No More Sob Spot: the last post

if you're going through hell, keep going

My pear and hazelnut cake
- it was delicious

I have been telling newly bereaved mothers this for some time now.  It is a truism.  The thing is, one day you wake up, and although it still is (and always will be) shit that my child died, it is increasingly obvious that I am no longer in hell.   I should know.  After all I spent enough time there.  

Instead, this week I have been working my way through a few recipes from the new Nigel Slater cookbook.  Yesterday I had some  other mothers to lunch.  Next week, I'm having my first coffee and cake open house for bereaved mothers and their children.  I am still limping; a trifle broken, but after a fashion, I'm sort of starting to function a little bit like I used to.  Now we're through Halloween, I'm even starting to think about Christmas, and my caution about how to cope with it is tempered and sometimes over-shadowed by joyous anticipation.

This might seem small beer to someone who hasn't lost a child, but regular readers will know these all represent huge leaps forward.  I am minded of this time 2 years ago, where I blogged my huge sense of achievement in buying the new Nigella cookbook.  Six and a half months after Catherine died, it was the first time I'd managed enough enthusiasm to actually buy anything that wasn't some adornment for my daughter's grave.  I was hugely proud.  I never cooked anything out of it.  Not ever.  Yet here I am, two years later, making cake for other mummies.   The painstaking process of becoming a mother-again; negotiating the social minefield of dead-motherhood.  Coping with other people's children.  Re-integration.

So no more sob spot?

It is a cliche, but losing a child is a journey.  My horizon is the decade mark.  I think that is probably the point to seriously take stock and ask if you made it through.  Yet there will be staging posts, and I think this is one.  After two and a half years, it is time to move off of my sobbing spot, even if there will still inevitably be tears..  

This is not the end, but it is the end of the beginning.

More to follow.

“Does love wear out” said Small, “does it break or bend?  Can you fix it, stick it, does it mend?” “Oh help,” said Large “I’m not that clever I just know I’ll love you forever”. Small said “but what about when you’re dead and gone, would you love me  then, does love go on?” Large held Small snug as they looked out at the night, at the moon in the  dark and the stars shining bright. “Small look at the stars – how they shine  and glow, but some of those stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in  the evening skies. Love, like starlight, never dies”. No Matter What - Debi Gliroi