…knowing something is wrong with your child, knowing they are ‘not themselves’, knowing something is bothering them, hearing them say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ when they are only five, knowing they couldn’t explain even if they wanted to, because they can’t comprehend it themselves, and begging to make it all better…fear is being a parent.
About a year ago. My child asked me a frightening question. ‘Mummy, what happens to me if you die?” I was shocked. It came out of the blue. I tried to find out what prompted it, but got nowhere. Then I tried to brush her off, telling her I wasn’t going to die anytime soon. But she insisted, “I know, but what happens to me when you die?”
I then went round in circles and dropped some red herrings about burial and cremation, and carrying around ashes in handbags filled with chocolate scented envelopes. She giggled, and seemed to like the envelopes. Hours later, when I thought the topic was forgotten, she came and sat beside me, placed her head in my lap and said “Mummy, I don’t want you to be dead.”
That was a year ago.
A lot happened in that one year. I met someone whom I loved, and whom I thought loved me, and who my child was fond of. But then I realized they were not what they seemed, and I bailed. That’s when I got scared.
Ever since then, there’s something I’ve been meaning to do. But somehow I never got round to it. Stuff kept coming up. Excuses maybe, or maybe chicken, but I just never got round to doing it, until today.