Yesterday was pretty rough, today not so much so far. I've noticed that a few times. I knew there would be good days and bad days. I understand grief pretty well and I kind of knew what to expect. That doesn't make it any easier to experience. Knowing something and feeling it are two different things. It's been 20 years now since Mum died and I know how special she still is to me. I remember the layers of mourning and grief I went through for years and years and that I still miss her, think about her and honour her memory. I know logically that it will be the same or similar with Kat but I still take a kind of comfort when people who have been through this years ago tell me that they still hold a special place for their lost baby. That family celebrations are always tinged with the sadness of missing someone. Michael's mum told me that she read or was told that when someone dies we who are still here have our memories of them and we cherish those memories. When a baby is stillborn the people left behind have to create an entire life on that baby's behalf to remember them by. When Kat was born we clung to the thought that we would always love her and always grieve for her. A part of me questioned it though - would another baby heal this pain? Would we remember having her more than we remembered her? I think about how much my mother still means to me 20 years after she died and I listen to other people who are 3, 7 and 8 years on from losing their babies and it's a comfort to realise that yes, Kat will always be special to us just as she is now. To some people this may seem morbid or depressing. To me it's grief. I don't see it as a negative. Death is part of life and it's something we will all be affected by in many different ways throughout our lives. I don't like the term "get over" when it comes to mourning a loved one. "Live with" is closer to how I feel about it. This immense pain is going to be a part of me for ever. It won't always be as sharp as it is right now and I don't suppose I will always feel it as constantly as I do now. But the memory will be with me for ever and so will Kat.
When Kat died Michael's cousin, whose daughter died three years ago, told us that the one piece of advice she would give was that people will say things that hurt because they don't understand and to remember that what they said is about them and not us. I didn't really understand it at the time - how could anyone say anything hurtful to people whose baby just died? It has happened though and mostly I've been able to let it pass. People remind us (mainly me) that we still have two children or that we can have another baby one day. They say it so kindly and it's so obviously coming from a good place that I can take the sentiment and ignore the words. The one I can't let go of though is the funeral director we used. There was only one funeral place in the town we were living in at the time (we moved recently) and I swear if there had have been any other option I would have walked out. Maybe it was worse because my expectations were high. Everyone we had dealt with at two hospitals had been so nice and I expected the same from a funeral place. The reality was far from nice. The man we saw started by going straight to taking our details, filling out forms. He didn't ask us any details about our baby or what we wanted. When he got to the part on the paperwork about the name of the deceased he looked right at us and said "did you name it?" I was heartbroken. I couldn't believe I was hearing my beautiful daughter referred to as "it". However, there was more to come. He asked us which minister we wanted and we both immediately said "no ministers". His reply was along the lines of "so you don't want anything said at all, just the coffin in the ground with no words". THAT was when I lost it. Me losing it was when he realised how badly he had stuffed up and he tried then to recover the situation, but never actually said the words "I'm sorry". He said that they don't know what people want in their funeral services and he has to be guided by us so when we say no minister he can only assume we don't want a service. BULLSHIT for one. For two - gee, maybe he could have started by ASKING us what we wanted. Once we had all the details sorted I walked out of there - if not exactly screaming then at least making no effort to lower my voice - saying "IT - he called our daughter IT" and that I could have punched him in the face and would have walked out if they weren't the only funeral place in town. I was in great wracking sobs all the way home. It was the most pain I had felt since the moment Kat was laid on my chest and some primal being took over my body and I threw my head back and howled. I will never forget Michael's mum holding me while I sat on our lounge crying "my DAUGHTER - my daughter was ripped out of my body and she has a NAME". Even so, I thought that would have been the end of our bad dealings with the funeral director. Nuh-uh, there's more. We eventually heard from them that they had a member of staff (who we had met briefly and seemed very nice) who would conduct the service for us. We tried to find someone elsewhere but were unable so we quite reluctantly went ahead with using one of their staff. Michael rang to say that we would be doing that and that he wanted to go over the sentiments that we wanted expressed. He was told that their guy was just reading the service, we actually had to write it and given the suggestion that there would be plenty of ideas for services online. Our families were with us and Michael didn't say anything, just went to the computer and started looking online. It took me a while to go and see what he was doing and he was heartbroken and very distressed. There he was reading funeral services for babies. Among the less pleasant were the funeral for a non-believer being conducted in a church that began with "he is not a believer so we are not here to celebrate his life but rather to offer comfort to his loved ones". And the funeral for a stillborn baby that began "our society is so wrong - it doesn't recognise the rights of unborn children, not even the right to life". Eventually we found a beautiful service on a Humanist site, personalised it and Michael typed it up to take to the funeral place. Where he was met by the man who would be conducting the service who was incredulous that Michael had been able to write a funeral service in his time of grief. He had spent the afternoon online and had put together several ideas to go over with Michael. I won't name the funeral director but he SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED NEAR PEOPLE WHO ARE GRIEVING. One last thing - when I went to pay the bill I saw a leaflet in their office titled "When a Baby Dies". It was basically an information leaflet for the funeral director and I'm not sure why they had it on display = among other things it contained such advice as the baby's name being very important to grieving parents. You think???