Grief without tears

A funeral

Neve, days before her death. Painted by Emily Tammam in Ultramarine Blue, Lemon Ochre, Scarlet, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber, on Arches paper. All paint from The Stoneground Paint Company.

I have pictured her. A mother at her young child’s funeral. She is distraught. Tears flow. She is supported by others. They hold her up, bearing some of the weight of her grief. She is all but collapsing with sorrow and anguish.

I see her. A mother at her young child’s funeral. Her eyes are dry. She is surrounded by others who are ready to support her. Inside, she feels numb and distracted. On the outside, however, she is calm and composed.

I watch her, startled and absorbed by what I see.

She is hyper alert to the needs of her other children, aware of the complexity of the day for everybody. She has to remind herself to focus on what is happening in front of her. She is both a bereaved mother and the mother of bereaved children. She reminds herself that this is it, they are about to bury her child. But her mind struggles to focus. She has never experienced this feeling of distractibility and of lack of clarity. Actually, that isn’t true. She remembers getting lost in her local Sainsbury’s while her daughter was having brain surgery. Right now, the only clarity is detachment. She sees herself from above, standing with her remaining family.

Around her, others are crying, tears trickling and flowing down their cheeks. They watch her; she imagines them imagining what it would be like to be her, to be burying her child. She momentarily wonders why all these people around her are crying. Then she remembers, again. Yes, the funeral. Her daughter’s funeral. Tears are to be expected. Even more so when it’s the death of a 10 year old.

Why isn’t she crying?

This mother watches as her child’s coffin is slowly lowered into the earth. How can she begin to comprehend that this is her child? How did they end up here? Why can’t she focus on what is happening? Where is the overwhelming pain - how can she still be standing? She knows this moment will never happen again. She has already seen her daughter’s face for the very last time. She touched that face, those cheeks and the child sized hands for the final time, several hours ago. Never again. Their warmth had already dissipated but there was still comfort to be had, in holding her. Her sorrow was heavy, as she watched them gently lift her child from the bed and then drive her away. Never again would this child come home. The sounds she will hear in time, of her daughter’s breathing, won’t be real. As she had watched the black ambulance drive her daughter away, there had been tears. It had been a tangible confirmation of a death. She had felt it on a visceral level, as the sobs racked her body.

So where are her tears now?

Surely burying her child should shatter all uncertainty? She wants to feel everything, all the pain and sorrow and loss. This is her child. They are burying her child. She repeats this to herself, perhaps hoping the fog of numbness will clear. Concentrate. This is her child. This child who she birthed and fed and cared for and then held until her death. She is so calm and composed.

Why is she not crying at her own child’s funeral?

What kind of a mother is she?

In the days that followed Neve’s funeral, I would be plagued by guilt, layers of it, settling on top of my grief. I feared that what I thought was sadness and sorrow might actually solely be guilt. Closely, I examined my love for my dead child; the weight of my thoughts pulled me down. This was an added heaviness, as I navigated those early weeks. I recalled moments with Neve, before her death, times when I was certain I had loved her. There were so many of them. I tried to persuade myself that the daily and the nightly mothering, the hugs and the kisses, that these were irrefutable evidences of my love. But my self-reproach was tenacious.

It was within an online gathering of bereaved parents that light began to emerge. For several years, I had yearned to join a group like this, as I navigated the anticipatory grief of Neve’s illness and impending death. Finally being welcomed in was a solace, a moment of complex and contradictory emotions. At long last, as I had suspected would be the case, here was a space where I could share my numbness and guilt. Around me, there were nods of understanding, smiles, tears and an ease that comes from a space like this.

Even so, I could not have imagined what would come next. This was not just a space of acceptance and compassion. To my surprise, a number of these people began to share that they too had not cried at their child’s funeral. The feelings of belonging and connection washed over me. Like me, these bereaved parents had also been left with a complex mix of emotions, on top of their grief.

Thus these questions became the substance to my thoughts in those early weeks and months. I began to enquire more widely and discovered that the range of normal was wide and varied. The distraught looking mother was as normal as the serene looking mother. There was no one way to be a bereaved mother at your child’s funeral.

As I met more bereaved families, correlations began to surface. These dry-eyed parents had often had a child who had been unwell for a long time. Parents had adapted and often felt no choice but to keep on going, running on adrenaline and stress. It wasn’t unusual for there to be other children to juggle, other needs to meet, even at their own child’s funeral. Their hyper vigilance did not dissipate at the moment of death.

Some of these parents shared with me that they did eventually fall apart, weeks, months or even years later. Others did not.

These conversations palliated some of my guilt. Perhaps I could view my dry-eyed self as stoic and composed, rather than cold and apathetic.

From this distance now, as the bulbs start to send out their shoots and I know the daffodils can’t be far off, I think back to the months preceding Neve’s death. I feel sorrow for the added layers of guilt that I felt, on top of my grief, in those early weeks. If only I had known that feeling numb and distracted, even at my own child’s funeral, was grief.

Why didn’t anybody tell me?