King Kairo

Quintessentially Mental: The Podcast

Transcript

SureEyes: [00:00:00] you're listening to quintessentially mental a podcast hosted by SureEyes, please note that this host is not a mental health practitioner or professional, and this podcast is not made for treatment of any mental illness.

[00:00:24] Spudcaster: [00:00:24] baobulb.org is a podcasting platform and a medium for storytelling. This podcast is also available on all the major podcasting apps, including apple and Google podcasts, podcast your life with baobulb.org.

[00:00:43] SureEyes: [00:00:43] Hey y'all this is quintessentially mental the podcast, and I'm your host. SureEyes. I'm also known by my government name, Cherize Ross. I do some overcompensating for my mood today, I woke up feeling pretty bleak. Um, and this week I wanted to talk about loss and grief and trauma, um, things that have been affecting me on a very personal, very real level, almost daily for now, almost a year.

[00:01:18] Um, I woke up thinking about my. My baby nephew who lived with me from the time of his birth. Um, he was just a few days shy of turning 11 months when he passed away. Um, and that by far was the most traumatic thing that has happened to me in my whole life, in my whole damn life. Um, Before that had happened.

[00:01:50] I'd had other traumatic experiences, whether it was, you know, the number of racial incidents I had experienced where I had my identity, my being my existence, my essence questioned purely because of the colour of my skin, a trauma that I'd been dealing with since I was six years old.

[00:02:19] Um,

[00:02:22] the trauma of being arrested in London for speaking out against, um, a racial incident and maybe taking it too far by calling the British police colonial liars.

[00:02:35] Um, I guess in the heat of the moment, I, I really. Had my anger towards, you know, colonial mindsets and that type of oppression explode on me. And I ended up getting arrested. Another trauma was, you know, something I speak about quite often, which is the end of an eight year relationship. That was quite significant to me.

[00:03:05] And having that be the most traumatic thing that had ever happened. But since the passing of my baby nephew, there has been nothing. That's not true. Actually. I guess my, the birth of my son was probably as traumatic and maybe that's a conversation to have another day where we talk about, you know, almost maternal.

[00:03:35] Traumas and maternal mental health issues, something that I'm experiencing also quite deeply. Um, but like I said, this morning, I woke up thinking about my baby nephew Kairo. I'd call him aunty’s big boy, king Kairo. Um, I woke up feeling really, really sad, um, and really missing him in. I’m just thinking about, you know, he would have been turning two this year and what would he have been saying?

[00:04:11] What would have he, how, you know, what I could tell, even at the age of, you know, almost 11 months, the personality that was developing and, you know, he'd make me laugh. And, you know, I often have the events of that day running through my mind. Um, at the time of his death, I was pregnant with my son. I was about 20 weeks pregnant.

[00:04:39] Um, and I remember waking up on that, on that morning and going into my brother's apartment and, you know, yelling at him for not cleaning out the cat's litter because when you're pregnant, you know, you're not supposed to deal with kitty litter because of the toxins that they, um, that they, that they give off that could potentially harm an unborn baby.

[00:05:06] And usually every morning when I walked into my brother's room or my brother's apartment, I would immediately grab Kairo and kiss him and, you know, ask him. How he slept and talk to him. And on this morning, I was so wrapped up in my, you know, I was in a, on a work call or I was about to have a work, work, uh, work or workshop anyway.

[00:05:36] Um, I needed to have actively participated. And, um, you know, I, I was upset about my brother, just always having to remind him to clean the cat litter. Um, and then I also needed to rush off because my mom wasn't feeling well. She had a bit of a crick in her neck and I'd committed to going to Clicks to, um, you know, get her some Transact patches or something to soothe her stiff neck.

[00:06:12] And, um, yes, I yelled at my brother and he, he just got up out of a daze. Went downstairs. I got into my car and I left. And when I came back, I walked into my house and all I could hear was my mom saying, come Kairo, come Kairo, come, come Kairo. And I thought, this is it. He's walking. You know, he's and I just heard my brother yell for me saying, Cherize come quickly.

[00:06:46] Cherize come quickly. And I just thought, this is the moment. This is it. You know, he, he's walking now. He'd been standing and he'd been edging across surfaces helping himself move. And I thought, this is it. I'm being called to come and see him walk. And as I went up the stairs, nothing could have prepared me for, for what I saw.

[00:07:10] Um, you know, I saw. My mom holding his limp body and my brother completely in shock and devastated, confused. Um, my mom kind of trying to resuscitate him. Um, I was just, I was confused and I kept asking what happened was he left in the bath was, you know, my brother was like, no, no, you know, and there was some, a lot of confusion.

[00:07:43] Um, We called the paramedics. And while they stayed on the phone with them, we continue to administer CPR to Kairo. Um, and it was, it was out of this world. His body was cold and it was limp. Um, he's yeah, he's very little body. Eventually the paramedics arrived. And they took over trying to resuscitate him.

[00:08:19] Um,

[00:08:20] and you know, we, we were told to leave the room that they were in and they continuously tried. And I think the lead paramedic on this, who responded to this call. Found a glimmer of hope on one of the machines, because she quickly grabbed him, instructed her team to follow and instructed me to follow her to the hospital, just down the road from my house, which we were very lucky was so close.

[00:08:52] And as we rushed, you know, she, she kind of, I still have images of, or similar visions of seeing this paramedic, holding his body with all of these. Pipes and attachments to his body and just running down my stairs, running down into the, you know, with his naked body, you're running into the ambulance. Um, I still remember being completely dazed and confused and trying to figure out what exactly was happening.

[00:09:28] As we got to the hospital, they had taken him into the triage area. And I remember distinctly walking in and asking one of the people who worked at the hospital was he breathing. And I think I'm not sure if he didn't hear me or misunderstood me, but all he kept saying was yes, yes the little boy is inside.

[00:09:50] And I took that as, yes. Yes. The little boy is breathing and I almost felt this incredible wave of relief. Just wash over me where I just felt completely and entirely relieved that at least he was breathing as we, as we sat in, in the ER and, you know, filling out the paperwork and you know, me having responses to the, the medical staff, you know, things like that.

[00:10:22] You know, how were you supposed to put a price tag on a life and how am I supposed to, you know, just really reacting and exploding and lashing out to the situation. Eventually we sat down and the lead paramedic and the doctor walked in. This must've been after about maybe 15, 20 minutes. Um, maybe not even maybe 10, 15 minutes.

[00:10:50] I don't really have. A concept of time, um, when it comes to that day and they came to us and, you know, the doctor kind of just shook his head. I don't even know if it was a male doctor, female doctor, I don't even know. Um, but the lead paramedic was a woman and she came to us and she just said, look, we tried our best, but we couldn't save him.

[00:11:17] And it felt like my entire world had just. Crashed my entire world had just come crumbling down. And it was the most surreal feeling because I'd been texting work during the morning saying I have this family emergency, my nephew, isn't breathing, like being quite clinical in my descriptions of the events that were transpiring.

[00:11:46] And almost, it was like, that was something to keep. My hands busy or keep my mind busy was just relaying the events as they unfolded to someone at work who who's my own, your coworker, but, but a friend, um, and I just broke down. I just completely, uh, completely lost it. Um, I couldn't understand how. My brother had changed his nappy at just 4:00 AM on that morning, where he was laughing and talking and babbling and, you know, showing no signs of distress, showing no signs of something, being wrong, showing no signs that only a few hours later he would pass away and.

[00:12:45] And that that by far was the most intensely devastating experience I'd had to date. Um, of course, with his autopsy coming out weeks later, um, it was found that he had Bronco pneumonia, which was present in both his lungs. If I'm not mistaken, And what's completely bizarre is, you know, this is the type of illness with kids that shows signs there's, you know, there's signs of struggling to breathe, there’s signs of, you know, lack of appetite.

[00:13:29] There's, you know, signs of a fever. There's, they're very visible signs before, you know, something like that. Ends up being a fatality ends up taking a baby's life and, and still to this day, I, I, I don't understand, you know, and I remember the days, the moments that hours, the days, the immediacy of moments immediately after my, my nephew had passed.

[00:14:01] Everyone kept saying to me, you know, you need to look after your own son. You need to. You need to look after yourself so that you can look off to your son. And you know, this was, it was a very confusing and bizarre time for me because Kairo was like my son, you know, he lived with me from the time of his birth.

[00:14:25] We cared for him. We looked after him. We bought nappies and milk and tried new foods with him and had bath time with him. For all intents and purposes, you know, he was like a son to me. And so his, it was the strange concept of how am I to mourn this human who grace, my life for almost 11 months brought me so much joy.

[00:14:56] And yet I was so sad at his passing and yet still needed to be excited and. Happy about the pending arrival of my own son, my biological son. Um, it's something that, you know, it took me a while to kind of realize that our emotions aren't black and white, I emotions aren't either, or our emotions aren't mutually exclusive for a long time.

[00:15:28] I felt that I could not be happy because I was grieving. And I could not grieve because I was happy. Um, and it took a while for me to realize that,

[00:15:41] you know,

[00:15:45] emotions exist on a spectrum. You know, emotions exist, not mutually exclusive of each other and, and took a long while for me to be able to accept that.

[00:15:57] I remember going to my 20 week scan and my. The gynecologist's telling me, but your little boy is perfect. He's anatomy is perfect. His lungs, his kidneys, his heart, his spine, his brain, everything is perfect. And I just burst into tears. I couldn't, you know, in the same, in that moment, I was so ecstatically happy that everything was perfect with my own little boy.

[00:16:30] And so completely devastated that my Kairo was no more. Um, I'm going to pause there and let's take a break to hear from our sponsors. Um, and we'll return where, you know, I'll, I'll kind of talk a bit about how his passing affected me in, in the days coming and in the months coming and still to this day.

[00:16:57] Um, so let's hear from our sponsors. And while we do that, thank you to our wonderful host baobulb platform an organisation who continue to provide us with the space to have these very important conversations.

[00:17:15] Spudcaster: [00:17:15] baobulb.org is a podcasting platform and a medium for storytelling. This podcast is also available on all the major podcasting apps, including apple and Google podcasts, podcasts your life with baobulb.org.

[00:17:33] SureEyes: [00:17:33] Welcome back. Um, this is quintessentially mental, the podcast. In an earlier segment. I shared in detail, my experience of losing my young nephew, my baby nephew king Kairo, and how that affected me. Um, and I wanted to talk a bit about how, you know, I I've, I've struggled, you know, since his passing, I've struggled with deep anxiety.

[00:18:05] Um, constantly wondering questioning if the same thing is going to happen to my son, you know, kind of paranoid that I'm overlooking a symptom guilty that, you know, I didn't take as good care of Kairo as I should have or as I could have or as I, you know, and these things don't matter, right. The could’ve/should’ves, they don’t matter.

[00:18:31] Uh, what does matter it is. You know that I try to find some peace. And so, and so in the days after his, in the days after his passing, um, I barely ate, I barely slept. I cried continuously. Um, I, I was a zombie, you know, it was, it was a very, very difficult period. And yet still having to. Become functional as we planned his funeral, um, still become, you know, be functional so that I could be there for my brother who I cannot fathom, had to bury his child, um, to this, to this day.

[00:19:22] It's not something that I think any person should experience the loss of your child. And so as the days progressed, two weeks, every Tuesday, he passed away on a Tuesday, every Tuesday would be a reminder of, you know, it's been so many weeks since Kairo passed away and the events of that morning would run through my mind.

[00:19:50] And every Tuesday was so difficult for me. Um, And it would also be the mark of a new week in my pregnancy, which was again, this juxtaposition of, you know, emotion, positive and negative emotion that I was feeling at the same time. Um, and so the 23rd of each month became a difficult date for me to digest where, you know, So many months since Kairo had passed and I'm still shook, I guess, by how sudden his passing was, I'm still shook by the fact that I don't hear him anymore, that I don't see him anymore, that, you know, he's gone, I guess.

[00:20:43] And this is, this is the thing, right? Is death definitely triggers, very unstable, emotional and mental health situations, feelings. I don't even know what to call it right now. I'm pretty emotional as I'm sharing this. Um, you know, it's, it's something that triggers. You know, if I think of, if it wasn't for my pregnancy and you know, I I'd say this to my close friends and my family that if it wasn't for my pregnancy, I probably would have gone off at the deep end.

[00:21:21] And I would've gone on some kind of binge, I would have gone into some kind of destructive force and, and by all intents and purposes, my pregnancy with my own son saved me from the depths of, of grief for Kairo. Um, as I said, I still struggle with anxiety. I still, you know, check if my son is breathing, I still check if, you know, if every cough kind of triggers alarm bells, every, you know, and I think to this day, not having closure on what caused it really plays with my mind and really affects the way that I, you know, View my son.

[00:22:10] And that's been a very tiring process not to allow this, to consume me and to really infiltrate the way I raise my son. I'm talking about it now. I can almost see how far I've come, you know, way I'm able now to. Allow my son to be sleeping and leave the room, even if it's just 10 minutes. Um, my paranoia doesn't seem to be as prevalent.

[00:22:42] My anxiety isn't always as high. Um, but it's definitely something that still lingers at the back of my mind. Something that still plays on my mind. And I think will play in my mind for a very long time. And so I know this podcast episode, isn't really giving much advice

[00:23:05] or

[00:23:08] I don't know, isn't really concluding.

[00:23:13] I really don't have any words of wisdom on, on death on this particular topic. But I know there's a, there's a quote by Rumi that always, that always stands out for me. You are not a drop in the ocean. Well, I'm paraphrasing because Rumi and I don't have it in front of me, but basically it says, you know, you are not a drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean in a drop.

[00:23:42] And that almost gave me comfort that, you know, why did I always say by Kairos life had yet to begin? He, you know, he was a whole full person in his entire life. Um, he lacked nothing. He, he needed nothing. And, you know, I kind of, I reached a point in my grieving process where I almost thought, you know, whatever you need to tell yourself to feel better, whatever, whatever that thing is that you need to tell yourself to feel better.

[00:24:14] Tell yourself that thing. And for me, what I, you know, what I kept telling myself was, you know, you taught me how to love. He taught me. That I could love unconditionally. He taught me that I could have love for someone and something that wasn't necessarily out of my body. And I knew whatever doubt I had, about the type of mother I would be.

[00:24:41] I knew with certainty that I would be the best mother possible to my son. I don't know how to conclude this episode. Um, If you are dealing with grief and loss and death related trauma, I urge you to talk to someone who understands that psychology, um, who understands trauma and the grief process, and, you know, allowing yourself to move through a very non-linear healing process.

[00:25:21] On that note, darlings, um, love yourself and each other be kind to yourself and each other. Um, yeah. Hit me up on, on social media on socials. If you want to talk, I'm here too. I think this is the first time that I've extended my help or my ear to those who need it. So. Feel free to reach out, to reach out to me.

[00:25:52] I'm Cherize Ross on Facebook and @S U R E Y E S on Instagram. Slide into those DM’s and, uh, yeah, be kind to yourself. Really one love. Toodles

[00:26:09] Spudcaster: [00:26:09] Thank you for listening to this spudcaster podcast. Don't forget to like share and subscribe.

[00:26:18] SureEyes: [00:26:18] You've been listening to quintessentially mental the podcast, hosted by SureEyes.

[00:26:24] Join us next week as we continue the conversation about mental health. And remember we are always perfectly ourselves.

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