How I Came to Hold You: an interview with Ben Wakeling

As a child I used to be rewarded for good deed done or consoled about childhood's slings and arrows with trips to the bookstore.  Among the rows of books, at home with the familiar smell of paper and ink, I was allowed to roam in pursuit of my newest treasure or my most recent salve.  Back then -long before the internet and online used book stores- that small store and its selection of tomes held what I believed to be the entirety of all books everywhere.  I suspect that somewhere in that bookstore there was a section for books written about grief although I never did see it or if I did I never understood enough about the truly sad things in the world to give it much more than a passing thought. 

The most comforting smell in the world to me is not that of my grandmother’s banana bread wafting from a warm oven.  It is not the smell of the gardenia perfume that my mother always used to wear.  It is the musty smell of books well loved and worn.  It is no surprise then that the first thing I did after returning home from the hospital after our son died was to search for books that I could wrap myself in and read words that would convince me somehow that I was not the only person traveling that lonely road.  

How I Came to Hold You by Ben Wakeling is a compilation of stories about people who have walked that same lonely road.  They are the stories of loss that are so familiar to those of us who find ourselves at Glow in the Woods.  But they are also stories of love and how it was to cope with such profound grief through subsequent pregnancies. 

Burning Eye and I had the opportunity to ask the author some questions about his own personal experience with baby loss as well as his experience and writing this book.  Thank you to Ben for being generous with your time and responses. 

 …

What made you decide to take on the very emotional task of writing a book about baby loss? 

I had previously written a couple of humorous, anecdotal books about fatherhood, and wanted to stretch myself to write something more serious and meaningful...something that would have a tangibly positive impact. I decided to write for a charity, and after a short consultation with the readers of my blog I chose the charity Sands.

The proceeds of this book go to Sands. What would you like us to know about this organization? What kind of work do you do with them?

I'm only affiliated with Sands as a member - I don't work for them, either on a paid or voluntary basis. They work tirelessly to help support parents and families who have lost a child, as well as focusing on improving the care they receive and funding vital research into the prevention of stillbirth and neonatal death. They aren't a huge charity - and many of them work on a voluntary basis - but the work they do is priceless.

How did writing this impact your own journey through grief after the loss of your baby?

By the time I began writing this book I had come to terms with the grief that I experienced following our miscarriage. As upsetting and distressing as it was, we lost our baby quite early on during my wife's pregnancy - about 9 weeks - and so we hadn't had the time to really bond with our unborn child. What it did highlight to me was the incredible endurance of the human spirit in the face of the most awful circumstances. The raw courage of the parents in my book - and any parent who has lost a child - to simply put one foot in front of the other astounded me. I have no words to describe the admiration and respect I have for anyone who has suffered the death of a child.

Why did you choose not to tell your own story in the book?

I wanted to tell the stories of those who had suffered a loss later on in pregnancy or shortly after birth to highlight to anyone enduring the same trauma that the grief can be managed, and that there will - one day - be a light at the end of the tunnel.  Sands also works primarily with families who have suffered a stillbirth or lost a baby shortly after birth, and so choosing families who had endured similar traumas dovetailed with the work they do.

How did you find and choose the families you interviewed?

I advertised in local newspapers, and asked for people to contact me via Twitter and Facebook. It was the most effective way to obtain case studies, because in advertising for families who had experienced loss I would only be approached by those who were willing to share their stories. 

How did you connect with the parents whose stories you tell in this book?

I have an immense amount of respect for the courage shown by the parents I interviewed.  Here I was, a complete stranger, sitting in their living room and asking them to tell me the details and emotions surrounding the darkest days of their lives. I began by reassuring them that I would never push them to tell me anything they weren't prepared to; I was approaching them as an author, not as a journalist. I also avoided preparing any questions beforehand; I didn't even have a notepad in the majority of cases. It would have restricted the interview too much. Instead, I just placed the voice recorder on the table and asked them to tell me their story. I found that the conversation flowed naturally, and that the parents were willing and open to share their thoughts and feelings with me. There were some interviews, which lasted in excess of two hours in which I asked just two or three questions.

What led you to write the stories as interviews instead of having the subjects write their own stories?

I wanted the book to flow from one account to the next, and this could only really be achieved by keeping the same writing style. I've always maintained that it is the parents' stories being told, it's just that I'm the one who wrote them down. There was no creative license involved - the subject matter was far too sensitive and personal for that to have ever been considered. I made sure that I sent a write-up of each parent's story to them before publication, so they could check for any factual errors which may have crept in and be perfectly happy with the result. Many families said that telling me their story was quite a cathartic experience, and seeing their experiences on the page in black and white allowed them to begin to make sense of their tragedy.

Your subjects for this book are all couples who, after their initial loss(es), are either pregnant at the time of the interview or have already gone on to have another living child. All but one of these couples stayed together after the loss of their baby or babies. Secondary infertility and divorce are not uncommon experiences after the loss of a baby. Was it intentional to only profile couples who went on to become pregnant again or to have another baby and who remained in the relationship? If so, why?

Yes, in part. When I first met a couple of representatives from Sands we sat down and discussed the theme for the book. It was noted that there was very little in the way of literature which covered the unique emotions, experiences and challenges faced by parents who had lost a child and then gone on to become pregnant again, and so it was decided that the families interviewed would meet this criteria. The fact that the majority of the couples remained in a relationship following the loss of their child (or children) was more coincidence than judgment.

There is a lot in these stories that resonates with all of us babylost parents. Something familiar: the emotions, the experiences with the medical profession, picking up the pieces, deciding to try again. Who is your intended audience for these stories? Who are you hoping to reach?

Primarily, the audience is those who have suffered the loss of a baby. Many parents feel like they are alone in their experiences and emotions after their baby dies, and one of the most common pieces of feedback I have received from those who have read the book is that it helped them to realise that they are not alone in the challenges they face. I think the book also allows those who are on the periphery of baby loss to have a small insight into the mind of a grieving parent; perhaps friends and family who know a loved one who has lost a child. It goes a small way to help them understand what the parent is going through, and how they can help.

There was a common thread amongst these stories of medical mismanagement or poor care. Did you find that these experiences to be true in a widespread way in the UK? Were you trying to make a statement about the state of prenatal/postnatal care in the UK?

Fortunately, from the stories I have heard and the feedback I've had, poor care is only experienced in a small percentage of cases. In the majority of instances the families are dealt with sensitively, and with respect. There are certainly improvements that can be made in some areas, and there will always be instances in which a member of the hospital staff mismanages the situation, but thankfully this is not widespread. I certainly wasn't trying to make any statement about the state of care in the UK; I have a lot of respect for those who work in care and medicine.

As a writer, what sort of writing did you do after your loss? Did you tell the story to many people around you? Did it help?

I didn't write much about the loss, as we kept it to ourselves, only telling close friends and family. My writing would have taken the form of a blog post, and I didn't want our loss being widely known at that point. Those who we told were incredibly supportive; a couple of people didn't say anything to us, because they weren't sure what to say; which was quite upsetting, but understandable.

You can find more about Ben, Sands, and How I can ot Hold You at:

http://www.sandsbook.co.uk/

http://www.benwakeling.co.uk/

gone

Four years. On Sunday it will be four years since I held Freddie in my arms while he breathed slower and slower until I could gently feel his wrist, that tiny, purple-cold hand already turning white and know that I could feel no pulse, that he was gone. That eleven days of fraught love, fierce hope, fluttering joy and brutal instinct had subsided into a quiet room, still bed, arms that held.

I've tried to remember how to summon the tearing pain I felt back then, honour him in some way with eleven days of memories, quiet time, thoughtful words. Tried to find some way to make meaningful the loss of him, the hole of him, the whole sorry mess of death and destruction and all the ribbons of grief that have tied themselves around the feet and limbs of our family.

I could find gratitude. Friends have surrounded me in community this year, making daffodils for him, posting pictures of them from all around the world as they dance and shine and call a little baby boy to memory. Gratitude I can do. I can be grateful for finding gratitude.

I could find rage. Rage that when one of my children changes school next month I will have to find the words to explain that yes, it was four years ago, but she is still affected by her brother's death and that everything they learn about her must be tempered with the understanding that she has this loss in her soul. Rage that when people can't find their way into the mind of my youngest daughter, they have to remember that she locked up sadness and hid it inside herself and learned to be impassive when she was just five years old. Rage to see my false jollity hurting my biggest girls, old enough to know I'm faking, not worldly wise enough to understand why. And wondering if it means I'm okay in there, behind the jolly. I don't want that for them. Rage that all I can do on his birthday is try to smile for as long as the girls are looking at me, that we go the day without saying his name, that we laugh and make the best of it - so British are we - and then I look back at the photos in the evening and there is sorrow written across the face of the man I love. And he probably didn't even know it was there. Would probably say it wasn't there. But I know his face and I know it was.

I could find regret. Regret and resentment for a boy who had dark eyebrows and who never got to hold my face and utter the words his brother does - 'More! No! Here! Go! Again!' - that Freddie looked for me in need just once, when he crashed and they jerked him back and I saw him eyes wide and alarmed at the fuss and I was behind the mess of nurses and thoughtless registrar and couldn't ease him. Wasn't the person for the moment. I can find regret that four years have passed and family life is busy and sometimes the candles for each of his eleven days are not lit till late at night, resentment that his brother broke my thoughts of him by getting ill during those days and I had to wrestle my focus, look at now - not then - and I was angry at that. Angry at them both. At both my boys. Together.

I should be angry at them both for colluding to eat all the biscuits or for drawing on the wall, not because one is dead and stopping me from dealing with the others asthma and the other has asthma and is stopping me concentrating on the other being dead.

That's not how it should be.

But I couldn't quite find the babylost mother in all of that. She was missing.

Then the news arrived. A beautiful young woman lost. A daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife. Someone with it all before her, a family who had already suffered enough, a family broken to pieces from out of the blue.

And it all came back. I left the house one day and when I came back our world had shattered. A parent should not have to tell the world a child has died. Sisters should not sit, shell-shocked, asking again if this is true - how can it be true? How can life become death? No one who loved should have to pick up the pieces, carry on, make the best of it, fill the gaps, learn to smile again. Keep going because there is no choice and you cannot simply die along with them.

I can see them, in my mind's eye, just like I see every family who pitches into grief. The sofa still feels the same when sat on. Meals must still be cooked for hungry children. Deeds must be done, from the extra-ordinary horror of arranging a funeral, to the mundane of putting out the bin. Life stops and carries on and your head feels a million miles wide, light as air, deranged by the ordinariness of the bizarre.

One minute you are just a family and the next minute nothing will ever be the same again. Beyond pain, that other father said. And yes, I see the sense and madness in that. Losing a child is a place beyond pain and you learn to live there.

Four years. My boy should be four years old on Sunday. I've had long enough to know this happened to us, long enough to be back to happy days and a healed(ish) heart.

But he's gone - and I still do not really believe in it. Do not believe these four years have happened, that we've lived them and survived them.

Just... gone... just like that. Gone.

People talk about the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Is it a lineal experience for you or a cycle that repeats? How do you cope with your changing emotions? How do you cope with hearing about loss in the wider world since losing your child? Does it affect your emotions in anyway?