My mother asked me
yesterday how I cope with speaking about Ben in my interviews on TV and on
radio etc. How I was doing with holding
it all together, especially in public. She
told me a story about a woman she had met at a function the previous week. This woman had lost a baby 20 years ago. She told my mom that although she had other
children since, and was very happy, sometimes a memory would sneak up on her, at
the strangest times, when she was cleaning, or driving, and that pang would
resound once again in her heart. Quite
intensely, just for that moment.
It gets
easier. Although you don’t believe it,
or even want to hear it when you are the darkest moments of your grief, time
really is the proverbial healer. The
pain gets less overwhelming, the wound less raw. And then it just becomes part of who you are.
It’s sad, but you live comfortably with
that sadness.
Like the woman
who lost her child 20 years ago, I too am happy now. I don’t spend a lot of
time being sad about Ben. I still miss him. In fact I made myself look at photos of him yesterday. I say ‘made’ myself because it still is a
little raw for me, but I wanted to burn his face into my memory again. I wanted
to search his face for any features that his brother or sister might have. He looks a little like Kate. A mixture of Adam and Kate actually. I stared at the photo of his face and
wondered again, for the millionth time, what he might have been like as a
little boy.
I really am
fine. I am able to talk about Ben with
breaking down. I am even able to look at
his photos and remember back without the searing heartache. Mostly because I prepare myself ahead, a
mental version of taking a deep breath and squaring one’s shoulders. But like the woman who lost her child so many
years back, it is when I am not expecting it that it hits me hardest.
I got an email in
my inbox today from the nurse who took care of Ben while he was still alive,
who prayed over him while he lay there fighting for his life, and who prepared
him so gracefully for his death. She is
the nurse who gently removed all the IV lines, the ventilator tube; who carefully
wiped away the bits of stickiness left over from the Band-Aids and sticky tape,
and who dressed him for the first and last time in a little yellow baby
sleeper. She placed him in my arms so
that I could hold him for the first, and last time. And once he had died, she
took him from me again and prepared him to be taken away.
After Ben had
died, she was so gentle and kind and helpful. She helped me with the terrible details of
where his little body should go, which funeral home would collect him etc – the
horrendous admin of death. She honestly
helped me so much. She gave my son and I
dignity in his death. I will forever be
grateful to her for that. I thought of
her often in the year after his death
Imagine then my
reaction when I saw her again at the NICU where Adam spent the first twelve
days of his life. A totally different
NICU, far away from the one where Ben had died. I could never have gone back there again. I was so pleased to see her, even it was a
very emotional time. When Adam was
eventually discharged twelve days later, she was the nurse on duty. She helped me dress him in his outfit; she
removed all the tags and signed him out. And she said to me “I am so glad that this
time the little boy I am handing you is going home with you, happy and healthy”.
It was such an incredibly poignant
moment. For both of us. It felt so fitting that she was the nurse
discharging Adam.
So when I saw her
email in my inbox today, I was immediately transported back to the days when
Ben was in the NICU, when he died… For the first time in a long time I cried. I miss him; I miss what could have been.
“I don't know if you remember me but I will never
forget you and I believe that I am amongst the privileged people to have been
able to share a small part of your journey. I looked after Ben at xxxxxxx then
Adam in xxxxxx…”
Of course I
remember her! She is such a beautiful
person. Young. I think she was in her
very early twenties at the time, but so full of grace, so mature. And she meant so much to me, both with Ben and
with Adam.
I sent her a note
back
“You will never know just how much you meant to me, or
how important you are in my life. You gave me a gift that will stay with me for
the rest of my life. I will forever be grateful for the way in which you took
care of my son and more importantly, the way you handled the situation that allowed
him to die in dignity and allowed me to say goodbye in a dignified way.
Honestly, I wish there was an award I could recommend
you for, or a prize I could nominate you for. You were an excellent NICU nurse,
not only because of the way you cared for the babies, but the way you treated
Marko and I. Thank you thank you thank you”
She is no longer
working as a nurse, which is such a pity. She is such an excellent one. She was really excellent with the babies and
with the parents, which is SO important when you have a sick child. Nurses do one of the most important jobs in
the world, and in this country they get paid so badly, it is a disgrace. An absolute disgrace.
Thank God for people
like this amazing young woman, I am forever grateful for what she did for me
and my sons. I hope that life rewards
her richly.
Ben's webpage
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