- (Read Danish version here.)
Published in the magazine for the Danish National Association for Loss of infants
Morten Brask lost his twins in April 2000. One year has passed. What are his reflections? How does a father and a man endure unbearable grief?
Alma
One morning, a doctor called us in for a meeting. “Alma has suffered a brain hemorrhage,” the doctor said. “She will never have a normal life. We must stop treatment.”
We sat in silence in the waiting room, staring at the doctor. She smiled, though it was clear she had done this before, yet would never truly grow accustomed to telling parents they were about to lose their child.
I cried, and so did Siri. Is there a harsher blow to endure? Your child is going to die. An hour later, our parents arrived to say their goodbyes to Alma. They stood by her incubator, gazing at her, bidding her farewell. Siri and I sat in a room, waiting for a nurse to disconnect Alma from the ventilator, tubes, and sensors. I stood by the window, watching raindrops ripple in puddles. Shortly after, the nurse brought Alma to us and placed her on Siri’s chest. Alma had tucked both hands beneath one cheek. She lay perfectly still—a tiny angel. We kissed her, whispering how much we loved her. Occasionally, she gasped for air. We could do nothing. We just sat there, holding our little girl, watching her slip away as we whispered and stroked her hair.
Thor
I couldn’t move for the rest of the day. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, or at Alma, who lay in a cradle beside the bed. Siri expressed milk with a pump; during that hour when we held Alma, her milk had come in, painfully swelling her breasts. Only in the evening did I gather the strength to visit Thor. Beside him stood the empty incubator. Thor’s condition had slightly improved, and he accepted the milk.
Siri and I took turns sitting by Thor’s incubator. We followed the nurses’ work closely and soon learned to read the numbers and graphs on the monitors. We could tell how he was doing—elated when the numbers improved, anxious when they dropped. Days passed in a relentless rhythm between home and the neonatal unit. Some mornings, he was doing well; others, poorly. We began to hope he might survive. But in the final days, his vitals plummeted. His lungs were failing, and there was little hope for recovery.
One particularly dire day, I did something I had never done before—something I would have found pathetic in any other circumstance. I locked myself in a bathroom, knelt on the floor, and prayed. I prayed that, if a life had to be taken, it would be mine. Thor should live, grow up, and become a happy person. Let me die; let my son live. But this, my only prayer ever, went unanswered.
The inevitable came. Once again, we were called into a meeting. His lungs could no longer sustain him. We sat with Thor, holding him until his heart stopped beating.
The last Morning
We were allowed to bring the twins home. The day before the funeral, the coffin arrived. We dressed them in clothes. It was impossible to find garments small enough, so we had to use doll clothes. We laid them side by side, as close as they had been in Siri’s womb.
Half an hour before the funeral, we placed flowers and gifts in the coffin—a gold bracelet and a pocketknife. I was about to close the lid when Siri began to cry, begging me not to. “I can’t,” she sobbed, “I can’t say goodbye to my children.”
Eventually, I had to ask Siri to leave the room. Once she was gone, I sat for a while, looking at them. Inside, something shattered—something that would never heal. I will never get through this, I thought. Then, I placed the lid on the coffin.
Shattered Dreams
In the days after the funeral, everything fell apart. It was unavoidable. We sat on the couch, staring into the garden. Late spring had arrived. Summer and long daylight hours were approaching. The birds were beginning to herald the season, but in our home, there was only darkness. The air was heavy with shattered dreams.
It was during these days that I truly felt how sharply the world distinguishes a father’s grief from a mother’s. When friends and family visited, several turned to me and said, “This is so hard. Poor Siri, losing her children like that. You have to be strong and take care of her; she’s endured a terrible loss.”
I nodded. Yes, she had. But what about me, the father? Why did even those closest to me assume the mother’s loss was greater than the father’s? Why was I expected to be strong when I had no strength left? When I could barely get out of bed in the morning? Why should I conform to the tired old role of the strong man when I wasn’t strong at all?
Unable to meet these expectations, everything eventually broke down. Siri couldn’t bear the grief in our apartment, so she moved in with her mother. It marked the beginning of the end of our long relationship. We had heard it before: such immense pain can destroy a marriage. Those who survive it often already have other children. In our case, the prediction held true.
Alone
I spent some days alone in the empty apartment. Life had to go on, I thought. I was, of course, on sick leave, but I assumed I could return to normalcy after some time.
Three days later, having neither eaten nor drunk, my parents came to fetch me. They moved me into their guest room, giving me a chance to live an unburdened life I hadn’t known since childhood. Weeks passed where I did little more than rise, sit in the summer sun, wander deep into the forest, and slowly, very slowly, begin to recover.
Tears Among the Trees
On long walks through the forest, I thought often of the children. Being alone was liberating; I could sit in a clearing and cry without eliciting strange looks. People are accustomed to seeing children cry. They also accept women crying. But a grown man crying is unsettling, almost frightening. It signifies a loss of control, and it feels so wrong.
We say men should show their emotions, should cry. But when they do, it’s uncomfortable. Although I’ve never struggled to express emotions, I found it nearly impossible to cry in front of others. I cried at the hospital, but after the funeral, I rarely showed my grief publicly.
Friends’ Understanding
When friends visited, I would recount the entire story: the birth, the pain, the empty days alone. My friends cried as I shared what had happened. I told the story to my new girlfriend. I wrote an article about the children’s death for a magazine. I did everything I could to share my grief, so I wouldn’t have to bear it alone. Yet, it often felt as though I was speaking to deaf ears.
Even my closest friends couldn’t truly understand. Their empathy was genuine but limited—like watching an unbearably sad movie. It moves you deeply, but it never becomes real pain.
