Here Come The Tears

There is a ride at Alton Towers theme park called the Oblivion. I have only been on it once, I think. I'm sure I'd remember if it were more. You are herded into a carriage with other thrill seekers and, after some mild and disarming meandering, are left hanging over a sheer vertical drop down into darkness and dry ice. After time enough to appreciate this, the cart plunges at high speed into oblivion.

Which is a bit like the time after a dead child's birthday. There is the slow anticipation of the build up; the day itself -  in my experience - a gentle and peaceful time and the aftermath - a plunge back into intense grief. Of course, my mangled simile fails at this point. A fairground ride is as much about exhilaration as it is fear. Infant death is not. Nevertheless, it is true that in years past Emma's birthday has preceded a roller coaster period of very raw grief and sadness, culminating in Christmas.

But not this year, strangely. I waited for the depression but it didn't come. I was quiet and inward looking for much of October but curiously content. Life has been full on since then. We are up to our eyes in paint pots and decorative repair,in preparation for braving a stagnant housing market in the new year. The eldest two are reaching the age where the word mummy means taxi service quite as much as it means "all knowing and wise nurturing source of all goodness and sustenance!"  Toby is not quite two and is a full on whirling dervish of mischief and joy and chatter.

... And I have been looking forward to Christmas - honest-to-goodness excitement and pleasure at the thought of it, something I thought was gone for good. But there will always be triggers. Of course. I expect them. I even welcome them as a means of capturing elusive closeness with my daughter, my Emma. The tree groans with ornaments bearing her name, after four Christmases of pouncing on personalised decorations in garden centres and craft fairs and packing them carefully in tissue paper and bubble wrap, come January. Each December, there is pleasure in unwrapping them, but pain too. "This isn't how it's meant to be," falls from my lips less frequently now, but it doesn't mean I feel it less often. And hanging your child's ornaments on the tree instead of their stocking by their bed will always be wrong and always disorientating.

Some of my triggers are less obvious - more mundane but no less crushing. Coming home from school of an afternoon, after crossing the busy road at the bottom of the hill which leads to our home, I release Toby from the sling or the pushchair so he can indulge his toddler passion for crazy running with the big kids. I watched them both take his hands and pull him up with them. They were cheering, he was giggling and I was trying my darnedest to keep my eye on the shadowy three year old girl with bouncing curls who was running with them. She looked around at me and laughed. I swear she winked and then I blinked and she was gone ... again. And I cried ... again.

Which is something I do every time I hear this song. Which is often. My children like to listen to Radio 2 in the mornings and the DJ is championing this song for the Christmas number one. So, it is played daily around breakfast time. I find excuses to delve into the fridge because, although I don't hide my grief or my tears for Emma, it is becoming a bit of a feature of our morning routine - hot shower, clothes on, breakfast eaten, quick weep, teeth brushed, shoes on. It's the first couple of lines that get me ... because my love, as potent as it was, couldn't keep her safe and there is no bridge I can cross to bring her home to me. She is gone and I am facing my fourth Christmas without Emma.