Losing
your child has a lasting impact on the rest of your life. Of course it has. In
many ways. Not knowing why adds another dimension.
One minute they were fine, the next they were gone.
I do not think anyone would ever get their
head around that one.
One of
the ways it impacts is worry.
When you
have a subsequent child or you already have other children, all of a sudden all
bets are off.
Any
sickness, no matter how seemingly trivial or normal for childhood, can morph
into something that makes you believe the grim reaper is rattling at your front
door once more.
Is this
just flu or meningitis?
Is this
really just a sore tummy or something more sinister?
Is this
headache and vomiting just a virus or the signs of an aggressive brain tumour?
Is that
sound in the middle of the night just a congested nose or laboured breathing? Perhaps
even a bout of pneumonia you never even knew he had?
I am
sure that the way we find ourselves reacting these days is a normal side effect
of what happened to us. You know your brain is getting ahead of itself every now and then but there
always is that niggling doubt; that fear, that maybe it’ll happen all over
again.
If
something so very rare could take your child, the chances of something much
more common striking don’t seem too unrealistic then. In fact, in the middle
of the night those worst case scenarios often seem to be the only plausible
explanation as to what is going on with them at the time.
It is
probably different for everyone but for me, the winter months and in particular
December and January are difficult.
When
Eoghan gets sick during that time, I invariably draw comparisons to Patrick and
his ear infections and sniffles…all of which were so perfectly normal. He had
had a good stretch but was sick over Christmas and into January…not very and as
always, he took it in his stride. Never a child to complain much and in such
good form the morning he passed away.
And then, just like that.
So now I
worry. Not excessively and every minute of every day but it has become a
constant in my world.
And it can
be bloody exhausting.
A missed
call from the crèche can send me into a mini panic... Perhaps not so much now
but certainly at the start.
An
ambulance passing at full speed with sirens blaring whilst I am on my lunch
time walk equally so. My head immediately goes to that day.
Perhaps,
not having been there myself makes this a little worse for me. The imagination
takes over and paints a horrible picture of how things probably unfolded while
I was sitting in Germany unable to do anything.
As
always, these are just short, fleeting moments; long enough to remind me that
this is me now. This is part of my life forever.
So now I’m
more inclined to stay home with Eoghan if he is sick. I work from home with him
sitting beside me on the couch, cuddled into me and browsing YouTube. Like any tot getting sick, his timing can be truly awful
but at the end of the day what can you do. It gives me comfort knowing that he
is with me and I am sure he prefers having one of us near him when he is feeling miserable.
