For the first time ever, I have an unpublished post in my "drafts" folder. Generally, I'm from the "publish and be damned" school of blogging. Probably because my head acts as my drafts folder and, if something makes it from head to screen, it's usually what I needed to get out. But, recently, I feel wordless. I have wondered whether this is me telling me to stop, to pack up and move out. But I'm resisting. I don't feel done and this is one of the few places in my life that is still all about Emma (okay, with a little bit of Toby thrown in ... but mainly my girl.) The frustrating thing is that the words are there - I feel them bubbling under the surface, I gag on them but I can't make them take shape here. And I hate that it's her second birthday soon and I can't find anything to say. Of course I can say "I hate this", "I wish this hadn't happened to us", "I want her back" but, well, those things go without saying don't they?
***
It's our niece's second birthday today. I thought it was tomorrow. Fortunately, I sent the card and present earlier in the week so it arrived in good time. Shopping for her presents is a strange experience. I couldn't let myself think about what 2 year old girls really like so I was staring at rows of toys trying to choose something innocuous, something that wasn't going to make me feel sad and mad and angry that I'm not buying something for my daughter too. I certainly couldn't buy her clothes - that would mean going into the girl toddler aisle and I can't do that.
I rant (prudish mama, me) about the difficulty I had in trying to buy Lucy (soon-to-be 6 but tall and lissome and older than her age sized) an age-appropriate winter wardrobe - Jeggings, yuck, yuck, yuck! At least, shopping for a 6 year old among Han.nah M branded clothing and lurid neon sack dresses - nostalgia for an era twenty years before she was born - is a world away from trousers still cut to accommodate nappy covered bottoms and sweet little dresses.
I don't actually know what my little niece is "into" - her favourite TV characters or her preference for play. I don't know because I choose not to know. Bad Auntie that I am, always striving to avoid the unavoidable. She is here - a beautiful, healthy little toddler - and Emma is not. I bought some jigsaws and some crafty/colouring stuff. A nice (such an anaemic word) present I hope. I made her card too - taking time and care over it, perhaps overcompensating for finding it hard to see her as anything other than my daughter's shadow companion.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Thursday, 2 September 2010
The precious gift of being able to miss.
I love all of my children with a white hot love. I remember my first night with my first-born. A difficult but successful birth - a baby who lived. I was high on motherhood and morphine so those early hours are blurred but, as dawn rolled into the room, I remember watching my tiny son in his plastic bassinet and thinking, "I would kill for you." It was a foregone conclusion that I would have died for him. That choice was made the minute I knew I was pregnant. But having him there, next to me, my mama-tiger was roaring, prowling - ready to fight. White-hot love. Fortunately, I have never had need to test that strong, primal feeling but it is still there - for all four of my babies.
Many of us with rainbow babies have written about the fact that we, probably, would never have had both babies, if our dead child had lived. That is almost certainly true for us - although when I said so to Dave, he said that maybe Toby would have been my "stamped feet" baby - the "let's have one more" child. Or, as my sister calls it, my "Oops-a-daisy baby". Maybe, we were always meant to have him somehow. Look at him - he's gorgeous. So alive. How could he not ever have been? How could I not love him with every last atom of my being ? ... and yet, if I hadn't had him, I wouldn't have known him to miss him. I find that so strange and unsettling.
When Emma first died, both Dave and I questioned the adage "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Some days were so hard and so painful and so raw that we wondered if it might have been better not to have had our third child. If we had never known her, we would not have been able to miss her with such gut-wrenching profundity. But that thought was fleeting. More often I recognised that her being in my life was -and is- a precious gift. To be able to miss her every day is my connection to her, my opportunity to mother her. A testament to the deep, abiding adoration I have for my tiny, beautiful baby girl.
Many of us with rainbow babies have written about the fact that we, probably, would never have had both babies, if our dead child had lived. That is almost certainly true for us - although when I said so to Dave, he said that maybe Toby would have been my "stamped feet" baby - the "let's have one more" child. Or, as my sister calls it, my "Oops-a-daisy baby". Maybe, we were always meant to have him somehow. Look at him - he's gorgeous. So alive. How could he not ever have been? How could I not love him with every last atom of my being ? ... and yet, if I hadn't had him, I wouldn't have known him to miss him. I find that so strange and unsettling.
When Emma first died, both Dave and I questioned the adage "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Some days were so hard and so painful and so raw that we wondered if it might have been better not to have had our third child. If we had never known her, we would not have been able to miss her with such gut-wrenching profundity. But that thought was fleeting. More often I recognised that her being in my life was -and is- a precious gift. To be able to miss her every day is my connection to her, my opportunity to mother her. A testament to the deep, abiding adoration I have for my tiny, beautiful baby girl.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)