Mourning Has Broken

by Erin Davis

  A few months after moving to British Columbia to begin the next chapter of our lives, we were invited to what we learned was an annual barbecue at a neighbour’s house. As this was our first time meeting many of the people on our street (except for a friendly wave while we passed their homes on our dog walk), we weren’t sure who knew “our story.” I’d come from a life where it seemed everyone was aware of the loss of our adult child. So you can forgive us for having the feeling that people would know; it’s just how we had lived for so many years. But in this new life, there were very few people who knew the reason we’d left our previous lives in search of new ones in a new city and province. So we wondered: Would we be asked “the question”?

  If people did know, they didn’t say, “Oh, you’re the new folks whose daughter died. Welcome!” or anything at all, really. There were two nearby neighbours who may not have been kept abreast of the talk of the street—if there was any to begin with. Reality check: why would there be? As we waited in line for burgers and salad, I struck up a conversation with the woman, who had at her side a lovely young girl. I asked the girl’s name and we were introduced. Then the girl’s mother asked if my husband and I had any children. I was very pleased with the response that emerged, since I’m never quite sure what’s going to come out. I have no pat answer; it all depends on the circumstances, the mood I’m in or how surprised I am by the timing of the question. But this time I was ready.

  As parents of a “limited edition,” saying we don’t have children is not an option. Early on in our search for ways to make a conversation easier for those asking, I thought perhaps I’d just say no. But even considering that response felt like such a massive betrayal of our daughter—as if somewhere around us she was saying, “Are you kidding me?” and wondering how we could erase twenty-four years of her making our lives so rich.

  It is an unfortunate thing: If you lose a husband, you’re a widow, and if you lose your wife, you become a widower. When your father dies you’re fatherless; when both parents die, you become an orphan. So why isn’t there a word for parents who have lost a child? Come on, Germany, I’m counting on you! You invented a word for weight gained from eating when you’re sad (kummerspeck, or “griefbacon”), so don’t tell me you haven’t got one for parents who have lost their child!

  My friend Nancy consulted Latin and English dictionaries and then headed to the internet as she attempted to bestow a name upon this horrible state. She came up with liberiloss (Latin for “children” and English for “loss”), puerperde (Latin for “child” and French for “loss”) and, finally, puerloss (Latin for “child,” English for “loss”). Sorry, but they all felt like lose-lose scenarios.

  But China, known for its mandated one-child families, does have a special word for this kind of loss: shidu. Wikipedia explains: “Shidu is a phenomenon denoting the loss of a parent’s only child. The parents who have lost their only child are known as shidu fumu in China.”

  It only just now occurred to me how many parents in China must find themselves in the same shoes we wear. And sadly, as useful as it is to have a term to describe us, I hope that the word is never needed enough to become a widely used part of the lexicon outside of its country of origin.

  Someone suggested recently I try the term kidow. While I get why that might be fitting, it sounds too much like kiddo, a cheery term of endearment (and one I still get as a grown woman from my dad), and comes off as a little too flippant for such a debilitating condition—enduring the death of a child. I’ll pass, thanks.

  I did come across a piece on the internet about things the writer had learned since her child died, and she used the term loss parent. Try rolling that around: “Oh, we are loss parents.” I suppose it’s fitting enough, despite its Peter Pan similarities (are these where lost boys come from?), but until the term becomes widely used, we would just end up explaining it anyway. So we’re no further along, are we?

  Until then, somewhere between spilling our hearts’ darkest contents and denying the existence of an amazing human being lies the middle ground. Not a happy medium, in any way, but a place where no one needs to hurt. There has already been enough of that.

  I answered what should have been just polite conversation filler at the street party in a mostly honest way and then deflected. “We have a daughter in Ottawa. And how old is this young lady?”

  In that moment, I felt inordinately proud of myself: I’d stolen home plate while the pitcher was looking somewhere in the outfield.

  Sandy Sanderson, a wise and deeply funny boss of mine in radio, once passed along this sage advice: “You would be astounded how little people talk about you.” He wasn’t being callous; he was just reminding those of us in the meeting that people are much more wrapped up in their own lives than we realize. We’re just bit players. As don Miguel Ruiz says in my favourite chapter from The Four Agreements, “Don’t take anything personally.” Remembering that it is “their movie”—and we are barely in even the shortest of scenes—has come in handy more times than I can count in both my personal and professional lives.

  What is sad but true is that our own movie’s second act shifted from family film (a romantic comedy, even) to horror flick. Of course, we aren’t alone in either the real world or that of the arts; we found that even the most popular literary, stage and film classics took a turn for the deeply dark side. Again, I wish we had been familiar with the play Our Town, for there is no way at all we could have foretold the deeply sad plot twist.

  It is ironic, really: as a parent, part of raising a child is letting your mind jump ahead three moves to the worst thing that could possibly happen—Watch her on those stairs! Don’t let her do somersaults or she’ll break her neck! Don’t let her sleep with a stuffed toy or on her back . . . or front . . . or side . . . whatever is going to take her in her sleep! And then your job is to prevent it. I was always told to relax and was chided for gasping when our toddler got near the edge of a deck or too close to a swimming pool, or wobbled her bicycle while riding safely at the side of the road. But I swear to you, I was always in that mindset of “what is going to happen to her?” and trying to prevent it. I’m sure most, if not all, parents are like that.

  What I find sadly funny about it all now, though, is that it was not a hot dog that went down the wrong way or a fall from a bunk bed or a toboggan careening into a tree that took our daughter from us. It was a heart that stopped beating. Losing Lauren was everything I feared but nothing I could have prevented. And if I dwell on that for anything longer than a fleeting instance, I could lose my mind.

  And so our job is to keep going. To remember and hold close our hope that our souls will be together again one day and to reflect with joy and love and laughter on the times we had here, the three of us, in those golden twenty-four years. To be grateful that we have no regrets and can say we were the best parents we could be (with room for improvement, of course), that we raised an amazing human being and that we have to go forward in a way that honours her spirit and her memory.

  Part of the way we are doing that is by helping those who are, if not bereaved themselves (and I hear from many through my website email), then close to someone who has lost a loved one. We do it by sharing with them information like favourite books or readily available information found in brochures from our local hospice. We do so by constantly reminding anyone who will listen that someone who is suffering needs to talk and repeat their story. It helps us to process our thoughts and feelings. You need to accept that you cannot take away our pain and that trying to cheer up someone who is suffering in the aftermath of losing a loved one is like trying to will a wound to heal simply by saying that it must. Although it is not easy to witness or engage in, you have to allow us to express our feelings of anger, sadness, guilt or sorrow without judgment and without a Cher-like slap to the face and a “snap out of it!” admonition. Even if it is a little more subtle than that fabulous Moonstruck moment, your calls for a stiff upper lip won’t help a broken heart. There
is no getting over it, just getting through it—remember?

  Grief takes time. Be patient. There may be guidelines or road signs, but there is no hard timeline. For some, sadly, it will take forever. Just remember that.

  Please do not forget us when the shock and pain that you felt upon hearing of our dear one’s parting have faded. For us, those feelings are still there times a hundred, or a thousand, and we feel them every morning the moment we open our eyes and realize that nothing is the same as it was such a short time ago. If you think of it once in a while, maybe send a text on the day of the month that she died—or any day at all! Post a heart in an email and we will know we are in your thoughts. Telling us that you are thinking of us down the road doesn’t tear off a scab; it is more like kissing a scar. It just shows us that someone still cares and that we are not suffering alone. And as overused as the words “thoughts and prayers” may be, they still mean something when they’re said in sincerity and meant to ease our pain.

  And then, if there comes a time when the person who has lost a huge piece of her past, her present and her future all in one tragic moment feels as if she might be ready to pick herself up off the floor, you might consider being there to guide her gently back to life. Perhaps include her in new activities or help encourage her own growing independence. Add her to your social circle or keep asking her to join you until you get a positive response (or a convincing reason why not—maybe she just doesn’t like your friends or, worse yet, you). And please, please, please keep talking about the person who died.

  Yes, we realize that they are gone—we haven’t lost our minds, at least not entirely—but you have to know that they are still very much alive in our hearts. We dream about them. We cry for them. We ache with a longing that can never be fulfilled. We fantasize that they’ll come to the front door to surprise us one more time. We hear a ping on our phone and think: Oh, it’s a text from her! (I had to change my text notification sound effect, as every time I heard those five little percolator notes, I thought of Lauren and that she might be texting.) The phone rings and our dearest one is the first whose name comes to mind. That person will never truly be dead to us—don’t you see? In our case, this person, our child, came from our bodies, and she is a part of us forever. Where, for a time, you may see something that seems like an amputation, we see a leg that suddenly isn’t working right, and it doesn’t make any sense. “It was fine yesterday. . . .” She was our child and she always will be. We will always hold in our hearts not only the memories of our time together (from the moment we first laid eyes on this sweet baby with the long fingers) but, equally palpably, the hopes that we held for her that will never be fulfilled. All of those are swirling together: the mental snapshots, the raucously bright watercolour dreams, the strains of her music and the joy of her laughter. They will not fade, and just because you do not see or hear them does not mean they have faded for us.

  I wrote this on October 11, 2015, after baby Colin’s first birthday party at which Lauren was not toasted or mentioned. I wanted to scream it but dared not open a barely healing wound in her husband and father. So, after the paper plates and banners were disposed of, I sat and penned this plea:

  LAUREN DAWN

  Speak her name, please . . . for our sakes, speak her name.

  We know that she’s gone. That our lives aren’t the same.

  We cannot ache more than we already do,

  So, remembering her is a kindness. It’s true.

  We sense you tread softly, as you skirt the abyss

  But it helps us, you see, when you do reminisce.

  Do you worry of adding to our pain and our strife

  By reminding us that she is gone from our life?

  Our daughter has died. This is now who we are.

  But memories prevent her from drifting too far.

  Your silence—it adds to the rumbling pain

  When we long to know she’s in your thoughts once again.

  Let your words paint a picture of laughter and joy:

  Of her music, her childhood, her husband and boy.

  Speak of her wedding, how she laughed and showed grace

  And the love and pure joy on that beautiful face!

  Tell us something she said that will always ring true

  And simply remind us what she meant to you.

  Keep her alive in your heart with words spoken

  That ours will stay whole—just a little less broken.

  Oh, speak her name, please, that her life will go on.

  As this love will forever—for our Lauren Dawn.

  When you recognize that—how alive she still is to us—you help our souls to survive. And keeping our beloved one’s memory alive means more to us than anything. Anything.

  CHAPTER 8

  Surviving the Worst That Could Happen

  Erin’s final broadcast, at Casa Loma, December 15, 2016

  Chris Shapcotte

  ONE OF THE MOST UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES OF THE tragedy of losing our beloved Lauren was the strength that I—and, by association, Rob—was given by the response and support of the people who listened every morning and corresponded by email. I had always felt a closeness to our listening audience, or more aptly, to the individual people who made up our listening audience, but I’d never imagined that after all of the years that I’d tried to make their mornings a little happier, a little gentler, they would one day be there for me. But that is exactly what happened.

  Back in the radio studio, as the weeks passed, listeners began to awaken not only to the music and voices on our radio station but also to something happening on its airwaves in those dark, early hours. It seemed that simply by showing up and turning on the microphone every day, I was inadvertently becoming proof of life after death (at least in this way).

  I knew in my heart that this is exactly what Lauren would have wanted me to do: what I loved and what she loved. Radio. In fact, one of the four or five psychics I spent time with in the first year after her passing said exactly that. “It’s not about you, Mom,” was Lauren’s message. “This is about them now—just as it always has been. You have to be there for them.”

  Yes, I talked with psychics or mediums. With one of them, fresh off the Jersey Shore, I experienced a truly meaningful “passing over” ceremony in Sedona, Arizona, during which Lauren seemingly explained her death to us by means of a reading. Interestingly enough (lest you think they are all charlatans out to take advantage of a bereaved mother), although I was also in touch with three or four others during those early months after Lauren died, I was actually warned off it by the second-last woman I consulted, who gave me an intense hands-on kind of reading. She cautioned that I would be messing with my own strengths and energies (auras, if you will) if I continued to seek readings more than once a year. I took her advice to heart and laid off on my efforts to communicate with Lauren through someone else.

  There was one encounter, though, that was truly noteworthy for the circumstances under which it came to be, as well as the results it yielded.

  I met with a medium and author who would only do readings for other parents who had suffered the loss of a child; she herself had lost a daughter in a car accident when a driver crossed into her daughter’s lane. This woman’s depths of depression led her to learn that she had psychic abilities and was actually able to communicate with the other side. She came highly recommended by no fewer than thirty listeners who reached out to me in the early days after Lauren’s death. We were lucky to book an appointment with her some six weeks after making initial contact; she has since stopped doing readings altogether. Family health challenges played a role in this decision, but I have no doubt that the kind of work she did with her clientele was extremely draining. She sounded somewhat defeated when I spoke to her over the phone for the final time. She had given so much comfort to so many, and I only hope she found some for herself along the way.

  Our time with this woman (who asked that I not mention her name here lest she be contacted by other
parents seeking her abilities) assured us that Lauren is with us every day and that she wants us to move forward and to encourage her husband to do so in any way we can. Without going into a lot of details about how I knew this medium was “the real deal,” I can tell you that she brought up names, dates and significant other elements of our families’ and our own lives too frequently to be coincidental.

  I like to think I’m not naive; I believe there’s a fine line between being a believer and being a sucker when it comes to trying to communicate with the so-called other side, but I also think there are far too many mysteries in the universe for us to close our minds and hearts completely to the possibilities. Besides, if it provides hope and peace and isn’t hurting anyone, where is the harm? Of course, there are those who prey upon the vulnerable; I know that and am in no way encouraging people to seek out psychics or mediums for answers. It was just something that worked for me, and even for my more skeptical husband.

  Recently, I looked back on a reading I got from a friend of a friend, named Cyndi Tryon, just before Lauren gave birth. She made reference to a Caesarean section (but said it probably wouldn’t happen), and then she said that my own mother showed up and said she’d be there with Lauren and showed an eleven on her watch. Was that eleven the day Lauren was to give birth, or the same day seven months later that she died? I don’t know. But it doesn’t bother me to think that my mother was with her dear granddaughter on either—or even both—of those days.