-By Chan Lilian-
This article appeared in The Star.
This is probably one of the most difficult subject for me to write because I want to send the message across to the general public on how do they deal with us grieving mothers and at the same time, how do we grieving mothers cope with losing our child/children. I strongly feel the need to put them in writing for the benefit of others. Please do not view this letter with your sympathy and but your understanding.
First, let me briefly open up my heart like an open book and tell you what my friends, comprising a few Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian and I went through after the loss of our child. If you never lose a child, you will never understand our pain so I will not mention that here. However, there are so many factors added on to our grief that could have been avoided if only people know how to deal with us. Love and grief goes hand in hand. The deeper you love, the more you grief. Just because our child is only a few months old, doesn’t mean that our love is less and we can forget our child in the same period of time that they lived on earth. Or if our child is old and has lived a full life, the surviving mother will not feel sad. The love of a mother for a child starts the moment she knows her little one is growing in her womb. By then, she will have built her hopes, dreams and all good wishes for her little one. Therefore, once these dreams and hopes are dashed, the pain is tremendous.
Secondly, the social stigma that some of us experienced is enough to make us crawl in a hole and hope never to see the sun again. Our local ‘pantang-larang’ of not associating oneself with us mothers whose babies died made us feel like we are carrying some infectious disease or plague. We won’t get invited to weddings or welcome anywhere near another pregnant woman. And if that is not lonely enough, people will avoid bringing up our dead child in their conversation. If we so much made some remarks in our conversation, recalling some fond memories etc., we will get uneasy reaction. Please note that the memories of the child does not get buried six feet under or scattered into the sea with the body or ashes, it stays fondly forever in our heart.
Thirdly, “get over it and get on with life”. That is the most common ‘intelligent’ remark we get. There is no way that we can get over it because we are not built to record and erase memories like a cassette or computer. We do get on with life because we still wake up every morning to live another day and we do not need another person to tell us to do that. Therefore, if you do have a friend or relative who has gone through such experience, please do not add on more agonies for her. We merely expect our friends and relatives to be there with an ear and shoulder. And avoid at all cost telling us that our child will be reborn again. It is like telling us that our child has died a second time. Please also don’t be naïve to think that we can always get pregnant again and bear a new replacement. A child is not a car, he cannot be replaced.
What prompted me to put these thoughts in writing is the way some of us, grieving mothers dealt with grief. We know what an orphan, a widow and widower are. But there is no term for us, the grieving mother because it is not the normal arrangement of life for a parent to bury a child. Therefore, not only we do not have an official ‘title’, we also do not have an ‘official’ guide to tell us how to cope. It is more pronounced here in our country than other developed country. Many mothers have struggled alone and habouring thoughts of suicides and living recklessly. I am not able to quote the many real life examples that I encounter due to the trust and confidence my friends had in me. However one of my friends who has lost a child has kindly consented to share her experience in this letter for the benefit of other grieving mothers. After being married for ten long years, she and her husband were finally blessed with a baby girl. The baby was born premature and diagnosed as a Down syndrome baby. This made my friend and her husband love their only child even more tenderly. During the long stay in the hospital, she went through the difficult time feeling totally alone, watching her precious baby slowly dying. When the baby died, the whole world crumbled. She had to handle all the funeral arrangements and was not allowed to cry at all. Her relatives and so-called friends said she should not cry as her little one was back with her Maker and is no longer suffering. Due to the tremendous loss and lack of proper support, she almost committed suicide. Thankfully, her best friend and her husband helped her through the most painful time. She says that her only recourse to lessen the pain was to cry non-stop. Tears do help somewhat but until today, after two years, she still cries because the pain never goes away. She too agrees and supports my decision that we need to have a grief support group here in Malaysia to help parents who lost their children. Apart from this friend of mine, other mothers whose only child died felt that their very reason to live died with the child.
Personally, I can tell you that after the loss of my child, I do not care whether I live another one day or decades longer. But I have every reason to carry on because of my three wonderful children and the little one I am now carrying in my womb due to their dependence on me.
There are also a few who does not only live with the pain of losing the child but with the added guilt their loved ones piled on them. They are made to feel like they are responsible for the health condition and eventual death of their child. These imaginations can get very real if the mother does not have another trusted and reliable person to talk to. The burden of guilt and regret coupled with grief will be too much to bear alone.
I have personally seen marriages breaking after the death of a child because of the difference men and women dealt with their grieves. There are also mothers who had mental breakdown later on because they avoided giving the proper acknowledgement to the child by going through a proper funeral ritual. In their hours of grief, loved ones are naïve enough to believe that if they quickly disposed off the child (usually a still born or very young newborn) quietly and shielded the mother from the trauma, she will eventually forget she ever had the baby!
Therefore, mothers who had lost a child, if you read this article, know that you are not alone and that there are many of us who had travelled the same path. Reach out and let us help each other to face the harsh reality and know that everything you feel is normal. I had actively involved myself in several online grief support group overseas for the last six months. Locally, I have a group of multi-racial, multi-religious friends that we communicate with regularly. We are willing and ready to provide an ear and shoulder to other grieving mothers. It does not matter how long your child has left you or how old the child is. If you still feel the pain, you are free to share with us. However, if your grief has interrupted your normal life routine, please seek professional help if you can.