Working with Death Wednesday: Photographer

My name is Nicky, and I am a mother, a wife, and a photographer, living in Derbyshire. I have 2 older brothers, both married with children, and we are no strangers to grief, starting with losing our father when I was 19, and each losing a child in later life.

DW:  What is Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep?
NH:  NILMDTS is a charity organisation based in the US which brings professional photographers into hospital to use their skills to provide portraits for bereaved families who have lost a baby. They have volunteers all over the world though they are not as well known in the UK as in the US yet.

DW: How long have you been volunteering with them?
NH: I became an affiliated photographer about 18 months ago.

DW: What made you want to become a volunteer with this organization?

NH:  I lost my stillborn daughter 11 years ago; I came across NILMDTS about 4 years ago, just as my photography was becoming more than just a hobby, and I decided I must get involved to help parents like us have something tangible to help them always remember their lost baby. Photographs I have of my daughter Kim are not great, and if NILMDTS had been around then, I would definitely have been glad of their service.

DW: Can you tell me about your first experience volunteering?



NH: My first NILMDTS family contacted me after they discovered that their baby had Trisomy 13, a syndrome which affects the baby's development and is incompatible with life. Imogen was not expected to survive her birth, and if she did so, would not live very long. I met with Imogen's mother some time before her due date, and when Imogen was eventually born, alive, I photographed her with her family. After she died I was able to take photographs of her without her oxygen tube, and also to photograph her feet which each had an extra toe because of the syndrome. She had been so frail before that we did not remove her sleeper to expose her feet.

I was nervous, but I am nervous before every shoot, though I think there was more to it this time. I had already met Imogen, and she simply looked like she was fast asleep. The task of creating images was not difficult, with soft and gentle direction. I was not upset and felt no need to cry. I had not known how I would feel or if I would get upset.

I have since photographed 2 more NILMDTS sessions, and I am relieved that I am not overwhelmed by emotion - meeting the families and seeing the babies does not bring my own grief back to me - but I know largely what they are going through and have a great empathy for how they are feeling. Later I am exhausted because it is emotionally draining even though I don't get physically upset at the time: I am not immune.

DW: After you’ve photographed a baby who has died, do you have anyone to talk with about that experience? I imagine it must be very difficult.
NH:  There is support available via a NILMDTS forum for photographers, and I am in touch with a group of other UK affiliates and we share our experiences. My husband understands why I want to do this work and is hugely supportive, friends and family know what I do as well, and I find I can lean a little on a lot of people if I need to.

I have travelled my own journey through grief, and I am in a place where I am comfortable with my own loss, enough that I have the capacity to help others with theirs in a creative and meaningful way. I think I can do this because I have 'been there' and it is perhaps Kim's legacy that I have the strength to do so, a silver lining in the cloud of bereavement.

Thank you so much Nicky for sharing your work with me today!  It's beautiful.  And the work you are doing is so important for grieving parents.  Thank you.

So, readers, have you heard of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep before?  Know anyone who volunteers for them?  Give them a hug from me.
Pamela

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Child at Birth

My name is Nicky, I'm in my 40s and originally from the Midlands, UK; my mother still lives in the house where I was born. I'm married with 2 children, 2 of 3, the middle one being stillborn. I'm a photographer now my children are older, but I was a fulltime Mum for 11 years.

DW: Who was the person that died?

NH: When my son was not quite 3 we lost our first daughter Kim, stillborn at term, with no apparent reason why, and no answers form a post mortem. I found the lack of answers strangely reassuring, if nothing was found, I felt it was unlikely to happen again, though it was hard to go through 3 early miscarriages before finally becoming and then staying pregnant with our second daughter, at which point worry just drifted away - her due date was Kim's birthday which we took as a good omen.

DW: How old were you at the time?
NH: I was in my mid-30s

DW: Can you tell me about her birth?
NH: Kim had a healthy heart beat through the labour, but once born, she didn't breathe and couldn't be made to breathe, and so drifted away minutes after she had arrived.
There was no clue that Kim was not going to live, it was a shock and I was initially numb, entangled with the fatigue from an overnight labour, it was as if it was happening to someone else, almost like an 'out of body' remote experience.

DW: Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before Kim died?
NH: I attended my first funeral at the age of around 7, a lady who had been 'like a second mother' to my father after his own mother died, and I saw her in her coffin in the front room of the house, with the curtains partly drawn, as used to be the tradition. That's all I remember, just her in her coffin in that room, I don't remember the service or anything else. By the time I was 14 other family friends were having cancer treatment or heart attacks then suddenly Dad himself had cancer diagnosed when I was 16. He died when I was 19. The year of the movie "Four Weddings & a Funeral", I attended 4 funerals and a wedding as elderly uncles and aunts began to die - my mother was the youngest of 8 by several years. A colleague died of Leukaemia at age 24 when I was 22. Death was all around. Perhaps all of that loss was preparation for the greatest loss of all, the loss of a child. My brother lost a child when I was expecting my son. Losing a child goes against the natural order, you expect to lose your parents at some point, but not a child. I became familiar with grief.

DW: Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving?
NH: Immediate family and friends were very supportive, though my mother found it almost impossible to tolerate. Through having my son I had built a wide network of other Mums, friends to one degree or another, on whom I could lean a little so not becoming a burden to one or two. I also sought counselling through my doctor. One person wondered if I was 'grieving properly' as they had not actually seen a tear fall. I dislike crying in 'public' so she didn't see me on the days when I cried, until she made me cry, then she seemed happy.

DW: Was Kim buried or cremated?
NH: Kim was cremated after just me, my husband, our midwife and 2 friends present at a short service with a couple of readings. We did not feel a large funeral appropriate, and unnecessary for us. We had a huge number of cards and armfuls of flowers at home and wanted to say our private goodbye.

DW: Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share?
NH: Grieving is exhausting and if you find you are having a 'happy day' - a day where you feel optimistic, uplifted, positive, not sad - then embrace it and don't feel guilty. A day off from varying degrees of despair and heart-wrenching pain can be a good thing, so Have a Happy Day, once in a while, if it comes, run with it, its ok, let yourself be happy. Ultimately, for most of us, life does go on. It doesn't mean that we have forgotten the lost loved one. Its a bit like pulling into a lay-by for a rest from driving along grief's road, which can seem endless, especially at the start.
I put a signature in my emails at the time which said: "The body is well, the mind is managing, and the love of Kim's healing gift is keeping the heart from breaking." The healing gift was that Kim's birth went very well and was a positive experience despite her death, after a very traumatic birth with my son 3 years earlier which had left me severely traumatised. (I was hospital-phobic at that time, which was a serious problem.)

DW: Were any songs played at her memorial?
NH: We made a conscious decision not to play music and then forever have a sad association with something that could come on the radio and upset what might be a stable day that day. Instead we had 2 children's stories read out, as well as poems we had each written, my husband and I. The books were No Matter What and Time for Bed. The first one talks about a mother loving her child no matter what, and includes a line "Love like starlight never dies". We had to hide them for a few years as we couldn't read them at bedtime to our son, but eventually we were able to read them to our 2nd daughter without getting choked up. We still have them.

Thank you Nicky for sharing your experience. Nicky will be back on Wednesday. She is a photographer with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep in the UK.

I'm looking for contributors for both my Monday and Wednesday posts. Do you work with death in your profession? Or know someone who does? Let me know. And thanks for stopping by and reading. If you like this blog, please share it on Twitter, Facebook or Google or do it the old fashioned way and tell someone about it in person.
Pamela

N is for...

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Early on in my journey, I interviewed a photographer who volunteered her services for the organization, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. I've already written about it on my blog, so I encourage you to simply watch this video.  Grab a box of tissue.

Watch This

Have you heard of this organization before?  Have you or anyone you know utilized their services?  What are your thoughts?