Muddling through
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I found this note on my phone, a conversation with my 4-year-old daughter, a year or so after her sister was stillborn, a month or so before her brother was due.
E: Can you watch my baby? If she’s by herself stay with her because she’s always peeing around the corner.
Me: Why does she do that?
E: She’s just weird
Me: Why do you think?
E: I think she’s just worried
Me: Oh – what’s she worried about?
E: I think because I have a baby in my tummy and she’s worried it’s going to be dead this time.
Me: Oh no – is she worried about that?
E: Yeah. Just tell her it’s not going to happen.
I feel gutted. The kind of worry and anxiety that underlies that game feels shocking to me now. It wasn’t only me who lived through this, I’m reminded. It was my living children, too.
We used to have these kinds of conversations all the time. My bright little girl telling me how smart it would be if I had a window into my tummy so we could look inside and make sure Baby Brother wasn’t “getting dead.” How if she had a magic wand, she would magic Anja back to us.
On Anja’s fourth birthday, we had a cake and M, who was not quite three, asked when she was coming over to eat it. “Anja’s dead, sweetie,” I said. “I know,” he said, matter-of-factly. “But there’s cake.”
These sibling are now 9 and 14. They mostly go quiet when I mention Anja. On her birthday, last week, M said, “she would be one year older than me, right?” “Mmhmm,” I answered. “She would be.” He was silent, thinking. I let him wonder. And I wondered, too: who is she, to them? Who was she and who has she become?
E baked a cake and then somehow after dinner everyone was fighting and sulking and no one would come out of their room and the cake sat on the table while I fought down a misplaced rage. The same thing happened last year and I was so angry. This year I’m angry, too, but also seeing the pattern. It’s her birthday and they have feelings that are confusing and strong and hard. And sad.
The next day, we ate the cake.
I used to think I was a good parent to a grieving child. We talked about sadness and anger, we played it out, we drew and sang and stomped when we needed to. And then - we stopped. I still say her name. I tell stories that start, “When I was pregnant with Anja….” But it’s not the same as it was when they were little and full of wonder about everything, including death.
I see other loss friends whose children draw hearts in the sand with their brother’s name, who have their baby sibling’s photographs on the wall, who light candles and blow them out to say goodnight, every night, and I think I’ve failed my own children who don’t want to talk anymore. But it’s also been 11 years, and I’m just a little bit wiser now, and I know we all grieve differently. Our silent wonderings, our small gestures, our chocolate cakes. We’re still missing her, though I vow as I have so many times in these long years, to do better, to make it up, to grieve right.
Both things are true: I think they’re ok and I worry they’re not.
It’s almost the end of another January, and we’re all here, still, muddling through.
Siblings sometimes seem forgotten in babyloss. Does your baby have siblings, and if so, how are they? Do you feel like you know how to talk about death and grief with them? To keep up a relationship for them with their sister or brother? How are you muddling through?