My sweet Sayge

[debsayge]

Dearest broken people,
I have met some of you already so thankyou so far for all your sharing and caring empathy….
So far I’ve been unable to tell and still am as I feel too traumatised with disbelief … so this is an outpouring of this Mumma to my girl, hoping it’s ok to do this way and not undermining anyone else for how they express… I’m the hope to feel heard and seen…
My darling girl I’m sure that you watching me now would say I love you so much Mumma!I understand, I see you!! Even though Now that the rest of the world does not!!
I miss you up in the early hrs, photographing the dawn to excitedly show me when I got up or a flower just opened, which you would later be picking to make the beautiful bunches with Archer for your farm gate shop, which from the money raised would pay for all your treasured animal feed, always taking great pride in decorating their little homes with cherry blossom branches and lush greens from our garden which you and Archer tended with so much effort and Joy!! I miss Luna and Ron (Harry Potter people) which became your names for each other, Ron for Archers strawberry blond hair and funny character and Luna for just you being yourself not into being anything but you and the long white blond hair, I miss watching you platt it every night so you’d have the waves you envied in your brothers….I miss our talks when you’d often snuggle in bed with me and telling me how safe you felt in my arms, you are my flowers mummy, thank you Mumma you always help me, I can’t talk to anyone like I can to you…i miss you always in the kitchen preparing our food together and your appreciation for it all, I miss you saying I’ll always help you Mumma, cause you need me….i haven’t even managed to clean the house now!! At all….I miss my little darlings chatting with bill and toffee ( our 2 soft toy Bilbys made by daddy) about all kinds of silly nonsense and toff calling me yummy I love you too, I miss walking past your room late at nights and sitting listening to my kids breathe peacefully as I’d sit and say sleep with all my love my precious ones( my kids always slept together) or before that just listening to all the funny stuff and their joyful laughter until finally they’d sleep….I miss watching you write in your journals (since about 6) which start with words like “diary 16 of my beautiful life” and ending with words like I will continue to be grateful every moment of my sparkling life….I miss you always being on my side and saying don’t worry about your mean family you’ve us now and we are always together, and I miss you honouring that togetherness always…..I miss our special christmases always filled with months of preparations and so much joy, months of Christmas carols, our birthdays which went for a week and I miss the cakes you made covered with flowers just like Mumma always made for you all….I so miss you playing piano with so much heart your piano teacher would always call you the girl with the beautiful hands….I miss watching you try so hard at karate and gaining your black belt with Archer….I miss you doing ballet with such dedication! I miss you riding your horses with archer and being so careful not to hurt them….I miss your dedication to animal communication, natural horsemanship…. I miss you looking deeply into my eyes with such trust….and then!!for her 18th birthday a heart wrenching diagnosis after she thought she’d hurt her knee, she hadn’t, she is always much to careful of herself, I never worried when she’d climb to the top of the trees…..then we were flung into that horrible adult hospital, and really should have been allowed in the childrens as although 18 only a little girl at heart…then she lost her beautiful hair….now stuck in a wheelchair for 3 months and frightened into not moving!! That leg!! Then when the poisons failed they heartlessly told her she’d need to sign this(first time signing) to sacrifice her left leg to live!! So she did so courageously but with so much fear and loss I don’t believe ican ever get past this trauma this horror, I understand you all know here, she was so devastated but still up on those crutches and outside to do everything…!!!.this was followed by abandoning hosp they had nothing for us and she hated them all, me too….we did everything alternative possible….months and months of many things everything be done to Sayge, I felt!! People don’t understand this, we didn’t see this coming!!!we thought we were safe!!! yet here we are like you in the devastation of our loss and no direction a catastrophic tragedy….we would love another family to connect with our small farm and us with my beautiful broken-hearted boy, and this totally broken Mumma…
Grateful to you all I know you all here are just as lost and so alone….I promise to empathise with you all …And deeply honour your pain…
With love to all Deb Angel Sayge
Xx

Topic

[debsayge]

See me!! Roar (RAW)
Musings on BEING with grief,

Hi I’m Deb, broken mumma of my darling girl Sweet Sayge….

I have been feeling a lot , ohhh such a lot, ohhh all over the place, brokenness, and I’ve decided that if I write my thoughts here it may resonate with some of you here just as something to contemplate…some thoughts to share, I’m hoping this thread will bring out others thoughts to share too.
Life as we know it now after our pain filled losses is so raw so changed so awful, also we acknowledge the unspeakable way in which we had to just witness our beloveds demise, which we can either speak about or not, sits so heavily in our shattered hearts…

Yet here we are in these forums, Alone, abandoned by non grieving (at the moment) family/friends/society, who can’t/won’t look our way….at least not for long .

My family is completely Alone here, no family care or support, no friends that have stayed, from here it’s been impossible to keep trying to connect; (so difficult when you’ve no energy or confidence, we’d need an advocate to help us which obviously we don’t have) as a family, with other bereaved of your child families, it’s for our survival truely, there must be others like us, nearby, but we are all hiding from a world that’s too harsh with our fragile hearts, in forums, at home….we need you, we need each other, please put up your hand and we can gather here in our garden, this is my plea ! for just a couple of other families to share, maybe in just this informal space we could feel held by one-another, and our children, being in the presence of other bereaved siblings could be so nurturing, can anyone relate? Any thoughts on how to find what we need?
I mean we’re thinking of putting a sign out front??? That’s desperate.

I saw a talk recently called don’t look away from the homeless; I thought; OR the grieving…..in my unbearable mourning; about my only hope was that people would stay with me, because they care, because they love Sayge too, but from what I’ve witnessed now; this is not the reality of what happens and it’s debilitating, frightening, crushing to our family.
My Sayge deserved so much more than this, all our lost beloveds, much much more than a truncated response,it’s making our grief that much more crushing.
Then, on top of this, we are seen as some pathological thing to be fixed, or avoided.
There’s the choice,
fixed is turning away from our deeply loved person we lost, purposely putting our unbearable pain ‘somewhere know-one has to look at it’ move on….or stay with the pain of loss , feeling the depths of our beloveds in so doing remembering them, loving them with our whole broken hearts, honouring our lost people in our unique ways….whatever that means, I just don’t know right now….it’s somewhere this unbearable pain is taking me/us.
So what I’ve been wondering about is if we could all find the courage to take our grief out into the world, let it be seen, would this not make it easier for the next grieving person??
Then I thought we’ll that’s silly as I’m way to fragile to do this, maybe we could bring something back though, from older days, how about arm bands, perhaps our beautiful persons favourite colour , red is Sayge’s favourite, or rainbow ribbon, or with our beloveds name on the ribbon,imagine all grieving people wearing arm bands, we could really say something here; “my heart is broken, please be kind to me”, wouldn’t this allow us to be seen, acknowledged, open a space for others to pause and reflect even momentarily, possibly begin a more caring and understanding response from others and I feel give us a voice where ours has been silenced by loss; and would this enable the next person to experience this pain, a little more compassion….i see where other grieving families have created “a cause” either small or great; and I don’t know about anyone else here but it makes me feel more hopeless than I already do as I feel so incapable of anything, then I surmise , I bet they’ve had so much family/friends support ? That things have been more possible look I don’t know however I imagine if we all did this small thing perhaps we could start revolutionising how we are witnessed in our unbearable suffering and in this small way honouring our own beloveds, allowing us to feel we are doing something!however small, that we can manage.
Imagine your out (you don’t want to be) someone actually comes up and acknowledges you, we have a hug or cry together and they share something with you too perhaps, or maybe someone just looks into your eyes with a knowing. I mean not one thing helps our unbearable living now, although just possibly the acknowledgment (which is why we’re in these forums) might bring slight comfort to our hearts also isnt this sort of re-building the connections we so desperately need in offering our humanity to each other as human beings rather than human doings.

From the Pooh stories!
“How strange that the grass is all that remains after the storm “ said the boy.
“Sometimes being soft is strong” said the rabbit.

So to me, the softness of others is what I need, what I feel we all need. If we are to survive! This.

With so much of my heart to you all, may we all have a softness around us now, please!
Deb
Xx

[debsayge]

I came across this sentence the other day, and since it seemed to speak volumes to me, thought I’d share with all bereaved mummas here, Sayge is my home, Sayge just loves Narnia also…..ohhh the tears and the fears now are overwhelming ….the loss of my beauty my world is too much to bare.

Loving you all through this grief, from my shattered heart to you all
XxDeb

If anyone else has anything else to share, please do.

To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.
From: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste NG

[jamie62]

Good morning Deb
Your writing is very powerful and insightful. I sometimes find myself pouring out some anger in my writing. Here’s what I wrote yesterday. We are interring my 49yo wife’s ashes tomorrow.

Josie sits in a box in the walk in robe. Ashes to ashes. The sheer biology of it is mindblowing and heartbreaking.
“Pick up the pieces mate” was a comment made to me this week. Really? Pick up the pieces? Our life is a little bit more like a train wreck as the weeks proceed so there are plenty of pieces to pick up. Might take me the rest of my life to pick up these pieces. There are shards of hurt, crumpled side panels of heartbreak, a smashed windscreen of future hopes and dreams and blood and tear stained upholstery strewn all over the tracks.

Keep writing and sharing your story and know that there are plenty of people to offer support.

[debsayge]

Hello dear Jamie,
So grateful for your kind words, I sure do understand the agony of all posting here, to speak out loud is confronting, though it’s so helpful to me to receive a response as it helps me to feel acknowledged in my pain.
Jamie, your love Josie! I feel your loving and longing for Josie, all reflected in your deep caring for your boy, it’s so wonderful how he can feel safe enough to cry with you, you are doing so well there, sharing your heart with him this way, I really do believe by doing this you are allowing him to be real! Rather than packing it away, he will become so compassionate because your heart is open, even though bleeding.
Holding you today friends as it’s a very sad day for you. Thinking of you, and thankyou for helping me.
Hope to hear from you again, your writing is so heart felt.
XxDeb

[vmzinnia]

Hello @debsayge and @jamie62. Thank you for sharing your beautiful and powerful words. I felt compelled to write something in response because reading what you have written has left me with a deep physical feeling I find hard to describe and it has brought tears to my eyes. Your love for Sayge and Josie is so evident in your words, and they will always be part of you and be with you in this way.

[debsayge]

Sending love to dear Moon, and grieving mumma always….
Dear Zinnia, thanking you for your kind and encouraging post, it’s so comforting when people respond, it helps us grief stricken people to feel that we are maybe helping others here, to feel seen and that’s why I keep sharing little thoughts I have….I just find it so disturbing out in the world that everyone we have known over a long time have turned away from us, so here I can feel at least understood by those who are similar, a few kind words go a long way.
Thank you all for reading
I hope we can all keep helping each other to find more compassion in this deeply troubled world/times.
Love to all everyday
XxDeb Sayge’s sooo lost mumma

[Moon]

Hi Deb, I hear you, I’m here. Wish you were. Oh f, that’s my sons’ service exit son, Pink Floyd..
I wonder what you chose for Sayge, they’re both forever 19…
Wish we could sit together and chat honestly about all of feelings, everything we cherished, but also unfortunately endured alongside our child.
I would hold your hand in silence or let you talk until dawn, show me 1000 photos, watch you dance to sayges fav music wearing her clothes,
and know you’d do the same for me xx
I’ll be reading you, but maybe under a different name, 9 months ago I was planning a funeral, 9 months in my belly first ! there’s gotta be a rebirth xx

[debsayge]

Hi dear grieving people, and my friend Moon, I’m here too reading and thankyou for your words which reach deeply my heart,
I’m sorry it’s been ages as I’ve been having worries about how to respond actually, as I think I’ve noticed people don’t really talk much unless our posts are more positive and it makes me feel paranoid about not feeling that way, I hope that makes sense.
Is it still the same for you Moon, that you don’t have really anyone? You see for me Sayge’s passing has been so shocking, I mean she was so fine healthy happy joy filled , my best friend companion my world, then this damn thing struck and she’s gone in 13mths, after horrors seen of which I just will never make sense of.
Since she came into my arms we have never been apart, My son too, all our days were a swirl of love n light and joy and now all those memories just hurt so bad. I can’t look at photos and things she made me , oh so many, with anything but despair.
I am barely existing.
I think of your little darling Scout grieving mum, and she’s your sunshine.
I think of your humble beautiful boy Jeremy Moon.
My Sayge, my loving caring gentle girl.
And all that have gone before, and still to come and I go What!! This is all so wrong wrong wrong.
Our lives are torn and shredded now, just getting up in the morning feels like a betrayal to her, my hubby n Son understand me, but where are those that could be holding us, I just feel abandoned now, and betrayed my most, and wonder how it can ever be better from here…..I mean I’ve loved with complete abandon I suppose it’s normal (for me) to grieve this way too, and you know what, Sayge would understand, she’s exactly like her mumma, how can I remember that this Must be enough , and realise most non grieves just have never had this capacity to love so deep, otherwise there may be more understanding around us all….
Go ahead moon and write your posts a new, I’ll be reading, just wish I had more signs from my girl but sadly none, not even dreams, I just don’t understand anything anymore.
From my shattered heart to you all, deep love
XxDeb

[VM – OnAJourney]

Dear Deb
Thank you for your powerful post. It is so true that the pain we experience in our grief is a reflection of the deep love for the one who has passed. That might be a consolation at times, and at times it is just plain raw pain. And a deep sense that it is so wrong and inexplicable. We are trying to make sense of the loss but there is no sense at all. It takes immense courage to love so deeply and grieve so deeply. You are not alone, Deb. And your sharing helps others to feel less alone and isolated in their grief. Thank you for your courage and your thoughts and words. And while you might be right that generally it is easier for people to interact with positive thoughts and feelings, this forum is a space where we can share our pain and sadness – in an unfiltered and raw way.
You are on an incredibly tough journey – please be assured that there are people out there who understand and think of you.
Sending you love and care x

[debsayge]

Dear onajourney

Very grateful to you for your reassurance and encouragement.

I really find the only light that comes is here, if Im feeling like I’m helping others by being really honest, as honestly our feelings are just all over the place and unless your really blessed, to have around you the real love of people who can just be with you, let you do whatever at your own pace, that’s the only real help, sadly I’ve found it’s not like that and what scatterings are left (after a while) just don’t acknowledge anything and that’s just horrid and of course and all the usual stuff people thoughtlessly say……our beautiful people deserve so much more, so I do find I have to defend my grief, that’s so unfair for us people already suffering beyond.
So I find I’ve kind of isolated more until I can find a way to protect my heart, people talk about this a lot and I don’t think it’s the grievers that do it, I think it’s a huge lack of feeling anything but big happy in the world it’s all so pretend…..
I mean that comment said to you Jamie, it’s just absurd what people get away with, so cruel, so thoughtless so lacking even a shred of care for Josie….
After what seems a lifetime spent with my precious Sayge, and also having her later in life as I was 38, 43 with Archer, all that mattered was bringing up wholehearted beings.
What hope is there without our dear ones, gracious humble loving beautiful people.
Love to you all
XxDeb

[Author]

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