'Thankful to have had that week': Why mum spent days with six-year-old son's body after his death
By Merryn Porter |
The death of a child would be the biggest fear of most parents, and there is no right or wrong way to grieve such a loss.
Now a US television producer has revealed she spent a week with the body of her six-year-old son following his death last year.
Mary Forrest Engel, the wife of NBC television journalist Richard Engel, has written about the way she grieved son Henry after he died from complications of a rare neurological disorder Rett Syndrome, which had robbed him of the ability to walk.
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Forrest Engel, herself an award-winning TV producer, outlined the week she spent with their son Henry after he died in a first-hand piece for TODAY Parents.
Forrest Engel said she was prompted to tell her story after seeing a photo of a father holding the hand of his deceased daughter, who was trapped underneath rubble after the recent earthquake in southern Turkey.
She said the photo brought her back to sitting with Henry's body after his death in August 2022.
"As long as he remained a physical presence on this Earth, I wanted to be with him," she wrote. "We sat with him in our home for hours. Changed his clothes. It was summer. I put shorts on him, and a T-shirt out of habit. I chose one of his softest, cosiest ones."
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She said that when the people from the funeral arrived that evening,
she opted to carry her son's body to the waiting car.
"It was the last time I would ever carry my beautiful Henry. How many times had I carried him in his life? Hundreds? Thousands?" she wrote.
"He was almost like an appendage to me; we were physically intertwined due to his disability and him needing me to move him around, to be his legs."
She wrote about her "crowning achievement of this" at a birthday party he went to at an indoor play facility.
"We almost didn't go, as I thought, 'How the hell am I going to do this?' but then I thought, 'How can I deprive him of the chance to go to a birthday party?'" she said, adding she "carried him myself through the maze; his smiles were the best thank you I have ever received."
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She said ever since Henry was born, she had clung to routine and schedules to feel a sense of control over a situation that really couldn't be controlled. When he died, that routine went out the window.
"But without even realising what I was doing, I created one last routine for us," she wrote.
"The people who worked at the funeral home จC two of the kindest people I've ever met จC said I could come see Henry's body in the days leading up to the cremation," she wrote, adding she would go and "sit with him every day for a week" at 9am and 5pm.
"They would have him ready for me, and I'd go into the room and cry, stroke his hair and face and rest my head next to his," she wrote.
"I brought a different assortment of books and toys each time. I'd push the buttons on the toys and listen to the sounds, which I had heard so many times when he had pushed them.
"Henry loved music. I sang some of his favourite songs and played others on my phone. Who Let the Dogs Out and a variety of Katy Perry and Lizzo songs felt disjointed กญ and at the same time, perfectly right in the little room where I sat with him."
Forrest Engel said that while that period of her life was a blur, the hours spent with Henry's body were "vivid in my mind."
"I would wake up feeling anxious to see him. Longing for him. Each time I went I would stay for about an hour, then leave the room and head to the front door of the funeral home before turning back for one last goodbye," she said.
"It was so hard to leave, but we also have a younger son, Theo, who needed me, and he was in the forefront of my mind as well."
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Forrest Engel said a few friends asked to go with her one day. Through tears, they took turns stroking his gorgeous hair and speaking or singing to him.
She said that while her husband was a "bit hesitant about what I was doing at first" he eventually accompanied her.
"He realised the value in having this time to do the impossible: attempt to say goodbye to Henry," she wrote.
"This kind of grief is unlike anything either of us had felt before. There's no roadmap. He didn't know if it would cause me more pain to have this ritual that I had created, but he came with me.
"One time we were there together, and I stepped out of the room for a bit. When I came back, I heard Richard talking as I was about to open the door. I didn't go in. I let him have time alone with Henry's body. I didn't ask him what he said; I didn't have to."
In another passage, she wrote about noticing Henry's nose was running as she sat with him.
"I hadn't had reason to think about this before, but of course bodies leak fluid. There's something I never thought I would write in an essay, but here we are," she said, noting how she'd wipe his nose for him.
Forrest Engel said the funeral director had told her she would know when it was time to say a final goodbye.
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"She was right. I thought I would never be able to let his body go, but there came a time when it was clear," she said.
"The day of the cremation, we went multiple times to sit with him. At one point, we left for a little while to get a coffee.
"I remember feeling like an alien mingling with these people who were going about their everyday lives while we were preparing to take our son to be cremated.
"Then we drove to the cemetery in complete silence, his oddly lovely rainbow-coloured casket made of woven willow in between us in the back of the hearse.
"We sat in the church for 45 minutes. Just us. It felt like five minutes. Then it was time to leave the crematorium and walk away from his body จC this body I knew so well, loved more than life itself and fought to keep alive for years."
After Henry's cremation, Forrest said they scattered some of his ashes at a tree in a park that Henry loved.
"Six months later, I've now come to realise that he's everywhere. Wherever I go and whatever I do, he's with me," she wrote.
Forrest Engel said while "not every grieving person has the ability to do this, and not everyone wants or needs to, I am thankful to have had that week."
"It was surreal, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching กญ and also filled with so much love. There's just so much love, and that's what has gotten me through."
You are not alone. To find the right support for you, or a loved one visit www.pmhweek.org.au
For support around miscarriage or loss, please contact Red Nose Australi?a
