desire to bake and decorate cupcakes and to chat over dinner preparations. Planning birthdays and Christmases without her boundless enthusiasm will never be the same.
Since she’s gone, we’ve hankered after her girliness, both in these superficial ways and of course more fundamentally. All of our future hopes and dreams for our dear, beautiful daughter died with her. No walking her down the aisle for Trevor one day; no watching her career with interest and pride (no doubt anxiety and frustration too); no unsuitable boyfriends to fight off or front up to for Ed, Paddy and Trevor; no sitting bikini-clad on strong shoulders at summer festivals; no graduation day, 21sts, bridal shopping trips, or cuddles on Christmas morning. This additional loss hit me hard. I am severed from the Sisterhood. And while I hope there will be girls back with us in due course, in the meantime I profoundly miss their presence in our home and lives.
The loss of my sense of security
The experience of trauma has consequences, chief of which is a heightened sense of physical and emotional vulnerability. On holiday recently, Trevor had a sore throat, which became sufficiently bad to prompt him to get into a taxi and head across an unknown Asian city in search of a late-night doctor. He headed out the door without me giving it a second thought, until, ten minutes later, he sent me pictures of the massive street riot his cab had become embroiled in. Out of nowhere, and out of all proportion to what my brain knew was minimal threat, the familiar anxiety came rushing in. Until I knew he was at the doctor’s and had been seen, I felt (very suddenly and acutely) aware of how vulnerable we were. How stupid it was to take anything for granted in this world.
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAUMA HAS CONSEQUENCES, CHIEF OF WHICH IS A HEIGHTENED SENSE OF PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY.
Once you’ve lived with continued aftershocks from earthquakes (which come without warning to shake your world) and received that call from the policeman (saying he’s on his way to see you), there is no longer any sense of certainty. Anything is possible, everything is possible, at any time.
How are we supposed to go on living normally, letting our remaining precious children walk out our front door every day, when we have been made so acutely aware of the randomness and fragility of life? Vulnerability is a particularly challengingaspect of bereavement, especially following the loss of a child or anyone deemed ‘too young’ to die.
Social anthropologist Wednesday Martin sums this up beautifully, when she writes of that ‘crazed but logical, urgent-feeling’ of the need to hide other children away, to protect them from danger, and the ‘obsessive fear that now he or she will be hit by a car or walk into the pool or somehow, anyhow, be extinguished’. 2 But, learning to live with fear and vulnerability is an essential skill of resilience. It’s easy to view courage as the absence of fear, but there’s plenty of evidence to show (and my experience backs this up) that courage is the ability to experience fear but not become overwhelmed or paralysed by it.
VULNERABILITY IS A PARTICULARLY CHALLENGING ASPECT OF BEREAVEMENT.
I’ve read a great deal since Abi died, searching for clues to promote acceptance, for contemporary sound bites and ancient wisdoms that add to the jumble of jigsaw pieces that help make sense of my new world. Reading Pema Chödrön first introduced me to two key pieces of the puzzle of life and death. As if they were signposts pointing my energies in the right direction, I very quickly attached myself to the two Buddhist principles of ‘Life is Suffering’ and what I like to think of as ‘The Universal Law of Impermanence’. I’m not a practising Buddhist, but adopting some of Buddhist philosophy has substantially helped me overcome the secondary loss of my trust in the world and my fear of life’s random nature. After all, given that Buddha
Since she’s gone, we’ve hankered after her girliness, both in these superficial ways and of course more fundamentally. All of our future hopes and dreams for our dear, beautiful daughter died with her. No walking her down the aisle for Trevor one day; no watching her career with interest and pride (no doubt anxiety and frustration too); no unsuitable boyfriends to fight off or front up to for Ed, Paddy and Trevor; no sitting bikini-clad on strong shoulders at summer festivals; no graduation day, 21sts, bridal shopping trips, or cuddles on Christmas morning. This additional loss hit me hard. I am severed from the Sisterhood. And while I hope there will be girls back with us in due course, in the meantime I profoundly miss their presence in our home and lives.
The loss of my sense of security
The experience of trauma has consequences, chief of which is a heightened sense of physical and emotional vulnerability. On holiday recently, Trevor had a sore throat, which became sufficiently bad to prompt him to get into a taxi and head across an unknown Asian city in search of a late-night doctor. He headed out the door without me giving it a second thought, until, ten minutes later, he sent me pictures of the massive street riot his cab had become embroiled in. Out of nowhere, and out of all proportion to what my brain knew was minimal threat, the familiar anxiety came rushing in. Until I knew he was at the doctor’s and had been seen, I felt (very suddenly and acutely) aware of how vulnerable we were. How stupid it was to take anything for granted in this world.
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAUMA HAS CONSEQUENCES, CHIEF OF WHICH IS A HEIGHTENED SENSE OF PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY.
Once you’ve lived with continued aftershocks from earthquakes (which come without warning to shake your world) and received that call from the policeman (saying he’s on his way to see you), there is no longer any sense of certainty. Anything is possible, everything is possible, at any time.
How are we supposed to go on living normally, letting our remaining precious children walk out our front door every day, when we have been made so acutely aware of the randomness and fragility of life? Vulnerability is a particularly challengingaspect of bereavement, especially following the loss of a child or anyone deemed ‘too young’ to die.
Social anthropologist Wednesday Martin sums this up beautifully, when she writes of that ‘crazed but logical, urgent-feeling’ of the need to hide other children away, to protect them from danger, and the ‘obsessive fear that now he or she will be hit by a car or walk into the pool or somehow, anyhow, be extinguished’. 2 But, learning to live with fear and vulnerability is an essential skill of resilience. It’s easy to view courage as the absence of fear, but there’s plenty of evidence to show (and my experience backs this up) that courage is the ability to experience fear but not become overwhelmed or paralysed by it.
VULNERABILITY IS A PARTICULARLY CHALLENGING ASPECT OF BEREAVEMENT.
I’ve read a great deal since Abi died, searching for clues to promote acceptance, for contemporary sound bites and ancient wisdoms that add to the jumble of jigsaw pieces that help make sense of my new world. Reading Pema Chödrön first introduced me to two key pieces of the puzzle of life and death. As if they were signposts pointing my energies in the right direction, I very quickly attached myself to the two Buddhist principles of ‘Life is Suffering’ and what I like to think of as ‘The Universal Law of Impermanence’. I’m not a practising Buddhist, but adopting some of Buddhist philosophy has substantially helped me overcome the secondary loss of my trust in the world and my fear of life’s random nature. After all, given that Buddha
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