Hearts can heal from awesome loss

dublin | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Wednesday September 06, 2006 21:37 by dynamoshels

Meningitis rates in Ireland are among the highest in Europe, this is one story

Meningitis rates in Ireland are among the highest in Europe, this is just one persons story of the impact of the disease

The rain battered the car windows as we pulled up at the hospital, and inhaled and swallowed hard, not in trepidation of what I was going to find but rather in a hazy confusion. As I walked through the hospital doors, my stomach immediately began to feel queasy. It has also been the strange relationship with hospitals I have had that they make me feel sick just by stepping in to one. The smell hit me straight awy of disinfectant, made worse by the smell of damp clothes, I remember thinking what a filthy smell for somewhere supposed to be clean. I had convinced myself that whatever I would find when I went into the room would not shock me. In my naivety I had ‘prepared for the worst’

As usual when I enter a hospital I became abysmally lost and turned to a nurse to ask her what room my cousin was in. When she heard the name her face tweaked ever so slightly, as she had just been confronted with some awful truth. I knew I was not supposed to notice but I did, my stomach now churned and I felt dizzy. When I reached the hall way I was confronted by family I hardly ever saw, the sort of family you see at weddings or funerals or when we ‘need to rally together’. I stood not knowing exactly what to do next, until a friends mother said ‘Go on in pet, she looks very peaceful’ She’d been crying. I eased the door open with my hand trembling only to see a bed surrounded in machines, wires and drips. There my cousin lay in the bed, a pristine white sheet draped over her. Immediately I cried, faced with the horrible reality. My uncle held me close and said ‘I know, I know’ I was so angry with myself for not doing better, not being more support but all I could do was stand there looking at the bed lost in this world of confusion. I stayed a while making the sort of hopeless chit chat people do in these situations when everything you say seems pointless. I went home to think about what I would say tomorrow.

I returned the next day with an over sized yellow rabbit. I lay it on her bed with the huge collection of cuddly toys and sat realising she would never see them. Late in the evening on the 8th of March, 2003, she died surrounded by family and friends. My memory of the evening is sitting staring out a window, not thinking about anything while a the same time having a million thoughts go through my head. I also remember sitting beside her in her house looking at a photo of her on holiday, this fifteen year old girl smiling happily in the photograph, I glanced at the bed. She looked every bit as beautiful now, her smile gentle, and her hair strawberry blond and curly. The fact that she looked so like her old self broke my heart.

Her funeral was the hardest I have ever had to attend. The feeling that hit me as I entered the church will stay with me forever. I cannot describe that feeling it has to be felt. I wish no one else will ever have to experience that but they will and it won’t be any easier for them than it was for me. You never forget losing a loved one, especially when the death is sudden. Undoubtedly it changes you, your life and many of the things around you. I have grown through it and much of what I do know I do because of it. My little cousin missed out on a lot of what life has to offer but she also fit a lot into a short life and enjoyed the life she had. I think there is a lesson in that for all of us.