By Sue Dagg
Life isn’t fair. This is a phrase I remember having repeated to me over and over by my mother when I was growing up. It’s actually held me in good stead, preventing me from worrying too much about what I have compared to others; understanding that life doesn’t owe me anything and that I need to work at getting what I need. It’s useful to be able to recognise that while people will accept your excuses when life delivers you a hard knock, they will admire you for reaching an achievement despite, or because of, challenges.
When my daughter Emily died, I felt that I handled that aspect of her death philosophically and with grace. In the very early days, my husband and I had discussions reaffirming to each other that, while it was the most awful thing that could have happened, there was no point asking ‘why me?,’ because “everyone draws a bad hand at some point”. It was easy to understand that when we could see evidence of it everywhere in our lives: an adult family member not-so-long ago diagnosed with leukemia, a friend with a new baby and a worrying new diagnosis of his own to go with it, or a woman who had no friends or family to cook, clean or help her like ours had as she carried out the tiring daily trek to and from the NICU to visit her preemie baby. When we looked for them, stories abounded of close friends and families who lost their parents or siblings far too soon, and we were abundantly aware that grief couldn’t be graded or compared. How could we say that losing our baby was more painful than someone losing her mother at the end of her 20s, or his teenage brother in a car accident? We couldn’t, and we knew that.
We had been dealt a bad hand in life- one of the very worst- but we knew that it was only a matter of time before something challenging would have appeared in our lives, just as it appeared in everyone else’s. It was to be expected, even if it was painful and didn’t make the grieving easier. Sometimes when I did start to think to myself ‘why me?’, I asked myself who I would want to give this pain to instead. There was no one I could bear to wish it on, so I asked it to stay with me instead. I returned to work after a month of mourning, re-engaged in life, accepting that I would carry my safe, well-worn sadness along with me.
And then I met the angry side of grief.
Even though I knew to expect anger, the ferocity of it shocked me. Seemingly non-existent patience combined with apparently endless rage and bitterness. It threatened to envelop and consume me, and I struggled to keep my head above water, feeling as if I might drown. From colleagues making mistakes or my boss not considering a well-justified idea, to the selfishness of women having their second babies when I hadn’t even been allowed my first surviving one yet (how dare they?), to the inequality against women and people of non-white backgrounds and the destruction of the earth; everything made my blood boil, my attention short. Some days, I could barely stop myself from saying something that would get me fired, lose a friendship or alienate family. Oddly, it’s not that my perspective changed; I still had most of the same thoughts and opinions as before. What was difference was my unstoppable and immediate response to injustices, slights and ignorance. Not only could I not suffer fools gladly, I felt that they might just need a good shouting at to help their education.
Whereas other stages of grief were easier to accept and experience fully, I struggled with anger. I felt a massive sense of guilt over my barely tolerable behaviour, totally intolerable thoughts, and the directions that I threw my inner, more secret rage. Secret, because I couldn’t bear to admit to even myself how much hatred I was sending silently over Facebook in the direction of those happy ‘new baby’ and ‘new bump’ photos that showed the perfect lives people have when their children aren’t dead and scattered in the wind. I didn’t want to wish anyone ill, and I knew how foolish this jealousy was. Facebook is only someone’s highlight reel, not an accurate portrayal of their world, and I know that the 3am screaming or the non-stop vomiting aren’t so photogenic and don’t make it into a Social Media-ready description of a parent’s day. But the irrationality didn’t matter to me, and that was distressing.
I didn’t want to talk about my anger to anyone because it hurt to even admit to myself that I had this level of bile, jealousy and resentment. It’s easy to be a good listener for someone who is numb or in pain and needs to talk; harder to hear about the dirty little secret ill-wishes that your friend has for people who dared to have the life she wanted. Despite telling myself that I wasn’t angry about Emily’s death (convincing myself I was just tired and angry in general), I realised that probably this actually was where a lot of this anger stemmed from: my child died when it was so hard for me to conceive her in the first place. My hard-won baby girl died, while so many other women seemingly glided from bathroom pregnancy test to hospital bed, conceiving and delivering all in the same easy move.
Anger is the truly ugly side of grief.
Justified or not, these feelings felt sordid and festering inside me, like an ulcerous wound that oozed stinking pus out of me no matter how hard I tried to hide it. Where before, I would seek friends and family to support me when I needed them, I started to isolate myself away and hide this shameful person that I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want anyone to think that their own lives were hurting or upsetting others. I desperately wanted to be wise, beneficent and enlightened, instead of this tiny-minded, hurtful person. I dreaded that Emily’s legacy would be a bitter, angry woman who ruined opportunities and relationships alike, destroying everything in reach.
I wish I could say that my angry stage was over, returning to a more ‘pure’ grief that’s easier to manage for both me and others. I wish I could say that I no longer have bitter thoughts that tear open the darker parts of my soul, causing me to silently fear that my heart may have turned rotten, ruined forever. I wish I could say that this burden had lifted. It hasn’t. This has, and continues to be the hardest part of my loss, showing me sides of myself I’d rather not have ever known.
What I can say though is this: By acknowledging the darkest parts of my grief and exposing them to light, they’ve started to seem just a little less awful, less damning. Some days I can even understand those aspects of myself and send them compassion and love. I’m getting better at recognising that this is likely only a stage and will pass. Even understanding that what I feel is probably even normal.
Like other monsters under the bed, confronting this hidden inner troll has made it less scary and threatening. I’ve become brave enough to talk to a friend about what sometimes fills my thoughts. I don’t want anyone else to ever feel alone in this, so I’ve put my courage to the test and even written about my simmering rage and bitter jealousy for all to see. I’m trying to start to bleed off a little of the poison gradually, so that I don’t erupt quite so unexpectedly and accidentally take it out on bystanders. It seems to be starting to work.
Until then, I’m mad as hell at the world that life isn’t fair, and I’m not going to let that be a dirty little secret anymore.
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Sue Dagg is 35 years old and lives with her husband Rob and bulldog Lilly. Their daughter Emily Beatrice was born prematurely at 23+4 due to PROM and died after only three weeks of life. She was a fighting spirit who beat many odds to be born. For Sue, part of bringing meaning to Emily’s life is found in breaking the stigma of talking about pregnancy and infant loss, and ensuring others know they’re not alone.
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