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.