The other day I caught up with the last Season of This is Us. It's been running for a while and is the story of three children and the ordinary and sometimes not so ordinary lives they lead. It has flashbacks to their childhood and their mother plays a prominent role throughout the series. I should stop here and say SPOILER ALERT don't read any further if you haven't watched the entire show.
In the penultimate episode of the last season the mother is dying and the children and her family all gather to say their goodbyes. It probably wasn't the best idea to watch this but I feel that it was such a good reflection of the process of losing a loved one that I have to share my thoughts.
It reminded me so much of our last hours with Zack. Being with someone as they slip away from you and being with a child as they pass is the most haunting, beautiful, calm, unnatural process. Knowing this day would come terrified me, the fear of what it would be like ate me up. Yet here we where. Zack fought on throughout the night and into the early hours, dying at 5.53 am the same time as he was born. I remember getting into the bed with him and his little heart beat so fast and he was so hot, his breathing noisy but he was gone, no response, just his body continuing on with the brain's instructions. I held his hand and cuddled him and told him how much he meant, how much I loved him, that it was okay and I was going to wait with him. I kept picturing us both sat on a bench together waiting, Im not sure who we were waiting for but we were waiting for someone.
And when I watched the episode of This is Us called The Train, I got it. As Rebecca (the mother) slips away in her mind she is on a beautiful train, she meets a prominent figure in her life who guides her through the carriages where she sees her children, hear's their voices over the tannoy system and meets other significant others. Until she gets to the final carriage, where she turns and says I'm not ready to go in yet. But when she does she meets her husband whom she lost many years ago and she understands that she is safe and can now let go. At that point she slips away.
I thought it was a beautiful analogy and I like to imagine that Zack was waiting perhaps for his Nan (my mother who passed a few years back) to come for him, to guide him over. I understand for some people this may not resonate with you, you may like to consider death to be the finality of life and that nothing more exists, But for me it gives me comfort to think that as Zack made his last journey, that he knew we were with him, he could hear us, he could feel us and he was comforted by our presence.
I want to alleviate the fear of death. We don't talk about it enough, we are afraid of it. I was. I wish that someone had said to me we can keep him comfortable. Explained to me the process of dying, how the noises that they may make, the sounds of their breathing, the discolouration of skin are all a natural process. I was terrified he was in distress but as one of the lovely members of the Clair House team explained, he wasn't in distress in actual fact, it is more frightening and upsetting for family members.
This is why I am continuing this part of Zack's story because I was so afraid. I knew we would one day lose him, And I searched and searched to find something that would perhaps ease my fears. Because above all else, above the thought of losing my most precious child I did not want him to suffer. I wanted to be reassured that his death would not be agonising, he would be afforded the peace and tranquility at the end of his life that he was not given at the beginning. And I am thankful that for whatever reason the right people where around at the right time. And we were able to give Zack that last final loved beyond end to his life. His most wonderful short life. God I miss my boy.
