Emptiness

I have been trying to put into words what it feels like to have your child die. It is definitely a heartache and so I once compared it to the feeling of breaking up with a partner (not just anyone, but someone who you truly loved and cared for and wanted to make a life with). So take that feeling and then multiply it times a million and that starts to get close. And this makes sense, because who do we love even more than our lovers, more than our parents? Our kids. I've often told my children that they will never understand how much I love them until they have their own kids. The love for a child is like no other love and therefore the pain upon losing a child is like no other pain.

We spend our entire lives trying to protect our kids from the dangers of the world. No matter how a child dies, their parent feels like they have failed at their most basic task, keeping their child safe from those dangers. Even if there wasn't a single thing I could have done differently to keep my child alive, I still have to go over every possible scenario to be sure. I have to do this to feel like I still have some control over my world, unfortunately when your child dies you mostly feel like everything is out of your control and like very little makes sense in the world.

From the moment a baby is born we start marking milestones, trying to savor every moment of their time with us, because we know that their time with us is short no matter what. When a child dies there is an overwhelming sense of loss of potential. There are so many mile markers that did not get passed and nearly every day is a reminder of these things. I try to think about the markers she did pass in her short life, she did many many things for an 11 year old. But many times the pain of the things left undone is almost too much to bear and certainly too great to push aside.

Children seem to be much bigger personalities than their size would have you believe. The hole left in a parent's life when a child dies is even larger. In our culture our lives revolve around our children. Even as a working mother, most of my free time and much of the physical space of my life is set up to accommodate and integrate my children. Work schedules are set around kid's school schedule, evenings are spent doing homework or going to extracurricular activities, houses are chosen to most easily contain our children and their friends, cars are chosen for their ability to pack in as many kids and friends and equipment as possible. When a child is gone, many of these things seem unnecessary, useless, empty; sometimes even ourselves.

So, I really couldn't imagine...

I have lived (until recently) a rather charmed life. I didn't attend a funeral until I was 36 years old, and then it was for my 91 year old grandfather. It's hard to feel extreme sadness for the death of someone who has lived a long and full life. I didn't know death.

Before M's death the only bad things my family had experienced were my father's heart attack/surgery (which turned out fine - 12 years later he is healthier than ever), my mother's brain tumor/surgery (also the best possible outcome - no cancer and full removal of and recovery from the tumor). My husband had experienced harder things, the death of his beloved grandfather (in his mid-fifties) and the very early unexpected death of his father. J's dad died only a few weeks after I met J. I wish I could say that I had learned empathy going through that with him, but I did not. He swept it under a rug, dealt with it internally, if at all, and I acted as though nothing happened except on rare occasions. Probably not the most empathetic way of dealing with it.

Obviously when bad things happen to other people I felt sad for them, but I really did not know how they were feeling. That is part of why I am writing here. To try to capture those feelings, so others might have some idea, even if they still can't imagine. The death of your child is a special kind of pain. It is, I think, different than even other deaths. I feel this in my gut and my husband confirms, that for him at least, it is completely different that the pain he felt when his father died when J was only 16.

Why am I hiding

And so I have created a pseudonym... Imagen Kant. And I'm trying to wax all philosophical about the death of my baby girl. But why. Why can't I just be me? J writes openly and bravely for all the world to see. I don't think I can though. I think it would water down the honesty for me. Everyone grieves in their own way, that's what people keep saying. I guess I am just a tiny bit more private. But it seems silly, why can't I let people in?

But it's not about letting people in, it's about documenting the feelings as honestly as possible. And if using a pseudonym is the way to do that then so be it. So now it is out there.

I no longer "can't imagine" rather I AM Imagen Kant.

How did this happen...

A few months ago (nearly four, to be exact), I changed my Facebook status to, "just can't imagine." This status change was prompted by the news that a new friend's two year old daughter had just been sent home from cancer treatment to die. This news was shocking. Yes, the baby had cancer, and had for several months; but by all accounts treatment was going well. Hearing the news that this mother was told that she was going to have to take her daughter home and wait a couple of weeks, which actually ended up being only a matter of days, for her to die was absolutely unimaginable to me. Apparently, I continued to use those words for days. A friend recently mentioned that I had said these words to her at the baby's memorial service.

"I just can't imagine."

And I was right. I couldn't imagine. Now, I am not known for my empathetic nature or my extreme sensitivity, but I am a mother and one would think that a mother would understand another mother's pain at the loss of her child. And in fact, despite my words, I thought I had at least some idea. I didn't; my first instinct was correct, "I just can't imagine."

Exactly six weeks after I changed my status message to those words, I no longer had any need to imagine the horror of losing a child. I no longer had to imagine because the unimaginable had happened to me. My eleven year old daughter died. She died suddenly and swiftly and with no warning. And now, I can imagine, I wish I couldn't and I guarantee you that you can't. You just can't imagine.