How painful it is to write these words. It never gets easier, and it never will – as I always knew and as I now see for certain.
Katherine and Jean-Marie, Christmas 2001
Some people call sorrow that lasts more than one year “complicated grief” or “pathological grief.” I call it the price I pay for loving an extraordinary person extraordinarily much. The intensity of sorrow correlates to the intensity of attachment, and most parents who lose children never get over it. We have to live out every bitter moment that should have been sweet.
People often remark on how short life feels, and at 57, I get why they say that. The days fly by, the years evaporate. But imagine having to leave the party at just eight years old. And the worst thing is, she understood all she would be missing. She wanted to finish learning cursive at St. Irene’s School; she wanted to play in the kiddie pool with her friends on a sunny June day; she wanted to be Tinkerbell for Halloween; she wanted to adopt a baby so she could watch it grow. She got none of those things, none of the quotidian joys, none of the lifetime landmarks. She told me not to bury her dolls with her – because she did not want that for her children. Can you imagine truly understand you would be rotting in the grave within days at such a young age? She should have been raising children of her own by now.
I am not sure my children will ever have children of their own. They have seen what losing Katherine has done to us, and unfortunately, they know all too well – from me – the perils that await parents and children now.
When I had Katherine, it was not until she was born that I understood what I had done to myself – that I loved her so much that it would destroy me if anything bad ever happened to her. Her first day on Earth, I thought “oh no – what have I done?” – as I fell in love at first sight. Her last day I thought would kill me. I often wish it had.
But mostly, I went into parenthood with serene sanguinity. I thought that the days when so many children died in childhood were behind us – with vaccines and antibiotics conquering communicable disease, with car seats shielding their travel and “back to sleep” guarding their nights. I knew a few children were diagnosed with leukemia, but I thought that was mostly a problem in heavily industrialized areas, and I focused on the fact that many cases of leukemia are now cured. I thought that with effort and intention, I could protect her.
Little did I think that we were poisoning our children from before conception and every day after with every breath they inhale, every sip they take, every bite they eat. Little did I think that even the tender and intimate act of breastfeeding was conveying my lifetime exposure, my body burden of toxic chemicals, right into her rapidly developing self.
Our families, our town, our country, and we ourselves in our ordinary daily habits – things everyone did then, like heating food in plastic, putting a flea collar on the dog, replacing carpet – all participated in her poisoning. We have built our world to poison children. Even those taking drastic steps to avoid it – like eliminating pesticides, eating organic, filtering air and water, and limiting plastics and personal care products – are not free from toxic trespass.
And the petrochemical industry chiefly responsible for poisoning people and planet are marketing their toxic products – especially plastics – harder than ever. They have ruthlessly purchased our politicians – anyone who has ever spoken the words “drill, baby, drill” for starters – and are trying to hold back the necessary transition to renewable energies and cleaner materials. They have cruelly sabotaged the Paris Climate Agreement and pitilessly thwarted the UN’s Global Plastics Treaty. The Trump Administration, in thrall to these behemoths, has utterly gutted all the salutary steps towards addressing climate change and toxic contamination that the Biden Administration had taken.
I once thought of politics as something I wasn’t that interested in. I thought my one duty was to show up at election time. Little did I think that decisions made in the halls of power -- or more commonly, in the board rooms of corporations – would kill my child, would ruin our lives, would imperil the very planet on which we all dwell.
I am glad I didn’t know how it would turn out. Yet I would give anything to know then what I know now if knowing could have prevented her death. I want every person this side of loss to understand that their everyday decisions and the decisions of those they vote into office are life and death for those they love the most. I hope Poisoning Our Children will play some small part in preventing for others the desolation we ourselves endure.
