Prayer Flag Tutorials for the Day of Hope

Posted in Connecting with Angel Child by Robyna

On the 19th August each year, we mark a day of hope. A day to reflect and honour our much loved babies. In the lead up to the day, Carly Marie hosts a prayer flag project. Parents and others touched by the loss of a child are invited to make prayer flags in honour of their child or children. The project had it’s birth not long after Xavier’s death. I remember so clearly sitting down and making him a flag, tears streaming, but grateful for something to do. For the first time, I found something healing to do with my empty hands. I could not stop making them. They hang on our verandah, joined by the flag I made last year and the one I have just made. As Xavier’s birthday is at the beginning of the project, each year I will make a flag for him, for hope and for healing. I am drawn to lace and fragility when I create for him. The flags reflect that. The ones I first made are a little battered and bruised – they are starting to fray. But I find them even more beautiful this way. I think it’s an apt metaphor for life after loss.

I have a sewing machine and inclination to sew. But you do not need either to make a beautiful flag.

Here are flags you might look to for inspiration.

The Paper Bag Flag
I wanted to make a flag with objects I had around the house. As this remains a bag, I have placed all of Xavier’s 2nd birthday cards within it. If you choose to make this flag, you might like to write a letter to your child and place it within the bag.

The Printed Flag
Did you know that you can directly print onto fabric using freezer paper if you have an inkjet printer? Neither did I. This flag might suit those that prefer to design on-screen than on-fabric. If you feel uncomfortable printing like this, you could also use transfer paper and iron onto your flag.

You Need

An A4 sheet of paper
A piece of cotton fabric the same size as an A4 sheet of paper
Freezer Paper (you can buy this from Spotlight for about $1.50 a meter, they have it behind the counter)
A computer
An iron
An inkjet printer
Sewing machine (optional)

To Create

Create a design on your computer that you are happy with. It might include a photo, a verse or a beautiful picture. I chose to include Xavier’s footprint and a quote that speaks to me. Keep in mind the final flag will be 9inches (width) x 12inches (height) when creating your design.
Using the A4 sheet of paper as a template, cut the freezer paper and the fabric. They should be the same size.
Iron the freezer paper onto the fabric. This article gives more detailed instructions – please follow them – I would hate for anyone to damage their printer!
Print onto the fused together freezer paper and fabric, ensuring that your print will be on the fabric side.
Peel off the freezer paper.
Trim or hem your fabric to size 9inches (width) x 12inches (height). If sewing, fold the top over with enough room to thread through a ribbon to hang your flag. If trimming, you might like to hang your flag with pegs.
I chose to sew a heart around the image. It would also be sweet to add beads or other objects precious to you and your baby.

I dearly hope your creative process brings you healing, hope and mostly, a sense of connection with your baby.

16Jul2014

First birthdays, Rainbows and Growing Up

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

In a few short weeks Elijah will turn one. It is impossible. My tiny baby is growing up. I feel the melancholy of every mother as he takes his first tentative steps away from babyhood. My heart aches as I put away the clothes he no longer fits, knowing that the next baby to wear them will not be my own. I look at his photos, taken when he was so new and tiny and wish myself back to that moment. He takes up so much space now – in his cot, his pram, his car seat – and I feel a pang as I remember when he looked so little in all of those places.
As a bereaved mother, One feels improbable. I have only just accepted that Elijah’s presence is permanent. I was drinking him in, savouring him, fearing that if I did not, I would deeply regret it when he left. He has not left and he will not leave but I am grateful that I have treasured the moments so carefully. I never let myself believe that Elijah would be one, or two, or twenty. It seemed presumptuous and arrogant. And now, here we are, on the brink of a year on earth.
Elijah was never born to replace Xavier, but we did think he would bring healing and hope. He has brought both in equal measure. As a newborn, I projected a comforting, healing personality onto my son. When babies are too tiny to express their opinions, we imagine what they may be thinking. Look at their little faces and prescribe thoughts to their expressions. We form an idea of their personality, their likes and dislikes before their personalities emerge. Part of Elijah will always represent healing to me, but he is so much more outside that persona. He suddenly has a host of opinions on a variety of things. He gazes at his brother adoringly and will laugh at his antics with a giggle reserved purely for Isaac. He will reach out for cuddles from the people he loves. He will try to pat any dog that might come his way, accompanied with a determined “d-d-d”. He will attempt to catch and return a ball. He scoots along the floor, with his funny crawl, at top speed with a broad smile when his father comes to the door. He wiggles his way out of my arms to explore and demands being scooped back into them when he has satisfied his curiosity. He has dozens of toys, but will always choose the Tupperware and DVD drawers as his favourite play things. He is funny and bright and calm and inquisitive. He is not the sage old soul brought on earth to give me comfort that I may have first imagined. He is light and colour but he is so much more than a rainbow baby. He is Elijah. And as he grows up, as I am sure he will, I look forward to learning ever more about him.

15Jul2014

Clipping their wings?

Posted in Uncategorized by Robyna

In our house we don’t just greet the day, we launch a full-on assault on the morning. As soon as it hits 6am, Isaac barrels into our room, full of energy and verve. There is no slow wake up, although N bravely and resolutely pretends to sleep through it all. Before kids I considered myself a morning person. I would get up early and enjoy a (hot) cup of tea, watch the sunrise and read. It was gentle. There is no gentle anymore. Isaac goes from zero to a hundred at a pace that would spin the head of any race car driver.

For the past two weeks his extreme energy have filled my days. I am unsure whether I had forgotten his intensity or whether the constrains of school meant it was building all semester. But my little boy was in full flight over the break. His energy fills me with awe, is slightly terrifying and is mostly exhausting. I find myself losing patience, not because he is naughty (although we have plenty of that too) but because the sheer pace of him fatigues me. I have asked him to turn it down, to calm down, to take a breath, to lower the intensity. When I ask why he is so full on, he replies, wide eyed, “I am just so excited”. “About what, my love”, I ask. The eyes open wider: “About everything mummy!”

Everything is exciting when you are five year old boy. I didn’t grow up with brothers but close friends of mum and dad at our church had boys. I remember their manic energy. My sister and I would thrill to their madness. Crazy antics undertaken for no reason other than they could. We would giggle and call them “bonkers” which would only send them to an even sillier place. I’d forgotten all about those boys until I saw their behaviour mirrored in my son. And I worry that there are limited places for that energy to unfurl.

I often speak to other parents about how differently we do things from our own parents. I imagine we are romanticising a little. I don’t think every parent in the seventies and eighties sent their children off in the morning, blithely unaware of their whereabouts and didn’t expect them home until dinner. But they certainly didn’t hover as we do. They gave us room and space to make mistakes and figure our way out of them. Now, dangers real and imagined stymy that space. It feels likes the larger community is quick to tut tut and point out parenting flaws, but less inclined to help recreate a space where children can exercise the freedom we once enjoyed.

I am a cautious parent – it’s hard not to be when you have lost a child. But I also have a sense of fatalism that I didn’t before. We simply cannot protect our kids from everything. Xavier died doing nothing more dangerous than sleeping. When fate points its bony finger at your family, there is nothing you can do. In reality, there aren’t more evil people around than there used to be – we are just hyper-aware of when bad things happen. It is not good luck that protects our children – it’s incredibly bad luck to have something happen to them. We don’t live in a world full of bad people, but we have created a community were people are scared to do the right thing for fear of being judged as doing the wrong thing.

And I wonder if our collective fear is stopping our children from finding their wings and soaring.

7Jul2014

Connections with my Son-shine

Posted in Connecting with Angel Child by Robyna

These will always be the hardest days of the year – his birthday, his anniversary and the short days in between. A curtain is lifted. Those days, my head space, the evocative smells and sounds belonging to this time of year, all conspire to draw him closer. The memories coming rushing back, clear and raw. My thoughts are once again full of him. And even as my heart breaks, I am thankful for the deeper connection these days bring.

It is a precious thing, this connection with my son. A considered thing, a nurtured thing.

When Xavier first left, I knew I could not relate to him as a newborn. He had become something else and I had to find a differently shaped relationship. The newborn baby on the television, the billboard for a maternity hospital, the tiny little boy being held by his mother – those things were too hard to bear. They brought me pain and I desperately wanted to sustain a relationship that was based on more than hurt. Grief tied me to my son, but something else, something stronger, needed to connect us.

I feel him in dozens of ways, and most strongly in the sunshine’s rays. It has helped me enormously to have something so constant in my life that feels like it belongs to him. To have something family and friends can hold to and let me know they felt him near. Something accessible and relatable and hopeful. I have taken dozens of photos over these past days, often intentionally of sunny rays of light. Then there are the photos that I never intended to be filled with light, but rays of sunshine still made their way in. There are the beautiful signs that friends have shared that seem too coincidental to be anything but Xavier reaching out.

We are taught to doubt the things we cannot see. We are taught to be skeptical and to close our minds to that which we do understand. But when something happens that defies explanation, when the impossible becomes your reality, new possibilities open up. When life, brand new life, is proved fallible, you have to wonder what is beyond it. If a baby can die for no reason, then is it such a stretch that their spirit stays near? If medicine cannot explain what happened to my son, why not accept the inexplicable signs and coincidences that have occurred as being from him? If I am asked to have faith that nothing could have saved him and that his brain was fundamentally flawed, why not have faith that he still lives around and in us? I have had to accept so much that seems doubtful and unreal, that accepting the things I once would have scoffed does not seem a great stretch. I do believe that Xavier’s spirit is near and real. Whether the manifestations of that are real or imagined matters little. Whether he lives on within me or external to me, he still lives on. Whether my beautiful friends remember him because they are moved by his spirit, or their compassion for me, it matters not – there is still loved expressed because he was here. I hear his voice sometimes – whether it’s my imagination or truly his spirit speaking is irrelevant – I still hear his voice. The nature of the connection does not matter, the existence of a connection is what is important. And for those whose scientific minds do not allow such flights of fancy, I leave you with the beautifully comforting words of Aaron Freeman:

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly

29Jun2014

The days belonging to him

Posted in Grief over child loss by Robyna

Late June in Brisbane and the days are brilliant. Chilly mornings giving way to bright sunshine skies. The air and the wind and the way the grass smells unlocking memories of him. These days when he shared the earth.

Come the 6th July the other memories will come. Unwelcome and unbidden. The moments that stole him away replayed in my mind. But for now, I am not thinking on that. I am remembering those two weeks he was here.

Recalling the smell of him and the soft peach fuzz of his hair. Memories I thought I had lost but that are carried in the air late June. I remember the cosy fog of the first few days. Sleep deprived and elated. That excited, bewildered, other-worldly place that belongs only to parents of the very newly born.

I remember proudly showing him off, so new and tiny. I remember friends holding him and drinking in his freshly bloomed loveliness. I remember fighting through a fog of sleepiness and taking him to meet his cousins one evening despite a day full of activity. Oh, I am so glad I did.

I remember feeling content and whole.

I remember gazing at him in adoration and asking my husband the most rhetorical of parental questions – isn’t he beautiful?

I remember the way he breathed a little too heavily and the midwife who worried and the doctor who did not.

I remember nursing him and thinking I’d give him the world. I remember calling him “my little love, my turtle dove”. I remember him curled up, cuddled into Ns chest, oblivious to the world as he slept. I remember singing him silly little songs and tracing his features as he slept.

Not so long ago, I was unable to recall these simple things. They would have been a dagger in my broken heart. But today, as the sun reached out and touched the grass, offering respite from the wind’s chill, the memories came flooding back. And I could accept them with open arms and be thankful for the 14 days he graced the earth.

A different kind of Birthday

How do you celebrate a birthday for a person that you can no longer see?

Invitations
There will be no carefully curated list of people who will share in your birthday. No beautiful invitations to send to friends and family. But there are those that will accept the unwritten invitation to share in your birthday and remember you. Those that miss you too. Those that grieve with us.

Decorations
There will be no balloons and streamers hung. No theme will define your day. But I have made this hanger. It reminds me of you and it decorates your brother’s room.

Presents
You won’t unwrap a train set, or open your eyes to find your first bicycle. You won’t be spoiled by those that love you with earthly gifts. But I made you this prayer flag, as I have done in the past and will do each year. It is my gift to you and yours to me.

Songs
I won’t sing you happy birthday. There will be no chorus of hip, hip, hooray. But I wrote you this poem.

Candles
There won’t be two candles atop a cake. You won’t try to blow them out with your baby breath. But I will light a candle for you and others might too.

Birthday
There won’t be a birthday party tomorrow as others might know it. But I feel your birthday to the very depths of my bones. A birthday is for letting someone know how much you love them. And I love you forever, my baby boy still.

22Jun2014

The Changing Tides of June – grief coming up to the second birthday of my son

Posted in Uncategorized by Robyna

Imagine learning a new language. Struggling to wrap your mind and tongue around strange combinations of sounds. Frustrated when you cannot make yourself understood in your adopted language. Elated when you finally manage to string a sentence together. And then, almost without realising, you are fluent in this language. It has become an intrinsic part of you and sometimes you even find yourself forming thoughts in this once foreign tongue. Then imagine waking one day, finding you can barely remember more than a few words. Your mind grasps for the sentences that once flowed easily and comes up with …. nothing.

Lately, this is how grief has felt. June is here and some days bite with more ferocity that others. I find myself back in places I thought I had left far behind. Grief is not a linear journey. It does not follow neat and logical stages. It is circular and that is frustrating. I have worked hard to get to a comfortable place in my grief. I have tried to integrate Xavier into my life in a positive way. I have deliberately pulled myself away from wallowing. I have strived to be in the best place I can be. And here I am, despite all that work, feeling very much like I did after we first said Goodbye. I have lost my fluency.

The other day, as I was preparing dinner, I had to mentally cheer myself on. Cut the carrots. Good. Now put the water onto boil. Great – see you can do this. This was a tactic I have not had to employ since the very early stages of grief. The need to take things very slowly and deal with every second as it comes and on its own terms. The need to exert an enormous degree of energy on seemingly simple tasks. I was reminded of why grief can be so very draining.

What terrifies and fascinates me is how little control I have over the way my mind works. It has tucked away these dates like land mines and as the months tred upon June and July, they explode. They blow me back. They take me into the darker places. Where rage simmers and the emotions that I believe I can control threaten to consume me. I find myself balanced on a knife’s edge.

I berate myself for being like this. I have a beautiful family who need me, no matter what month it happens to be. Xavier’s death left a hole, but at times it feels like I am the only one who sees it. My life was changed by his leaving, and my life stayed exactly the same after he left. In many ways, I feel that I do not have permission to still grieve violently. That I should put away a portion of Xavier’s birthday to be sad and get on with every thing else. Seize control and beat grief back into its Pandora’s box. But grief defies this quaraintine – it does not stay neatly in one aspect of my life. It bleeds into others. Grief does not care that I need to make school lunches or attend a birthday party. It marches stridently across my heart and demands my attention.

And I will have to deal with it. I know enough of grief and her relentless tide that she will not be beaten back. The waves will gain and gain until they crash. But even as I do, I know that gentler days and a calmer ocean will come again. As much as grief is a circuitous and messy business, I think I know my way back to gentleness. I might find myself back in places I had left behind, but the hard work has not, cannot, be for nought. I have toiled to lay the tracks I need to get myself back. My hard-won language has not been lost and I have only been temporarily rendered mute.

11Jun2014

Everything I need to know I learned from my kids

Posted in Connecting with Angel Child, Parenting, Parenting after loss by Robyna

Most parents agree that they learn more from their kids than they ever teach. Today I was reflecting on the lessons my kids are currently teaching me.

From my dear five year old Isaac:
The world is full of friends you haven’t met yet I think every parent has marvelled at the ability of children to instantly make friends in the playground. Isaac never worries whether he will be accepted. He assumes that everyone wants to play with him. He doesn’t analyse the situation and if someone doesn’t want his friendship, it’s accepted with a shrug and viewed as their loss. He doesn’t ask much of these friends. Just to have a good time within the moment shared. There is no sting, no anguish and a world of possibility. He does not complicate things that are not complicated.

My dear little Elijah: Celebrate your wins and don’t compare yourself to others Elijah has an adorable, completely non-conventional crawl. One leg remains curled underneath him whilst the other extends out, acting as a sort of rudder as he manoeuvres himself around. It is effective but it doesn’t look like everyone else’s crawl. When he gets from point A to B, a broad smile of pure joy and pride beams across his face. He doesn’t compare himself to others. He doesn’t fret about being different. He doesn’t frustrate himself by wondering why he can’t crawl like someone else. He doesn’t need to restrain petty jealousy as he watches another baby his age crawl or walk. He just loves what he has achieved. He celebrates his successes with conviction and without comparison.

My dearest Xavier has probably taught me the most. But of all his lessons, one of the largest is about our incredible resilience as human beings. We can survive the impossible. We can rise above what tries to drag us down. The only limits we have are those we build ourselves. Xavier, as a baby, was fragile. A hidden fragility that meant he slipped away during sleep. But he too is resilient. His name has not been forgotten and love for him still abounds. If we choose, we do not need to be limited. The human spirit is far more powerful than we ever dare dream. And sometimes, it takes a human spirit to remind us.

6Jun2014

The incomplete, complete family

Posted in Uncategorized by Robyna

Before my world shattered and my beliefs were turned on their axis, I was a firm believer in two children. I never thought I would have to specify two living children. I felt two children was socially, economically, logistically and environmentally responsible. Replace yourselves. Mimimise your footprint. In the same idealist and naive manner, I assumed that when I did have children, I would fall pregnant easily, carry blissfully, have empowering births and enjoy the baby years as the best of my life. And that all my friends and family would enjoy the same experience. Sometimes it seems like everyone pays a price on this journey called motherhood, and my price was an exceptionally high one. As though the good fortune I had experienced with pregnancy, birth and babyhood stacked so high that it was destined to topple.

My white-picket fence dreams have been smashed to smithereens. My logical approach defeated. Because families are not logical. They are messy and wonderful and frustrating and beautiful and they defy reason. We go back and have more children. Even when the baby is still crying, when the toddler is still tantrum-ing and the mother is wondering when she last had two minutes to herself. We go back. It defies all reason. There is the biological imperative and there is something else. Even when we doubt the car or the house, our hearts that will always, always accommodate more children. And once opened, they never contract. Our babies can leave us, but the expanded heart remains.

After we said goodbye to Xavier, I came across a number of bereaved families that had gone on to have numerous children after loss. At the time I wondered whether they were trying to mend broken hearts with babies. After having Elijah, I no longer think that. I think tragedy changes your priorities. I think the importance of family grows. I think things that seemed scarily impossible no longer seem so. I think that in the face of surviving the death of your child, anything is possible. I think the noise and the joy of children is the most healing of all music.

Our family feels complete and incomplete. I do not think there are any more children. There will always be an aching void, but it is an Xavier-shaped hole that cannot be filled by anyone else. And with that realisation, comes a little grief of its own. I think every woman probably feels a pang when the realisation hits that there will be no more babies. No more pregnant bellies and pushing kicks. No more euphoric, inexplicable, indescribable moments of joy as a newborn babe is first put to your breast. That the intense intimacy of caring for a newborn will never occur again.

But I know that there are even more wonderful adventures to look forward to. That the priceless moments all three of my children give me are abundant. That my future will be full of them. And that is a bright future.

1Jun2014

The Weight of June

Posted in Uncategorized by Robyna

My heart knows the dates are coming. Before I turn my mind to them, my heart is already aching. The unbearable weight of June. Suddenly, I am carrying a heaviness I thought I had banished. In the very thick of grief, I felt like I was surrounded by a viscose tide. Everything was an effort. Every little thing met with resistance. I pushed through it, hoping that the other side would be easier. I pushed against the heaviness that weighed against my heart. And I remember being so very tired from the effort of it all.

It eventually lifted – that thick fog of grief. But I can feel it, insidiously and un-beckoned, sliding itself back into my life. The 24th June will mark two years since Xavier came into this world. The 7th July, two years since he left it.

My life is in a happy place right now. I am blessed and continue to be blessed, but it is not enough to guard against the dates. The violent grief comes unbidden. That is the thing about grief – it is not a choice. You can choose, to a degree, how you deal with it. But the grief itself – that has a life of its own. I have come to know it now – I can recognise it and I can feel the pull. Yet, being forewarned is not enough to banish it. It is at this juncture that I am faced with a choice – do I try desperately to turn the grief away, to turn my back on the tide, or do I accept it – let it wash over me and hope there is catharsis in doing so? To be honest, I am fearful of either option. I am not sure I want to sit with my grief – in all honesty, I want to be done with grief. But, it seems, grief is not done with me.

There is confusion and fear in the thick of grief. I have sought solace and peace in a whirlwind life and when I finally eek out that time, I feel lost and alone without my boys nearby. I want to push out at those who love me most, and I want to embrace them and never let them go. I want to un-know what I have learned and I want to make the most of lessons hard-earned. I want to go back to the innocent girl I was, I want to embrace the better woman I have become. I want Xavier back in my arms, but not at the expense of his youngest brother. I want to feel Xavier near and real, but I do not want the hurt that inevitably brings. I want two years to mean that I can experience his birthday without pain. I want to still feel close to him, even though it has been two years.

Xavier’s first birthday was peaceful – I was so very sad, but the tension was less. I was filled with the hope pregnancy brings and I had the time, inclination and inspiration to do beautiful things for him. This year, it feels like the tide of my life washes me further away from Xavier. Which wave do I ride? The grief, dark and insistent, lapping at my feet but with the promise of bringing Xavier nearer? Or the current of a life that continues to take me further away from a much loved little boy?