Lilypie

Monday, September 10, 2007

Coping With Bereavement

I read an article in the Sunday Lifestyle yesterday which really brought tears into my eyes. The story is so heart-wrenching that it might as well have been one of those out of the Chicken Soup series. (By the way, our local Chicken Soup makes a good read too, there are stories inside which let us ponder and reflect, although my personal favourite is the Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul, no guessing why!)

The article tells of how a couple came to terms with the loss of their three children - two stillborn, and one did not survive after a few days. As I read it, I started crying. Imagine how painful it must be to lose one child, let alone three! How it must have killed the mother to carry the children, give birth to them only to witness their deaths, all the more since it was so hard for the mother to conceive in the natural way.

The couple in question coped with their loss by remembering their babies, blogging about their feelings and how they were coping. My heart reaches out to them, and I hope they will be able to be blessed with more children, normal ones, along the way.

People cope with loss in different ways. Some people keep their sadness in their hearts, some express out their feelings, some blame the whole world (I always wonder why!), some blame whoever whom they feel have no right to grieve (who is anyone to say who has the right or no right to grieve anyway?), and some will do more, like volunteering for charity, all in the memories of the loss loved ones.

And that is why I am writing a book. The story was already formulated many years back, but I need to make the plot longer for a novel size. The story is in memory of my late cousin who died of leukaemia at the age of ten.

I saw how she went for chemotherapy treatments, how her beautiful luscious hair dropped, how she struggled to keep alive in the hospital with all the tubes and needles sticking into her. Perhaps that was how I developed a fear for needles.

I remember visiting her in the hospital. She was only a few months younger than me. She was my favourite cousin. I could not bear to see her that way, and cried each time I saw her. When my mum told me she passed away, I cried. I went to her funeral, saw her in the coffin, dressed and made up like an angel, and I just could not stop crying.

Years later, I understood what illness it was she succumbed to, and wondered why did this happen? I researched on cancer and how it came about. Each time I had a nose bleed (not that often anyway) I would panic. Each time when I had an anaemia attack and the doctor told me that I have very low red blood cells, I would panic.

On the sixth anniversary of her death, I started to think of doing something in her memory. I thought of composing a song initially, but that would be too depressing. So I thought of writing a story. And now, finally, I am putting pen to paper all the skeletal plots I formulated all those years ago to weave into an actual tale.

I am not sure just how well my book can sell, or if it can even be published in the first place, but in the event if it does get published and sell, I want the proceeds to go to the Children's Cancer Foundation, especially for the Leukaemia stricken. That is the only thing I can ever do for her.

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