family parties in which he will take part, no wedding day, no grandchildren.

When an older child dies and his brothers and sisters have left home the parents are left with emptiness.  At a time which should be a release from the years of caring for children and a future where mother and father can begin to build a new and full life of their own they are faced with trying to hold their lives together.

There are no other children at home to care for.   There is often just two people who have lost themselves.  They will struggle with the loss of the child who has died; the loss of those children who have left home to begin their separate lives; and with the loss of the years of fun and fulfilment they once dreamed were ahead of them. Marriages and partnerships may shake or crumble under the heavy weight of grief and loss but in time many will find a path forward, marriages can become stronger and life will mean something again. 

Parents may change so much after the death of their child that to each other they become unrecognisable as the people who met and began a family life years before.

They will need to discover who they are all over again and both partners will need space and time as they grieve for their child in their own way and on different timescales. At this crucial time of change they will also need to leave the path of communication between them open to enable a new life and understanding to be constructed, slowly and with input from both.

As the bereaved parent struggles to adapt to a life without their child it will be at a time when their energy levels will be severely depleted and it will be vital that they also try to take care of themselves.

When my youngest son, Paul, died on 11^th June 1998 in a car accident he was two months away from his 19^th birthday.  He left for work that morning and never came home again.  As a family we are still struggling from the repercussions of his accident.  Grief is very personal and we will all grieve in different ways.  That concept often causes added problems as we all think our way is right.  It is but only for us. 

Paul and I had always been close and the teenage years did no damage to our relationship. I consider myself so lucky to have had Paul in my life.  Our house was the normal mix of fun, loud music and arguments.  There was rivalry between Paul and his older brother Gary but only what would be expected between young adults and time would no doubt have seen their relationship change as they moved away into separate lives.

Paul's death tore us apart.  Never again will our life be as it was, that carefree, innocent life when the only stress we felt was mainly of our own making and time would eventually bring an outcome that could be lived with.

The consequences, fallout and path for most parents whose child dies will share similarities, but will also have a uniqueness about them just as each of our children do.

When Paul died we had never had to face a major, traumatic bereavement in our family.  We had lost grandparents, older relatives, a father and friends but we were totally unprepared for the onslaught of emotion and pain as Paul's death hit us.

Each of us reacted in different ways to hearing of Paul's death.  I immediately became so deeply shocked that reality no longer existed.  Although shivering excessively I remained in total control, talking to the police and going on later that evening to telephoning relatives and friends.  Over the next week, before the funeral, I was the one who welcomed people to the house, gave them tea and hugs, answered telephone calls or spoke to neighbours who called.

I chose to tell both John and Gary as each arrived home from work that Paul had died.  John was emotional and found it difficult to talk to anyone in those early days and Gary's first reaction was of anger at the garage who sold Paul his car.  Five minutes before the police had arrived John had telephoned to say that he had booked Paul's car into the garage to find out what the problem was. Understandably Gary had thought maybe the car was at fault, but that is something that could never be discovered because all the electrics were destroyed in a fire after the crash.

Death suspends your life.  Life for everyone uninvolved in the death goes on around you, all the trivialities and worries that once were part of your life still exist for them. I can remember standing in a supermarket queue hearing people say how awful it was that they couldn't go to lunch at the time they wanted to and I wanted to shout at them that my son had died and I didn't know if I could live without him.

The mind is both exceptional and destroying.  My mind blocked Paul's death and filtered it slowly in drip by drip over the next year allowing my strength to slowly renew itself before the full reality of losing Paul hit me.  It destroyed the person I was by filling my mind with visions of Paul at the time of his accident even down to hearing him call for me.  It told me that I had failed him, that I was not a good mother because I could not protect him.  It takes time to learn to work with your mind, and it takes the support of special people who will be prepared to listen to you going over the death again and again.  Some will find these special people amongst their own families and friends, some will need to seek help from the counselling profession or their GP.

Paul's young friends kept us going in those early times.  It seemed we couldn't go anywhere without seeing a smiling face or being asked how we were.  They were more open in their pain and loss than many older friends, relatives or neighbours.  They took his death very badly.  They had never had to face the death of someone they had grown up with, discussed their future with.  They had gone from believing the world was theirs into the darkness of realising they were in fact mortal and death was not only for the old or ill.  They all had cars, some took time before they could drive again, others changed dramatically in their attitudes, renewing friendships ruined by petty differences.

Paul's friends stayed in contact with us talking about him, sharing escapades from school or insights into a son's life that we had not been part of.   One of the greatest gifts we have of Paul is a four hour video made by him and two friends for one of their college courses.  Emily, Paul's best friend, bought a five minute version around the day after he died - it took me two months before I could actually view it.  Gary watched it first, then one day I discovered I had a real need to see it.  My reaction was of tears and smiles whilst touching the screen wanting to feel his flesh.

Emily has become, in her words, our surrogate daughter.  She has been a part of our lives from the day after Paul died. 

About four months after Paul died Emily gave us a four hour video from which the five minute one had been taken.  Paul appeared in almost all of the four hours.  Although I do not watch it us much as I once did when I do it never fails to make me smile. I may not be able to see him in the flesh but I am luckier than most people in that I can hear his voice and see him smile.

The early months of grief were exhausting, sometimes I would fall asleep while having a conversation with someone.  Often I would have to apologise because I had forgotten what I was saying mid sentence.

I ached everywhere, there was a constant aching pain in my chest, my throat seemed to have closed and all I could eat was yoghurt. I was confused, could remember nothing before Paul's death and could hold no information from one second to the next in a mind that held only Paul's death and my loss.  I lost so much weight that my bones were prominent which provoked comments about had I been on a diet from people who did not know I had lost Paul.

Sometimes I was so tired I could not move arms or legs but only sit silently.  The only part of me that seemed to work was my mind, repeating over and over the events of Paul's accident, the police and the funeral.  Day after day, minute after minute filled with the pain of missing him.

The shock had erased all my memories - I couldn't remember anything before Paul died, not my childhood, my wedding or even the boys growing up.  I had nothing.  After 4 years I have at last regained some of those moments in time.  In the summer of 2002 I began having panic attacks and over time worked out that I was so frightened of forgetting Paul that I was holding onto his death but my mind had it's own agenda.  Eventually I gave up fighting a battle I could not win and Paul came back to me.   I can be anywhere now when a little glimpse of Paul's childhood will appear to me and I am no longer afraid of forgetting him.

I never had problems sleeping in fact for me it was the other way around.  I would go to bed very early sometimes before 8 pm, fall asleep immediately and not wake until 6 am next morning.  I craved sleep.  Waking was my problem. Seeing Paul's empty room as I walked out of the bedroom, the smooth bed, the eerie silence.  Where was his tousled head just visable under mounds of covers?  The silence in the house when John and Gary had gone to work, no noise, no music, no laughter, no brotherly squabbles.  No kiss on the cheek that Paul always gave me before he left the house.

No telephone calls asking what was for dinner, or could we pick him up from the pub or the cinema.

Young people need feeding all the time - Paul's stomach had ruled his life.  Now I could not even find the enthusiasm to cook at all and John took over in the kitchen and fed us.

Paul used to be home from work by 4.10 pm.  Two hours just for us before John and Gary came home.  I would have coffee waiting as he arrived home, he'd tell me about his day, the moans, the jokes and the food he had eaten for lunch!  He would play loud music or we would watch an American chat show on TV for a laugh or a discussion.  Those two hours became the most unbearable in an unbearable life.  Strangely Paul also died at 4.10 pm.  I spent that time curled up, crying until eventually as winter came I decided to try to become more positive and to fill that lonely time as best I could.  I tried television, reading, music, a bath, anything to make the time pass.  I lit the room with candles, wrote in a journal of my loss and discovered, in time, that I could cope with those two hours just as I was coping with all the other hours in a day.

I talked non-stop to friends and to some family members, in fact to anyone who would listen to me. It must have been distressing to many to hear what I had to say but in those early days I never stopped to think of them.  Grief is in a way selfish.

Teenagers or young adults provide a link with a changing world enabling parents to keep a ‘young' outlook and keep up with technology as it progresses.  We know all about the latest ‘cult' television programmes, the ‘in' groups or ‘must have' fashions.  We know who won the football league this year and can converse on world issues from the viewpoint of someone who will inherit our mistakes.  Take our child away and we can become stale and uninterested in ‘today'.

Young adults talk incessantly of their future, the plans, the adventures they will have.  As parents we watch as they build a new life that will not include us on a daily basis.  We cannot help but get caught up in their excitement or comment when plans seem a little too adventurous for our liking.  We run ahead of them to a vision of partners and grandchildren and cosy family gatherings.  When our child dies their future and ours with them is torn away.  There is nothing left of a future only a smiling face immortalised in a photograph. 

The bedroom of an older child will have their personality stamped indelibly on it.  Often they will have decorated it themselves, certainly you will not have had much input as to what is on their walls!  You probably have no idea what is hidden away in their drawers or under their bed.  I can remember a time when Paul was writing a film script and each time I knocked and entered his room it would be hidden from my view.  We'd laugh together and I knew that it was his private thoughts and not for my eyes.  Imagine the pain when eventually I came across the script knowing that he had not wanted me to see it.  I never read it but gave it to his friend Emily with whom he had discussed his ideas - I felt it was more hers than mine.

There is a feeling of intruding into a part of their lives that was private and had not included you.  I had no right to be in Paul's bedroom looking through his cupboards.  It took me 2 years 7 months to feel the time was right to sort through his possessions but the time you choose to undertake this task is never going to be easy.  By the end of the 8 hours it took me to sort through his bedroom I was a mess.  I was no longer his mother but an intruder, reading private thoughts, sobbing over pencil cases proclaiming his love for a girl when he had been at school, hugging his boxer shorts as the ultimate betrayal of a mother was finished.

Paul's bedroom is now the study.  The bed and cupboards remain in place, the decorating is untouched but now his walls are covered with posters of New York (his favourite place), with his own artwork and with photographs of his friends as they fulfil dreams.  There are postcards from all over America sent by friends and a growing family of stuffed toys that is my mark on his room!!  His photograph watches me as I work and it is a room of comfort, solace and love.

It is not the young child that I miss as much as the adult son.  It is the son who would discuss life with me, talk about films and music.  It is the son who tried to get me to laugh at his comedy programmes knowing how much I disliked them.  It is the son who cheered me up when I was tired and miserable or defused my anger with a smile.  I miss the son whose outlook on life mirrored mine more often than not.  The son who became taller than me, who didn't always do things that I wanted done but who still found the time to plant a kiss on my cheek as he left the house.  It is the son who poked his head around the bedroom door when he got home from a night out to say goodnight. 

For any siblings the loss of their brother or sister will mean the loss of the chance to discover a closer friendship as adults.  This kind of relationship is often denied them during the turbulent years of youth when hormones and a need to find out who they are inhibit the need to be friends not antagonists.

As a child becomes a teenager/young adult and takes on more responsibility for their own life the role of the parent changes.  They leave behind the control they once held and gradually relinquish it into the hands of their child hoping that the foundations they had laid will be enough to guide their child through life.  Their child will now want to venture further from home, meet friends and build a social life at night.  Rules will be set and tested time and time again.  The parent will now become a taxi driver, money lender and often an embarrassment!  Bedrooms will be out of bounds and cleaning them will be difficult as you try to negotiate a time when the young will not be sleeping! 

There are no dirty trainers lying in the hall, no racing to reach the telephone because of course it will always be for them.  There is no creeping into his room at night hoping to borrow an extra large t-shirt to sleep in.  There is no listening to the laughter from his room, there is no fun when both parents are suffering and there is no young voice to relieve the silence.

Just to lighten everything I have said:

Paul was a lovely, warm, caring son who made friends easily and kept them.  He is remembered for his smile and love of life.  I was lucky to have had all those growing years with him and I regret nothing except his death too early.  Amongst the sadness in my life is an over-whelming love for Paul that keeps me warm and I will not give up on life because while I am here so is Paul.

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