The power of nature: A bereaved mother’s story

Sophie Pierce’s son Felix died of SUDEP in 2017, aged just 20.  Now her memoir ‘The Green Hill: Letters to a Son’, is coming out in paperback; she says writing it has been a key part of her grieving process.

It’s now 9 long years since my son Felix died of SUDEP.  He was a student at Leicester University, just 20 years old, and was found dead in his room after not being seen for a couple of days.  This horrendous event was, as anyone bereaved by sudden death knows, utterly life changing, not just for me, his mother, but for the entire family of course. The repercussions will continue to reverberate for the rest of our lives.

Very soon after he died, I found myself writing letters to him in a large notebook I kept by my bed. Each night I spoke to him via the letters, as though he were still alive.  Amid the shock of his death, I think it was a way of trying to pretend he was still there, and refusing to accept he had died. But I also knew, deep down, that this was a defining event in my life and I needed to keep some kind of record, however painful.  

There was no plan to write a book.  But after a couple of years, I realised that I had something to say about death and grief, which affect us all, but are also subjects we tend to avoid, through fear.  I hoped that by putting my thoughts ‘out there’ I could contribute something useful to society by putting pen to paper and sharing my experience.  But also, at a visceral, angry level, it was to tell the world, to scream at the world, ‘this is what it is like to lose a child’.

The title of the book, ‘The Green Hill’ is a reference to Felix’s burial place at Sharpham Meadow, a peaceful field overlooking the River Dart in Devon, with distant views of the sea.  At the time of his death, I felt grateful that we had somewhere beautiful for him to rest, but in the years since, I have come to realise that places and nature play a far more important role in our emotional lives than we appreciate.

Of course, wild landscapes are soothing and therapeutic in a general sense; beauty is something that makes us feel good.  But when you’ve experienced a traumatic death, you need something more; it’s not about being ‘cheered up’ by a stunning sunset or a breathtaking view, lovely though these things are.  It’s something more profound than that: feeling part of the wheel of life: of birth, growth, and finally death; a sense of touching our mortality, and connecting to the person we have lost.

Being in nature helps me confront the hideous reality of Felix’s death. Nature incorporates not just beauty, but decay and death too: take trees in a wood.  In the spring they burst into life, with young green leaves. As the summer wears on the leaves start to change colour and eventually fall to the ground.  They then decay, and that decay leads to new growth. Somehow that is reassuring.

Walking on Dartmoor, swimming in the sea and hiking along the coast path has helped me make a kind of peace with Felix’s death. It’s also a way that I can feel a particular kind of connection to him, a continuing bond if you like.  These immersive activities give me a sense of being with him still, through that bodily connection and communion with the earth where his body lies. 

The paperback of Sophie’s memoir, The Green Hill: Letters to a Son, is out on Thursday 23^rd August from Wilton Square Books.

Sophie is doing various events talking about the book, the week beginning 19^th April, you can find out more here.

Follow Sophie on Instagram @mssophiepierce or Facebook.