By Press Release
Statistically, one in three children born today has a good chance of living to 100. Of course, life is unfair, and not all will make it. No-one is born with an expiry date. I’ll be long gone by 2121, but I find it incredible that my enchanting two-year-old granddaughter has at least the potential to be there.
Who knows what the world will look like 100 years from now? My dear old Nan was born in the 1890s and died a decade short of her century. I once asked her what was the most incredible thing she’d witnessed in her long lifetime; something she couldn’t have imagined as a child. Her answer – perhaps predictably – was the moon landings. Having spent her early life gazing up, she couldn’t believe humans had managed to travel there.
I never asked what the worst thing she experienced was; I knew. As a child, her dad drowned, alongside his brother, and during WWII, she lost both of her sons. My 24-year-old grandfather, Dick, and his slightly older brother, Joe. What astonishing bad luck, tragedy on an incomprehensible scale. When she spoke of her precious boys, which she did often, I didn’t say much in response, I just wished they were still around. We loved hearing about them, talking about who they were, and even the circumstances of their passing.
When my first child was born, she wasn’t breathing, but the sight of her blue and unresponsive didn’t distress me. As the team worked on getting her airway clear, my only thought was how I would tell her near-exhausted mother that our precious child was lost.
As I looked on helplessly, the passing seconds seemed like minutes, but those extraordinary clinicians were doing all they could and, before long, I heard my beautiful daughter cry. A nano-second later, her colour changed to the most wonderful shade of healthy baby pink. Despite the din, I have rarely been happier; but oddly, I had no tears of joy or relief. Once they were settled for the night, on my way home alone, I was hit by a sudden wave of emotion. My new responsibility was almost overwhelming; my life was changed forever, and I sobbed my heart out.
Many new dads feel something similar; the birth of a child is the most incredible joy and burden, a realisation that from now on, it can’t all be about you. My happiness now depended on that precious little girl, and it took some getting used to.
All life is terminal, worldwide, 67 million people die every year, that’s 667,000 just in the UK. Still, few of us like to think about it because loss and grief are so bloody awful, we don’t really know how to cope with it. When we lose someone, it’s normal to wonder if we’ll ever be happy again. But grief isn’t depression; feeling sad is normal and loss is not something to get over. Death is a part of all our lives and, given time, precious time, usually, it does become manageable; we learn to live with it.
Losing a child is altogether different because it disrupts the natural order of things and goes against nature. What do you say to someone who loses a child? It’s so unimaginably awful, we usually say nothing, because we can’t handle it. Trying to express sympathy to someone who has experienced the loss of a child feels impossible. In the past fortnight, I have thought of little else because someone I know had this indescribable horror happen to them. However hard I’ve tried, I concluded there really are no words. All I have is sympathy, compassion and tears.