How I Coped With The Loss Of My Nephew

My sister lost her little boy to drowning when he was 16 months, and I don’t know how a parent manages to cope after losing a child but it is a daily struggle for me even 19 years down the track.

I do know how, as an Aunty, that losing my nephew was the most physically and emotionally heart breaking pain I have had to deal with.

It never really leaves you.

As I saw my family falling apart around me, I felt I had to hold myself and everyone else together. I just also had my second child who was 6 weeks old at that time. Since it was a drowning that happened in our pool, we had to all go and give statements to the police on where and what we were doing at that time.

Even though it was an accident, I always blamed myself for not being able to prevent it. Not until years later did I find out my sister felt the same way.

And as much as you just want to turn the clock back you realise that life won’t let you, it just keeps marching on.

The whole year after the accident was a blur to me, and being the Aunty I felt I should be able to hold the whole family together and not show any weakness, as I wasn’t the one who had lost a child.

When everything sort of settled down I found that there are other things in everyday life that could set off tears and meltdowns.

The sound of an Ambulance would have me in tears in a street. Doing my grocery shopping and a song comes over the speaker which was played at the funeral, I ended up leaving a shopping trolley in the aisle and grabbing the baby blindly trying to find my way to the car to bawl my eyes out.

The other thing that changed is that I never let my kids out of my sight for years, even the teenagers now say that they remember me always making sure that they never did anything that could remotely hurt them, I cotton-balled them up to try and protect them from life.

Years later — thinking I had done a pretty good job on repressing any negative memories of the day and I had my cheery happy face on for people all the time.. Then it all came undone when I started getting panic attacks (I blame Oprah for the start of that. She did a show on heart attack symptoms and I thought great, I am having a heart attack while I watch this show).

I was flat out getting out of bed for the day, my bed was my safe place.

I went to see a psychologist who asked me all the usual questions about my life and events.  Here I am thinking what a brilliant job I was doing about controlling my world around me and she asked me to talk about that “day”.

Are you kidding me, I have spent the last 10 years trying to repress those memories and you want me to bring them back?

That as an Aunty, I never allowed myself to grieve, I didn’t go and see the little man before he was buried because I felt that I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I couldn’t grieve.. that I thought, I wasn’t the one who lost a child so I don’t have the right to be that upset. I know it sounds stupid but the brain will think a lot of silly ways to try and protect us from what it believes will be harmful.

I joined a group called Bonnie Babies and because I was an Aunty, not a parent, they came around and spoke to me first to see if the group might be able to help.

I went to about 5 meetings and that was all I needed, those parents, grandparents we were all in the same boat. I told them my story, I heard theirs and realized that I am not the only person to leave a shopping trolley or to start crying because of a sight, smell or noise.

To all parents, aunties, uncles and grandparents — you aren’t alone and you are allowed to grieve.

It does get a little easier, accepting the loss of a family member – but there is always that little person missing. Always.

Now kids alive, do the five. 

Never take your life, or your loved ones, for granted.