Every new life comes with a blank page; a blank canvas to bear witness to the experiences of life. Even experiences that appear to taint the pages of life are crucial for constructing individual personalities. Unfortunately, for many children, nothing is ever recorded on the blank page they are given at conception.
For many, becoming a parent allows another chance at life again. For some, it even offers a chance to re-live a life wasted through regret, procrastination and fear. Parents review personal defeats and victories, recorded in their own book of life. Then, often to guard against mistakes being repeated, they try to direct their children along one of life’s infinite paths that they believe to be the most appropriate.
When a baby dies, their book of life remains as a solitary blank page; any words tentatively drafted by expectant parents, hoping to offer guidance through life, are erased and forever remain blank. No life is experienced, thus nothing is recorded.
Death does not remove a parent’s instinct to care for and protect their child. When a baby dies, a parent spends the rest of their life in grief, while possessing a lifelong knowledge that they are to be denied an arena to exercise their most primitive instinct – to care for their child. Just one symptom of grief is being forever unable to help our children record memories and experiences.
The life of a grieving parent is rarely recorded. Society at large closes their ears to the words of a bereaved parent; they close their eyes to the pictures of our children. Thus, the suffering that stalks parents such as I and many reading this often goes unchecked.
There are no birthday cards written to keep as mementos of the landmarks of life. There are no party invites written as evidence of our children’s developing friendships; but then we need not worry whether our children get along with their friends, as there are no arguments or squabbles in the silent cities that hold our sleeping children.
There are no scraps of paper that bear witness to a child’s attempts at learning to write. Pages holding artistic scribbles, that only a mother or father could regard as good, remain blank. Instead, the child’s name is only ever written in books of remembrance or in granite. Despite there being little to remember, we cling to the hope that the world will acknowledge our children as we will always do.
Instead of baptismal candles, burned only once and then safely stored alongside birth certificates, we continually burn candles of remembrance that glow in the windows of otherwise darkened households.
Instead of making sure our children are well presented and healthy, we ensure the only visible marker that bears our child’s name is maintained. We defend the beauty of their graves; as we adorn them with flowers, we wipe the stones clean, such that the names called out by the inscribed words are recognised.
Perhaps the only thing that Death can never take is a child’s ability to teach a parent to be a better person; even in death, they retain the ability to demonstrate how to live a better life with whatever time is remaining. Even the blank page from a baby’s denied life is capable of transmitting one message.
Such blank pages remind that any child, with a lack of life experience, has a great capacity for wonderment and for fantasizing about what riches life will bring. An innocent anticipation of life’s joy; a curiosity of what may or may not be. The blank page of a child’s story can encourage us to regain a sense of wonderment towards the small things in life.
Even in death, children teach us not to be bogged down with frivolous worries. The spirits of our children are free; they are not weighed down with worry, harvested from previous wrong decisions. They are not indecisive, fearful of repeating past mistakes. They have not yet been stung by falsehood and therefore have not yet become untrusting.
When a full life appears to be ahead of us, we do not see the importance of living life to the full. Instead, we assume there will always be plentiful time to allow us to experience what we want. Through the eternally blank page that accompanies their deaths, children teach us that the apparent space remaining on the page that records an individual’s life cannot be used as a guide for how long is left.
This is why, despite his stillbirth at 37 weeks on New Years’ Day 2012, I continue to look to my boy, Ethan, for inspiration.
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