Remembrance

My granddaughter nearly made it to her third birthday on 28th November 2008. But, instead it is the 9th anniversary of her death today. There’s no such thing as getting over this, just getting though it. When the feelings hit, acknowledge them, take the time to let them pass, rather than fighting them. Then day to day life carries on as usual. Whenever we think of our other grandchildren, Kyah is there too. But instead of talking about her, we have Kyah season, which begins on the 19th November. Mostly on this date we stick to seeing people who were part of her life. My son, whose life fell apart when Kyah died, seeks solitude these days. It’s good for him and I’m not so terrified now that he’ll be broken by it.

People who aren’t close to the family often talk of the impact of Kyah’s life on their own in positive terms. Her death made them:

• look at themselves, there attitudes to work and family and what living well means;
• go home and hug their kids harder (forgetting that their kids shouldn’t have to wear their parents’ emotions like that);
• decide to do something that they always wanted – life’s too short to wait etc. 

It all seems so self-centered doesn’t it? For us, the 505-days of Kyah’s journey (cancer, a neuroblastoma) left far too many scars for this sort of relentless soul-searching. A child is not lost to cancer because someone needs a life lesson. These are not really not the thing to say to families who have empty arms where a child once was. 

In my experience decisions made after Kyah’s death to move forward were often rash. Too much getting on with life and not enough working through those 505 days of hope and heartbreak as a child slowly died. No-one became more resilient because of this. It was not a lesson in how to live.

Today I marked the day with a fun-run and unexpectedly shed a tear when I watched the 12-13 year-old girls race. Such lovely, lively people moving on from their childhood, while Kyah will forever be nearly three. As it happened I ran for a short time with a woman who had a photo of a young child pinned to the back of her t-shirt. I broke her solitude by having a wee chat. She lost her little girl four years ago. Her name was Paige.

To Paige’s mum, thank you for talking. It made my remembrance easier, and I hope that you liked having the opportunity to talk about your child. I’d love to say it gets easier as time goes on to mention your child in everyday life, but in reality the mentions are more private. In public we go about our daily lives, chatting as if she never existed when conversations about family life happen. Conversation flows better if we just tuck her away in our hearts and speak her name under our breaths.