I am Vic’s mother!

Child-loss is a black hole of grief and sorrow in which every emotion is compressed and compounded.   It is an inescapable vortex.  

Vic was the centre of my emotional cosmos. My world revolved around my precious child. Vic was my past, my present and my future. When she died it felt as if my life ended.

For the first time in 38 years I cried. I truly cried and called to the heavens. It was as if 38 years of pent up fear, anguish and stress was released. I screamed, I sobbed, I wept… Did you know that there is a difference between weeping and sobbing? I clung to my child. I stroked her hair. I washed her little body and dressed her in her favourite pyjamas. I sprayed her favourite perfume on her.

Grief is a strange journey.

When I embarked on the Journey of Mourning it was a strange road. I had lost people I love dearly before. My mom, my dad, BFF’s, colleagues and family had died. Of course grandparents too… But I had never lost a child. This is a road I had never travelled before. I did not only lose my precious child but I also lost the person I was.

Within a millisecond I ceased to be a mother. Wait – I became a “bereaved mother.” The hope I had clung to for 36.5 years was lost! The fight in me was gone.

The second my child’s soul left her body my heart shattered into a million pieces.

The hardest thing I had to do in my life was say goodbye to my child; listening to her breathing getting weaker and weaker…. knowing that her last breath was so close.

Then I thought nothing would match my pain watching my precious baby leave our home for the last time in a plastic sheet on a gurney until I had to stand and watch the hearse drive away with my precious, precious child lying in a cold hard coffin – her destination a crematorium!

No matter how prepared I thought I was for Vic’s death – I wasn’t! People seem to think I should be grateful Vic is dead. Just as people did not want to listen to me talking about Vic’s terrible suffering they now don’t want me to talk about Vic after she died. They ask you how you are doing hoping you won’t be honest and answer…

It is almost surreal to see that the world has carried on with its business; that the heavens are unchanged; that life has continued. I look at myself and I think that people that don’t know me would never guess that my life ended 6 months ago… People pat me on the back and say “You are so strong…”

We are nearing Vic’s 6 month anniversary and I have learnt to breathe again. I have learnt to stay strong for the boys. My life will and must mirror Vic’s strength and courage. Her dream of a Hospice will continue to live on in me…Her goodness will continue to spread to the community and the world!

I raised Vic to be strong, courageous, and brave. Vic taught her sons that she is their mother not their excuse…

I am Vic’s mother – she is my reason; not my excuse!