This is Fiona’s Story

The friend of a bereaved mum pays tribute to Jude who died at 5 years of age from an undetected heart defect in 2011.

Jude was the kind of child who took your breath away. When he died, two days before Christmas 2011, it was sudden, unexpected and incomprehensible. This cheeky, knock-about five-year-old, whom we all thought was indestructible, was my oldest friend Fiona’s boy. His death, from an undetected heart defect, left a hole so enormous I couldn’t believe it wasn’t leading the 6 o’clock news.

I had no idea about how to talk to the bereaved. Until then, I’d mostly avoided those who’d lost loved ones. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. In a culture that’s distinctly uncomfortable with pain, this is a safe position for many people. We don’t like to look that kind of loss in the eye for fear it might swallow us.

For Fiona, one of the hardest things in the aftermath of Jude’s death was feeling as if he was being erased. Some people would say anything to avoid talking about him, terrified it would trigger more hurt. It had the opposite effect.

She told me: I’m not over the death of my baby boy and I never will be, so the mention of his name doesn’t remind me that he died; it lets me know that people remember that he lived. Nearly two years on and her sense of loss remains ever present. By any measure, she will always be grieving. But she is not ill. She has simply found a way to accommodate her pain.

In December, as she prepared for the first anniversary of Jude’s death and another Christmas without him, she swapped the traditional advent calendar for a journal that marked one thing each day that she was grateful for. I was, and still am, in awe of her resilience and capacity for love.

How, I wondered, does she do it? Her explanation simultaneously reassured and devastated me: ‘I need people not to misunderstand my sense of being okay. They shouldn’t decide that I’ve moved on, accepted my loss or, God forbid, replaced my precious son. Instead people should know that it’s possible to choose to be okay whilst at the same time living with a broken heart.

I can never replace what Fiona has lost, but I can promise her I will never say, ‘enough now.’ I will never tire of hearing her talk about Jude, and I will continue to remember her crazy-beautiful boy and say his name out loud for as long as I have breath in my body.”(Published in the Sydney Morning Herald 16/10/13)

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.