Additional Needs
Age Appropriate
by Jodi Shenal
on 26th April, 2024
Old grief in a New Year
What does a New Year look like when part of you died 3 years ago. In 2020 my youngest daughter Lydia, the sweetest little blessing in my world left us mourning and yearning for her. Since then, only part of me goes into each New Year, each Christmas, each birthday. New Year in particular reminds me that part of me is still in 2020, I can’t comprehend that it has been over 3 years since I held her.
I don’t need other people to be sad or continually sensitive around me, the painful reality lives within me. There is still a part of me in the present, still a part of me that wants to enjoy what is going on in life at the moment. I love and adore my wife Bethan and my eldest daughter Caitlin, and they need me in this year, with them. Lydia loves me, she loves her mother and her sister too and she will want us together, she will want me here for them.
If the question is, how do you move on from child-loss? Then the answer is, you don’t.
You don’t move on, you change, you focus, you try.
Have patience with parents who are grieving – it seems to us that the world has moved on while we can’t. It seems people want to know how we can move on – even an expectation that we should have moved on by now. We’re able to enjoy celebrations but life events always need a moment to remember that our child ought to be here for this.
Sometimes the expectation of continual positivity and optimism is too much, sometimes we just need to be sad, sometimes we just need to remember, we don’t need others to be sad – we just know that a part of us isn’t here -part of us is with the one we long to see. We’ll make the best of a New Year, but we’ll need moments to go back in time.
