Feelings can co-exist. You can feel extreme happiness and joy yet also feel the heavy sadness of loss that your child is no longer with you. It is ok to feel the extremities of both these emotions.
The anxiety never goes away. We lost Eddie in the middle of the night, unexpectedly when he was only three months old. Eddie was a victim of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and was a perfectly healthy baby boy. We have had two subsequent children who are now five and three but despite medical assurances, I never go to bed at night with the safe knowledge that it won’t happen again.
You will always be grieving your lost child. There’s often a misconception in grief that it’s linear and you go through the stages until you come to the end of your grief and you’re fine. There is an old adage, time is the greatest healer but what it really gives you is more coping mechanisms. The trauma of losing a child never leaves you and it can surprise you unexpectedly, even years later. I have accepted that the grief is always with me, but I have learned to live with it.
Milestones will always be bittersweet. As our children get older, we will always be acutely aware of the milestones they are able to reach, like their first day at school. This will always be tinged with sadness as Eddie should have reached those too.
We will always be a family of five. Eddie is always remembered and is the driving force in the work that we do as a charity. We have photos of Eddie in the house and Ollie and Chloe will always know that they had an older brother, who is no longer with us, but is shining down on them, proud of everything that they do.
About Jennifer Reid
Jennifer is the co-founder of Teddy’s Wish, a charity that funds research into the causes of baby loss and provides bereavement support for grieving families. The charity was set up following the tragic and unexpected loss of her first son Eddie when he was only three months old.
www.teddyswish.org
