This article is reprinted with kind permission of the writer Geves LaFosse and taken from the website Blog | Geves Lafosse
When Juliette died, it was torture to think that I’d seen my beautiful girl for the last time. She’d been robbed of a life that ought to have been hers, and her siblings had lost the friend they should have had for all of their lives. On top of this pain, the guilt I felt about Juliette’s death was like salt in the wound.
I felt I had no right to breathe when Juliette no longer could. I was ashamed that my heart continued to beat, and even felt guilty for the space my physical form took up in the world. My perfect daughter lay in her grave. How could my treachorous, flesh and blood body continue with its meaningless biological rhythms?
Even the smallest of pleasures now felt wrong. Before Juliette died, I loved making bread, but this contentment seemed newly self-indulgent and frivolous. And I told myself I should not enjoy food anymore, because I had no longer had a way to feed my daughter.
My feelings made no sense - I realised that even then - but that didn’t stop them. As a family in the aftermath of Juliette’s death, we needed a break from the kind but exhausting scrutiny to which we were all subjected, so my ex-husband and I took the children abroad on holiday. While she was alive, Juliette’s leukaemia treatment would have prevented such a treat, and a nasty inner voice reminded me hourly that we were only there because she had gone. It screwed me up with guilt for this “betrayal” of my precious, lost daughter.
Those living children of mine...like most parents, I’d wanted my daughters and sons to have the best possible childhood, and I here I was, failing to protect them from their sister’s death, and everything that would mean in the long term.Logically I knew that everything that could have been done for Juliette medically, was done, but that meant nothing to my grieving mind. In the week she died, my legs gave way in the shower. I cried, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’ on a loop. I’m sorry you died, and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t keep you safe like I was supposed to.
Confusingly, heartbreakingly, early grief wasn’t just tears - there were utterly incongruous moments when I couldn’t stop laughing. But afterwards, I sobbed, berating myself as a monster for forgetting, even for an instant, that my incredible child had died. Only much later I was reassured to learn that laughter during grief is common - that it acts as an escape valve, a dopamine soak for a traumatised brain.And that’s the key thing - a parent needs to be comforted that what they experience is “normal” (insofar as losing a child can be ever be considered normal). At the time, I internalised most of these emotions, and tried to work out for myself why I felt so guilty. Perhaps, I thought, it’s because in our privileged Western world and times, children rarely die. When it happened to me, it forced the question, ‘why my child? As a mother, how did I fail so spectacularly fail to keep her alive?’ Self-punishing, normal, but ultimately pointless questions.
Everyone tells you it’s wrong in every dimension to outlive your child. I know this, yet I was not prepared for how guilty I would feel when I have. I wish I’d known that other parents felt as I did. If I’d been able to speak of it, I hope that someone would have begged me to be gentler on myself. The guilt for surviving the past twenty-years since my daughter died is no longer so huge, but it’s taken time. I wish I had known that was normal too.
I would love to hear about others’ experiences and thoughts on this subject.
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