I am not a writer. I am not a journalist. I don't even have a blog.
I don't have a platform. I don't have a fan-base of loyal followers ready to protect me from the trolls, real or imagined.
The only place I have written since I gave up my Open University degree is on various internet forums. All parenting; some more specialist than others.
I am that scary thing, that alien thing: I am a bereaved parent. And often it's just easier to use the internet to write about the loss of my beloved child than it is to speak out in the Real World. There are rules there. Rules about how I can behave.
On the internet, though, I get to say 'beloved child'. I can even get away with 'angel' or 'precious daughter' if I want. I can be sad. I can be emotional. I can reminisce and use mawkish language. These things are all allowed, even expected.
But one thing I can't do: I can't complain if someone compares their loss, their sadness, to mine. If I do that, I am no longer a figure to be pitied; I become a troll. A vicious, bitter troll, spitting out bile.
Please don't think I am the sort of person who doesn't care about the troubles of others. I do. I really do. I will listen and commiserate, and I will genuinely give a toss if someone is struggling with one of life's many challenges. But surely I get to draw the line when someone makes a comparison so insulting, so inappropriate, that it makes me think "oh no they didn't...". They did and they do - frequently. When that happens I don't need to be a troll, and no bile needs to be spat or any other body fluids spilled. I just need to raise my head above the parapet and say "No. That is not ok.".
Every September I sit on my hands as the Facebook statuses proclaim the grief of mums seeing their children off to university. "It's like they've died!" they say, and below this anguished cry a hundred comments agree and sympathise. "I am sat here in tears. My baby has gone to big school today. It's like a bereavement. I don't know what to do with myself" - followed by several of those particularly annoying emoticons with squirting eyes. "Oh hun I know! Xoxoxox." "Stay strong babe, sending hugs x."
These people are feeling something, but they sure as hell are not feeling the grief of a bereaved parent. Nor is the journalist who is mourning the loss of her children's early years. Because the children of those Facebook mums and the children of that journalist are NOT dead. And if your child is not dead you do not know what it is like to grieve for them.
You are allowed to be sad when your children grow up. You can spend time in quiet reflection. You can go up to their bedroom and feel wistful for days past. But do you really think you are allowed to compare your carefully crafted wistfulness to the pain of the mother or father who will never see their child again? You, who will be driving up at the end of term to pick up your son, or popping out at 3.15pm to meet your daughter at the school gates?
My daughter is not at university or sitting in a classroom. She is a small mound of ash in a pretty pink urn sitting in an alcove in my dining room. An alcove specially built by startled builders who asked me, "do you want to do something with this space, love?" when they were finishing off our kitchen extension. Imagine their surprise when I said "yes!" and rushed off to fetch my daughter's remains, so they could measure her up a second time for a snug wooden box. Because she is actually dead. The sort of dead that means that she is gone forever. Her little life came to an end on 27 April 2006. She was 14 years old.
I know what it's like to look at baby photos and feel that pang. How we miss their chubby cheeks and toddler tantrums; their funny little ways and mispronounced words. The difference for me, and for other bereaved parents, is that we don't have any new memories to add to the old. Those Facebook mums and that journalist will hopefully be able to fill their albums, memory cards or iClouds with hundreds of photos of their children. They can share the blurry, printed snaps at family gatherings and even get to laugh with their grandchildren about how silly daddy was when he was little.
I have some lovely memories of my beautiful girl, but even 10 years later those memories are obscured by a wall of horrific flashbacks. I can't seem to get through them, back to a time when my life was ridiculously perfect. So perfect that I might well have been stupid and smug enough to say something like "it's just like losing a child!".
Instead of a head full of pictures of that beautiful, lithe girl with masses of the thickest hair and the biggest blue eyes you've ever seen, I am trying to keep at bay the horrors of her last months; the memory of waiting till she had died so I could hold her one last time without causing her pain.
I am proud of her dignity and bravery, and awed by the extraordinary way she faced her own death.
I just wish she were still here. I wish that I was not a member of that troublesome, quibbling group who dares to say "No! That is not ok". The club that no one wants to belong to, but strangely so many people want to borrow from.
No. That is not ok.
Guest posts
Guest post: Things that are not the same as losing a child
MumsnetGuestPosts · 05/11/2015 14:07
A beautiful piece MrsDV and a great reminder to those of us for whom losing a child is something we cannot begin to imagine that throw away hyperbole is not always harmless.
Your pain is in every word and your love for Billie shines through every time you speak of her. 
Can I just say I particularly enjoyed 'carefully crafted wistfulness' . So very true.
I've just read every single post in response to this eloquent piece.
I'm in tears. I haven't lost a child. My son is sleeping next to me. He's two months old. I can't imagine the utter devastation it would cause if he was no longer in the world. I don't believe I would be able to carry on, but all you bereaved parents prove that I would, somehow.
My sister lost a child. And as an auntie, that's bad enough. As a parent, I count myself lucky that I can only imagine that pain. I hope this remains the case, and that I never have to experience what you have felt, what my sister has felt.
and LOVE to all bereaved families.
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I just wanted to add, MrsDeVere, thank you so much for writing this, and starting the other thread too.
It's important that others do not get to set the tone and 'rules' for how grieving parents and family feel and react to things. And it's important that the 'debate' (such as it is), doesn't get twisted into a Twitter spat or belittled into trolling and vipers nonsensical trivialities.
This topic is bigger than one self interested blogger, and it shouldn't be limited or twisted by someone who doesn't want to try and understand things beyond her own experiences.
It's a Good Thing that we've taken back the discourse, through your brave words, and it's good to have moved on from reacting to one persons crassness and limitations, and by talking together these threads show other people what's really important.
And that's the beautiful souls we've lost, and will love and mourn forever.
. Your daughter is so beautiful.
I absolutely agree with all you've written. I sometimes feel the wistful nostalgia of my daughters' lost toddler smallness, the pudgy little hands, the fluffy hair. But it is nothing at all like the grief of true loss. (And I have lost a parent, not a child. An easier thing to bear, being in the natural order of things). I'm so sorry that your daughter's life was so tragically short, and I hope that your frank and touching writing makes people think before they compare their lot with yours and that of other bereaved parents.
Thank you for writing this. I'm so sorry about the loss of your daughter, and for the losses experienced by the other MNers on this thread. It is not something I have ever experienced, and I hope I never do.
I can't begin to understand why anyone would think that comparing something to the death of anyone, least of all a child, is in any way appropriate. It simply boggles my mind. It is not OK.
Well done on speaking up. It needs to be said.
Huge sympathies
It is definitely not ok to compare the two. And I am sure many other bereaved parents will be greatful to you for explaining why so eloquently.
I have "known" you (albeit am a lurker mainly) on here for many years and your posts have frequently show great compassion for parents in all sorts of difficult situations. You do not need to explain or apologise for criticising such a thoughtless comparison
I don't tend to get sad or melancholy over my children growing (up). Stories like yours and others have just made me feel so grateful to have the luxury of watching them grow xxx
I have read and re-read this and cannot get over how eloquent you are on such a painful, terrible, unbearable subject. It's searing. Makes me gasp every time.
to you.
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Just read the original article. Bloody hell. If I was one of her kids, I'd be very upset and hurt at having her experience of the first few years of my life publicly described as a 'living hell'.
'Those young children are dead now.' Woah. WTAF. 
I think someone has some serious issues to work through. (Hint to Liz: it's you, not any of the 'trolls' who commented on your piece.) I am genuinely shocked and stunned.
It's more than not OK.
Well said, MrsDV. Just wish it hadn't had to be said and that no one was in the position where they had the first hand experience to say it. XX
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