Intense emotions of losing a child
When someone asks a friend how many children he has, he always says three, even though he lost the eldest of his children to cot death more than 30 years ago; a colleague lost a baby at birth and took some beautiful photographs of her. The most natural thing in the world to him as a professional photographer and a dad but something others struggled to understand.
Grief — especially of a parent — is personal. That why I hesitated, feeling that reading After Alexander, Jan Pryor’s account of life with her baby and after he died, might feel like an intrusion into a personal hell.
Instead, it feels like a sharing of the intense emotions of loss, anger, grief, bewilderment and desperation. It is incredibly personal. Pryor has written for herself and it is full of genuine feeling.
The early part of the book about finding Alexander limp in his cot, attempts to revive him and getting him to hospital is gripping, stark, pure emotion. Pryor writes in short paragraphs, each a snippet of remembered emotion.
AFTER ALEXANDER THE LEGACY OF A SON
by Jan Pryor (Heddon Publishing, $30)
Reviewed by Kay Forrester
Because she’s writing 34 years after Alexander’s birth and death, her book is informed by her subsequent studies on children and families. In 2003, she established the McKenzie Centre for the study of families; in 2008, she became the chief commissioner of the Families Commission.
There is an element of analysis in the latter part of the book as Pryor dissects her feelings to understand them. For her it is about understanding that sense of loss and not wanting to exclude a beloved child, although he is not there. It is about analysing the actions of others who, in their bid to comfort, cause more hurt.
After Alexander is not a manual; there cannot be such a thing for losing a child. It is one baby’s, one family’s story. The legacy of her baby son, part of her family for such a short time, is summed up in the joyful, jagged paradox that the timing of Alexander’s death enabled the birth of her second daughter, Esther, just a year later.
His loss comes at a cost — her marriage, anxiety about her children and grandchildren — but also brings moments to treasure: Esther’s birth, Pryor’s slow journey to resilience, a closeness with her son, her grandchildren.
She concludes: “And so you know you are blessed, despite that pain . . . You are so much more attuned with yourself . . . You are not better, you are not worse, you are so much more real.”