Product Info

Losing a Child by Linda Hurcombe

"How do parents survive when a child dies?

This book offers support, information and practical advice for any parent facing the loss of a child, and for anyone family, friend, professional carer — who is helping them find ways to cope. The author's aim is to stand beside those who suffer, and help them carry on, even when others find it hard to bear their grief.

Linda Hurcombe's daughter Caitlin died aged 19. This powerful and at times heart-wrenching book has grown out of a mother's and a family's grief."

'Linda includes in her compassionate account of parental grief much practical information and advice. This is a book of great humanity and warmth.'
Dorothy Rowe, from the Foreword

Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction: Footprints in Snow

• Growing Round Grief
• Early Days: When We're Not Strong
• Baby
• Sisters and Brothers
• Sudden Death: Murder, Accidents and Troubled Children
• Suicide: When the World Has Gone Out
• You Are the Expert

Helpful Contacts
References and Further Reading
Index

Extra Info

 Introduction: Footprints in Snow

We fall to the earth like leaves
Lives as brief as footprints in snow
No words express the grief we feel
I feel I cannot let her go.

For she is everywhere.
Walking on the windswept beach
Talking in the sunlit square.
Next to me in the car
I see her sitting there.

At night she dreams me
and in the morning the sun does not rise.
My life is as thin as the wind
And I am done with counting stars.

She is gone, she is gone.
I am her sad music, and I play on, and on, and on.

(Roger McGough)

I began this book in the days preceding and immediately following the catastrophe of 11 September 2001, or '9/11' as it came to be known, when terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC altered all our futures. Seasoned observers say we will always remember with precision what we were doing on this day, the way an earlier generation recalls the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the way my students and friends spoke of Princess Diana's fatal car crash in August 1997. This forms the big picture' and, as it happens, an appropriate context in which to write a book for people suffering huge loss, our intimate 9/11s.

I didn't want to write my personal story in this book. I wanted to write your stories. There is, however, a personal picture focusing on family tragedy and on my daughter Caitlin, and I cannot imagine that this is the book I'd be writing if she had not died. It is, I realize, entirely appropriate that Caitlin's story has become a leitmotif throughout.

Like many little girls in the 1980s, Caitlin grew up with daily images of the Princess of Wales, and adored her. Prompted by a kindergarten teacher, five-year-old Caitlin wrote a letter to the princess, accompanied by a drawing of Charles and Diana; it was later published in a book of children's letters. 'Dear Princess Diana. - What do you like best about Buckingham Palace? Love, Caitlin Hurcombe aged five years.' Over the years, Caitlin continued to enjoy collecting occasional 'Diana mementos', adoring this royal icon with countless millions of others.

When Diana died so suddenly in August 1997, Caitlin shared the national sense of numbness and loss: 'How sad, Mum, without Diana in this world.' But, of course, life went on without Diana; college and boyfriends and simple ordinary affairs gradually fell into place.

There is no causal connection between the public tragedy of Diana's death and Caitlin's death eight months later. Caitlin died by suicide on the Monday of Holy Week, 6 April 1998, changing the lives for ever of those who loved her. She was 19 years old, two months away from her twentieth birthday. Were she alive today, I would — when required — be supply teaching at her sixth-form college, making the occasional broadcast, editing theological works and writing novels, and of course fretting and rejoicing over the ensuing stages of her growth to adult years — boyfriends, adventures, career — all the usual experiences that became excruciating 'what ifferies' after her death.

Caitlin 's story
Caitlin and her elder brother Sean were much loved and loving, and Caitlin grew into a normal self-conscious complicated teenager. Her clergyman father and I separated when she was nine years old, and it was necessary to move away to our rural home in Shropshire where, in spite of the considerable pain involved in the break-up of our previous family unit, Caitlin settled in well. For a time she had a pony called Julie, until 'Julie interest' was supplanted by 'boy interest'. Her priorities were friends, regular contact with her father and big brother in London, drama and singing, physical appearance, clothes, and 'sorting Mum out', by which I mean engaging in huge debates over virtually everything, conducted most often in the kitchen. Caitlin frequently won these verbal sparring matches with Mum. She would have made a superb lawyer. Friends, though, never seemed to see this pugilistic Caitlin, and would comment on how endlessly biddable and easy-going she was with them.

Her sixth-form years were safe and loving, if turbulent. 'You're always there for me, Mum,' she'd tell me in regular generous moments. I need to remember these moments, not least as reassurance that I did indeed let her know how much she meant to me. She was also the kind of girl who told me every single day that she loved me, sometimes even in the midst of an argument: 'Mum, you are such a moody Trudy! Get a grip! Love you!' she'd say, with the love you' shouted over her shoulder as off she'd swoop to make a phone call or wash her hair.

During the unspeakable days following her death I clearly remember thinking, 'How will all the people I cherish be able to deal with the person I have become, will become?' There was life with Caitlin, and now life without her. All the many roads that led to Caitlin became cul-de-sacs. I harboured a terror that her older brother would follow her inexplicable exit from life. I felt a profound kinship with all lost needlessly dead children, and their surviving loved ones. Above all, there was a diminishment to such a degree that life appeared to lose all meaning. Writing — my 'almost way of making a living' — was out of the question. What was the point of words when there was no Caitlin in the world? I was dragged into a vortex of despair, where all I had worked for came to nothing. This sense of loss remains a personal struggle in spite of an abiding faith in God (not your fault, God!), a miraculous loving companion, the reward of work itself, and a grand extended family of true friends — you know who you are.

The following sequence of events is factual and chronologically accurate, although I have changed some names.

Caitlin wanted to take the antidepressant drug Prozac (the oldest and best known version of a group of medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) because she felt down' after a difficult Christmas, and she wanted to lose weight. Friends told her that the drug was good on both counts. She informed the doctor she saw (not her own GP) that she was depressed and was prescribed the medication. In her diary Caitlin numbered her first and all subsequent days as 'PZ days'. At the end of the first day on the drug she skipped into the house from college saying she felt 'mega-great', which was a surprise because both the doctor and the 'Patient's Notes' emphasized that the medication might take at least a fortnight, and possibly more, to 'kick in'. I gave one of my mini-lectures about the placebo effect, and insisted on reading the Patient's Notes aloud to Caitlin. A separate set of instructions, logoed with a Crystal Mark of clarity from the Plain English Campaign, and titled 'Day by Day: A guide to your first three weeks of treatment', urged the patient to carry on with the drug no matter how bad they might feel.

Caitlin's 'day one' euphoria was short-lived, and by the first weekend on her medication she began complaining of a stiff jaw and of feeling 'edgy'. She began chewing her cheeks in her sleep, and while awake she couldn't settle.

That weekend, she went out with friends to a local pub. Later that night and at home, Caitlin was agitated and upset. She told me that she didn't know what had got into her, but she'd 'lost the plot', got into the flat of a local man called Psycho, and removed his stereo.

'Beg pardon?' I was dumbfounded. Psycho's nickname is not a term of endearment; his day job is at an abattoir cleaving beef carcasses. He also goes berserk at the drop of a hat or too many drops of alcohol.

'Where's the stereo, Cakes?' I asked.
'In my bedroom.'
'Your BEDROOM?'

'Listen. He's been slagging me off, Mum, so I thought I'd teach him a lesson — it's better than punching his lights out, which is what I wanted to do.'

The image of my gorgeous girl attempting to 'punch Psycho's lights out' was more scary than amusing. 'Get that stereo back into his house. I don't care how you do it.'

And she did. By the time the police arrived at Psycho's flat the next day to investigate the reported theft, Psycho's stereo was back in situ, cosily plugged in and ready to play, as if it had never been moved.

During college half-term Caitlin visited her father and brother Sean in London. Sean noticed she was very 'manic', and urged her to 'chill'. He instinctively cautioned her not to mix alcohol with her medication. This caveat later provoked a huge argument with me on her return home: I suggested that she moderate her intake and stop trying to 'keep up' with her mates. Caitlin retorted, 'If you aren't supposed to drink alcohol while on the drug, the Patient's Notes would say so, and there IS no warning. You read the instructions out loud to me, Mum, remember? Boring!! They would tell you like they do on antibiotic prescriptions. Right?' Caitlin ten, Mum nil. Otherwise she seemed happy, happy, happy. Through the vantage point of the 'retrospectoscope', much too happy.

Shortly after this period of 'euphoria' Caitlin woke me at three in the morning, crying in anguished sobs from her bedroom. I ran to her room.

Mum, I dreamed you were dead!' I cuddled her and tried to talk her down from the nightmare.
But Mum, I killed you with a machete.'
I managed a feeble joke. 'Well, most kids feel like killing their parents some of the time, honey.'

A couple of nights later she woke me again, having a nightmare in which she killed herself. Such was the violence of the dream that Caitlin was unable to go back to sleep that night. I stayed with her. Sleep disturbances continued.

A few days later Caitlin said, 'Mum, one thing I notice about being on Prozac is that like, I can't cry even when I want to. I either feel like, calm and floaty like, or I feel like, massively angry, but, like, in a calm sort of way.'

Instead of responding to what should have been a warning about the effect of the medication, my reaction to Caitlin's observation was to ignore her concerns, and ask her not to use 'like' so much. I did re-read the Patient's Notes, though, and was somewhat reassured that they said not to worry if the depressed person was still feeling bad, as they remained on the road to recovery as long as they carried on with the medication.

Although she was a distinction student, Caitlin became convinced that college teachers were marking her down. She charged into their empty office one day and commandeered the class register. At home she raged furiously, convinced that her tutors planned to fail her. I went with her into college to visit her head of department and sort things out. Her tutor seemed bemused, defensive and incredulous, quite naturally objecting to Caitlin's unprecedented behaviour. He produced the register and pointed out that she had looked at the wrong row of marks, that she was maintaining her distinction standard, but that he was concerned with her recent out-of-character and erratic behaviour. Caitlin, who normally would have apologized unreservedly to her teachers, seemed both unrepentant and unfeeling. It was like seeing another person acting inside her skin; the! biblical term 'possessed' springs to mind. This change is made clear in a ferociously rude and vitriolic poem Caitlin wrote and circulated extracted here (I have changed the names):

Ballad

There once were two teachers
Called Larry and Whim,
One was a wanker, the other, just dim.
They'd failed in their lives as actor and dancer,
Rude comments to students cut like a lancer...

Remember those trousers?
Remember that belt?
Remember how much her egg sandwiches smelt?
Remember the good times?
No we do not.
Do it again? We'd rather chew snot.

This language, from a girl whose watchword was kindness, who was surrounded by friends and gifted teachers of whom she was extremely fond.

As suggested by the doctor she saw when Prozac was prescribed, Caitlin talked a counsellor who concluded that she was coping exceptionally well. Over tea that evening, Caitlin was elated.

'Mum, the counsellor says I'm psychologically intact!'
'Of course you are, darling.' Huge hugs.

And indeed there were productive days. During this time Caitlin co-wrote and produced a play based on a lighthearted look at the Seven Deadly Sins, called Hell's Belles. Even if I hadn't been a doting parent, I would have called it topnotch. On Mother's Day she presented me with an elaborately festooned box filled with brightly coloured primroses — 'To the best mum in the world'.

These interludes were her last positive days; she had indeed lost weight, and by now was thrilled that her 5' 8" frame comfortably fit into a size 10.

At this time Caitlin met a new circle of non-college friends, including a boyfriend called Steven. She neglected her long-time friends at college, and out of the blue she began bunking off college in spite of the fact that she had rehearsals for a solo in the term-time cabaret. An interview at her first choice of university awaited. Dear Uncle Roy from America had promised to buy her an old banger of a car and, icing on the cake, she had a lovely summer job waiting for her in the south of France with a family and children she knew and loved. But on her last Thursday she didn't come home from college. Later she rang to say she would be spending the night with one of her new friends, Kathy, and would catch the bus to college from Kathy's on Friday morning. Might she bring Steven home for a meal Friday evening, as he'd like to meet me? Yes, of course, said I, we'll cook the meal together.

I discovered that Caitlin didn't go in to college when her tutor rang on Friday morning asking where she was. I rang Kathy's house.

Caitlin, what's going on? You promised you were going to college. They need you for rehearsals.'

'Get off my case, Mum.' And then, as if she were playing a part in one of those 'because I'm worth it' ads, she shouted, 'I'm confident, I'm intelligent and I'm beautiful.' I was stunned.

Caitlin, your personal excellence is not the issue here. Please come home, we are supposed to be cooking a meal for you and Steven.'

'He's not well, he's in bed with flu.'

Please come home. What about your doctor's appointment?' At this point I was grasping at straws.

'Cancelled it. If you want me home, you'll have to come and get me.

I refused. This person with Caitlin's voice was someone else entirely. She did not come home. Another first from a daughter who had always rung to let me know where she was, and another sleepless night for Mum on the home front, fretful, frustrated. And furious.

After it was too late to save Caitlin, I learned that she had gone pubbing on the Thursday night with her acquaintances. The new boyfriend was shift working at the local factory and Caitlin gathered every daffodil from an adjacent lay-by. She found Steven's office and showered the flowers at his feet, declaring her undying love. Then she walked back to Kathy's for the night. Next morning while chatting to Kathy, she calmly cut a neat 'S' on the back of her left hand, then rubbed a burn mark from the base of her forefinger to her - wrist with a pencil rubber. She asked if Kathy wanted to try this: 'It doesn't hurt while you're doing it — it takes five minutes to hurt,' she said. Kathy declined, and later told me that Caitlin was being very 'mechanical and strange' that morning.

Nor did Caitlin come home on the Saturday. I phoned Kathy's at noon and Caitlin had just left. Through the afternoon I hovered round the phone waiting for her to contact me.

The phone rang at about 5 p.m. A female voice on the line:

'Is this Caitlin's mother?' Yes. 'Come and collect your daughter.'

'Who is this please?'

'Someone who thought Caitlin was a friend, but she's not, she's horrid.'

'Excuse me?'

'She's been beastly to our friend Steven. He really loves her, but she got off with Bristol Bob in the girls' cubicle at the Barley Mow. We told the publican and Caitlin's out on her arse.'

'I'm on my way.

I drove the 15-mile journey like a maniac. Pulling up at the village's T-junction, a tableau from hell — Caitlin, struggling to free herself from a small gang of girls who were restraining her arms, pulling her hair. The shop window behind them, broken. A bearded shopkeeper wearily sweeping up the shards of glass. I spoke first to him.

'I'm so sorry, who broke your window? Have you phoned the police?'

The man wearily glanced up. 'We don't phone the police round here.'

How could this be my Caitlin, my daughter, broken and bleeding and flailing around like a snared wild bird, having kicked in a shop window? A bare 10 yards down the road a straggle of lads restrained Steven, the new boyfriend, pinning him to the spot. At first Caitlin didn't seem to recognize me — 'How did you know where I was?' she barked. She refused to get in our car until I suggested we invite Steven home with us to sort out whatever the problem was. Extracting him from the other group, I helped them into the car and drove them back home. Caitlin was simultaneously incoherent with remorse and alarmingly 'high'. I offered to cook them something. Caitlin wanted to do the cooking. Did they want time alone to sort things out? Yes.

'I'll be back in an hour. I'm with Trish at Richard's and Lisa's if you need me. Don't drink any more alcohol. Promise?'

'Promise.'

On my return, Caitlin, standing jacketed in the front room, said that they weren't staying because our house gave Steven the creeps. She'd rung a taxi, and they were going out. Where? Anywhere but here! Caitlin seemed furious with me; her aggression was palpable. I watched helplessly as the taxi took them away. Another sleepless night.

Sunday morning. I rang Steven's home. Steven's mother answered the phone. Yes, Caitlin was there, and awake. What a lovely daughter you have. She's welcome to stay with us any time. Caitlin came to the phone.

'Darling, do you want to come home?'

'Yes, but Mum, I thought you were angry with me.'

I took a deep stupefied breath. 'Don't worry. See you in a few minutes.'

Most alarming to me at that point was the mutilation of her hand; she had never done anything like this, had always hated and avoided any sort of physical pain. She'd tried and failed at the current fashions of nose and belly button studs and piercing. I asked if she'd like to see the doctor. Yes.

Dr Lambert, who had prescribed Prozac for Caitlin, met us at the surgery and tended Caitlin' s wounds. She asked Caitlin to tell her what had happened the day before. Did Caitlin think her medication might be a problem? Caitlin said maybe. Caitlin should see a psychiatrist as soon as possible, said Dr Lambert. Caitlin said yes please. Arm in arm we walked home in the Sunday sunshine; this has become a precious memory. Caitlin seemed at peace, serene. Never, never, in her life, she said, had she been so out of control as she was on Saturday. Did I think Steven would finish with her? Not if he's a proper new penny, I said. I told her that I loved her more than everything in the world but that I was running out of ideas. 'So am I, Mum.' Thinking that alcohol was the problem and that she just couldn't keep up with her friends' drinking habits, Caitlin planned to stop.

She went to bed for a while, exhausted, and in the afternoon spent time with Steven, trying to reassure him and make things up. At no point did I consider the possibility that her medication was the problem. I didn't know then what I know now, that this type of drug, taken by countless millions as a safe and non-addictive treatment for depression, changes the chemical constituency of the brain, and that approximately 10 per cent of the population do not possess the enzyme to metabolize it, leading in these people to a potentially toxic build-up.

On Monday Caitlin went to college. I kissed her goodbye at 6 am and dashed off to catch my train to work. At some point she wrote and posted a card to Steven, declaring her desire to be '110% for you'. She apologized profusely for being 'more out of control than I've ever been. I promise I'll put my nutty behaviour in the past and I sort out my head', she wrote. I last heard Caitlin's voice when I phoned from work that evening to tell her my train arrival time. She sounded cheerful, said that it had been a 'good news day', and asked me to listen to her solo song when I got home. 'Love you, Mum.'

Later records confirm that she phoned Steven at an agreed time; that he heard the phone ringing, but didn't answer it because he was discussing with his parents a pay rise he'd just received. He also didn't answer, as he explained at the inquest, because he knew it was Caitlin ringing at a prearranged time and was uncertain about his feelings for her. Between the time of Caitlin's attempt to ring him and his return call, she took her piano stool and stacked a childhood chair on top of it, made a ligature from her pony's lunge rope, slung it three times round a beam in the guest bedroom and twice tightly round her neck, placed a pillowcase over her head, and kicked away her support. She was still warm when we brought her down and attempted to resuscitate her. The postmortem reported only the presence of 'a therapeutic dose' in her system of 'fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac)', the drug she had been prescribed.

Caitlin left two notes, one carved on the collar of her lurcher dog, Gus: 'I love you, Gus, always'.

And one to me:
Mum, I am so very sorry. I love you very much, and I always will.
When you look at the stars, think of me smiling down at you, and Dad, and Sean and all of my friends and the people I care about. I am sorry I am a complete failure and a coward. I finally thought my life was going well and now everyone hates me. Remember me always and the good things I did instead of the bad. One day I will meet you all again in heaven, if there is such a place. There are so many people I love that it would take a very long time for me to write them all. Remind people that I was a kind girl who loved to make people smile, so people don't remember all the bad things about me. I'm so very, very sorry. I love you with all of my heart. With you in spirit always
All My Love Eternally, Caitlin

There's a mother in this scenario and she's me. I have longed for madness, but an incurable sanity afflicts me. The need to discover a Why?', leaving no stone unturned. I am informed that this is a near- universal response of grieving parents, and especially in cases of suicide or murder, and that 'letting go', 'moving on', 'finding closure' are mandatory. Some may say that Caitlin was suffering from undiagnosed depression — that is, 'the disease was responsible for her death, not the drug'; more cynical observers might feel that her death while on a drug that makes so many people feel great was coincidental. Still others who accept the connection between her suicide and the medication may see her death as collateral damage ( acceptable failure) in the fight against depression — 'you win some, you lose some'. Clearly, I believe I know 'why', but knowing why changes nothing. And I'm sorry to say that it doesn't help either, because all I could ever want is my beloved girl alive.

What does help has become the 'stuff' of this book. Reaching out to parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, adopted or blood-related, w ho have lost a child, or an only child — or, in some cases, children — and who, in spite of intimate acquaintance with sorrow, take courage to re-build from the ruins and carry on with life. Nobody wants to think that you have to suffer in order to grow. Would it were not so, and I'm certain that suffering is not the only motor of growth. But suffering can be forged into a 'terrible beauty'. I may not like it, but I've seen it too many times to discount it.

My earlier life projects in teaching, publishing and broadcasting have involved thousands of students and participants, many of whom I know only through correspondence, but who have enriched both work and life beyond measure. All researchers are taught that scientific objectivity depends on keeping one's distance from the people one writes about, but, for me, grief, the great leveller, changes all that. I am persuaded that writing from a 'befriending' perspective will be helpful, not least by serving as an important reminder that all human 'objects' are primarily 'subjects', that this book will be enriched by first-hand experience as well as more traditional methodologies. As Caitlin wrote in her diary. 'A friend is the one who comes in when the world has gone out.'

After 11 September 2001. New York Christians hosted one of many services for British families who lost loved ones. Prime Minister Tony Blair attended, and contributed a reading. He chose a passage from Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey. In this novella, the finest bridge in all of Peru broke, killing five people in the midst of living the story of their lives. The author writes of their lives up to the time they are about to set off across the bridge. Tony Blair read out the last paragraph:

soon ... all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land ... of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Grief is many things; it is a place, here where I stand, and a feeling, and also an objective experience; but perhaps most accurately it is an architect of restoration and renewal to the ruined bridge of loss. It is physically and mentally painful, sometimes to an indescribable degree. We all want to avoid it, but there are times when we cannot. We grow up. We grow older. Some of us even grow wiser. I am not certain that we can ever choose to grow a 'good grief, but, frankly, it is worth a try.

Who is this book for?
This is a befriending book for the mothers, fathers, siblings and grandparents bereaved of their child or children, and, in the words of the tagline for The Compassionate Friends, 'for those similarly bereaved'. It will also be useful to friends who care about bereaved families as well as to helping agencies. The category 'child' includes adult offspring as well as 'chronological children', and grandparents bereaved of grown children or grandchildren.

Most of us feel inadequate in the face of death. My purpose is to explore ways of healing and solace for those devastated by the anguish of grief, and to discover ways of offering comfort to friends and relatives to whom the unthinkable has happened.

This book addresses many, though not all, aspects of life after the death of a child. Perhaps most importantly it tackles the over-used, misunderstood and endlessly fascinating word 'love' that won't let us go, as well as the other two of the 'big three' graces, faith and hope. My hope for you is that this book may provide a brick or two for the building of an unbreakable bridge of love, hope and, for those w ho desire or perceive its importance, faith.

About the author
Linda Hurcombe taught English Literature for 27 years at both university and secondary levels. She is co-author, with Susan Dowell, of Dispossessed Daughters of Eve (published by SPCK) and author/editor of Sex and God (Routledge). In recent years she has combined writing with editing and was coordinating editor of The New Dictionary of Pastoral Studies (SPCK, 2002), and editor of Compassion, the quarterly journal of The Compassionate Friends UK, from 2001 to 2004. She is the mother of two children — Caitlin, and a surviving older brother, Sean — and lives in Shropshire.