Jo & Mark - Mum & Dad

How does losing a child affect your relationship with your partner?

First up, I feel very lucky that I didn’t go through losing Marty alone, some people do and I can’t imagine it.

Second…not only did I have a partner, I had Mark. He was everything we needed him to be and more. Caring, supportive, he pushed through every day to do the best for us. He was resilient and vulnerable - by that I mean he let me in, I didn’t feel shut out from his thoughts. The word capable sounds like it belongs in a job application but he was, he did it all - cared for Robyn, drove around France, talked to insurance companies, French authorities and doctors, he supported me in every way, he kept all of our family up to date. He took joint responsibility for everything and didn’t let me shoulder any emotion or activity alone. Yes in day to day life he’s very annoyingly good at everything ;-)

I don’t know if this is weird but I have never felt as connected to him as I did during Marty’s life and the weeks that followed. My friend told us she saw us more ‘together’ at Marty’s memorial service than she did on our wedding day.

We were honest with each other - I told him when I felt like I wasn’t bonding with Marty like I should, he told me when he thought his world was falling apart around him. We were each others crutch - I stayed strong for myself so he didn’t have to stay strong for me, and he was there waiting when I fell. We waited for each other to be ready for each of the things we had to discuss and decide. We felt strong together.

Mark and I are quite different people, day to day we approach things in different ways. I would have been absolutely bloody useless if it was Mark in hospital. Just the thought of me finding the right Town Hall and registering Marty’s birth on my own, in French. No thank you.

I honestly think I would have been more of a mess if it were all that way round. A sudden and quick labour - I’ll stay calm for that (calm enough), a son in intensive care - I can do day to day life and conversations. Mark told me afterwards he thought I was good at handling high stress situations, he was probably surprised to hear himself say that! That is by far the most high stress situation I have ever been in, and ever hope to be in. Don’t ask me to reverse park in a busy car park though, I’ll drive home before doing that.

I think we both felt that we got through that week together. We had amazing support from our families but the two of us were determined to do the best for our children and each other, together. We decided to have Marty cremated in France so we could all travel home in one car. Our family in France could have, and wanted to come with us but we chose for just the two of us to go. Different reasons contributed to that decision but it felt kind of fitting to me, we’d been there together for Marty throughout his life, so we should be there together to the very very ‘end’.

When we got home we held a Memorial service for Marty for our family and friends to join. We both wanted to speak about Marty, so we stood up, and we did it jointly, for each other, and for him.

It’s not all ‘hearts and flowers’ though, as my mum would say. Soon after the memorial service Mark went back to work, and I felt like I was being left behind. It felt like people were moving on, him included, and I didn’t know what I was meant to do next. Mark had a big distraction in work for most of the day, meanwhile I was starting this 6 months off work and was thinking about Marty all day, every day. I felt like it was me bringing Marty things into conversation all the time, like I was pulling Mark down. It’s not fair for me to determine that Mark wasn’t thinking about Marty just because he was in work, of course he was, but that’s just how it felt at the time. I know his mind is still flooded by thoughts of Marty when he goes to bed.

We are different people, with different ways of dealing with things. Plus we weren’t in that crisis mode any more, this was day to day reality. I spoke to my counsellor about it and I realised that everyone travels at different speeds through grief. Maybe a bit like travelling in convoy, let’s try that out…We’re in different cars, on the same road but we’re stopping off at different places, and for different amounts of time. We might even take the odd detour. We’d meet up along the way and be together again, but that just wasn’t possible all of the time. I found that really reassuring, I was worried we were drifting and we’d never get it back.

For the first few weeks if ever Mark was in a bit of a mood or annoyed about something I thought ‘I wonder if this is really about Marty’. I wondered if we’d think like that forever, always tip toeing around each other, just in case. I don’t think we do now. I know I tell him if I’m feeling upset, he probably needs a bit of a shove to tell me the same.

I remembered hearing that a lot of couples break up after the death of a child, and I can understand why; you share a huge sadness. You remind each other of that sadness. But you also went through it together, supported each other, and learnt things about each other. You’re bound forever by all of those experiences and memories.

For the two of us, we also have the benefits of there being positive experiences in our story. Marty was our beautiful boy not some horrific episode. We got to meet him, and spend time with him, and we got to say goodbye. We met people along the way who went out of their way to help us, people we’ll never forget. We had good care. Neither of us were at fault, there was no guilt or blame to tear us apart.

We’ve had different feelings and opinions about various things - what to say to Robyn about Marty, things people have said or gestures they’ve made. And I can find that hard, I’m a sucker for cohesion.

But I do feel proud of us. We have been through something huge together. We put Robyn and Marty at the centre of everything, and we would have done anything to have got all four of us through.

There is of course still a long way to go,  in a sense we’re just at the start. But I couldn’t hope for a better partner to go through this with. I would do anything to have kept his boy here for him.

📷In Nantes a few days after Marty died. We look exhausted. How could we smile? We had Robyn smiling back at us