Perfection?

So I've been thinking on and off about perfection. Actually I've been feeling angry that it's something I think is denied to me now. Those "perfect" life moments - how on earth can you have them when one of your children is dead? It feels like one more thing to grieve - as if grieving the physically painful lack of my baby isn't enough.

But then the rational side of me kicked in (good to know it's buried in there somewhere). My life was NOT perfect before Emma died - it was good and rich and happy but ... perfection ... all the time?? ... I realised how stroppy I was being mourning something I never had (and never missed) anyway.

I also realised that life is not all bad now either. It's tough and grey and teary a lot of the time but not always. In the very early days after Emma died I used to feel guilty that I couldn't say, "My life is terrible" - as if somehow I failed her for not feeling like that. But, if I had said that, wasn't I "failing" all the people still living who have offered love and comfort and made this path bearable? Wasn't I "failing" Emma's brother and sister for not seeing the joy that they bring to my life. Emma's death was terrible -is terrible and sad and momentous - but the life I'm living in and around the grief isn't.

This was brought home to me this weekend. My wonderful husband said he wanted our anniversary to be "a break in the storm". It was, because he worked SO hard to make it that. He headed off to work for the day before arriving back with an armful of beautiful flowers and the surprising announcement that he'd managed to get the day off (he teaches so this is a big deal - he can't simply take leave whenever). It was a good day - and it just got better. After a meal out, instead of driving home, he drove us to the castle (turned hotel) where we spent our wedding night. I had *no* idea any of this was coming. The enjoyment he so obviously got from pulling the wool over my eyes was so touching and me - well I got a day and a night that were pretty near to perfect. I got my break in the storm.

10 years ago ...

I stood at the front of church and promised "For better, for worse". I could never, ever have envisaged what that would mean in reality. The best has been better than anything I could possibly have dreamed up. The worst ... well, I don't need to say do I? Nobody says their wedding vows, imagining the day they'll have to bury their child.

My husband is my best friend, truly. For all that's a cliche ... it's absolutely right. I still wake up and turn over to find him in the morning and feel relief and joy and peace that he is there next to me in the bed. I honestly don't know where I'd be right now if I hadn't had his hand to hold on this horrible, horrible bit of our journey. I feel as if we're two battered trees, falling towards each other. Somehow, our branches are tangled and we prop each other up - not in strength but in struggling together.

It's because of him that I know I have strength for this. After ten years, I say again, "For better, for worse" ... forever.

It was Mother's Day yesterday

I have said that if I ever write a memoir about Emma, I'd have to call it "Life in the Conditional Tense" because it is so hard not to spend so much time with the shoulds and the woulds and the what ifs. Yesterday should have been my most perfect mother's day. I should have been celebrating the fact that my family is complete and I get to watch them grow. But it isn't like that. I didn't get woken up in the wee small hours by a hungry, chubby 5 month old.

But ... it wasn't so bad. Bittersweet ... as is much of life now. I was allowed a lovely long lie in and I was woken by 2 very excited little people and their daddy with a tray full of breakfast goodies. I got 3 gorgeous cards - two my lovely son & daughter had made a nursery and school. One bought by daddy and decorated by the kids. They worked very hard on it yesterday (I guessed what they were up to ... 4 year olds are not discreet) and their daddy announced it was a card to celebrate life, a card full of exuberance. And, you know, the card from my stillborn daughter was indeed full of life - the children had coloured it with bright colours, stuck wobbly eyes and felt poms poms wherever there was a gap and daddy had written the verse:

Dear mummy,

I am your forever baby,
forever your princess,
forever in your heart.
I love you,
my forever mummy.

Emma xxx

As sad & as incomplete as I felt yesterday, I also felt deeply, deeply blessed for what I do have. I just miss my smallest girl.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." (Khalil Gibran)

Mixed feelings.

I don't know where I want to go with this post. I just know I want to write something. It's been a strange few days ... in places painful with the raw hurt I felt back at the beginning of this, without knowing why these days should be like those days. Sometimes, I can point and say, "That's why it hurts". Other times, I simply have to accept with bewildered certainty that the hurt will subside again in time.

And then I read Gal's post at Glow in the Woods. It took me a long time to read because the tears started within a couple of lines. But they were good tears - tears that bring a tiny measure of healing with them and at the end I had one of those moments where my soul breathed a sigh of relief - relief that someone has managed to gift me with something I didn't even know I needed.

Then I logged on to one of my loss forums and a friend who has walked this path so closely with me, announced her pregnancy. I feel pure joy for the possibility that is growing in her right now.

I would like to hang to these moments of peace and joy. I hope that I can.

A Daddy's Tribute

D. would probably want me to apologize for the sound. He recorded himself playing this on our old, battered digital camera. Nonetheless ... I think it is so very, very beautiful.

Quieting the snakes.

My darling man looks burdened tonight - his shoulders are hunched and his eyes are dark. There's been an inspection in school so it isn't all that surprising. But I recognize grief beyond tiredness so I ask ... and he replies "A. was off today." A & his wife both work with D. More than that, they are his closest friends there. A's wife is currently on maternity leave with their third child. They have a daughter, they have a son ... so far, so parallel lives. I have prayed since Emma died that their new baby would be a boy.

Today, they had a baby girl.

Whenever, I feel like this pit must have a bottom ...

I hide my Medusa head - I shush the snakes, cram them back down and try not to focus on the fact she cried when she found she was having an unplanned third pregnancy. Because her new daughter will be loved and cherished - just like mine is. Because when I miscarried our tiny one, she send me a huge bouquet of flowers. But mainly because my husband is hurting and I want to make it right for him. I can't but I can try to avoid making it more wrong.

Getting it wrong.

You are only an acquaintance - we met at a coffee morning, probably a year ago. I remember I had an obvious bump - probably about the same size as the one you are carrying proudly now. I was probably stroking my wee girl - in the way that absent minded and unburdoned pregnant mamas do in public. You didn't say much then - I thought you were shy. My best friend fears you are just arrogant.

I can't tell how pregnant you are - I think you must have been pregnant when Emma died. That at least would explain why you look like a rabbit in the headlights when we pass each other at the school gate. It's your third - like Emma was my third. I shouldn't judge but I suspect you've had no losses - your children are close in age. I wish I knew what you are thinking when you look at me with such empty eyes. Are you feeling sorry for me? Guilty over your third beautiful bump?

Most pregnant women seem to exude an air of relief around me - a naive assumption that because I was the unfortunate 1:200, their odds are somehow lowered. I've done the suffering for them. I could tell them that I'm the third of three generations to experience stillbirth in my family or I could tell them of an internet acquaintance who lost her baby daughter to a placental abruption back in September and posted a heartbreaking message just weeks ago to say that her sister's tiny boy had been born too soon to survive life outside of his mama. The fact is their odds remain the same - low but not somehow lowered by my tragedy. Perhaps your reaction is more honest; perhaps my daughter's death has shocked you to the core. But I dislike you and I go out of my way now to avoid eye contact with you. NOT because of your pregnancy - pregnant bellies do sting me but I can't stop the world gestating and I hope to do it myself again one day. No, I dislike you because I can't read you - you don't warm your sad eyes with the ghost of a sympathetic smile. You make me feel worse - if that is even possible - about being a deadbaby mama. I don't like you because when it comes to reacting to me, you got it wrong.