Reflections on Grief, Family and Time
Written by Melanie Yong
Last week, my healthy 31 year-old friend had an unexpected stroke and remains in a critical condition while we wait for news and hope for his recovery. A familiar wrench of frozen shock and band of leaden dread clamped over me when I heard. Interspersed with wildly oscillating thoughts of my friend, his family, and what this might mean, were thoughts of my brother, Jarrod and my cousin, Dom. I was back in 2000, lifting the phone on New Year’s Day and hearing my father choke out that Jarrod, who should have been chasing sunshine and beaches in Thailand, had died – something about a car, an accident, a hospital, a mistake. I was back in 2008, at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the crazed waiting and frenetic silence of medics desperately trying to save my cousin – blood, swelling, tubes, machines, more blood.
I didn’t think I would ever be happy again. I remember someone asking what could take me out of my black tunnel of anguish, what could bring light back into my life. I replied that I couldn’t imagine anything changing the way I felt. My reaction when I heard about my friend made me realise how long it had been since I’d felt like that. While I still think about Jarrod and Dom every day and wish constantly that they hadn’t died, I am finally happy again and loving life with my partner, Jason and our son, Matteo. Family events are celebrations once again – times to be anticipated and enjoyed, rather than suffered or evaded. I allow myself to hope for a happy future.
It took me years to decide I was capable of being the mother I wanted to be. For so long, I couldn’t imagine bringing a little person into a world without my brother. I wasn’t sure I could cope emotionally with loving another person without any guarantees of their safety, health and survival. I was afraid I would constantly be worried about my baby. That something would happen to him. That he would be sick. That he would die. That I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about these possibilities and my parenting would be stifling, distorted by negativity. Although there are times when these thoughts surface, I’m mostly too busy and content to drown in these ‘what ifs’.
My pregnancy was a mixture of excitement and fear. It was amazing to have something so beautiful to look forward to, but I was so, so scared that something would happen and my baby wouldn’t survive. Everyone kept telling me that birth is a natural process, that the odds of anything going wrong were miniscule, but having experienced the sudden death of both my brother when he was 21 and my cousin when she was 35, I knew what it was like to be one of those incredibly unlikely, impossibly unlucky statistics. I researched incessantly the risks and benefits of every decision. I felt my baby was safer while we were physically connected; I was terrified of releasing him to the ‘what ifs’ of life. I was afraid of the pain of labour but the knowledge that I’d already been through the most unimaginable torment helped me see that if I could get through that, I could birth a baby.
It seemed right that our baby was a boy. Jarrod was the baby of our family and seeing Matteo running around, making us laugh and enjoy life reminds me of Jarrod tumbling around and keeping us entertained when he was little. I see so much of Jarrod in Matteo – the same cheeky, fearless, sociable, affectionate nature.
We spent a long time choosing his name. I wanted my baby to be his own person and not feel the weight of being confined by my dead brother’s name. At the same time, I wanted to honour Jarrod and connect him to this baby who would not have his physical presence in his life. So we decided that his Chinese name would be Nian Hua 念華 which contains an echo of Jarrod’s name. Nian means to be on one's mind/heart, to think of something/someone, to long for or miss or remember. Hua is the second character of Jarrod's Chinese name. It means magnificent, splendid, flourishing. So, Nian Hua acknowledges that Jarrod is on our mind and in our heart and is remembered and missed. It also reflects our hope that Matteo's mind/heart will always be magnificent, splendid and flourishing. Matteo has both Jason and my surnames – something even more important to me now that I am the only one who can continue our family name into the next generation.
Matteo’s presence in our lives has been unbelievably healing and joyful for my whole family. Before Jarrod died, I was adamant I would never have children. Jarrod’s absence left a realisation that, for me, family is everything. Jarrod is my only sibling and the thought of a future without family was unbearable. Expressions of love and affection towards loved ones are fragmented, disenfranchised by their death. With Matteo, we have found a home for some of these dispossessed expressions of love. Matteo hasn’t filled the chasms left behind by Jarrod and Dom – we wouldn’t expect or want this. Yet we feel so lucky to have this special little person who has chosen us as his family and reaches out to receive as much love and attention as we have to give.
If only Matteo’s Uncle Jarrod and Aunty Dom were here to share Matteo’s life with us. Jarrod was incredible with children – he would happily spend hours playing with them and I can clearly imagine how much he would have loved Matteo and laughed at the way he breaks into dances when he hears music he likes, his constant ‘chatting’ and voracious enjoyment of good food. I’ve missed being able to tell Jarrod he was going to be an uncle and having him visit us straight after Matteo’s birth for that first cuddle. I’ve missed being able to talk through my decisions with Dom and her patience, insight and ability to dissect situations and uncover alternatives. I’ve missed Jarrod and Dom at all of Matteo’s ‘firsts’ – his one month celebration, first Easter, first Christmas, first birthday, first Chinese New Year. I show Matteo their pictures and talk about them and I hope he will come to understand who they were, what they mean to us and how loved they are.
This article first appeared in the Oct/Nov 2011 Siblings Magazine
Image: http://hospiceandnursinghomes.blogspot.com/2011/01/hospice-volunteers-an...
