“People say that time heals and I would say there is some truth, in that, but it never takes the scar away.”
Stuart’s Story
Our Son Lewis was diagnosed with a form of childhood cancer called Neuroblastoma when he was just eight months old. The next two years were a constant round of treatment mainly but not exclusively at the Birmingham Children’s hospital, a second home. Lewis coped well with the treatment but it was a harsh regime. Cancer, of any sort, is a formidable opponent and in one so young it was difficult to witness. Witness we did and tried to maintain a positive outlook and a desire to return to our normal lives and see Lewis grow up alongside his older Sister. The highs and lows of the treatment were a test of our resolve but we were supported by a wide variety of health professionals, family and friends. The positivity, generated by all of these people, for Lewis to beat this was almost palpable but alas this awful disease took him away from use before his was three years old. To write this brief account, a multitude of memories and emotions sweep over me, and that will be eleven years this July since we lost him.
Reflecting on the last eleven years that I have been without my Son Lewis I tried to think of an analogy that was relevant and that could have provided symbolism to my younger self, trying to deal with his loss. I suppose I gravitate towards analogies, pictures, associations to a common understanding in many aspects of my life. In life, analogies help me comprehend and provide an understanding and visualisation of an idea.
At the time of our loss I tried to deal with the mass of feelings and emotions. With the benefit of hindsight I would have looked for an appropriate analogy, as a way to make sense and reason to an impossible situation and a storm of feelings and emotions, plumbing depths and taking me to places I didn’t know existed in me. Drowning in an ocean of emotions and desperately seeking some kind of solace. These were dark times indeed.
Maybe that’s the analogy – a storm, well a storm on the sea, the wind and the water as a force that is all consuming and indiscriminate. The violence of our loss, the tearing of our emotions and the exposure of our grief, for me, is best summarised by the analogy of a storm, this is a fitting description I feel. After the intensity of a storm, there is a different landscape left behind. This is what we were after Lewis’s death. There are scars within the landscape and I relate this to the scars of the loss. Vivid and inwardly shocking. The damage is visible to all and obvious just like the after effects of the storm upon the landscape. The landscape is our emotions, relationship or ourselves from that point.
People say that time heals and I would say there is some truth, in that, but it never takes the scar away. I view these scars as my link to Lewis, a time machine, back to those days and maybe time has shaped and smoothed the scars, like the elements do, but it’s still there all those emotions and the love of a child that isn’t here anymore. You will never forget them and those emotions are just below the surface. Personally, I wouldn’t be without them as they are now my constant companions eleven years on.
#nationalbereavedparentsday2021 #achildofmine #keepingtheirmemoryalive #NBPD21 #acom