Losing a child brings a pain so deep and dark that at times there seems no way out, no hope, no reason to continue living. During the first year after Nicolas died, I wrestled with thoughts of my own death, for the first time wishing the airplane I was on would crash instead of land safely, for the first time more afraid to live than die. During those darkest moments, I saw no possibility of joy or purpose in my life and simply did not want to go on. I wish I could say I’m still here because I tapped some unknown and unexpected well of strength to push through those dark days. In reality, it is Nicolas’ little brother, Christopher, who saved my life. I became pregnant with Christopher three months after Nicolas died, which coincided with the lowest point of my grief. My pregnancy did not give me hope for the future as hope was an emotion I was incapable of feeling at that time. But it did give me a sense of responsibility and a sort of robotic reflex to continue eating, sleeping, working, living.
Although a somewhat taboo subject, even among parents who have lost children, I imagine most bereaved mothers and fathers have contemplated suicide after burying a son or daughter. I read today about a couple who decided this world held nothing for them without their only child. Their beautiful boy, Sam, suffered two tragedies in his short life. He survived the first, a car accident at one year old that severed his spine and paralyzed him from the neck down, but succumbed to the second — a sudden massive bacterial meningitis infection that took his life on May 29, 2009, four years later. The TimesOnline reports the bodies of Neil and Kazumi Puttick were found at the foot of Beachy Head in Sussex, England, with two rucksacks: one contained a toy tractor and teddy bears and the other little Sam’s body.
I am not a grief counselor or a psychologist or even an especially perceptive person and cannot comment on how or why some parents are able to fight the overpowering urge to join their children in death while others cannot. But I feel nothing but empathy and understanding for the parent who makes that fatal choice, nothing but a sadness for the unbearable hurt that drove them to pull the trigger or, as in Neil and Kazumi’s case, to jump off the cliff. There is no selfishness in this act, as some people believe of suicide — only a desperate pain and hopelessness.
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June 11th, 2009 at 23:00
Hi….saw your comment on Erin’s blog. I also lost a baby named Nicolas (same spelling)…he was stillborn 6 years ago. We were living in France at the time but are back in the states now. You will find the link to my blog but nowadays it is thin stuff — i am dealing with some issues with my mom & am offline much of the time. I hope those issues will be resolved relatively soon & i will be back a bit more.
I also wanted to leave a comment about suicide. It IS a selfish act. I say that as a person who has contemplated it in detail many times, but also as a person who is currently hearing my mother say daily how she wants to kill herself because of her troubles. Grief is inherently a very self-centered experience. When you are in such pain, such hopelessness…you can NOT see further or have hope. People try to make it better with their words, but this is not possible, really. I felt this when Nicolas died and also i see it now with my mom — she is going blind, and we try to re-frame it for her so that it is OK, just like people tried to reframe it for me after my loss — ‘it is a new normal’, ‘it could be worse’, ‘try to be positive’, ‘count your blessings’, ‘accept and embrace it’. But right now she cannot do any of those things, she can only mourn the loss of the light.
Yet, 6 years ago, when my baby died, she said to me that i needed to ‘accept it and move on’, and she did not leave me the space to cry or to grieve or to be hopeless. So i do not treat her the same as she treated me, and i try to help her grieve… as well as to build this new life, this ‘new normal’, of hers. But i do believe that if she were to kill herself, as she threatens…it would fundamentally be because her responsibility to us (her family) would weigh less than the relief of her pain. That is my own experience — i never came close to doing it, because i feel the responsibility for my family who is here….even if much of the time i am effectively useless.
Anyway, i just wrote a bunch of crap about myself & my current situation, sorry. Too many cosmos tonight, i guess.
June 12th, 2009 at 06:08
Hi Kate. First, let me say I am so sorry for the loss of your Nicolas (love the spelling!). Second, you are right about suicide being selfish because it is inherently a self-centered act. Having entertained some of those thoughts myself after Nicolas died, I know I was only thinking about myself and not the people I would leave behind. I used a poor choice of words in trying to express my sympathy for the Putticks. I guess I was trying to say that the pain that drove them to such an act is so real, so overwhelming, so consuming that people should not judge them for being weak or selfish. BTW, sometimes too many cosmos is a good thing!