The Unseen Grief

It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote a blog on this website. I wasn’t even sure I was ever going to come back to it if I’m being honest. A lot has happened between losing the twins and now and my life is looking quite a bit different. It may be a story I tell in some capacity someday but for now…if you know, you know. 

I actually started writing this blog shortly after Christmas. I had so many thoughts swirling in my head at the time, but it’s taken me until now to finish it. Even two years later, I am still processing everything, still learning how grief shows up in my life in ways both seen and unseen. This is not an easy story to tell, but it’s an important one.

Remembering with Intention

This past Christmas I was reflecting on how jarring the difference was between this holiday season compared to two years ago — when I was hooked up to a million monitors in the hospital, trying to mentally prepare myself for the most traumatic experience I will likely ever go through.

During that reflection, I began thinking about all the ways Hudson and Greyson affect my day-to-day life in ways other people may never know. Today, I want to share some insight about the unseen grief after a loss — the hurt that happens quietly, behind the scenes, every single day.

One of the first ways I remember them intentionally began very shortly after their loss. I wanted Xavier to know very early on who they were, and what their relationship was to him, so that we could remember them together.

I will never truly know (at least not for a while) what Xavier’s understanding of death is right now, but for now I keep it simple. “Hudson and Greyson are in the sky.” We started off blowing kisses to the sky, and sometimes Xavier would even do it on his own which melted my heart.

Then Hudson and Greyson also became part of our bedtime routine. Every night, we listen to the song "Gone Too Soon" by Daughtry and dance together. We still finish our dance by blowing our kisses to the sky. It is a routine I absolutely cherish, and Xavier looks forward to “Hudson and Greyson’s song” every night as well.

These small, intentional rituals help me keep Hudson and Greyson close, but there are also the quiet moments of remembrance that happen when no one else is looking.

The Quiet Rituals

One of those quiet moments is something so simple, but so powerful: tracing their initials in a heart in the fog on the shower glass. For a long time, I didn’t even want to clean that spot of the shower glass because it would feel like I was erasing them somehow. One day, Paul noticed my little ritual and I walked into the bathroom one evening to see that he had started doing it too. It was a small but incredibly touching gesture to let me know that he would always think of them too, and that even though he wasn’t yet a part of my story at the time that I went through losing them, he recognized that they would forever be a part of me.

To this day, he has traced the memory of them in the fog every day and for that I am forever grateful. As comforting as these rituals are, there are also moments that come out of nowhere, catching me completely off guard: the unexpected triggers.

The Unexpected Triggers

These unexpected triggers happen far more often than you probably think. One minute I'm wrapped up in the chaos of everyday life; the next, I'm face-to-face with a memory I wasn't prepared for. These are the ones that catch you by surprise, the ones that make you feel everything all at once, but just for a moment. There are so many random things and happenstances that remind me of them that I never expect until it’s happening.

Let me paint a picture:

I’m going about my day, hustling and bustling around my house, multitasking like my life depends on it…Xavier says he is hungry so I go to the kitchen to get him a snack. While I’m in the kitchen, I notice that the garbage needs to be emptied, so I deliver the snack, return to the garbage and bring the garbage out to the bin in the garage. I turn around to head back inside (like I do any other time that I take the garbage out), but this time I lock eyes with something on the shelf in the corner.

It’s a pretty big box so it’s hard to miss, but for some reason I didn’t notice until this particular day. It’s a Wonderfold Wagon…awesome right?! Every parent RAVES about those things, and I have a brief memory of feeling excited when I got it on sale….but in the next moment I remember why it is still in the box.

I ordered that Wonderfold Wagon because I was about to go from one child to 3. After losing the twins I couldn’t bring myself to open it or use it, and I also couldn’t bear the thought of returning it. So, there it sits on that shelf in the garage, and even now I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I open that box. So there it sits, a silent reminder of a future that never came to be.

Grief doesn’t just live in the big milestones. Sometimes it’s tucked into the smallest corners of our lives — a box in the garage, an ornament on the tree, or a fleeting thought at bedtime.

The Ornaments

This next example of unseen grief is pretty simple and it’s what prompted me to write this blog in the first place. One of the first things I did when I returned home from the hospital after delivering the twins (and almost dying from complications), was order custom Christmas ornaments for the tree from Etsy. Looking back now it kind of feels like an odd choice but I have always been the type of person that has the desire to memorialize people in that way and it was a welcome distraction at the time.

Last December was the second Christmas that the ornaments were put on the tree. I leave them until the very end and scope out the perfect spot. Paul, once again, has a handy intuition when it comes to knowing what I need in these moments. He knows that putting the boys’ ornaments on the tree is something I have to do on my own, and he gives me my space to do so. However, he also knows that the moment they are on the tree is the moment that I need him, and without even being asked, he holds me as we look at the ornaments and have a little moment of remembrance together.

It’s bittersweet…it’s something I look forward to doing each Christmas but it’s also something that I dread because of the feelings it brings up for me. And then there are the everyday “what ifs” — the moments when I look at Xavier and imagine the life that could have been.

The Everyday “What Ifs”

Every day I look at Xavier and imagine what my life should have looked like had Hudson and Greyson been a part of it. I look at Xavier and imagine how big the twins would be compared to him, and I imagine how chaotic it would have been with the three of them tearing up the house together.

Any time we go grocery shopping, I think about how much more expensive our grocery bill would have been with two extra little mouths to feed. Every night at bedtime I think about how our bedtime routine would have been so different juggling 3 kids at once so close together in age.

Every time I have to pack away more clothes that Xavier has grown out of, I think about how they are going into a box in the basement instead of being passed down to his little brothers.

Every day, I walk by the book on my dresser that I had made documenting my pregnancy and experience with Hudson and Greyson. Most days I continue walking by, not quite in the right frame of mind to read through it again. It has all my belly update photos, my experiences with finding out I was pregnant, finding out it was twins, finding out they were both boys, and most importantly, the photos of me holding them in the hospital. On the rare days that do have the courage to look at it, I’m also struck with guilt about all the other days that it was just too hard to.

Scrolling into Familiar Territory

Some reminders are expected; others sneak in when I least expect them, even when I’m mindlessly scrolling at the end of the day. My bad habit of doomscrolling on TikTok some nights began right around the start of the pandemic, long before Hudson, Greyson, and even Xavier were a reality. While most of my algorithm consists of people doing random funny things, and cats…a good portion of it is usually about babies too. The baby fever that has plagued me for years has slowly evolved from a place of optimistic excitement for the future, to a deep unrelenting ache that just never completely goes away. Every so often, the algorithm gets a bit more specific and shows me more twin content, and once in a blue moon, it hits very close to home and shows me videos of other women talking about their experiences of losing a twin pregnancy in a scarily similar way to how I did. While these encounters often make me feel less alone and more connected to others who have gone through similar situations, they are impossible to prepare for. I often think of scrolling on TikTok as my daily gamble with emotional whiplash.

The Significant Dates

Certain dates have also carved themselves into my heart forever, marking both the deepest pain and a bittersweet kind of celebration. The reality of having not only 1 but 2 days a year that are significant reminders is also something not everyone realizes.

Technically speaking, December 23rd is the day that Hudson and Greyson were delivered but it was so early in the morning and the lack of sleep made it feel more like a never-ending extension of December 22nd which is the day that I found out I lost them, and the day that I was admitted to the hospital.

That being said, December 22nd is the hard day for me to relive because it’s the day that my whole world was flipped upside down. December 22nd is the day that I wish I could just sleep through and pretend it never happened. It doesn’t feel like a day to celebrate their short lives, it’s only a day of sadness and loss for me.

May 20th is a different story. While May 20th still carries its own host of complicated feelings, it’s a day that I try to make more of a positive experience. May 20th was supposed to be my due date (although once I found out it was twins, I knew that I would have had them much earlier than that). However, as May 20th was the only due date I received, this is the day I consider their actual birthday.

The Beautiful, Complicated Reminders

Sometimes, the reminders come in the most beautiful, complicated ways — through the lives of the people I love most. This piece of the puzzle of grief involves my nephews (on both sides of my family, surprisingly enough). My younger brother on my mom’s side has twin boys of his own, right around the same age as Xavier. I absolutely adore them, but at times, they are a quiet reminder of the life I imagined with Hudson and Greyson. On my dad’s side, while there are no twins in the family, my brother welcomed a son who happened to be born on, of all days, May 20th. These are just the beautiful and unpredictable ways life unfolds, and I wouldn’t change having these amazing boys in my life for anything, but there’s a quiet sadness in knowing I can't devote the day to Hudson and Greyson the way I once imagined, even as I feel so much joy in celebrating my nephew’s life too.

The Social Piece

These social interactions can be some of the hardest, leaving me feeling defeated. Like when a stranger casually asks, “Is he your only one?” and I have to decide whether to lie and say “yes” to avoid making them uncomfortable, or to tell the truth — that I have three children, but lost two during pregnancy.

When I choose to spare them the awkwardness, or on the days I just don’t have the energy to get into it, I’m often left with a deep sense of guilt, like I’m denying Hudson and Greyson’s existence. More often than not though, I tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make the conversation. They deserve to be known, and I still believe there shouldn’t be such a stigma around talking about loss. It happens around us every single day.

Another layer of this is how people in my life sometimes avoid mentioning them, thinking they’re protecting me — and while I deeply appreciate the kindness behind that, the truth is, I want them to be remembered. It fills my heart when someone brings them up, because it means they are still thought of. I cannot thank enough the people who have taken the time to ask if it’s okay to talk about them, or to include them in things like listing all the grandchildren. Those small acts mean the absolute world to me.

Hopes, Fears, and Guilt About the Future

Grief has a way of entangling itself with our hopes for the future, stirring up fears and guilt over things that haven’t even happened yet. I’ve spoken a lot about guilt and how it’s woven through my grief journey. It’s not just the guilt I feel for things in the past—like not fully appreciating my pregnancy at the time, experiencing gender disappointment, or worrying that I somehow caused what happened. There’s also anticipatory guilt.

I do want to have more children someday, absolutely. But given my past struggles with infertility, I’m keeping my expectations low. Still, I know myself well enough to recognize that when the time comes to try again, I’ll be overwhelmed with guilt: guilt over feeling like I’m trying to "replace" them; guilt for feeling like our family isn’t complete and thinking another baby might somehow fill that space, even though deep down I know it never truly can. Guilt for fearing that moving forward might look like forgetting them, even though I know that’s impossible.

And yet, the guilt is already here, even though I’m not even at that point yet.

Then there’s the fear that comes with it. I keep telling myself that losing Hudson and Greyson shouldn’t make me more nervous about future pregnancies, because their loss was tied specifically to the rare type of twins they were. Their pregnancy was high risk by nature, and realistically, the chances of a future singleton pregnancy being high risk for me are much lower.

But if I’m being honest, I know I’ll still be scared. I know there will be an entirely new set of triggers if I ever get pregnant again. I imagine I’ll have severe anxiety going to every ultrasound appointment, especially because when I found out I lost the twins, I was at that appointment alone. I went to almost every appointment alone back then, and I don’t think I can do that again.

Will I feel joy or absolute dread the first time I feel a baby move again? Because the one clear time I remember feeling Hudson move, I’ve convinced myself it was the moment he died.

If my symptoms come and go, will I spiral, convinced I’m having a miscarriage?

I pray that if I have another baby, I’ll be able to give birth at the Toronto Birth Centre again. I don’t know how I would handle having to deliver at the same hospital where I lost Hudson and Greyson. I would hate the first moments of my child’s life to be remembered through the lens of my past trauma.

A Place to Feel Close

And then there are the places where grief feels most tangible, places where I can go to feel close to them, even if just for a moment. In October of 2023 the Scarborough Health Network held their annual burial ceremony for babies born before 19 weeks.

It was a beautifully sad and intense experience where you are surrounded by many other people grieving the loss of their babies too. It was so strange to not have a clue who any of those people were and yet feel so connected to them because of the shared experience we were all going through.

This mass grave is where I will visit every May. Last spring was my first time going back since the ceremony and it took me a while to find the spot again because they hadn’t yet placed a marker on the grave. You might think it’s odd to feel so connected to a seemingly random unmarked spot of dirt on the ground, but the reality is that mere inches below that random unmarked spot of dirt on the ground is all that is left of my boys.

This year on May 20th, I will be Jamaica celebrating one of my best friend’s getting married (with the wedding also happening that same day). I am hoping I can find some way to honour Hudson and Greyson that day, even if it is something small. Even though I can't be at their resting place this year, I know that Hudson and Greyson are with me, always.

I know there will be more unexpected and unseen waves of grief in the years ahead as there always are when you're navigating loss. But I also know that as I continue to heal and grow, those moments will feel a little lighter, and a little easier to carry.