Death anniversaries are the hardest.
Annonymous client
Death anniversaries are hard
She uttered the sentence in response to my public sharing on Instagram regarding the fact that it is 10 years since my girls were born and A’Mya died:
It also means that my grief journey with A’Mya is turning 10 years old. 10 years without her. ⠀
⠀
10. ⠀
⠀
I find it hard to believe that is already 10 years.⠀
I knew it was my last day of pregnancy.
I knew it was the last day of Hope & Passion inside me.
Alive.
Together.
Side by side.
To be born tomorrow.
31 August 2011
It’s the time of year… birth, death, all intertwined… and I’m so wrapped up in my own physical reactions and responses to the memories that I didn’t have any capacity to remember much of anything else.
Grey’s Anatomy can trigger grief
The past few days, when I was resting (I broke my right little toe) I watched Grey’s Anatomy. In this episode, a mother had just given birth to an extremely premature little baby. The doctors are fighting for his life, discussing chances of survival, treatment plans, etc. while the parents (who happen to be also doctors) watch in despair.
And then it hits me as I’m watching the part where two doctors are reviewing the board with all the children who once were born early, been in the NICU, and are shown here as toddlers and children. “Some of them survive,” Alex says.
Synchronicity or self-torture?
I turn it off. Still, I will return to it. It’s not (just?) self-torture, it is integrating what has happened and building the resilience of being with those places in my memory, in peace, with sadness but without absolute hopelessness and dread.
To me, that is the result of grief work. My grief work.
Birth and death
In my experience, birth and death have been experienced in close proximity. Ananda Mae and A’Mya Mirica were born 10 years ago today.
Three days later, A’Mya died in my arms. Big sigh.
Birthday, and not just for me but also for Ananda Mae, is closely intertwined with the fact that her sister isn’t here today. I’ve noticed that in my young daughter now more so than ever before.
On the weekend she cried saying I just wished I could talk to A’Mya.
Last night she woke and couldn’t sleep between 12 and 1 am – synchronistically the time where the two sisters were born if we take the time difference into consideration.
And – another synchronicity – just as I’m typing this, it is 8.40 am – the time of day they were born.
Just a coincidence?
I don’t think so. In the past 10 years and even before that I have experienced far too many of those seeming coincidences.
Image: Personal archives
