..'There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other wings'.
- Hodding Carter
One of the most frequently asked questions of us is: ‘How is Cameron doing?’. And that is a very pertinent question – as much for ourselves as well as for others. For how does one as a parent evaluate the impact of such a cataclysmic loss of an only sibling on one’s remaining child – both now but also in the future? How does measure the effect of a 9-year old child observing his sister’s fatal accident? Does he realize a quirky twist of fate could have dealt him the final blow rather than to Erin - had he been positioned where she was rather than where he was, just a meter away? How did he feel returning home for the first time, unaccompanied by his closest friend who adored him and emulated all he did? How did he face sleeping in the bedroom they had shared together, engaging in the bedtime routines of reading, snuggling, giggling and avoiding the admonishment of switching off the light?
In the immediate days following Erin’s accident, we went to visit her; initially Cameron declined accompanying us but then changed his mind. It was the first time I’d seen a deceased body; for Cameron the same experience came at 9 years old. We took her Christmas presents from Santa, and the ones from us we had chosen together with her when we had all traveled down to the Winthrop, USA, for our November wedding anniversary – new snow boots, an American doll, her tiny half-sized violin. Just 3 days after Christmas she received a postcard from Santa saying that he hoped that everything worked out and that her presents had arrived as hoped for as her letter to him had arrived late; he hoped he would receive a letter again from her the following year…
She looked beautiful – almost unscathed from the boulders that had caused her demise. Mike read her favourite book to her; we infused her face trying to commit it to memory, her fairy dust freckles adorning her left cheek; we held her hands and hugged her chubby body and between us tried to absorb the incomprehensible tragedy inflicted upon our once-whole family. Cameron uttered the most heart-wrenching cry when we explained to him that we could not indefinitely keep visiting her and that her body would deteriorate over time - for although inanimate and cold, she looked exactly as we knew her. It is an impossibly difficult task framing the words ‘cremation’ to a young child and justifying our decision to commit his sister to fire knowing that his young mind was thinking that this is what we would do to him had the roles been reversed. Mike had the soul-destroying task of signing the papers to commission the task. He then brought home his lively, energetic, joyful daughter, now dust-to-dust, enclosed in the jewelry box she had received from Santa – a gift opened with squeals of joy on Christmas Day two years before. The silver box was engraved with her name ‘Erin Kate’ and the dancing ballerina twirled to the sound of ‘Fur Elise’ when she opened it to stow away the newly acquired ear-rings for her recently pierced ears.
People believe in heaven and hell. We can proclaim: there is no hell other than the loss of a young child. We have lived it.
CameronandErin, a united entity, were inseparably close and they seldom quarreled. Erin followed with bemused interest Cameron's regularly changing passions which started at the age of 2 with an obsession with trains. Trains mutated into tractors...into dogs...into all things Mario, including a collection of 28 Mario stuffies...which was followed by his current all-consuming interest of baseball. Erin would scour shops, TV programmes, books and magazines in search for items to support his latest interest. His well-being was deemed more important than her own - and she would willingly relinquish her birthday or pocket money for Cameron's most current cause. In November Cameron crawled in to our bed in the early hours. I accidentally knocked his head and, crying inconsolably, he replied: ‘It’s not my head; I just miss Erin’. When I asked what things in particular he missed, his reply captured so aptly our own: ‘Just everything’. The dashed hopes; the projected plans, the daily speculations of how this child will develop, the wonder of unfolding personality traits and growing independence are all now unknowns and conjectures. The changes are all-encompassing and our family is profoundly different - the absence of the pink and purple swirls in the laundry; the girly giggles at supper time; the imaginative games the two children played together; the naïve innocence of our youngest child which brought a lightness to our evening dinner conversation, now very adult-like; the hair-bands permanently around my wrist to tame unkempt hair to all the feminine delights of having a girl. The silence as we awake in the morning replacing the chatter of the two children is still jarringly foreign to us.
And so we walked with Cameron into what seemed a barren future. But it has been his buoyancy that kept us grounded in moving breath by breath to the next minute, hour, day, month and now year. His enthusiasm for life, baseball, school, his enjoyment of being with his friends contextualized our need to heal so we could focus on his hopes, projected plans, the realization of his development, and an incredulous appreciation of his resilience in the face of adversity.
And with the prospect of new life, as my midriff has burgeoned, he has shown a developing interest in the prospect of a reconstituted, albeit very different, family. He will poke and pat my stomach in the hopes that an elbow or foot will reach out and connect with his hand or ask “How is your tummy today, Mom?”. He and Mike are complicit in holding the boy and girl gender secret while the world and I probe and wonder what the combination of genders will be that will be revealed in early May. They are as tight as clams. When asked how things will change with an expanded family, his apt reply is that he would have ‘more roles and responsibilities’ and recently he has admitted to be excited at the prospect of engagement – but only at the age of three! We have no doubt that he will be the most attentive and caring big brother maybe because of, rather than in spite of, the large age gap.
So we owe it to Cameron to keep moving forward, chins up and heads held high. As parents we have been astonished at his developing maturity - a maturity well beyond his years. He has paradoxically nurtured us, supported us, his parents. He has become deeply empathetic and connects with us in ways we have never seen before. He will now characteristically ask: ‘How was your sleep; your day; your meeting?’. He remembers the events of our lives and takes a keen interest, engaging us with attentive listening skills; his appreciation stretches to thanking for meals, transporting, doing laundry and cleaning the house. Although pre-teen, he will regularly come up and put his arms around my neck and whisper in my ear: ‘I love you, Mom – so much’. He is grounded, responsible and self-assured. We remain transfixed by the development of this premature little young adult. He now is included in all our major decision-making and he provides his perspectives thoughtfully and perceptively, often shifting our own opinions in the light of his considered reflections and critical thinking. We will never know what would have been but are now on a new journey, a future of new creation and becoming – with Cameron central to its unfurling.
And for that we need to be grateful.
- Hodding Carter
One of the most frequently asked questions of us is: ‘How is Cameron doing?’. And that is a very pertinent question – as much for ourselves as well as for others. For how does one as a parent evaluate the impact of such a cataclysmic loss of an only sibling on one’s remaining child – both now but also in the future? How does measure the effect of a 9-year old child observing his sister’s fatal accident? Does he realize a quirky twist of fate could have dealt him the final blow rather than to Erin - had he been positioned where she was rather than where he was, just a meter away? How did he feel returning home for the first time, unaccompanied by his closest friend who adored him and emulated all he did? How did he face sleeping in the bedroom they had shared together, engaging in the bedtime routines of reading, snuggling, giggling and avoiding the admonishment of switching off the light?
In the immediate days following Erin’s accident, we went to visit her; initially Cameron declined accompanying us but then changed his mind. It was the first time I’d seen a deceased body; for Cameron the same experience came at 9 years old. We took her Christmas presents from Santa, and the ones from us we had chosen together with her when we had all traveled down to the Winthrop, USA, for our November wedding anniversary – new snow boots, an American doll, her tiny half-sized violin. Just 3 days after Christmas she received a postcard from Santa saying that he hoped that everything worked out and that her presents had arrived as hoped for as her letter to him had arrived late; he hoped he would receive a letter again from her the following year…
She looked beautiful – almost unscathed from the boulders that had caused her demise. Mike read her favourite book to her; we infused her face trying to commit it to memory, her fairy dust freckles adorning her left cheek; we held her hands and hugged her chubby body and between us tried to absorb the incomprehensible tragedy inflicted upon our once-whole family. Cameron uttered the most heart-wrenching cry when we explained to him that we could not indefinitely keep visiting her and that her body would deteriorate over time - for although inanimate and cold, she looked exactly as we knew her. It is an impossibly difficult task framing the words ‘cremation’ to a young child and justifying our decision to commit his sister to fire knowing that his young mind was thinking that this is what we would do to him had the roles been reversed. Mike had the soul-destroying task of signing the papers to commission the task. He then brought home his lively, energetic, joyful daughter, now dust-to-dust, enclosed in the jewelry box she had received from Santa – a gift opened with squeals of joy on Christmas Day two years before. The silver box was engraved with her name ‘Erin Kate’ and the dancing ballerina twirled to the sound of ‘Fur Elise’ when she opened it to stow away the newly acquired ear-rings for her recently pierced ears.
People believe in heaven and hell. We can proclaim: there is no hell other than the loss of a young child. We have lived it.
CameronandErin, a united entity, were inseparably close and they seldom quarreled. Erin followed with bemused interest Cameron's regularly changing passions which started at the age of 2 with an obsession with trains. Trains mutated into tractors...into dogs...into all things Mario, including a collection of 28 Mario stuffies...which was followed by his current all-consuming interest of baseball. Erin would scour shops, TV programmes, books and magazines in search for items to support his latest interest. His well-being was deemed more important than her own - and she would willingly relinquish her birthday or pocket money for Cameron's most current cause. In November Cameron crawled in to our bed in the early hours. I accidentally knocked his head and, crying inconsolably, he replied: ‘It’s not my head; I just miss Erin’. When I asked what things in particular he missed, his reply captured so aptly our own: ‘Just everything’. The dashed hopes; the projected plans, the daily speculations of how this child will develop, the wonder of unfolding personality traits and growing independence are all now unknowns and conjectures. The changes are all-encompassing and our family is profoundly different - the absence of the pink and purple swirls in the laundry; the girly giggles at supper time; the imaginative games the two children played together; the naïve innocence of our youngest child which brought a lightness to our evening dinner conversation, now very adult-like; the hair-bands permanently around my wrist to tame unkempt hair to all the feminine delights of having a girl. The silence as we awake in the morning replacing the chatter of the two children is still jarringly foreign to us.
And so we walked with Cameron into what seemed a barren future. But it has been his buoyancy that kept us grounded in moving breath by breath to the next minute, hour, day, month and now year. His enthusiasm for life, baseball, school, his enjoyment of being with his friends contextualized our need to heal so we could focus on his hopes, projected plans, the realization of his development, and an incredulous appreciation of his resilience in the face of adversity.
And with the prospect of new life, as my midriff has burgeoned, he has shown a developing interest in the prospect of a reconstituted, albeit very different, family. He will poke and pat my stomach in the hopes that an elbow or foot will reach out and connect with his hand or ask “How is your tummy today, Mom?”. He and Mike are complicit in holding the boy and girl gender secret while the world and I probe and wonder what the combination of genders will be that will be revealed in early May. They are as tight as clams. When asked how things will change with an expanded family, his apt reply is that he would have ‘more roles and responsibilities’ and recently he has admitted to be excited at the prospect of engagement – but only at the age of three! We have no doubt that he will be the most attentive and caring big brother maybe because of, rather than in spite of, the large age gap.
So we owe it to Cameron to keep moving forward, chins up and heads held high. As parents we have been astonished at his developing maturity - a maturity well beyond his years. He has paradoxically nurtured us, supported us, his parents. He has become deeply empathetic and connects with us in ways we have never seen before. He will now characteristically ask: ‘How was your sleep; your day; your meeting?’. He remembers the events of our lives and takes a keen interest, engaging us with attentive listening skills; his appreciation stretches to thanking for meals, transporting, doing laundry and cleaning the house. Although pre-teen, he will regularly come up and put his arms around my neck and whisper in my ear: ‘I love you, Mom – so much’. He is grounded, responsible and self-assured. We remain transfixed by the development of this premature little young adult. He now is included in all our major decision-making and he provides his perspectives thoughtfully and perceptively, often shifting our own opinions in the light of his considered reflections and critical thinking. We will never know what would have been but are now on a new journey, a future of new creation and becoming – with Cameron central to its unfurling.
And for that we need to be grateful.