Everyday grief

And the thousand little heartbreaks of motherhood

“Being the mother of a son is like someone breaking up with you really slowly.”

- The Otherhood

Yesterday we said goodbye to River’s nursery. They close for the summer holidays and in September, he’ll be starting school. I remember walking into Pippa’s for the first time and noticing how calm the children there were. They could go inside and out all day, whenever they chose. Outside were trucks and bikes, a sandpit and chickens strolling about. Behind the fence was open countryside with grazing cows. River was so happy there.

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Yesterday morning I was showering him with kisses as he tried to do a puzzle on the floor. And for the first time he shouted ‘stop kissing me!’ and ran away from me.

Yesterday I remembered this video and this article by Mia Freedman, and the words: “Being the mother of a son is like someone breaking up with you really slowly.”

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For the last time I walk home from River’s nursery. My husband has taken River to his other nursery (which is open throughout the summer) and I intend to go home to work. But what I notice as I walk alone on this warm, sunny day is the grief shimmering in my body.

I cross over the railway bridge and past the duckpond where the ducklings, only weeks ago little fluffy babies, are now indistinguishable from the adults. As I walk across the bridge over the river I hear a splash and look to my right to see a black shag landing on the water. I watch it slide gracefully under the water and wait to see where it will pop up next.

I ask myself: what is this feeling like? What qualities does it have? And it was water; yes, water. As I watch the river flowing and sparkling in the sun, I know that this is what the grief feels like in my body. Like water.

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I feel the tenderness of my heart as I pass under the willows that grow by the river, where the cow parsley has all died back. A vibrating in my chest. It is not comfortable. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to feel this. There is a part of me that says: how do I fix this? How do I change this?

But I choose differently. When I get home I ask myself: what do I need? What do I need to do to allow this grief?

River’s key worker has lovingly created a scrapbook of his time at Pippa’s and I sit on the sofa and open it up. The first page is pictures of River, at two years old, with his little round face and short blonde hair, eating cereal and playing with trains. That’s when I realise what this is: the grief of knowing I will never see that little child again.

Mia Freedman articulates this grief so perfectly:

‘There are so many batshit crazy things about being a parent and one that definitely wasn’t in the brochure is the way you don’t actually parent one person, you parent many, many different people who are all your child.

‘There’s the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the pre-schooler, the primary aged kid, the pre-teen, the adolescent, the full-blown teen, the young adult and then the adult. They all answer to the same name. They all call you Mum. And you never ever notice the inflection point where one of those people turns into the next.

‘You never get to properly say goodbye to all the little people who grow up because you don’t notice the growing, the changing. Except when Facebook sends you those bloody memory reminders that invariably make me cry because it’s like showing me the face of someone I can never see again. Not in that way. Not at that age.’

Yep, I know. No wonder the video of radio host Amanda Keller reading this has been watched 41 million times.

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Of course, this grief is nothing compared to the grief of actually losing a child. And also: this grief, of watching our children grow and slowly move away from us, is real too. I know ‘big’ grief: my mother died when I was 14. And I know this grief too, this grief that is wrapped up in fathomless gratitude that I have a healthy child. I have this unbelievable gift that so many bereaved parents would give anything to experience.

Grief is part of the fabric of life. It’s part of being a human. We grieve so many things. We often try not to feel it. We try to distract ourselves from it, run from it, minimise it. Tell ourselves we should be ‘over it’ by now, or that grief is only allowed if someone has died. But whether we are parents or not, we will experience so many losses and heartbreaks throughout our lives. Those of us who are highly sensitive often feel grief at the smallest, most ordinary things. Witnessing the sun setting. Sunday evenings. Seeing the first leaves of autumn fall. The words ‘I love you’ that catch in our throat that we wish we could say, but don’t.

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Now the summer stretches out before us for seven weeks. I do not love the summer. I like cloudy days that bring out the rich green of the undergrowth; the sound of rain on leaves; a chill in the air. The bright sun and open sky of July brings up an ache of loneliness in me. A sense that I am somehow missing out on connection with others. During these long days I feel that if I’m not with people, then I am utterly alone.

I am also aware that this summer I have many more days with just me and River. And I know that at the end of this summer I will dress River in his blue school uniform and say goodbye to him in the playground. And my heart will break a little. One of the thousand little heartbreaks of being a parent.

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River sits on the stairs wrapped up in his Lion King towel. He looks at me with his big blue eyes and says, with such hope in his voice: ‘are you going to put me to bed?’

I’m so tired. Bedtime can take so long. I say: ‘I don’t know darling, if Daddy’s OK with it…’

‘Daddy!!!’ he yells down the stairs. ‘Are you OK if Mummy puts me to bed???’

Obviously James is OK with it.

So I take his little hand and we go into his bedroom. I pull the curtain across and turn on the fairy lights. I choose The Mousehole Cat to read to him which was one of my favourites as a child. And we lie down together, him snuggling up to me in his star pyjamas, his little hand resting on my chest.

There will be a time when he doesn’t want me to put him to bed. I won’t be able to lie down as he cuddles up to me, his little body slowly getting heavier. He won’t roll over as I read him Winnie-the-Pooh and I won’t listen to his breathing change until he’s lying there so peacefully, maybe with his arms splayed out, fast asleep. I won’t be able to kiss him on the cheek and softly say ‘I love you Rivsy.’ He won’t be my little boy anymore.

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What does all this have to do with being sober? Nothing.

And everything.

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