Guest blogs

Seven things I didn't know (and wish I had) when my child died

This article is reprinted with kind permission of the writer Geves LaFosse and taken from the website Blog | Geves Lafosse

At the age of three, my daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia – she died just nineteen months later. That was twenty-two years ago. Through the devastation I started writing down my thoughts, and in time, these notes became the story of When Petals Fall. Losing a child is rare, and when Juliette first died I felt completely alone in the experience. These are some of the things I wish I had known:

1. The guilt is huge.

Despite being told there was nothing I could have done, my inner voice repeated on a loop that I’d failed to keep my child safe. I didn’t know that this guilt was normal. To deal with it, I turned it inwards, punishing my body for continuing to exist when my daughter’s body no longer did. It may have looked healthy when I started long distance running and raising money for charity, but my behaviour became a covert instrument with which to hurt myself. Because I’d survived my child, running through injuries and in the worst of conditions was deliberate. Training plans and physical pain created noise with which I attempted to block out emotional pain, and in the end it didn’t work. The grief demanded to be felt. I wish I’d known sooner to be gentler with myself. Juliette’s death was not my fault. I wish I’d understood that extreme emotion is not failure, but a natural process, and allowing it to happen rather than fighting it is the easier, kinder path.

2. Grief is tiring.

Like, physically, bone-crushingly tiring. I’ve since read studies that have shown that bereavement of this magnitude doesn’t just happen in the brain. I don’t know why I found this so shocking, but it makes sense now that every cell in your body should experience grief too. I did not expect to sleep so heavily and wake up exhausted, craving sleep again - for physical rest, but also for the ceasing of my daytime thoughts. The process aged me. At the time, I was glad to see proof of this in the mirror. I don’t feel like this anymore but back then, I welcomed this hastening towards my own death.

3. Losing a child is not like other losses. 

I had a man say that he knew how I felt because he’d recently lost his dog, while someone else compared their divorce to me losing my daughter. These are extremes, but we all know that it’s against natural law to outlive your child, and no one except other parents who have lost children should come close to comparing their grief with yours. And even these griefs have differences. On the subject of other bereaved parents, with them you’re part of a fellowship no one wants to join. For me, these conversations and friendships have been invaluable.

4. The most well-meaning people may still say the wrong thing.

For instance, when your beloved child has died it is not comforting to be reminded that you have others. This was said to me, and of course the person intended it to be comforting. It was better (I guess) than being avoided entirely, but the most powerful words I heard were, ‘I’m so sorry she died. I have no idea how you must feel, and I don’t know what to say, but if you ever want to talk about her, I’m here.’ Also, I wish I’d known that you don’t always have to tell people truthfully how you’re doing. Sometimes, especially when I was having ‘a good day’ or could not predict someone’s reaction, I regretted opening up. Sometimes a simple, ‘I’m okay - thank you,’ would have done. You don’t owe people a total excavation of your emotions, just because they’ve asked. Sometimes, you just need to protect the open wound of your child’s loss.

5. All relationships shift.

I was not the same person after losing my daughter. I think people expected me to go back to being the person I was – I know there was a time that I expected that too – but it didn’t happen for me. Things that used to matter, just didn’t anymore. A lot of friends drifted away, but I gained important others who I’d trust with my life. And it’s not only friends. For me, family relationships changed too. This was unsettling, but I understand it better now. I realise I’d been a person fulfilling a certain role that my life until then had shaped me. When Juliette died, these old moulds shattered. I think grief prompts a desperation to hold onto familiar ways of being - there certainly was for me – but change happens, and I’ve found freedom in embracing it.

6. It won’t always feel this bad. 

At first, I didn’t want this to be true. Grieving my daughter’s absence was the mirror of my love, so to wish that pain away felt utterly wrong. I needed the sorrow to manifest my outrage that she had died. In other moments, I knew I had to manage better so that I could give my other children the lives they needed and deserved. Now I know those feelings of loss don’t ever go. What’s happened is I’ve grown around them, so they don’t fill so much of me.

7. Happiness will have a different quality. 

Feeling happy, or even wishing for it, made me feel like a heartless monster when my daughter had died. It's different now. Twenty-two years on, into every moment of happiness my love for Juliette is infused. It's there as a gold thread, a Kintsugi ceramic piece. My beautiful child is not with me, but my love for her always is, and that has to be enough.

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