At the Kitchen Table: All in the Family

I always find the "Kitchen Table" meme-type posts over at Glow really thought provoking. So, here are my responses to the current one:

1. What was  your relationship with your immediate family (mother, father, sisters and/or brothers) like before your child died? How have those relationships changed?

I have a close relationship with my family. They only live 20 minutes away from me and we see each other most weeks and chat on the phone in between times. I don't see my sister as often as I'd like (given how close we are geographically) but I'd still say we're close - it's the sort of relationship where we get together and it doesn't seem like it's been a while.

I'm still close - they were amazing when Emma died. They really did enfold us in love and practical help. There are occasions now when I'm aware that they, perhaps, don't "get" something about my grief but at least they have never tried to persuade me that my way of grieving is "wrong", even if they don't understand it. It would be easy for a rift to form in those circumstances so it's good that they trust and respect me as my daughter's parent.

2. Has your family been a refuge or safe haven, or a place where your grief is unaccepted?

I'd say a safe haven, mostly. Certainly, I've never felt that my grief for Emma was unacceptable.

3. How has your partner's family, if you have one, been there for you? For your partner?

They've been brilliant, for the most part, too. My husband is close with his parents and all his siblings and I know how much we have valued their support. It has been complicated on his side because so many more pregnancies and babies have happened there. Our rainbow baby is the only subsequent grandchild for my parents. On my husband's side of the family there are four new little people since Emma so far, one more due to arrive imminently and almost certainly more to come. In the early days, when I found pregnant people and newborns excruciatingly difficult, my husband's family (and my husband) had to tread an incredibly delicate line between celebrating the new lives that were growing and exploding onto their family tree and managing my very tender feelings on the matter.  Looking back, I can see how well they did that - even if I didn't always feel it at the time.

4. Have your immediate and extended family accepted your child(ren) as part of the family? Do they talk about your baby(ies)? Do they mourn?

Very much so. We set the tone very early on, always talking about Emma to them and making it clear that that was how we wanted it to be. Our families respected that and took their cue from us. They have definitely mourned - although, as others have said, I think at least some of their grief was for us, their children, as much as it was for our child.

5. What kind of support did your immediate family offer? Did they lose themselves in action, like cooking and cleaning? Or were they emotionally supportive?

Both. My parents had the heartbreaking news of telling our older children that their baby sister had died during labour and then bringing them to the hospital to see us. They were stalwarts for DS1 and DD1 during those early weeks. My husband's parents and brother dropped everything to drive up to us - they live a hundred miles away. Emma was born at 2.25am ... they were at the hospital by 5.30am. They went back to our house and cleaned up (I was had been planning a home water birth, so there was a birth pool to be emptied and put away) and cooked a meal for our return. That sort of practical help has continued through the years, according to our needs.

But, all our family have proved to be good at "abiding" with our grief too. They were able to let us talk over and over and over again and have always seemed to cope with our need to revisit Emma's brief life. And now, three years out, when we have the ability and desire to have other conversations we can - we aren't always cast in the role of "poor victims of a tragic event". It's a relief to know that our families adapted with us to the different stages of grief.

6. What was it like to bear witness to your family's grief? In what ways could you be present for them? In what ways could you not be present?

This is a hard one - I'm not sure I did, really. Thinking about it now, I was/am very selfish in my grief. She is my daughter, my husband's daughter, my children's sibling and, as such, my grief was all about me and those for whom I felt I had responsibility. I never felt I had responsibility to help my wider family grieve - I sort of just expected that they did. We've never cried much in front of each other - I tend to reserve my crying, even now, for alone moments. I suppose we bore witness in storytelling, even if that is probably the most difficult aspect of having a baby who is stillborn - the story is short and repetitive. Still, I would talk (to my mum and my mother-in-law and my sister, mainly) about my pregnancy, about what she looked like, about the things I miss. In that sense, we bore witness together to a whole life that is lost to us.

7. When you reflect on deaths in your extended family, how did the treatment of your child's (or children's) death differ from, say, the death of a grandparent?

My mother-in-law told me that Emma's death was the worst thing she has ever experienced (and both her parents and her older sister have died). I was surprised to hear her say that (not because I didn't think she didn't grieve just because I hadn't thought of it in those hierarchical terms) but I was touched too. 

There is a sense of deliberately creating rituals too, which I'm not sure we have with deaths that came after long (longer than Emma's, anyways) lives. Perhaps because we have memories instead of rituals in those instances. We don't buy gifts for elderly people at Christmas, we do all buy one for a child who would be Emma's age to give to charity. It seems more important somehow that our grief is more ...active ... I suppose.