Three months

Neve died three months ago today. A Sunday evening, the 30th of April, just after 7pm. Sunday evenings often feel poignant now, but somehow, the fact that today was also the 30th of the month added to the poignancy. It feels like a moment to take stock.

Neve’s death was relatively sudden and unexpected, even though we all anticipated that it would come soon. What we didn’t anticipate was that she would die then, that day, that moment. One minute she was alive, albeit very unwell, the next she was silent and everything was different. Unexpectedly, to me, I have not cried much, since her death. I suppose it is a combination of many things, including shock. Today, I wondered whether the shock was ever so slightly starting to wear off.

My grief for Neve is complex. She suffered so much, in so many ways, that there is relief that she is no longer suffering. Relief for her and also for our family, that we are no longer witnessing suffering and trauma. Her cancer felt like a ticking time bomb and every extra day alive brought with it the potential for an unthinkable level of suffering. Given all of this, I find it hard to yearn for extra time with Neve, because time was dangerous, for her. I have generally found it relatively straightforward to hold two opposing thoughts at once, except for this one. How can I possibly wish she was still alive, when she had already endured so much and her quality of life was so precarious?

Today though, today, I wished for just one more cuddle with Neve. Somehow, my brain is starting to be able to go here, to yearn for Neve, even though she suffered. I miss lying in bed with her, snuggled up. However, even through the sadness of missing her, I can’t help but smile. I remember a night when Neve was very unwell. Things were too unstable for me to go back to bed. So I curled up at her feet, on her bed and went to sleep. It wasn’t long before she woke up and asked me, politely, to please get out of her bed. She said I was taking up too much space. I thought back to all those years of sleeping with her, as a baby and a toddler and here she was, kicking me out of her bed now!

Tonight I feel sad that I wasn’t snuggling with Neve in the final hours and minutes of her life. Life had to go on, other children also had needs. Add to this the fact that Neve had been deteriorating and then rallying for two years, so this pattern was our normal. Up until then, her track record of rallying was excellent. Knowing there are very valid reasons why I wasn’t cuddled up with my dying daughter doesn’t mean I don’t also wish it hadn’t been otherwise. And, Neve being Neve, she might have rallied enough to ask me to get up, to give her some space!

I will continue to seek solace in my paintings of Neve. I have photographs of us cuddling over the years and in time I will paint those. Painting her, as she was before she became ill, is helping me to connect with that version of Neve. Though cancer changed her so much and we lost that child, years ago, it is only now that I am beginning to grieve for that loss. I am starting to find ways to feel the absence of her aliveness, her vibrancy, her vitality. This will bring pain and sadness, I know it will, but it is these tears and sorrow that I long for.

To me, Neve dying was not the tragedy. The tragedy was her cancer, her illness. The complexity of grieving for somebody who had changed so much and who was suffering so much is not the simple grief that I expected to feel, when my child died. Who knows where I will be in another 3 months.