POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING. This post touches on grief, child loss, stillbirth and pregnancy complications. At the end, there are links to UK organisations that maybe helpful if you've been affected by anything you've read.
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| Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash |
This post starts and ends with Nick Cave.
Yes the Australian singer, Nick Cave.
The most I knew about him a couple plus years ago was that duet he sang with fellow Aussie Kylie, the Peaky Blinders theme song and The Mercy Seat re-released by Johnny Cash. I’d also vaguely heard about his sons' untimely deaths in the news. I was very ignorant to all things Nick Cave.
After a hiatus, he started doing interviews again and it was around this time, in 2022, when I read an article that caught my attention and piqued my interest in Nick Cave.
He was talking about writing a book with someone during lockdown and how he learnt to converse about how he felt and not just write about it. What drew me to him, was his battle with his demons, most notably grief.
Between my second and third son, I had an ectopic pregnancy.
I had emergency surgery, in October 2018, to remove my right fallopian tube that contained the pregnancy. I dealt with it very objectively. I knew something wasn't right for 3 weeks. I was told it was a miscarriage. The shock came when I was told surgery was required. There was only a couple of hours between diagnosis and surgery. For a long time I wouldn’t talk about it and I never dealt with it. The scientist in me was fascinated with the mechanics of it and that came to the forefront. It was my coping mechanism. I pushed any feelings I had, away. For a long time, I couldn't look at the scars because it was a reminder of loss and of sadness.
When I became pregnant with my rainbow baby boy, a little over a year later, it was joyful. However, just after the 12 week mark, it became clear it wasn’t going to be straightforward.
I spent a lot of time in the hospital, many appointments and lots of scans. Around the 16 week mark, a doctor mentioned stillbirth because my placenta was very thin. I was 100% convinced we would never meet our baby. Not in this lifetime anyhow. This all happened during lockdown. I already felt a huge sense of loss.
My first son was born early (33+4 weeks) because I developed pre-eclampsia and he had the typical brain sparing intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) seen with the condition. In layman's terms it meant I had a terrible placenta.
I started reading about stillbirth, death and grief. I did it with the intention of arming myself with all the facts. Preparing myself for the inevitable. I had 2 kids who were 4 and 6. My first thought was that I needed to help them through their grief and their questions. I couldn't do that if I hadn't processed my own. So that is what I did. I grieved and I imagined the life we could've had but would certainly never get. I was very logical and scientific about it. I just couldn't see another way that this would go.
I had many scares during my pregnancy and every time I would think, this is it. This is the moment I have to truly say goodbye. At one point, I was expecting him to be delivered at 28 weeks. I went in for my consultation led scan and the blood flow was abnormal. It remained abnormal from that point forward. I was admitted. I rang my husband to tell him the baby was being delivered. This was COVID lockdown and no one could accompany me to the hospital. I had my steroid shots and it was only later after a rescan and my own consultant wading in, that the c-section was delayed.
From that point forward, I was in hospital two times a week. The baby would be delivered once the blood flow reached a critical moment where it was better for him to be out than in. In the end, we made it to 32 weeks but it was the most fraught time. Again, I mourned my son expecting only the worst.
When he was born, at 32 weeks, I still believed we wouldn't bring him home. I'd lost all hope. So when we finally got to bring him home after 31 days in hospital, my brain couldn't make any sense of it. I found it disorientating.
Here was my dream coming true but this wasn't the way my life was meant to turn out. I wasn't meant to have this happy life.
I felt like I'd cheated death. I still do, to some extent.
When a friend on Facebook, tragically had her stillborn child, I honestly believed something wasn't right. That was supposed to me and we'd accidentally swapped places. I was scared I'd wake up from the beautiful dream to face the harsh reality of living life without my child. I felt like I was living someone else's life and not my own. That feeling stayed with me a long time. Even now I don't think I've fully shaken off that grief. It lurks somewhere in the recesses of my brain and heart. It broke me and it still sits with me — this tinge of sadness.
I sought help and that started me on a very long journey of reconciliation of the imagined with the reality. I do feel like the luckiest person alive. I truly feel like I cheated death and I'm living in an alternate reality. For that I'll always be incredibly and eternally grateful.
In amongst all that, I started to think about my ectopic. The potential of a life never realised. I wondered so much. Did souls exist? Was that soul, out there, lost and untethered? Even now it makes me sad.
Part of my journey was exploring everything to do with living, dying, death and grief because that's where I existed for a long time.
It's why that Elliot Dallen article from my previous post resonated so strongly with me. It found me or I found it at precisely the right time I desperately needed guidance. It is such a hopeful and optimistic view on life.
Reflections on Life and Death from a Dying Man — The Article Everyone Should Read
It's why I reconnected with my favourite teen author Christopher Pike. I still have so many unanswered questions for him about spirituality, souls and death which ran throughout his body of work in some guise.
That's why Nick Cave's openness and poetic way with discussing grief really appealed to me and still does. The Red Hand Files is a website setup in 2018 where fans can directly send questions for Nick Cave to answer. You can view all the 300 letters and responses and subscribe to get them directly via email, when posted. It's probably about an email a month.
Regardless of if you agree with what he says, he writes in the most eloquent, thoughtful and thought provoking way. You see the gift of the songwriter come through in his words. I could never write in the unique and rich way that he does. I get real pleasure from reading his answers and hearing his voice carried through his prose.
In terms of grief, Nick Cave answered a fan's letter in 2018, where she, Cynthia, explained her losses and asked if Nick and his wife Suzie communicated with their son Arthur who died in 2015. It's extremely powerful and beautiful. Benedict Cumberbatch brings to life Nick Cave's response through his reading. I urge you to listen to it. Underneath the YouTube clip is the text from the letter he received.
Benedict reads Nick Cave's letter about grief
Grief and loss are emotions we usually associate with death but it comes to play in every facet of our lives. We feel loss and grief for things imagined but never fulfilled and those that were but are now lost to us.
We are so use to pushing it aside, pushing it down, anywhere else but here, where we reside, that we become so very afraid of it. Not just in experiencing it ourselves but seeing it in that of others. It makes us very ill equipped to deal with it and maybe there is no way to prepare until it happens.
We don't talk about death enough.
It's funny that as I write this I'm learning about the history of Halloween and the Day of the Dead through my tutoring. The stark truth is that in the past, death was rife, especially as we move into the darker, colder months of the year. Food became scarce and the cold would kill.
Halloween came from the notion, that the boundary between the living and the dead became thinner so that ghosts could walk amongst us.
The Day of the Dead is to celebrate loved ones who have died. In a brief reunion of food, drink and celebration, families welcome the souls of their dead relatives. It's a wonderful and joyful way to channel grief and loss, into something positive by remembering those that have passed. In one of the videos we watched, someone says 'nobody is really gone unless they are forgotten'. It feels so obvious but one we easily forget as we try very hard to move forward. We think in order to do so we must discuss it less, not more, but maybe more open discussion and reminiscing is just what we all need.
If I've learned anything, it is that we shouldn't diminish and dismiss our thoughts and feelings. We need to find a way to sit with them, process them, wear them like an old familiar sweater, in order to live with them.
I think the only way to do that is to make grief and loss, topics that people feel free to openly share. That starts by creating safe spaces for those vulnerable emotions to occur. It means discussing and celebrating all those loved ones, who are no longer with us or who we never got to meet, because in doing so we keep them very much alive — living right beside us, woven into the very fabric of our being.
As Nick Cave aptly says 'Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.'
Help and Support Links
Fortnightly Update
I had my sponsored mentoring 1-2-1 session with Poorna Bell almost 2 weeks ago and it was really insightful and I have direction and more confidence in myself and my work.
One of the things Poorna suggested, was to free up headspace by not feeling like I had to blog every week. To give myself permission to write every couple of weeks. Instead, I could use that thinking and writing time I use for the blog to do book related things that I don't get time to do normally. I categorically struggle to write the novel with the kids in the house. I will do it, if needs must but I work better when they aren't around to distract me. However, I can do other things, like my reference cheat sheet, my story outline and anything else that needs attention, that isn't editing because the beast of editing will definitely happen at the end.
She then talked to me through traditional and self-publishing routes and honestly, I'd given it absolutely no thought whatsoever. She was so sure I'd finish this book. That seeing my determination and seeing that I have written over 10,000 words, she didn't think anything was an 'if' but a 'when'.
I guess I grapple with the fact that realistically it probably isn't a great story in of itself but nevertheless I will follow through and if I've gone so far to have written it, I will spend an arduous amount of time editing it and rewriting the terribly written parts. I have struggled to meet the word count this week and actually as I write this, I'm a couple of days behind. However, with half term and no scheduled writing planned, I'm certain that I'm going to catch-up and spend the rest of the time on much needed thinking. This is break is a good reset for me.
I've struggled, but managed to get to the gym. Swimming unfortunately has had to fall away. It's really not what I want but there is only one of me and very little time.
Doing meditation in the car feels very silly but there was more opportunity to do it and I did feel better for those few minutes of breathwork etc. using Insight Timer. Obviously, if I'm running late or end up doing other work while sat in the car, then it also gets dropped off my list.
I'm still volunteering in school and enjoy that time I get to be with the kids. I've also attended a Governor conference on special educational needs (SEN) provision in our local authority.
The biggest change has been tutoring which I began this week. I'm doing 10 hours a week, 2 hours every weekday during term time. I'm really enjoying it but because of that, I've had to force fit everything else around it. It's why swimming hasn't happened and probably won't and the writing is getting a little haphazard. I'm constantly running out of time. I'm so grateful for this unexpected opportunity that I hadn't anticipated. It feels like it came out of nowhere. Like I've said previously, it's all about making difficult choices as to where we put our time. To put this into context, this is the first time I've worked — had paid employment — in 10 years
I officially have a pen pal through the letterbox befriender charity Omega. I've written, but not sent my first letter. At minimum, I think you send a letter every month or more frequently depending on when they reply.
Anyway, I hope this properly explains my radio silence.
I'm finishing this part of the post off in the car while I wait for school to finish. This is how I'm managing everything. Using up every minute of the school day to move something forward.
Again, thank you for reading. I'll be posting again in two weeks time.
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