This is Brenda’s Story

Brenda’s grandson Riley died at 20 months in 2009

On 27th July 2009 our world came crashing down when we lost our gorgeous grandson, Riley Robert. Our entire world changed that very day and I don’t think we, as grandparents, will ever get over it.

Our grief was so real and so raw and, to add to that, we had to watch our beautiful son and his lovely wife lose their only child of 20 months for no reason. For them to continue on with life by living in the same house, which was their family home, is beyond my comprehension. Somehow we all kept breathing and attempted to comfort each other, particularly Riley’s Mummy and Daddy.

Friends and extended family tried hard to comfort us but, on my part, I preferred my husband to take their phone calls because few of them knew how difficult it was for me to actually speak and neither, for that matter, did they know what to say or how to communicate with us in our grief.

A very close friend of mine used to say that she just wanted to hear my voice. I thought that was a particularly odd thing to say to me over the telephone … my voice never changed - what was she thinking? Anything that was said to me was taken personally by me and I seemed to change from the very considerate person I was into a very intolerant one. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was changing so much and so quickly. All I knew and felt was that my heart was broken. How many of us do actually suffer from a broken heart? We think we do… like when our pet dies, when our first love is finished or even when our elderly parents pass away, but that is nothing to what a grandparent feels when their grandchild passes away.

I want to stress to people on the outside that they cannot make things better for us…we have to travel at our own time and we just have to set our own pace. Nothing in my life seemed to matter one bit other than the gigantic loss of beautiful Riley. ‘Why had God chosen to take him’ was my most common sentence used over and over in my head.

This week we celebrated what should have been Riley’s sixth birthday. Oh, if only he was with us all to hug and kiss him and to blow out his candles. To say that we still miss him is an understatement. We try to imagine how he would look now, but our feelings hit a brick wall. All I imagine is his mass of beautiful curls and, oh, how I ache to touch him.

I just want to conclude by saying life does go on and we still keep breathing. Our lives will never be the same, but we have to thank God for the other blessings we do have.

Reference: Same, D. & Bereaved Parents & Red Nose Grief and Loss Services. (2016). Your Child has Died: Some Answers To Your Questions: A Booklet for Bereaved Parents whose Young Child has Died Suddenly and Unexpectedly. Malvern, Vic.: Red Nose Grief and Loss Services.