Tag: life

The Unimaginable Loss.

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For those of you who are new to this blog and my posts, we lost our son Hayden at the age of 24 in September of 2025. There are only a very select few with whom I have confided the circumstances around his death. At first we did this to protect those who loved and cared for him from additional pain, but as the year as gone on and we get closer to the anniversary of his passing, I feel more and more like it is a dirty little secret I am hiding.

Simply put, neither David or I have reconciled ourselves to Hayden’s passing. Because he was in the care of Community Living a coroner was called in to investigate. As a parent, I also had the option of asking for a full coroner’s investigation in writing which I did. The coroner who investigated Hayden’s death called me to tell me that I was wasting my time.

When you have a child that needs extra care it is impossible to document the highs and lows of parenting a special needs child. And, it is a huge decision to make to say that you can no longer manage their care. We made that decision after Hayden gave himself his first traumatic brain injury. Everett was six years old, Isaac was just over a year and Hayden wasn’t yet nine years of age. We had done everything in our power to keep him safe, including consulting with his pediatrician who told us “these kids just know how hard to hit their heads without hurting themselves”. We put him in a variety of helmets, hockey and bicycle, but as anyone who has a child who obsessively bangs knows, it’s much like shaken baby syndrome – and ultimately we couldn’t protect him from himself.

After his head injury we were able to find a placement in a facility that specialized in treating behavioural children. After two years, multiple drug trials, psychiatric treatment, physio and occupational therapy and scores of sheets of data documenting his self-injurious behaviour we brought home exactly the same child – one who was obsessed with self injury. It was at this point that we enlisted the help of Community Living Essex County. I want to say that the first decade of Hayden living in care was amazing. He came to visit every weekend, his manager and staff were fully aware of the repercussions of him banging his head. Every aspect of his house that could be padded, was. But time passes, management and staff change and the urgency, no matter how much I complained, was lost.

The person who was responsible for my son the night he died, should never have been alone with him. That’s my opinion and one that I formed the moment I met him. I will always feel that Hayden would still be alive today if someone else had been caring for him that night – someone who cared about my son, as an human being. I was under the impression that he had cameras in his apartment – I was wrong and when I broached it Community Living told me that they believe that cameras “interfere with the people living their lives”. I believe that, had camera’s been installed, people would have been more accountable for their behaviour. That same individual was more than happy to pull out his cell phone and capture video of the paramedics trying to bring my child back to life.

I have pushed down the horror of what my child when through as his body shut down because he was allowed to bang his head and give himself a life ending brain bleed. I truly feel so grateful to the paramedics who worked relentlessly to bring life back into his body so that I could have the privilege of saying goodbye and holding him in my arms as he left this world.

I have lost people I have loved, grandparents, best friends, but the pain of losing a child is unlike any other. He slept beneath my heart for nine months. His blood mixed with mine. He will forever be a part of my and I feel his loss, his absence from the world in my very bones. I have tried so hard to put on a brave face for everyone else, because honestly, no one wants to confront the mom who has lost a child – it is the the unimaginable loss. And it is. I have managed to push it down for 10 months, but it has shaken me to my very core. It has undermined my faith and trust in God. It is a long and dark road that I will walk for the rest of my life. It is the pain of losing a child that the world deemed unworthy of investigating.

If you want comfort I can tell you that although I have reject God, he has not rejected me. I will not pretend that my journey back to trust and faith will not be a long one. I don’t need platitudes or scripture quoted at me – I know them all – God knows my heart and if the bridge back is going to built there is no better bridge builder than Him.

I share this blog, not for attention but because Hayden’s death deserves more than to just be swept under the rug, because our pain matters and ultimately all the bureaucracy cared about was covering their asses. Hayden’s life wasn’t always easy and I’m not going to pretend that he didn’t suffer greatly, but his joy was pure, he loved deeply and his life mattered and I miss my sweet baby EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Leaning into grief.

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As many of you reading this are aware, we lost our oldest son Hayden on September 20 of this year. We all know that we will experience the loss of loved ones in our lives. It’s predestined that we will lose our grandparents and parents, even our pets. There was a part of me that always knew that I would lose Hayden, I even wanted that, because I didn’t want his care to be a burden on his brothers. What I didn’t expect was that it would happen so soon, or so suddenly. In my mind I would be an old lady and he would be a man.

So lets talk about grief. In today’s world we are all trying to capture the fountain of youth. We want to look younger, feel younger and be younger and I have noticed a trend away from acknowledging death. How many times now do people die without even having a funeral? I have seen it happen in my own extended family, even people of faith not having a service or a burial for a mother or husband. We, as a society, seem to have become extremely uncomfortable with the concept of death. And I think that we are all suffering for it.

When we were sitting in the hospital room saying good bye to Hayden I looked over at our priest and we talked about how I was not going to just “get over” this. And it was our Anglican priest who mentioned that the Orthodox practice was to have multiple prayer services. The moment he said that it felt right. I needed to “lean” (his word, not mine) into my grief and not try to pretend that life was okay.

As a result of that choice, to embrace the pain and the loss and the process of grieving, many of you have come to know a little more about Hayden. I took 40 days, I put black ribbons on our house, turned off our porch lights, wore black every day and arranged for prayer services on the third, ninth and 40th days following Hayden’s loss. I posted every day about my beautiful boy. I have cried, I have raged against God, I have questioned his existence and I have dwelt on the hole in my heart.

And what did leaning into my grief get me? At the end of those 40 days I was ready. I was ready to turn the lights back on, to wear something a little brighter, to feel joy. And each stage of the process of grieving helped. The first prayer service, the second, the funeral and the final service at 40 days after which we buried him. Each one of these was a step toward saying goodbye. Closing up his house, closing his casket at the church, being there for his cremation and the burying of his urn – each of these moments broke my heart. Each of these moments were steps toward the finality of life without Hayden, and each of these moments were an important part of this journey.

I know first hand that business of funeral homes is not inexpensive these days. But the act of mourning is vitally important. Many churches will hold a service for a very small fee – just to cover the cost of opening their doors in off hours. Yes, we should “Celebrate Lives”, but it’s okay to be sad too. It’s okay to call death what it is, it’s okay to spend time crying and missing the ones you love. Life is messy and imperfect and hard sometimes and we don’t need to gloss over the ugly parts – we need to lean into them and experience them. It is only by living in the darkness that we can truly appreciate walking back out into the light.

I will write another time about the ways in which God has reached out to me during this time, but for now, God bless.

Meredith