My teenage son died - AMA

[aloneinthenight]

My son died from cancer when he was 14.

We are so bad at handling grief in the UK.

People never know what to say, and feel uncomfortable, or worry about getting things wrong.

So ask me anything you like and I promise I won't mind.

I'm so sorry. What's the best thing someone can say or do?

I can't imagine the pain you've experienced. How do you get up and do anything ever again? Do you have other children?

I am so sorry about your son, such a cruel disease.

Can you point to good examples of handling grief? Cultures, or your own experiences?

I'm so sorry for your loss OP.
I once spoke to a lady who said of her teenage son dying, I just want people to not forget him. She said that mattered to her a lot.
What is your favourite memory? Would you feel happy to share it? It's ok if not.

I am so sorry to hear about your lovely son. Grief is something that never goes away but remains a dull pain that sits in the background.

What type of cancer did he have? Can you remember the exact moment they told you he was terminally ill?

In reality, there is nothing to say other than your sorry.

And to be comfortable with not being able to fix it.

In the early days, I needed people to look after me, to make decisions for me, feed me. I still do sometimes.

But now, a few years later, I like people to talk about him.

I have another son who is younger. I have friends whose only children have died and I can't imagine their grief.

I do get up every day but I'm not terribly productive all the time.

However I made a promise to myself that I would not let him be the reason my life is terrible. He was the best thing that happened to me, along with his brother, and I owe it to him to carry on living my life.

I like the idea of 'continuing bonds' and moving forward with grief, rather than getting over it.

So actually Coco is a wonderful example. Dia De Muertos is a perfect example.

I'm so sorry. Just so awful.

Can I ask, did he know he would die and did you talk about it together? My mum died in her 20s and apparently no one would talk to her about dying (which they told me they regretted years afterwards). I hope this has 'improved'.

Also, I know you have made this thread to kindly help other people but is there anything we can do to help you too? Would you like to tell us about your boy?

Please talk about him.

Use this space to tell us anything you want about him. Little anecdotes, funny stuff, what he liked or disliked. I sense you would like to talk about him but the people around you are reluctant to do so because they imagine that it would make you sad. But you want to talk about him and keep his memory alive. Go ahead and talk to us

He did a funny shake of his head and sort of rolled his eyes when he was embarrassed. I don't have any photos or videos of it but I can still see it.

He was annoying too. Constantly moving and constantly making noise and you couldn't take your eye off him for a minute.

We have a dog now who I think has replaced a bit of the chaos.

So sorry OP, this is unimaginable.
As pp said, please if you feel comfortable do tell us all about him x

I am so sorry. What is his name?

You are amazing OP even if that’s something I’m not meant to say it’s what I think.
When our children are alive we imagine the pain of grief if they died would literally stop us breathing and I wonder if for a while afterwards it did. But the fact you are here and making him that wonderful promise to go on is nothing short of amazing.
We run away from people who have been bereaved due to our own discomfort and then when we do face them we seem to think mentioning the person who has died will cause extra pain. That seems so bizarre. It’s not like it hurts less if you pretend they didn’t exist- surely that hurts much much more?

I have an irrational fear of something happening to one of my children. I think hearing that grief, however horrific and enduring, is survivable would help lots of people.

He had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.

We were never told that he was terminally ill, and he was still in hospital on treatment when he died.

But I think they tried to tell us as time went on that he was unlikely to survive, but we sort of blocked it out.

I do wonder whether it would have been better to have known for certain, but I don't think so.

What was he good at? Did he know what job he wanted to do?

Hi OP thank you for starting this thread and am so very sorry for your loss. As a mother I always think the very worst thing that could happen to me would be the loss of one of my DC. I would like to ask about your DS, did he know he was going to die and how did you / he handle that? Was his passing peaceful in the end (I hope you don't mind this question).

Thank you.

I suffered from anxiety for a long time that something would happen to him. But I always worried about car accidents or falling off his bike, never cancer.

It's not an irrational fear at all.

Sometimes I think I'm amazing (;-)). And sometimes I think I'm just a normal person that something terrible happened to, and anyone would do the same.

This is going to sound strange, but I never really knew or cared what he would be good at.

I actually thought he'd be a Dad. He loved little children and was lots of fun. I imagined him running some kind of Camp America thing with making small children do crazy things.

Or a teacher, even though he was a nightmare pupil in lots of ways.

Then I imagined him getting married and staying at home with the kids, maybe having a tree cutting business or bike repair shop on the side.

Thank you for asking, because no one ever does and also I don't like to share with people I know.

I don't know whether he knew he was dying. I think he had a sense of it. He was on a lot of pain medication so it's difficult to know.

It was traumatic if I'm honest. He had an arrest which meant he was crash admitted to ICU.

He died in ICU several hours later but that was very peaceful. I feel that he knew I was there with him and that I did a good job.

@Mars27

I do like to talk about him, and do as if he's still here.

I think one of the hardest things is that it sort of deletes your experience. So I still like to talk about something that happened in Year 6, as part of a normal conversation, or how difficult bedtime was or something.

But often people suddenly look at bit funny as if they don't know what to do.

What was his name OP.He sounds like he was wonderful

I have a friend who’s only daughter died and she said the most hurtful thing was she’d never be called mum again.
I still write her daughters name in Christmas cards which she loves ,she existed for 19 years and I knew her that long.xx

OP I'm so sorry for your loss.

It's come at a bizarrely coincidental time for me. A lady who lives around the corner from me and whose eldest was in my daughter's class at primary school, I've just found out about an hour ago that he killed himself in December. He'd just gone 23.

I'm friends with her on fb and I always say hello when I see her but we aren't mates. I don't know what to do, whether to seek her out and say something.

I was led by him really.

I think we talked about it but not directly. He was very focussed on getting better and that was important to him, and to all of us. We talked a lot about what his illness would mean for him in the future, but not directly about him dying.

I spoke to him as if he might die though. In that I made sure I told him everything I needed to say to him. I have no regrets about that.

Thank you.

Cards are really important- not that we got many Christmas cards this year.

Some bereaved parents I know still sign cards from their child and want them addressed to them.

I don't.

But I do want him to be mentioned in the card. 'Thinking of, raising a glass to, always remembering' anything along those lines.

I don't sign cards from him but I've developed a doodle of a balloon that I can sort of put his initials in. Or sometimes I sign cards from the dog just to keep us as a family of four.