What loss is to me

In 1991 quite a long time ago, my family and I was on a trip to the beach. That sunny day in July I lost my baby boy Jordan (8mths old) in a car crash, a car hit us head on from the opposite side of the road.

I was conscious and tried to save my son, but he´d died instantly, I helped my mother and sister out of the car. I left my husband as I knew he was dead, I saw that the second I lifted my head up, he body was bent round, his head facing backwards, his eyes open, ripped and staring towards me. I thought if I moved him I could make things worse. The emergency services revived him twice, he was left with severe brain damage, when he woke up he was not the man I loved any more, he was cruel, he´d forgotten me, forgotten us, he thought he was 15 years old.  I did not blame him, it was not his fault. I stayed with him though for 7 years after the crash, but we divorced because after years of him mentally, physically and verbally abusing me I broke. Well I broke the day he decided to shake our daughter and hit her. Normally he´d just take his frustrations out on me. Our daughter was born 6 months after the crash so she never knew her father before his head injury, which was a shame as he was a wonderful and gentle man. So anyway I moved to a small village in Spain with my mother and daughter to try to start a new life, my ex hubby lives in a house with his family and carers.

So this is what LOSS is to me:

Loss is when someone or something disappears from your life.

The emptiness that it leaves behind seems as though it can never be filled.

You are left with a void, a black hole that sucks everything happy into it.

It´s like a darkness that creeps up on you, mostly when you are alone or just sitting quietly.

Loss turns into a monster that likes to play tricks with your head.

It is cruel because now and then it will let you remember something special a perfect moment but then it will take it away and replace it with that last moment.

That is when it hurts the most, when it can do the most damage, you get told to think of the good times and you try but it does not let you.

After years pass you begin to feel a bit of a fool for still feeling as sad and still letting it control parts of your life. Me for instance, it controls my leaving the house, I just don´t choose to do it unless I have to, which is once a month for food. It controls my thoughts and stopped me allowing my daughter to go in a car without me, up until she was four years old. I thought if I wasn´t with her she would not come back safe, so I kept her protected like a small delicate china doll inside a box.

It´s not just when you are awake that it messes with your brain, it likes to do it at night while you sleep. You have nightmares where you relive every painful second over and over again or sometimes dreams where everything is right and the loss never happened. Then when you wake up you see the cruel trick the monster in the void played on you.

At night it was inside my head all the time so my brain decided it was too much and so I began to count to 100, then begin again. Some nights I´d repeat a sentence from a song, normally one I hated until I´d look at the clock and it was time to get up. You do not know torture until you have sang “Umberella ella ella” a million times (Thank you Rihanna).

After a time they gave me tablets to quieten my brain, they worked for a while then they stopped and I tried others until none worked at all. After one week without sleep I was very ill and so they decided I had post-traumatic stress syndrome, I thought I just had a broken heart. So then I was given several pills to take throughout the day. I just felt dead, weak and exactly how the monster in the void wanted me to feel.

Now I play Scrabble or Sudoku every night until around 4am (I kick ass at both now) then I take the last of my pills, I sleep till 10am. Sometimes the pill does not work so I just lay until I drop off or not at all.

As well as this the monster loss gave me another gift, I have OCD, when I go to buy my food I have to go on a bus, sit on the left, 4th row down. I have to go down the same streets, straighten things up on the café table I go into every time. I hate change it upsets me, makes me feel small as if in a massive room. I hide all of this as best as I can, the counting to 4 in my head when I stroke my dog, or dry my hands, or drink mouthfuls of water. I seem to think 4 is my lucky number which is stupid because I am a very logical person and I do not even believe in luck! I even have to make sure I stop the microwave or oven timer on 4, I have no idea what will happen if it ever reached 3.

Loss fucked me up, I became a robot, nothing scares me now or makes me cry. For instance some years ago a man in our village was hit by a car, he was screaming his leg hanging off. Everyone was running round like headless chickens, men were even crying, I was sat with the man’s leg dangling in my hand pinching the vein to stop him losing more blood. I sat for 3 hrs like it, telling the man that everything would be fine, my tourniquet was doing the job, wetting his lips with ice. I sat wondering how I could hold his ankle too, as it was clinging on by a small shred of flesh. After the emergency helicopter came and I went home I cooked dinner for my family, I remember thinking how much the chicken breast resembled the leg muscle I´d held on to. That same night loads of people visited me and even came with gifts, I just wanted them gone. The man when he got better (minus his leg) kept giving me kisses on my cheek whenever he saw me and thanking me for saving his life. In the end I wrote a letter and asked that he´d stop, I said I was just being a human, helping as humans do.

I feel sadness for animals, I feed strays and home them, I donate to save orangutangs, I love animals but I am not keen on people. I watch the cruellest videos and try to stop animal abuse, I do it again and again, but I never cry. I became desensitised on the day of my “loss”, after seeing what I did I do not think anything else could shock me to tears (unless it all happened again).

My “loss” did one good thing though, it taught me never to take people you love or life for granted.  In a way I grew into a better person, became less selfish and my eyes opened to the whole world.

I found Buddhism as well in my search for answers, I did not want to think my son was gone forever.  So it´s many wise words and the premise that we are just energy and we return, past is past, nothing is forever etc fitted nicely into my world, it gave me peace of mind. My nightmare…the one where I would dream of my baby boy laying buried in a box, in the middle of an empty field stopped. I know think he is the brightest star in the sky waiting to be reborn. SO thank you Buddha, you are the coolest of dudes!

Loss is something that no one wants to hear you talk about after a time, so it is something you push down inside of you and you hide it like it is something to be ashamed of. Some people suffer loss and it just fades after a while but I was not that lucky. Every July 14th my heart breaks, when I look at my daughter I wonder how much he would have looked like her, what sort of personality would he have? When I see my grandson I think of my lost son, he has blond hair, deep blue eyes like he did.

On November 29th I light him a birthday candle, just so he knows I have not forgotten him.

All this I have kept inside so writing it down was like turning on a tap, it just flowed out of the void. See I do write about my loss but I use poetry and never actually face it, I use cleverly disguised sentences, metaphors etc When really all I want to do is scream!

I feel weak because it was so long ago that it happened and that moment defined me as a person, defined the rest of my life. It took away my “happy ever after”.

That is what loss is to me.

© M.Withers/M.Strudwick . All rights reserved.

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