Trigger warning: The following story may be distressing for those who have lost a close family member, especially a child.
“Reshma* can write beautifully, give her any topic,” says Preethi*, talking about her daughter. “She is so knowledgeable... If you were to look at the newspaper after she was through with it, you’d not find a single page untouched. Her room’s wall is lined with books. She also loves jewellery – and watches! I make sure all of them are still in working condition.”
The way the 52-year-old mother of two speaks about Reshma, you wouldn’t be able to tell that it has been eight years since her daughter passed away. Reshma was only 24 when one day, she was rushed to the hospital because of breathing difficulties. Doctors said that her death was because of a bronchospasm, which causes sudden constriction of the bronchioles’ wall muscles. And while Reshma had had breathing issues since she was a teenager, they were never deemed life threatening.
For six months after Reshma’s sudden death, Preethi and her husband re-analysed everything. “Did we do anything wrong?” “Did we do enough?” Then, they took refuge in spirituality, and even contacted a medium. It wasn’t until five years later that they were able to accept that Reshma was gone.
“But we didn’t blame each other,” Preethi says. “Both of us were suffering, so we didn’t expect comfort from each other.”
“Some days my husband and I talked, some days we didn’t. I wanted to talk every day. We both didn’t broach the subject, thinking it would help the other person think of something other than our loss. Maybe… maybe we could have spoken more… cried with each other. But that’s not possible now,” she says, her voice resigned. “Now, we can’t talk about her for more than 10 minutes without crying. We need a third person with us if we want to speak about Reshma,” Preethi adds.
Preethi, her husband, and their younger daughter continue to live in a home that remains the way Reshma remembered it – with her in family photos around the house, and no shrine to mark her death. But her loss marks every relationship within its four walls.
How relationships change
A child’s untimely death is a shattering experience. It often takes an unimaginable, and sometimes irreversible toll on the relationships within the family. Dr Vijay Nagaswami, a Chennai-based psychiatrist, says that not only can it plunge the parents into depression, but it can also aggravate pre-existing physical or mental health issues. The relationship between the couple can change too – in many cases, even break.
“As with any other cause of grief, people go through the five stages defined by the late psychiatrist Elizabeth Kuebler Ross – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, not necessarily in a linear manner,” explains Dr Vijay. “A lot of factors play a role. The age of the child, the manner of dying (suddenly, as in an accident, or over time as in the case of a prolonged illness), culpability (was someone responsible for the child’s death, especially in cases of accidental deaths) etc.”
For Sudha* and Sharad*, the death of their daughter Rupa* has been very difficult to come to terms with, even more so because they lost her to a road accident in 2014. Rupa was riding pillion and her fiancé was riding the bike. Both of them were wearing helmets, and while Rupa’s fiancé survived, she did not.
Sudha still has a strong sense of injustice at what happened, and grapples with her daughter’s absence. Denial overshadows reality on many days. “Some days, I like to believe in afterlife just because I don’t want to accept that she is dead. I read and hear stories of rebirths, hoping she comes back as my grandchild. At other times, I want her soul to achieve ‘mukti’,” Sudha says.
Rupa’s death changed her parents’ relationship. Sharad was not in the country at the time of the accident, and Rupa’s subsequent demise. “The people I relied on at the time were those who would have been Rupa’s in-laws nine months down the line. I could feel them disconnecting immediately after she died. I hated my husband for being elsewhere when I needed him the most. That resentment has never left me. It is a wall around us,” Sudha shares.
Dr Vijay says that while a strongly bonded couple that mourns together may be able to come to terms with the death of their child in a healthy manner, it is not always the case. “If there are unresolved issues between them, it’s quite possible that the child’s passing may actually widen the rift between them,” he explains. For instance, Sharad’s absence at the time of Rupa’s death added to Sudha’s already existing resentment about him putting work above family.
While Sharad did come back and changed his job to be more present for his family, the distance between him and Sudha has affected physical intimacy, too. “My wife was grieving too much to think of anything else. She did many things out of a sense of duty – particularly towards our son. There were many times when simple gestures like a hug were turned down; even eye contact was missing,” Sharad says.
While he tried to keep Sudha busy – whether in housework or encouraging her to go to work, it did not help. “All I wanted to do was to curl up and sleep after swallowing antidepressants,” Sudha says. Sharad says that while he used to get angry and annoyed at Sudha’s heightened anxiousness, and “an overhang of grief in every aspect”, he has stopped now. “I have slowly stopped making attempts to change the course [of the relationship],” he says.
And though Sudha says that she still can’t talk to Sharad unless they go to their therapist who behaves as an “intermediary”, the couple agrees that what has kept them together is their love. “I guess one can love a person and still be angry with them. They are not mutually exclusive,” Sudha observes.
Differences in grieving
Seema Rao, who runs the popular blog Life and Times of an Indian Homemaker lost her daughter Tejaswee to dengue. The 19-year-old was in the hospital for nine days before August 11, 2010, when she breathed her last.
The first two years were really hard, Seema says. “My husband and I argued about things that weren’t issues earlier. I didn’t want to get out of the house. I didn’t want to eat, cook, or do anything. He would ask, ‘Where is breakfast?’ But I never made breakfast, he just took cornflakes and ate himself. I realised later what he meant was: ‘You’re lost to me. You’re not there with me.’”
Seema’s husband became irritable, while she became quiet. “But the only person who could understand this loss was him. We knew that, though we couldn’t always share memories of Tejaswee because they hurt,” she says. “Over time, he has understood that I will never be the person I was. He learnt to let that go.”
For Bengaluru-based Shekhar Vijayan and his wife, losing their 108-day-old daughter around four years ago meant coming to terms with how differently they dealt with grief, and accepting each other for it. Their daughter Akira was born premature, and despite three months in the NICU, she did not make it.
“I’m an entertainer, so my way of dealing with it is to talk about it. Even as I speak to you, I feel Akira’s energy propelling me forward. But my wife is not like that. I put up a Facebook post every year on Akira’s birthday, but for my wife, it’s very intense and personal. She wouldn’t do the same,” 41-year-old Shekhar says.
Describing his wife as his best friend who can complete his sentences, dealing with Akira’s death boiled down to respecting each other as individuals and finding a middle ground. “I think somewhere, going through her birth and death made us stronger,” he says, adding that their dog, Sunshine, also kept them going.
Social life and support
Though it has been nine years after Tejaswee’s death, Seema stills avoids going for celebratory occasions like birthdays and weddings, afraid of breaking down at a happy occasion.
It’s a similar story for the others.
“People hesitate to include us in celebrations. And frankly, I do not feel like participating. As a woman, the first thing I am asked is, ‘How many children do you have?’ A harmless commonplace question has become the bane of my life,” Sudha says. “I will always have two children. But the moment I tell them that I have two children, and that the elder one is dead, people become uncomfortable.”
Her husband Sharad adds, “Very few friends visit us. Most people do not know how to deal with our situation. We also get angry with family and friends who joke about road safety or do not wear helmets. It's a downer for them.”
Preethi, meanwhile, does not want to speak about her daughter with strangers. “People expect me to be okay by now. But I am not, and that doesn’t sit well with them.”
Dr Vijay says that loved ones need to encourage families to mourn and share their feelings. “They shouldn’t tell the couple to “be strong” and “not cry” and things like that. The couple should be discouraged from keeping feelings bottled up, or distracting themselves by burying themselves in work or other activities. Loved ones need to give the person space but also be available to help them process and deal with their grief,” he adds.
And when loved ones are unable to do so, the social circles inevitably shrink. And though that happened for Seema and her husband too, what they took away from the experience was to do what felt best for them. “We were beyond caring about what anyone else thought because we were in so much pain,” she says.
How they coped
Sumanth* and Jessie* lost their daughter 12 years ago to jaundice when she was around two weeks old. Immediately after this tragic loss, Sumath, then 30, started blaming himself, and everyone around him. Initially, it affected his relationship with Jessie; until a colleague pointed out to him that she had carried their daughter in her womb, nursed her, and was also prone to post-partum depression.
The couple even moved from Chennai to the US in 2008 hoping that it would help them move on. “But you can’t run from something like this,” Sumanth admits. It wasn’t until the birth of their son two years after their daughter’s passing that Sumanth and Jessie were finally able to accept their daughter’s death.
Sumanth, like Shekhar, has learnt to find solace in the belief that his daughter’s energy is still around him. In fact, his sons know about her too. “She, one of my sons, and I were born within a couple of days of each other in October. So, we celebrate it every year as the birthday week,” Sumanth shares.
The grief never really goes away though. “Sometimes, I still cry alone, and Jessie does the same because she doesn't want me to see,” Sumanth admits.
Seema and her husband decided adopt a child, despite opposition from their family. Her son was 18 when Tejaswee passed away, and he took the death of his sister really hard. While the couple worked towards helping their son too, over time, Seema found herself looking for signs of a child’s presence in her home. “A towel dropped on the floor, a misplaced slipper, a doll left somewhere,” she recounts.
Two years after Tejaswee passed away, they decided to adopt an eight-and-a-half-year-old girl. “That was a huge focus change for us. It brought us closer together,” Seema says.
In Preethi’s case, she likes to talk about her daughter because she fears losing the memories she has of her. However, she avoids social triggers, having unfollowed most of Reshma’s friends on social media. Her husband on the other hand, is more outgoing, and has even attended Reshma’s friends’ weddings.
Sharing grief and seeking professional help
For some couples, individual psychotherapy and couples therapy may work too, says Dr Vijay. In Sudha’s case, going to family therapy helped her see through her anger, and understand that her husband was grieving as well. Ultimately, the couple started a foundation in their daughter Rupa’s memory.
“I don't know if I can call it ‘healing’, but it is surely a direction given to our grief,” Sharad says. "Recently we found some old recordings and hearing Rupa's voice brought such mixed emotions. We continue to miss her, every single day," he adds emotionally.
“I feel that healing is for a physical wound – and even that leaves a scar. I do not think it is possible that a wound such as the loss of a child, which tears something in the deepest recesses of one’s soul, can ever be healed,” says Sudha. “I call out to her so many times in an empty house when I am alone. We live and we bleed every day.”
Shekhar, meanwhile, started a platform to meet others who had suffered a similar loss, and to help others who wanted to share their pain or sorrow respectively. The community platform penmythoughts.com allows people to express anything that they need to get off their chest. A look at the website now reveals a one-stop spot for a mixed bag of things – entertainment, sports, films, fiction and so on.
Seema started a Facebook group called ‘In our hearts forever’, where she connected with many mothers who had lost their children. “In fact, the group has branched out too – moms in Bengaluru are in touch with each other, so are Kolkata moms, and those in other cities,” Seema says. “Many women have not been able to communicate this way with others, in many cases, their husbands too. And while we share grief, we also have a lot of fun together – like going on trips and meeting up. We understand what we have gone through, and in that way, it has been really healing.”
*Names changed