Linda Sterry with her son Gregor, who died shortly after his second birthday. One of my most treasured memories of my son Gregor is the image of his cheeky face on his second birthday as he pinched icing off his birthday cake. It was 4 March 2009, and we celebrated with a tea party with his four-year-old brother, Ben, and two of their friends. It was the perfect day. Little did we know that less than two weeks later he would go down for his afternoon nap and never wake up.
On the morning of 15 March, Gregor had been out playing in the park. At lunchtime, my husband, Mark, put him to bed for his nap, but when he went to check on him later he wasn't breathing. Mark tried desperately to resuscitate him, while I phoned the emergency services, with Ben clinging on to me asking what was happening.
The paramedics and hospital staff did everything they could, but it soon became clear that Gregor wasn't going to make it. I felt utterly numb – it was like a surreal nightmare. When we were told we had lost our little boy it was as if the world had come crashing down around us. We drove home in a complete daze.
Arriving back, I was stunned to see a police officer guarding the house. We were told it was a crime scene, and that we would need to answer some questions. He didn't know if we would even be allowed back in that night. Just two hours ago, we had been told our child had died, and now this. The officer was clearly inexperienced and didn't know how to speak to us. On top of all this, the police had to take away Gregor's sheets as evidence. It was horrendous.
Soon, two CID officers arrived to question us and all I could think was: I want these men out of my house, so answer their questions and they'll leave. The automatic reaction when a police officer starts questioning you is to feel inexplicably guilty. I was thinking, do they think I've harmed my child? They went through a list of questions about illnesses, what had happened that day, who had been where, and things like that.
Eventually they finished and left, and we had the heartbreaking task of telling Ben what had happened. He was devastated. We told him that the doctors couldn't make Gregor breathe again and he had died. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
After that I was on autopilot. We had a fantastic funeral director who gave me a list of things to do every day, and there were things that I wanted to make sure happened – the situation was distressing enough, so it was very important to me that Gregor's life was celebrated.
For the funeral, I encouraged people to wear their brightest item of clothing and the coffin was covered in daffodils. I had made it clear to friends and family that Ben needed his peers there, and I definitely think having lots of children there helped. But in the days after the funeral, the house felt empty and silent. I desperately missed the sound of a toddler running around.
In some ways Ben's grief and straightforwardness really helped me and I would answer his questions as honestly as I could. A lot were along the lines of: "What do you think happens with such and such?" and I'd say: "I don't know. What do you think?" Two seconds later, he would be asking what was for tea. Children's grief has been described to me as "puddle jumping" and I think that is an amazing analogy. One minute they have their foot in a puddle, then they are straight out again and they won't return to it.
I hadn't lost anyone close before so grief was very new to me. I think helping Ben got me through it. I encouraged him to talk about his brother. He knows what grief feels like, he knows that feeling in his tummy. He says: "I really miss my brother." I'm probably his best counsellor right now. If I thought he needed other support I'd be the first person to seek it, but he is very open. He misses his brother terribly – they shared a room.
I keep loads of photos of Gregor in the house. Images are hard sometimes because they show you what you had, yet they show you what you have lost. But Ben will always be a big brother. Six months after Gregor's death, the first school project he had to do was All About My Family. How tough is that? Especially when children are quite factual and will say: "You don't have a brother."
There have been occasions when I haven't hidden my tears from him. I don't think I could. If he is sobbing in front of me, sometimes I want to cry with him, but the pain and sorrow is a measure of love and showing emotion is a healthy thing. I'd be a lot more worried if he was keeping it all in.
Shortly after Gregor's death, a police officer put a leaflet for the Scottish Cot Death Trust (SCDT) through the door. Cot death hadn't even crossed my mind, so that was a shock. At an initial postmortem, the verdict was "unascertained, pending further investigation". We then had a four-month wait for the cause of death, which was found to be an overwhelming virus. Even though he hadn't had any symptoms, we discovered the virus had infected all Gregor's organs. The paediatrician explained that it was very rare for this to happen in a healthy child and that was hard to deal with.
The police were involved throughout. In Scotland, where we live, the procurator fiscal heads up the investigation, acting like the Crown Prosecution Service in England. They take information from the police and all the other reports and pathology and communicate with the family. Our experience with the procurator fiscal was pretty shabby. The communication was not well co-ordinated and led to a lot of confusion.
But the referral to the SCDT was crucial. I called and spoke to the community services nurse. For the first few months I hadn't cried very much, but I found myself comforting a lot of people who were crying, so it helped to be able to talk things through with her.
The whole thing has been tough for my parents, too. Something like this challenges relationships with your family because, suddenly, the child is experiencing something the parents have not. That has been really difficult, but with the help of counselling I have managed to keep things on track.
In fact, counselling has helped me in a lot of ways. The anxiety I felt back then was overwhelming. I've always been quite self-confident, but my self-esteem was so low that I felt physically sick at the thought of going to work.
I got myself back to work but didn't enjoy being there. Then last November I was made redundant. It was a shock, but I think I probably would have left at some point because I felt I wanted to do something worthwhile.
After I was made redundant, I saw an advert for Vodafone's World of Difference scheme, in which people "donate" themselves to a charity. I was accepted on to the scheme, working with the SCDT running a survey for bereaved families about their experiences. It was almost somehow making good of my pain. It gave me a massive boost. I gained a lot from talking to other parents who had lost children. I had a sense of aloneness that is really hard to explain to people. I was surrounded by friends but I still felt alone in my head. So talking to others who had been through it helped.
Every year brings new challenges and more lie ahead. My approach is to face up to them because, even if Gregor's death couldn't have been prevented, the more people know about how they can reduce the risks of cot death, the better.
A key finding of my survey was inconsistency of care. The biggest problem was that a lot of professionals didn't listen to families. Most acknowledged why the police had to be involved, but sometimes they felt it was done insensitively. For me, it was a really tough thing to cope with on top of everything else. If our son had died in a hospital or hospice, we would have been surrounded with support – instead, we were made to feel guilty. There are huge opportunities for training. I would hope that the local bobby who turned up on my door could be given an insight into being as kind as the law allows.
But it is hard for anyone to know what to say. I gave up protecting other people's feelings a long time ago. If people ask: "Do you have children?" I answer honestly. If I did otherwise, I feel I would be betraying Gregor's memory.
Visit scottishcotdeathtrust.org or fsid.org.uk. Linda's blog is at worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/blogs/linda-sterry
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