‘I’d have thought you’d be over that by now.'

In the last couple of weeks I seem to have been surrounded by acknowledgement of and discussion about bereavement and loss. My home town of Falmouth is one of the 25 places to have just received a Netflix ‘After Life’ bench, all of which were commissioned with the suicide prevention charity The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and feature QR codes to online resources and a message: ‘Hope is Everything’. I’ve yet to take a selfie on the bench, but I will do. Maybe I’ll use the photograph in one of the two events I’ve very recently been invited to: a conference panel discussion focusing on writing as therapy following loss and bereavement and an interview for The Death Studies Podcast The Death Studies Podcast Elsewhere, last Thursday’s episode of the final series of the US drama series This Is Us followed one of the main characters as he attended the funeral of his mother which was especially poignant to watch in the week of 10^th anniversary of my own mum’s death. In Sunday’s episode of Call the Midwife Nurse Lucille Anderson suffers a miscarriage and like me (along with  many other women) wondered if it was her fault. Also in the last 10 days Barry Cryer and Norma Waterson – whose comedy and music respectively both featured in my husband John’s funeral – have died.  Although perhaps not so obviously significant the challenge of the week in  Sunday’s Pottery Throwdown was  to make and decorate three garden gnomes. My mum, Dorothy, liked gnomes; they made her laugh. In her last illness, a close friend bought us a ‘Paint your own gnome’ kit which we did together sitting closely together on the sofa in my flat where together we spent her last few weeks. 

The end of January is always hard for me. Sunday (30^th January 2022) marked  10 years since my beloved mum’s death. And on Monday 31^st it was 43 years since my wonderful dad Ron died. I can hardly believe that I’ve managed a decade without my wise and funny mum, let alone accept that it’s more than 40 years since I argued with my dad about whether we should watch ‘Top of the Pops’ or a BBC2 documentary and laughed together on winter mornings as he walked me to the college bus stop in our village. He was worried I’d get blown into the sea in the high winds. I’m a Sociologist and in my research and academic writing I reflect on reproductive disruption, baby loss, and the experience of loss and bereavement following the death of parents and of a partner. I do the same in the fiction and memoir work I began as one way to cope in my grief journey following the death of my John in 2010 and my mum (2012.) Much of my academic work includes the autobiographical and although I have less first-hand experience about mothering (I did help to care for John’s sons for 15 years) I do know, and have quite a lot to say, about being mothered. Despite being small of stature and sometimes insecure about her own status in the world my mum always made me feel like I was being personally protected by a whole pride of lionesses. I recognise my privilege, not just in having parents and a partner who loved and cherished me, but privileged in being able to spend so much time thinking and writing (often being paid to do so) about issues that mean so much to me and to others.

A few months after my mum Dorothy died in late January 2012 I spent the afternoon with a long-time friend. After talking about my mum and the pain of this loss for me we returned to a subject much discussed previously; my, to my knowledge, only pregnancy that ended in miscarriage many years earlier and my subsequent biological childlessness. ‘I’ve have thought you’d be over that by now’, my friend said. I know she did not mean to be unkind but a decade on I feel as hurt by her comments as I was when she made them. I have written, many times before, about the significance of misunderstanding and of exclusion in the lives of those who, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, do not mother (or father) children. Misunderstandings not least because of the simplistic description of people without children as either pitiable (involuntary) or selfish (voluntary) and exclusion from conversation and from activities, groups and gatherings. In the opinion of some, exclusion even extends to what is considered normal and natural behaviour and experience. Now, given my age – I’m 63 -  ‘how many children have you got?’, is  accompanied by ‘have you any grandchildren yet?’ in exchanges with new acquaintances. I used to, when it felt polite to do so, physically move away from chats focusing on the concerns about and achievements of children at conferences and parties. Now I just stay quiet or turn off my zoom camera when colleagues compare grandchildren’s ages or when in more politically focused meetings participants proudly claim that what they do they do for their descendants. It’s not that I don’t have stories to tell and with friends I’m close to I talk fondly of the children I am blessed to have in my life but, especially in casual company, my right to do so feels less worthy than those with biological claims. But I too, like many others without children of our ‘own’, care about the next generation as much as I care about the children going hungry right now and I believe that my activism, for the children and grandchildren that I do not have, is no less valuable than anyone else’s.

The losses I have experienced across my adult life are significant to the person that I am. The opportunity to research, to talk, to write about these losses have influenced me too; just as the presence of my mum and dad, my husband, and (fleetingly) my baby did and do. I am, I believe, and others tell me, a positive, cup-half-full person, not least because of the legacies of joys left by my now dead loved ones. Yet, the feelings of loss are present still and always will be. Not something that I can or want to ‘be over’. Always in my life, always in my heart.