Welcome to my blog!

I can quite honestly say that I NEVER expected to be writing here again. It is almost five years since my last post and, although I visit occasionally - to check I can remember the site address, as much as anything! - I haven't fixed broken links or updated my profile or removed posts linked to long deleted videos.

But, my life has changed so much. I'm about to be a student midwife and I'm part of a wonderful Facebook community for aspiring, soon-to-be student, already are student, already qualified, former midwives. (Hope I caught everyone with that!) I mentioned this blog in a post there and the response from those saying they would like to read it was positive. So, here I am, rolling out the welcome mat for a new type of reader. Once upon a time, this blog was only read by other babyloss parents. It was only really written for them too but I hope there might be something of value for those seeking to understand the ongoing impact that infant loss has on those of us who experience it.

This was going to be a thread on the Secret Community but it got Wa--a--a--y too long so I thought, why not make it a gateway to the rest of the blog instead?

So, a few random thoughts. It is an entirely personal set of musings on what losing my daughter, Emma, has meant for me. That means, I make no claims about representing any sort of best practice here. I do speak at Sands 'Improving Bereavement Care' training days for Health Care Professionals likely to encounter infant loss and there, when I tell Emma's story, I am mindful of Sands guidelines and so forth. This is unfiltered. This is me and my thoughts - sometimes they're sad, sometimes they might be vaguely amusing, hopefully they're illuminating but, always, they're honest. I decided from the outset that there was no point doing this if it wasn't real. So, yeah - it's unvarnished.

If you're coming to this from a midwifery perspective rather than a babylost one, then please allow me to give you a heads up. I don't talk a lot about my labour and birth with Emma but it does come up in a couple of posts. We don't have a precise reason for Emma's death so a lot of what I write about is, at best, speculation. Please be mindful that I'm writing here as mother (not a midwife) so if something seems medically imprecise about my understanding of how her labour and birth unfolded then that's why. Who knows, maybe in three years, I'll come back here as a qualified midwife and realise that some of what I said what wrong and edit accordingly but until then, the mother-perspective stays!

So, anyway, welcome and I hope my writing gives you some insight into what is means to be a parent to a child who dies during pregnancy or during labour or shortly after birth.

Four years on: A ritual complete.

August 2008: I was 34 weeks pregnant and we were on holiday in a cottage in Northumberland. In the peace and the quiet, I started a birth sampler for our baby.

Then she died being born.

And I knew I would finish the birth sampler. For her. I could do so little. But I could do this.

Except I couldn't. Not for months and month and months. Not until I was pregnant with Toby. My pregnancy was physically so easy but mentally the craziest nine months ever. My cross stitch became my grief project - my way of staying close to Emma when my focus was elsewhere so much of the time.

I said on still life 365 once that it was a ritual - each cross a kiss I never got to give her. There are a lot of stitches in it but not enough for all the kisses I would have loved to have given her. That I should have been able to give her.

 I didn't finish it before I finished growing Tobias Matthew Scrumptious-bum and life with a newborn is not conducive to sewing much (Not that I'm complaining - no way, not ever. He saved my sanity in a way that fabric and embroidery floss never could!)

But I did it. Finally. Pretty much bang on four years since I started it. And it feels good to have done it. For her. For a baby who was stillborn but still born. For Emma.

Right Where I am: Three Years, Seven Months and Thirteen Days.

I was so excited to see that Angie had set this up again and excited to participate. And yet, now I come to write, I'm not sure where I am or how I'm feeling right now.

Busy - I have been an at-home mum for ten years now. I am not oblivious to the privilege of having the choice to be out of paid employment for so many years. One of the things I do to facilitate this is to grade exam papers every May/June. So, right now, I'm a stay at home mother surrounded by institutional grey sacks filled with the work of some of England's 11 years old. I mark them during Toby's (increasingly fleeting) nap times and at night - leaving very little time to crack open the laptop and read blogs. So, it may take me a while to read all the other contributions; I managed to read every single one last year. I don't know if I will get that opportunity this year - I will try.

And, perhaps, that's as good a place to start as any. I still love this part of the internet and I still wish I didn't know about it but my decision to read and write is less compulsive now. I choose to be here. I choose to take a break and being away doesn't leave me bereft in quite the same way it used to.

I think that this past year - this fourth year - has been a year of integration and renewal. We talk about "new normal" enough for it almost to be a cliche. This year has felt a lot more like "old" normal. I will never be the 2007 version of myself again but some of the better parts of her have resurfaced again and I have enjoyed rediscovering them. I don't feel crippled by my grief anymore. My love for Emma has soaked into my bones and my organs - it infuses me. The missing and the longing are simply there - I don't need to summon them up, they twist and twirl around all the other joys and sadnesses and irritations and richnesses of this life.

I am enjoying watching my family grow. This is the year when I truly knew that my family is complete ... and I can use that word, although it means something different to me now than it would have done at the start of my reproductive years. I have been astonished to find there is relief in that - as well as the grief of no more babies. I recognise that I have been very fortunate in the midst of misfortune. Ben, Lucy and Toby make my world sing and I am relishing each age and stage. In September, my eldest child will be in double figures and I am looking forward (with suitable trepidation!) to navigating his journey into young adulthood with him. That sounds presumptuous - even typing it, I had to resist the urge to add an "if" or something conditional in there. I am far enough along in my grief to think that he will be okay. I'm still close enough to it, to wish to avoid any mention of the future that sounds as though I have expectations. I still want to appease fate, in case it decides to kick me hard just to teach me not to plan or hope or expect. But, assuming no disaster or tragedy, then I confess to feeling excitement about what my family is becoming. And I am hopeful that our marriage has withstood the worst ravages of our (mostly) shared grieving and intensive (over)parenting after loss. No complacency but contentment at where we are right now, together.

This past year has seen a transformation in some of the hardest, most calloused corners of my grief. I sometimes feel as though I go on and on and on about my religious beliefs on this blog but, actually looking back over it, I think the opposite is true. I think my struggles with my faith have been monumental since Emma died and I think I have avoided writing about them because I don't know what to say, because I'm concerned about looking foolish, because I don't want people who read here to be offended - all silly reasons to avoid confronting it, really. I can't pinpoint what has changed but something has these past months. My anger, which was incandescent in the early stages of my grief, has burned itself out and in the ashes I have found peace. I still don't claim to understand why Emma died or to pretend that I can completely reconcile so much suffering in the world with what I believe to be true of God but today I am okay with balancing the doubt and the certainty.

I have begun to renew friendships. It's slow work but, this past week, I have met up with two friends I have barely seen since October 2008 - and it was fun and it was fine.

And pregnant people and new babies don't cause breathlessness and a twist of the guts as once they did. I mainly feel joy at each safe birth. There will forever be a part of me that wonders why my births turned out the way they did, why my "best", most straight-forward labour should have been a death sentence on one of my children but I don't dwell there. I can't - there lies madness and I've been close enough to that edge to want to take a big step back.

Having re-read this, I'm a bit worried that I sound like the Mary Poppins of the babylost world. A spoonful sugar making the bitter medicine of infant death go down. Ah well. I can't help that - my life is mostly good now. There is much joy in it and so much to be thankful for. It's where I am right now. It's not where I am every second of every day - it's not where I would have been had I written this last week when I had one child off school with an ear infection and the other off with a sickness bug. When I had a trip to the hospital with one child for a review of a broken arm and a trip to the hospital with another for an x-ray on injured fingers (not broken, thankfully). All the while, womanfully wrestling with a toddler who is completely delightful and completely imperious and thinks that repeatedly hitting anyone who stands in his egocentric way is an acceptable form of self-expression! But, these are the stresses and strains of normal family life and, even as I want to shout with frustration, I am aware of how lucky I am to experience them.

Building bridges.

Angie's recent post on self-compassion gave me a lot of food for thought. It's an incredibly rich piece - deep and meaty as Angie's writing is and I've only really scratched the surface of what she is saying but it has made me think. As has the renaissance of new and fragile faith in me. I have missed it, I'm simply not cut out to be an atheist or even an agnostic but it has been a slow and painful journey to this place. A place where I sit with the doubts and my certainties and it's okay, it works and I find peace there. The two together have left me reflecting on the relationships I destroyed when my baby died.

 I cut myself off after Emma died. I wrote about wanting to be alone, about being an introvert, about simply wanting to wrap myself in my family and never interact with the outside world again. It was me. I think, perhaps, that is unusual in our circle. Too many times, bereaved parents have posted about the stupid/the wrong/the insensitive things others have said to them - some forgivable, others not - others hurtful and cruel beyond imagining. Or, as often, the silence and the failure of words.

It hasn't been that way for me ... well, not much. The odd sentiment has been expressed badly or clumsily. The odd remark has shown me that someone really doesn't understand. But really, the friendships that have fallen by the wayside have done so because I  willed it so. I closed those doors and blew up those bridges. I did it quite consciously in the early days. With a few exceptions, if you hadn't lost a baby then you were too hard to be around. And these were good and compassionate people (my bridesmaids among them) - people who could have helped me carry the burden if I had let them. But I wouldn't. They came to visit and they supported me with love and I closed the door behind them on the way out and never rang again. I hated using the phone - but that was just an excuse. In these newfangled, modern times where I spent hours communicating with dbms on the other side of the world, I could have connected easily enough but I chose not too. I don't know if I feel bad or guilty about it exactly. It was what it was - I can't change it and I think, for me, it was how I needed to grieve. I remember holding Emma in my arms and thinking (in the midst of a maelstrom of incoherent thoughts) that I would feel this however I wanted to feel it and I would not apologise for emotions that made people uncomfortable. But, in making that decision, I ignored the fact that, at some point, they might miss me - miss my support. I suppose I thought that nothing as bad as a baby dying would ever happen to them so they would NEVER be the one needing support again. The friendships would always be unequal with me as the keening mother without a baby and them holding me up. I refused to acknowledge that divorce or ill health or money worries or unemployment could cause heartache in the way that infant death does. But where is the compassion in that? Where is the opportunity to connect to someone with love, to be a friend?

And so, recently, I have been attempting to rebuild some of these friendships. It is a slow process - building takes longer than destroying always. I still hate using the phone. I still find it easier to interact virtually than to deal with real people but I have started to reach out to friends I haven't seen for 3 years, to ask them, "What's been happening in your life?" and to listen - to really listen (without the gentle background hiss of my inner demons who chant "Not as bad as baby death, not as bad as baby death").

Wilderness

I have said it before and I'll say it again - I'm never going to win any awards for the world's most prolific blogger. Even in the very early days of this blog, there were large gaps between posts. I think it's because I didn't begin blogging until Emma had been dead for 6 months. I read endlessly before then but something stopped me from writing - the amazing talent of the many mothers who poured out their pain and left me breathless with the raw ugly-beauty of their prose. The fact, too, that I posted on a loss forum back then. I wrote long, prosy replies which may have contained nuggets of comfort and wisdom (or may not) to threads started by other mothers and started endless howling threads of pain and rage and grief. That's the place where my words burned and I left footprints of blood and tears. By the time I was writing here, there was still blood and tears and bitter bile but they were tempered by gentle sadness and reflective pauses too. I don't post on the forum much these days either ... and Face.book. Oh Facebook - a place I regarded with utter bewilderment before Emma died and then loathing after she did. Then hope, when I established a profile where my friends were purely other babylost parents - no civvies on my street. But I'm wordless there too - I have no status, no timeline to share. I'm the ghost who pops up to like your status before vanishing for weeks on end.

I am comfortable with the ebb and flow of my need to be in this place, to need to write, to need to find the silent centre where my daughter abides. It marks, for me, the progress of my grief. I still need to come back here periodically but the need is different - a dawning recognition that whispers at the back of my mind for a few days rather a choking, desperate sensation. But, this last pause has been different. Before, even when I felt no need to write - when daily life left me fulfilled and happy-sad and mute - I visited this page daily. I'd check my blog roll and I'd read. I'd try to keep up with everyone else's writing and I'd try to take some time to comment, to bear witness to the hurt and the pain and the hope and the joy that binds us all together, even when we are strangers on opposites sides of the globe. I haven't even been managing that. I am aware of lots of mothers for whom April brings everything that October brings for me - birthday and death and bittersweetness. I am sorry I have not been truly present to honour Freddie and William and Austin and Simon and Alexander and Freja and Levi in a way I would like.

 Partly it is time. I am where I hoped I'd be - parenting living children with all the  wonderment and business that goes with it. They are too precious not to live in their moment and bask in their amazing livingness. They are growing apace and I have (mostly) made peace with the idea of no more pregnancies, no more babies here. I still get broody and I still have to make myself understand that the feeling of incompleteness arises not out of another baby as yet unmade but a baby who was conceived and carried and loved and lost. Another pregnancy would not be a cure for that and nobody's sanity here is up for another trip into that kind of crazy. I am 37 in three weeks. I had my first baby when I was 27 - ten seems a nice round number of years at which to call the babymaking quits. Besides, I am living in hope of actually sleeping through the night again sometime before I turn forty (if Toby might be prepared to consider that). He is currently taking it under advisement and we have brief, warm conversations about it at 2am and 4am and 6am when I visit him in his new, special bed and he imperiously demands "big nuggles" before clambering on top of me and pinning me to the bed like an affectionate starfish and I struggle to breathe from the sheer joy of it all.

But it isn't just time - I sometimes hover over this blog's name in the drop down menu of bookmarks before clicking on rav.elry or pin.terest instead - places which can become just as compulsive as here but are lighter and fluffier and feel like good hiding places. Hiding from grief and the hard, hard work of a lifetime's mourning. I don't think it's wrong to want to do that sometimes.

Except it doesn't quite work. I don't quite fit anywhere any more. I can look and act and pretend to be a "normal" mum when I take Tobes to playgroup but I'm not. A two hour session each week exhausts me more than it tires my toddler. I have become introvert to the point of being anti social and I am frightened of it having an effect on my children. I have to force myself to establish play dates or invite friends over for tea.  The days I am happiest are the ones when the kids and I have breakfast, we laugh and chat on the way to school and then it is Toby and I pottering around here, just the two of us. But he's two and he's full of energy and he needs more. So I try, I put myself out there and I try to ensure his world is happy and full and busy. I know it is because he is a warm, affectionate, well adjusted little boy but it doesn't come naturally to me anymore and I feel like I just don't fit.

But I'm not sure I fit here anymore either - with a head more full, most days, of big boy beds and homework and lost ballet shoes and complicated Le.go models and a house for sale than my precious, tiny daughter. I sometimes feel as though I'm a grief fraud but I'm not. I still miss her and I'm still trying to work out how to balance that with not missing the rest of my life.

At the Kitchen Table: All in the Family

I always find the "Kitchen Table" meme-type posts over at Glow really thought provoking. So, here are my responses to the current one:

1. What was  your relationship with your immediate family (mother, father, sisters and/or brothers) like before your child died? How have those relationships changed?

I have a close relationship with my family. They only live 20 minutes away from me and we see each other most weeks and chat on the phone in between times. I don't see my sister as often as I'd like (given how close we are geographically) but I'd still say we're close - it's the sort of relationship where we get together and it doesn't seem like it's been a while.

I'm still close - they were amazing when Emma died. They really did enfold us in love and practical help. There are occasions now when I'm aware that they, perhaps, don't "get" something about my grief but at least they have never tried to persuade me that my way of grieving is "wrong", even if they don't understand it. It would be easy for a rift to form in those circumstances so it's good that they trust and respect me as my daughter's parent.

2. Has your family been a refuge or safe haven, or a place where your grief is unaccepted?

I'd say a safe haven, mostly. Certainly, I've never felt that my grief for Emma was unacceptable.

3. How has your partner's family, if you have one, been there for you? For your partner?

They've been brilliant, for the most part, too. My husband is close with his parents and all his siblings and I know how much we have valued their support. It has been complicated on his side because so many more pregnancies and babies have happened there. Our rainbow baby is the only subsequent grandchild for my parents. On my husband's side of the family there are four new little people since Emma so far, one more due to arrive imminently and almost certainly more to come. In the early days, when I found pregnant people and newborns excruciatingly difficult, my husband's family (and my husband) had to tread an incredibly delicate line between celebrating the new lives that were growing and exploding onto their family tree and managing my very tender feelings on the matter.  Looking back, I can see how well they did that - even if I didn't always feel it at the time.

4. Have your immediate and extended family accepted your child(ren) as part of the family? Do they talk about your baby(ies)? Do they mourn?

Very much so. We set the tone very early on, always talking about Emma to them and making it clear that that was how we wanted it to be. Our families respected that and took their cue from us. They have definitely mourned - although, as others have said, I think at least some of their grief was for us, their children, as much as it was for our child.

5. What kind of support did your immediate family offer? Did they lose themselves in action, like cooking and cleaning? Or were they emotionally supportive?

Both. My parents had the heartbreaking news of telling our older children that their baby sister had died during labour and then bringing them to the hospital to see us. They were stalwarts for DS1 and DD1 during those early weeks. My husband's parents and brother dropped everything to drive up to us - they live a hundred miles away. Emma was born at 2.25am ... they were at the hospital by 5.30am. They went back to our house and cleaned up (I was had been planning a home water birth, so there was a birth pool to be emptied and put away) and cooked a meal for our return. That sort of practical help has continued through the years, according to our needs.

But, all our family have proved to be good at "abiding" with our grief too. They were able to let us talk over and over and over again and have always seemed to cope with our need to revisit Emma's brief life. And now, three years out, when we have the ability and desire to have other conversations we can - we aren't always cast in the role of "poor victims of a tragic event". It's a relief to know that our families adapted with us to the different stages of grief.

6. What was it like to bear witness to your family's grief? In what ways could you be present for them? In what ways could you not be present?

This is a hard one - I'm not sure I did, really. Thinking about it now, I was/am very selfish in my grief. She is my daughter, my husband's daughter, my children's sibling and, as such, my grief was all about me and those for whom I felt I had responsibility. I never felt I had responsibility to help my wider family grieve - I sort of just expected that they did. We've never cried much in front of each other - I tend to reserve my crying, even now, for alone moments. I suppose we bore witness in storytelling, even if that is probably the most difficult aspect of having a baby who is stillborn - the story is short and repetitive. Still, I would talk (to my mum and my mother-in-law and my sister, mainly) about my pregnancy, about what she looked like, about the things I miss. In that sense, we bore witness together to a whole life that is lost to us.

7. When you reflect on deaths in your extended family, how did the treatment of your child's (or children's) death differ from, say, the death of a grandparent?

My mother-in-law told me that Emma's death was the worst thing she has ever experienced (and both her parents and her older sister have died). I was surprised to hear her say that (not because I didn't think she didn't grieve just because I hadn't thought of it in those hierarchical terms) but I was touched too. 

There is a sense of deliberately creating rituals too, which I'm not sure we have with deaths that came after long (longer than Emma's, anyways) lives. Perhaps because we have memories instead of rituals in those instances. We don't buy gifts for elderly people at Christmas, we do all buy one for a child who would be Emma's age to give to charity. It seems more important somehow that our grief is more ...active ... I suppose.

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.

Befriender

Five weeks after Emma died, we staggered into our first support group. I might have managed to comb my hair before leaving the house but I probably didn't. I don't think I said much - I don't think I said anything. I let Emma's daddy introduce us and our baby daughter. I sat, still wearing my coat; hunched over my saggy, still pregnant looking belly, staring at the floor. I don't remember crying - I don't like crying in public.

During coffee, a woman came over to talk. She seemed familiar and it turned out we'd been to school together. Small world, with lots of dead babies in it. She was two years out from the death of her daughter and she smiled ... she actually smiled. Her daughter was dead but she smiled. And her face didn't crack in two and her eyes weren't dead and I had a glimpse that maybe one day, I'd hang my coat on the back of my chair and sit up straight and, maybe, I'd even speak. She's five years out now and she still smiles and reaches out to people arriving, hunched and broken and hurting like they've never hurt before.

Last Saturday and Sunday, I parked my car outside a neat little office block. Inside, was a familiar set up. Chairs in a semi-circle. Thirteen bereaved parents all sat waiting quietly. I talked A LOT this time and listened hard too. Not about dead babies - not all about dead babies - but about reflective listening and about non-verbal communication. About how to move from being supported to being supportive. We were asked why we were there. I said I was there to honour my daughter's memory. It has been a long time coming - finding a way I can give back what I got in the early days.

I don't yet know if my training was successful. I will find out soon. I wish I wasn't needed - that babies had stopped dying, that parents had stopped being heartbroken. But we are needed. Bereaved parents who can come alongside a new, raw hurting member of our group and bear witness to their pain. To alleviate it, not by endless prattle and platitudes, but by silent, attentive listening and gentle care. We are needed.

Three.

My baby loss remembrance ribbon pinned to my coat, breakfast with a friend, quiet snuggles with Emma's little brother, a bouquet of deepest red from us and pink roses from her grandparents arranged around her headstone, a butterfly cake with lashings of vanilla butter cream and silver sparkles. So many cards and well wishes, tears and laughter and reminiscences and moments of "what if ..." and a night at a cottage by the sea, with lashings of white wine, her candle and a roaring fire.

It was a good day, really it was. Still missing her, still missing my Emma.

The day before.

I want to write "I miss my baby" and copy it billions of time, press publish and crash the internet with my desperate longing for what can never be. I miss her, I miss the weight of her in my arms, the feel of ticklish sucking as she nurses, the damp, flushed hugs of a toddler bewildered by bad dreams. I never had any of it but I miss it. Oh, I miss it.

This time three years ago I was deep in labour, so close to meeting my baby. I think this day might just be worse than tomorrow. On the fourteenth, by the time most people grumbled their way out of bed, D. and I had been wondering where life went and what happens now for several hours. We had our baby in our arms and she was beautiful and time was meaningless. We tend to celebrate on the fourteenth - celebrate love and beauty. Celebrate with tears, maybe but with cake and laughter too. But the day before is a day of grief - grief for what could have been and what can never be. I miss my baby, I miss my baby, I miss my baby, I miss my baby ....

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

 From my favourite Keats poem, To Autumn.

I have always loved Autumn - I love the cosiness and the crunchiness, the chance to light fires and wear thick, woolen tights.  There is a relief at arriving here after the heat of summer, which does not suit my temperament. I love searching for conkers on the village green and going on crunchy leaf walks with toddlers in froggy wellingtons.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ...fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

 I still love the season but I stand, broken and grieving with my dead child in my heart, resenting nature's fecundity.  I stand a moment, of an evening, watching the sky turn glorious shades of crimson and orange before I draw the curtains and turn inwards. I call those skies our "Emma sunsets" and I welcome them, even as they break my heart.

I dread and long for her birthday in equal measure too. I don't need a single day to cherish Emma or to celebrate and love her but it is good to have a day that is hers, truly hers. But, the heaviness ... oh the heaviness. I am slow and sluggish now, crabbed and sharp, constantly tired with the anticipation of what is coming.

She will be three. My older children separated (just a little) from me when they were three; attending pre-school for two hours each morning. It was a happy and healthy parting for us with joyful reunions over junk modelling and finger-painted self portraits. I should be anticipating the same for Emma.  But our parting took place many years ago, just hours after she was born, and there is no possibility of a reunion in this life. And I hate that. I can see my breath on the air in the mornings but I can't see my child.

Yesterday, I held a newborn baby girl ...

My sister-in-law gave birth yesterday. Her first child - a daughter. A baby who evens up the number of boys and girls on Emma's daddy's side of the family. Of course, outside of the family, it looks like we have more boys than girls ... sigh ...

We went to the hospital to visit with them. She is a beautiful, beautiful baby girl and I got to hold her and watch her frown and dribble and dream sweet baby dreams. It isn't the first time I've held a tiny baby girl since I had to let Emma leave my arms. My other niece was born a few weeks before Emma (I think I might  have mentioned this fact a few [hundred] times.) The first time I held her was blissful. I scooped her up over the enormous swell of my 37 week Emma belly and enjoyed breathing her sweet newborn baby scent.

The next time I held her was at my daughter's funeral wake. I, honestly, can't remember how I found the strength or desire to do that. It's one of my few clear memories of Emma's burial day. Maybe because it's the last time I ever held that little girl in my arms and she'll be 3 next week. Things are a little easier now but, when the film of denial and numb disbelief wore off, I found my other little niece virtually impossible to be around. We tried, the Christmas afterwards, when she was three months old and Emma would've, should've been 2. I wasn't ready - I see that now. I wasn't ready to do family Christmas. It's the nearest I ever came in my grief to having a breakdown. Every time, my sister in law came into a room holding her baby, I had to get up and leave. I spent a lot if time crying in bathrooms and being horrifically difficult to be around.

So, yesterday wasn't the first time I have held a baby girl since Emma died but it was the first time it didn't almost kill me and I am so pleased she is here - safe and sound and whole and glorious.

So ....

We should talk about the goodbye that wasn't. I feel a little like the boomerang blogger or the comeback queen minor royal. I find there is an ebb and flow to my grief that compels me to read and to write and to come back here. But it also, at times, compels me to walk away, to take a break from dwelling amongst baby death and sadness.

The first time I took a break, I always intended to come back (but got some lovely, warm fuzzy inducing comments nonetheless) . The last time really was meant to be an end - a tidying up of loose ends and a step away. There was a dissonance between my "real" life and my online presence. In real life, my grief had receded a lot. My focus was on the three children that I am privileged to be raising and on my marriage to my lovely Emma's daddy. Here, I didn't quite know where to go with this blog. It was always Emma's space and I've never quite decided how much of the rest of my life fits here. I didn't want it to become a straightforward mummy blog - there are lots of better ones out there! And, besides, this is where I parent Emma. It didn't seem right that the focus wasn't her anymore and yet, I didn't always have very much to say about her or about life without her. So, I decided to stop and it felt like the right decision at the time.

But, I hadn't quite appreciated how much I relied on this place for my connection to my daughter or to my grief at having to live without her. For a couple of months after I stopped writing,  I felt very distant from anything to do with baby loss. It was as if Emma's death happened to someone else or in another lifetime. I felt "normal" - not just "new normal" but almost like I did before October 2008. And yet, there was an imperceptible tension. I only became aware of it when I started reading through the "Where I am"  posts. Suddenly, all the sadness and frustration at not having my daughter came back to the fore. That sounds negative but it wasn't. I needed to stop and take stock. I found my connection to my little girl all over again and I realised that I might not need to be here as frequently as I did in the early, raw days but I do need to be here sometimes. And I'm so very grateful for all the people who still leave lovely, lovely comments and graciously accommodate my long silences and clumsy au revoirs. Thank you for walking the path with me.

At the Kitchen Table - Time (Glow in the Woods)

1. How much time has passed since the death of your child(ren)? Do you mark grief in months, weeks or years? Does it seem to be going fast or slow?

It's nearly three years now and I mark it in years, although it surprises me to be doing that. When I was doing the "Right Where I am" project, it took me a while to work out how many months I needed to append to the two year mark and last month, I actually missed the significance of the fourteenth for the first time ever. Fast or slow is relative really - it's seems like a lifetime since Emma died, as though this has been my life forever but then I look at my living children (especially rainbow Toby) and I seem to have blinked and got from October 14th 2008 to here instantaneously.

2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?

No, I don't. At the very beginning, I believed something good HAD to come out of her death and a sort of unsaid end goal was that my grief would make me a veritable Mother Teresa - calm, compassionate, charitable. I thought a couple of years down the line, I'd be such an amazing person!! Pretty quickly, I realised that it wasn't going to work like that and I'm actually less of those things when the grief is sharpest. Nothing "good" is good enough to justify my baby's death. From then on, I lived very much in the moment. I decided to embrace whatever I was feeling - even if it was horrible or negative. So, no end goal just the ongoing plan to embrace whatever grief hurls at me and deal with it.

3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?

My sister-in-law is pregnant (actually all 3 of my SILs are pregnant!) She's the mother of Emma's shadow companion - her daughter was born alive five weeks before Emma was born dead. The baby she's expecting is her third - I don't find thirds easy at the best of times. As much as I love her, I've been having a hard time with her news. Yesterday, they found out they are having a baby boy - I was able to say "congratulations" and genuinely mean it. I didn't need to excuse myself to go and have a little cry somewhere. That was a revelation (and I doubt I'd have managed it, if little one had been a girl but, hey, it's a baby step).

4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?

I adored my pregnancy with Emma - I love being pregnant, I feel happy and beautiful and utterly bonded with my babies for the 40 or so weeks I carry them. Emma's pregnancy was, if anything, the most special. I was pregnant after a miscarriage and determined to suck the joy out of being pregnant again. I also believed she would be my last baby so I journalled and photographed and belly painted - moments that are beyond precious to me now. The time after her birth/death was so surreal. We only found out she was dead after she was born so we had had no time to think about how to handle the time afterwards. We had to simply go with our instincts and, looking back, I think our instincts were good. What we did was right for us, for our older children and for Emma.

5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?

I'm just past the beginning of that "milestone" and I think it is true. I have written here about feeling acceptance and integration. Grief is a sly beastie and I don't stay integrated or accepting but the times when I do are getting longer in duration. I would imagine that over the next 2 or 3 years (although I've not thought about it), that will continue to be true.

6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?

I can't remember if I've used this analogy here before. One of the most useful things that our wonderful bereavement midwife said to us was that our grief is like a heavy, black ball that is handed to us when our babies die. We can't put it down, we can't see round it. Gradually, our arms get stronger and we feel more able to carry the ball and we find things to wrap around the ball, to cover the ugliness. Crucially, the ball never gets smaller, we just get used to its shape and weight. That's how I think of time - it doesn't heal the wounds, it just allows us to build up the stamina to carry the grief and the ability to expand around it.

7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)? How about your relationship with the past?

I feel nostalgic for the past - I miss the person I was back then. Of course, there's an element of rose tinting because the person I was back then had some undoubtedly annoying quirks but I liked her, you know? Her confidence and naivety. I'm still not sure I like the "new" me.

The future - I struggle hugely with anxiety and I have major trust issues. I find it best not to look too far ahead, it makes me nervous to try especially with regards to my living children.

8. How long did it take to answer these questions?

 About 40 minutes but I was watching TV at the same time!!

Meditations

I am standing in church - not always an easy place to stand. For once, I am alone. The eldest are in Sunday school, little one is at the creche with daddy. But, it's more than that. In a crowd of maybe 150 people, I am alone. I wonder how many of them remember my daughter's name. I wonder how many even remember I had another daughter. And then it happens. I have my eyes closed and I feel arms around my neck ... the half hug, half stranglehold of a toddler and her mummy. And I know, I know it's Emma. Not Emma as I usually think of her - a newborn baby, my forever baby - never changing, never growing. This is Emma as she would be now - 2 and some. Flying hair and energy. I keep my eyes closed. I don't want to open them and see her absence. I treasure this tiny taste of my longing - I have never sensed her this strongly before. And then it fades. I am standing alone in church.

***

I take a bag containing old rags and a bottle of water with me and we stop on the way to school to choose some flowers. I leave the older ones at school and continue, littlest boy tied firmly to my back, to the graveyard. I stand by my daughter, but not my daughter - her body but not her being - and chatter whilst T. tries to wriggle his way to freedom. I don't let him and he settles as I lean over her gravestone, pour water over it and start to rub away the evidence of a wet and muddy couple of weeks. I suddenly become aware that I am singing - that's why T. has stilled. He recognises the song from my occasional bath times - a tuneless little ditty about splish splashing. I'm the crazy lady unconsciously humming bath-time tunes as I clean my daughter's headstone. And I have an epiphany. I suddenly understand what we all mean when we talk about parenting a dead child. I have never really been sure how you do that. Now, I do. I pack up my rags and my empty bottle and set off for home, still singing silly songs to the one on my back and the one in my heart.

***

I am hanging out washing and little toddler boy is doing what, in this family, is called hooning. He's marching round and round the garden, completely in love with his still-new mobility. No place to get too but it's purposeful movement nonetheless. "What I am doing is important", his sturdy little body proclaims. I turn away to pick up some more washing and I can't move. I look down and two chubby arms completely encircle my legs and my son hugs me hard and wholeheartedly. I lift my face to the delicious, warm sun and think, "I am happy, so very, very happy."

So many words...

I'm gradually reading through all the "Right where I am" posts linked to Angie's blog. Gradually being the operative word. I am marking exam papers, pressing deadlines and dealing with a small, cranky boy who is trying to grow some pre-molars and has decided nursing for 23 out of 24 hours is the best way to deal with the pain. (He's probably right).

But, I am slowly reading - and commenting on - every single one. The power and the pain; the beauty and the horror are immense. I have nodded along to each post I have read, recognising shared experiences ... wishing each of us did not have to be a part of something so wonderful but so sad. I am being reminded of things that I could have included in my own post but didn't. Maybe there are still words to pour into this place.

For example: I could have talked about music - and the way a silly, chirpy little song like this one, with the words "I love you more, everyday" can pop up on the radio first thing in the morning and make a babylost mama cry:

Where I am right now: Two years, seven months and seventeen days.

Well, right now? Right this second? I'm creeping back in a slightly embarrassed manner. I said goodbye, I meant it, I've regretted it, I've felt released - and I'm back to join in with Angie's project. Back for good or a one-off curtain call? I don't know ... but I really, really wanted to participate in this one. And if you have too, then I want to read your words. I will. I want to savour them and feel them nourish me. I haven't had a chance yet but I will. Our words are too important not to be mulled over and cherished.
So, me ... two years, seven months and change, more than halfway towards her third birthday? Wow. When did my girl get so big ... oh wait she didn't ... she doesn't. She's my forever baby, frozen in time and warm in my heart still. The glass over her photograph feels cold when I press it to my lips to kiss her but sometimes it's warmed by the breath of a sibling who has reached up to kiss it first. We all still miss her.

Life IS good. To say otherwise would be a lie and would do a disservice to my three living munchkins, who thrive and have remained alive since I last posted three months ago. This is despite me seeing dangerous accidents and untimely deaths around every corner. I was ever thus, but pushing a dead baby out of my vagina? That kind of confirmed to me that I can't always protect my children, even if I wrap my body around them and try not to let go. But, two and a half years out, I can (if absolutely, definitely necessary) let my older children play in our garden or in the common land out front, without supervision (for at least two minutes!), and not assume they will break bones, be kidnapped or die in some hideous grass-related incident. This feels like progress to me.

We laugh and we love. I defy the hardest heart not to be melted by Toby's gruff little belly laugh that wobbles his baby chubbiness or the tears of mirth rolling down my big boy's cheeks, as daddy does something hilarious or the radiance of my only living daughter's beams when I collect her from school. I don't know if we laugh more heartily because we have cried longer and the joy is hard won. Perhaps. But we laughed a laughed a lot before October 2008 and we lost that ability for a while. I'm glad it's back.

I'm glad too that I can be sad now - and it isn't always about 7lb 4oz of scrumptious still baby. Back at the beginning, any sadness, any stress, any difficulty - it all came back to Emma's death. I couldn't feel an emotion as separate from my grief. It was all, always, about death and dead babies. I was utterly consumed by the enormity of my daughter's life, snuffed out before it got a proper chance to start. It will never be less than the most heartrending, tragic thing but Emma's death is not always the place I return to, when life is tough. Life is able to be hard again, just because life is sometimes hard not because I am a dead baby mother.

If that sounds as though I've "moved on" or gotten over her. Oh no, never ever ever. I sometimes worry about the distance between us, my second daughter and me but then, something happens. I hear about another baby dying or I am confronted by a pregnancy announcement I have been secretly dreading and I realise that I am still damaged, still hurting and still wounded. It might be something much less momentous - a smell, or a facial expression I catch and I'm back there ... that room at the hospital, smiling because I am delirious after a labour gone awry and because I am holding one of the most beautiful babies I have ever been blessed to meet, waiting for someone to tell me it's all been a big mistake. She's just asleep and, if I just call her name gently in her ears, she'll wake and turn to me with hungry mouth and unfocused, dreamy, newborn eyes. She never did and you don't get over that, EVER.

But, I remember reading Glow, back in those early months and there was a remark or a comment from someone sometime further down the path than I was and it has stayed with me ever since. Somebody (apologies for (mis)quoting you without remembering who you are) said that she had reached the point where her grief was "a small patch of [her] soul, rubbed raw." I thought it was beautiful phrase and I wanted that to be me. It sounded like a reasonable aspiration. I wasn't asking for my soul back, whole and unblemished. That could never be. But to know that part of me would always hurt, always mourn, always grieve and yet to know that I would live and love and feel joy again seemed like heaven. And here I am,  two years, seven months and seventeen days with a small patch of my soul, rubbed raw.

Today's ramblings are brought to you by the letter "D"

I have no idea if this will be sad, self pitying, whiny or not. It might. It certainly started out that way but it has taken me a while to get it up. My mood has shifted and I'm reflecting, I think, rather than complaining. If you think otherwise, feel free to give me a kick in the virtual pants.

D is for ....

Depression
I am frightened of depression - not, I stress, people with depression but of the illness. Of finding myself wrapped in anguish. I have relatives who have faced that particular demon and it's not one I want. (Yeah, like I have a choice).

I read and I read when Emma was first born - looking for the perfect formula for grieving so I could do it, do it right and make it not hurt anymore ... mmmm, so that was going to work.

Of course, I was introduced to the grief cycle, with it's generous promise of acceptance at the end of neatly demarcated set of emotions, but uh-oh, one was depression. Well that's not going to fly.

But, I was pretty well already stuck into numb disbelief and denial so it seemed like my path was already set out, I just needed to step out there and get on with it. Except I procrastinated. I made it to anger, okay. More than okay actually - I arrived there blazing, screaming and kicking and HATING that my baby was dead. Every post I ever read from a dbm, every blog I ever encountered was more fuel to the anger. I HATED that your babies died too. I was not an angry person before Emma died and the strength of the emotion really, really took my breath away.

Sometimes, I would literally feel winded by all the pent up rage that churned my belly and made my head hurt. It was directed at God (see multiple posts where I skirt round the issues of religion and faith), at me - especially my crappy, failed reproductive system that didn't keep 2 of my 5 babies alive and failed to eject the other three in the normal manner, at women who dared to be pregnant with living children or who had living babies when I did not. I must have been an attractive person to be around.

And yet, I credit my anger with the fact that I don't think I became depressed in the first year after Emma died. I know distinctions are difficult, diagnoses imprecise and the line between grief and depression a nebulous, shadowy one. But, on the whole, I'm sure I stayed grief-side-up.

Fifteen months out, I got my rainbow. And people who don't know breathed a sigh of relief but my husband, bless him, made sure he knew the signs of incipient post natal depression. Because we suspected (we didn't want to, but we couldn't help ourselves) that bringing home a real life, bona fide, breathing little person might stir up more emotions than simple joy. We were right. Oh, there is joy, joy in such an abundance I feel wanton with the excess of it. But, there is sleeplessness and anxiety and heartsickness for our precious girl right there amongst the lovin' too.

I still don't know if I have experienced depression. Maybe that's the definition - if it wasn't bad enough for me to label is such, then it wasn't. Maybe the power of the thing is in the naming of it. I do know that Emma's second birthday came and slapped me upside my head. I know that for a little while there, between her birthday and Christmas, I was hanging by my fingernails, tiptoes on that ledge above the pit. I don't know how I got out but I feel like I'm back on firmer ground once more, skirting the edge of the pit and picking my path.

***
D is for ...

Disgust/Disorder/Desperation
I hate New Year's resolutions. Probably because mine only ever last until ... ooh ...12.02am before being broken. So, I don't make any. But, my son is one in a few days. I think claiming my flab is unshifted baby weight is no longer an option. In truth, I'm not really carrying baby weight, I'm carrying grief weight - an equally stubborn and difficult to remove type of poundage. I may not have used anti-depressants but, by golly, I self medicated with wine and chocolate. This period of ridiculous excess was book-ended by two full pregnancies. The end result - I disgust myself. I weigh more than I have ever weighed, unpregnant (And I have a worrying suspicion that I may even weigh more than I did pregnant. My refusal to step on scales during gestating at least spares me the indignity of knowing if this is true.)

I have an eating disorder - I've been coming to a realisation of this for a while. Not anorexia or bulimia but simply that - my eating is disordered, completely divorced from any real feelings of hunger. Our family meals are healthy, nutritious, well balanced. I take pleasure in trying to feed those I love good things. But I don't love me so there's no impetus to nurture my body. I am sure that the opposite is true - somewhere inside, I'm eating to excess to punish my body for being a failure. I eat to encase difficult emotions in a pie crust of feather-light pastry (served with a generous dollop of cream). I'm not sure what the next step is but there has to be one - I'm desperate. Desperate to be here for my living children - they have grieved a sister too soon, I don't want them to do the same for their mother, not if I can prevent it.

***
D is for ...

Disappointment
A couple I care about very much told me they'd had a positive pregnancy test this week.

I still, even two years out and after-baby here, categorise pregnancies. Some I can celebrate whole-heartedly, without reserve - any BLM falls into this category or anyone who has waited a long time for their parenthood. Others are more of the "pleased for you, sad for me" variety. Still others I dread hearing about (people expecting third babies, people who have a living child the same age as Emma, especially if they have a daughter). This couple is one I am truly, unalloyedly happy for. They will make fabulous parents. I hope, hope, hope it will work out for them.

It was only after we had talked that I realised how unusual it was - the way they told us. They didn't say, "We're having a baby" or "We're pregnant". They said they'd had a positive test. I know some of that was sensitivity for us - they're kind and thoughtful and compassionate people. But some of it was because they know, in a way that most first time parents-to-be don't, that pregnancy does not always equal a live child to raise. And I feel profound disappointment for them. I enjoyed almost every last second of my first pregnancy. I felt alive and excited and it never occurred to me that it would end any other way than happily. They don't have that. It might be a good thing - if it ensures that they are more vigilant and more informed about potential problems but it is a shame that, because of me, they have lost some of their blissful innocence.

On the flip side of this, is the fact that they are just beginning their journey towards parenthood. They don't know how their pregnancy will unfold or how their baby will arrive here or what their little one will be like. A beginning. For me, all that is at an end. I am content for it to end here, I truly am. I have spent the last few years creating a family, always hoping for another pregnancy, another child. My family feels ... complete ... sort of. I have four beautiful children. I'd like to be raising all of them but I'm not. But I love raising the three I do have here with me and I hold Emma in my heart. The twinge of disappointment I feel is silly really - to do with the ways in which my children came into the world. I understand fully that a good birth begins and ends with a living child but I will also feel a small degree of sadness that my only experience of "normal" birth was the birth that ended my daughter's life, making it anything but normal. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. My grief over Emma overshadows it but it is something that will always sting just a little.

How can it be 2011?

I gave birth to a daughter in 2008 - a beautiful, bouncing baby girl as the rhetoric goes. Oh my, she was beautiful. I don't have words to describe how precious she was although I try. I pour words into this place about her and to her but I'm not skilled enough to render how truly gorgeous my little girl was or how deep my love for her has settled into me.

2009 has rolled past, 2010 has been and gone. How? How, when my world stood still that day have I suddenly found myself 26 months further on, living and breathing? Surely, it was only yesterday that I undressed her tiny body and tucked her inside my nightshirt, hoping my body heat would warm her rapidly cooling little body? Three Christmases, three New Years and it still hurts like hell that she died when she should have lived. She feels so present, curled up in my heart and she feels so distant, flying in the stars.
.
I gave birth to a son in 2010 and he lived. When he breathed, I breathed out and I have had almost twelve months discovering that the treasure at the end of the rainbow is not actually gold - it's chubby baby thighs and milky breath tickling my neck at 4am.

2011 - the year my son turns one, my daughter turns 3 and I continue to straddle the twin worlds of love and loss.

With love to all who are navigating it all too. May 2011 bring you only good things.

A void

I have been avoiding coming to my blog, reading other blogs, commenting on blogs. I haven't avoided thinking about blogging friends though - this part of the internet has been my virtual home for nearly two years now - a place that I buried myself in for a while back there. I still potter on with my daily life and wonder about the mums who are completing difficult PALs or who are trying to embark on one, mothers who are learning about the joy and the strain of motherhood after loss. And it's all still important to me but, with a dodgy internet connection and online shopping to be done, it was easy enough to claim that precious screen time needed to be spent elsewhere. But, that wouldn't be the whole truth - the decision to step away was somewhat more deliberate than that. These times come along sometimes, it seems to be just part of the cycle.

I don't know what I expected for two years. Something more gentle maybe. But, no. What I got was a stumble, a head first pitch into the deeper recesses of the grief pit. Because there is still a void - a hole that will never, ever, never be filled. Most days I can step around it - carefully, but relatively surefootedly because I know the terrain by now but not this time of the year.  I celebrated my daughter's second birthday without her, just as I will celebrate her fifth, her eighteenth, her twenty first... We do celebrate but it is a conscious choice to do so - to do it in the face of an overwhelming urge to roll into a ball, refuse to leave my bed and focus on the void.

And gradually, imperceptibly, the depression lifts again and I only realise how low I actually was in hindsight.

And then it's Christmas - a whole bundle of conflicting emotions to try to deal with. I can't avoid Christmas, even if I wanted do, not with exuberant living children writing Christmas lists and begging for the tree to go up. I think it's good for me to be pulled out of myself and I am finding some seasonal joy this year as we sing along to carols and make mince pies. There are moments of intense sadness - of course there are. Emma isn't here and she should be, no amount wrapping paper covers the void. I took a Christmas wreath to her grave and cried harder than I've cried for a long time. I hang her decorations on the tree and feel again the paucity of what I have for her, compared to the piles of gifts hidden upstairs for her siblings and I feel angry all over again. Angry for what I've been cheated out of, angry that SO many of us face this Christmas without our babies and angry for her, that she is missing all this. Except I don't really think she is missing out on it all. I truly believe she is somewhere safe and well - somewhere I hope to join her one day, if I find my feet with my faith again. Somewhere, where Christmas is celebrated without sadness and only joy.

But, still, at this time of year I long for there to be no gaping hole in my life and I struggle to comprehend that there is - and always will be.