The Definition of Me.

In the past, before we lost you, there were women I knew who had lost a child. Relatives, online friends, colleagues,  people I chatted to, thought I knew pretty well. I admired them. They had been through tough times and had survived; they were women of courage and strength. They were indestructible.

Now I know that these women are not just survivors,  they are still surviving. They have not overcome their grief,  they still live with the grief every single day. Their grief is interwoven through every fibre of their souls, a dark thread in the fabric.

The grief does not fade with time. It ages, becomes more worn but it no more becomes a thing of the past than the love we have for our living children.  The love never dies, so the grief never fades. It becomes the thing that defines us, the thing that has changed us the most,  the thing we cannot forget.

You, Sylvie-Rose,  are the definition of me.

Miracles Hurt

It happens every other day. Someone shares a story on Facebook about a child who survived against all odds. This evening it was about a little girl who was born at 25 weeks and was not expected to live. But she lived, she survived.

Sometimes the survival against the odds is attributed to divine intervention.  God was petitioned and God came through.  He intervened.

So where was our intervention,  our miracle?  As soon as my sister-in-law found out you were in danger,  she sent a text to all her friends saying "Start praying now". Your granny prays every day and she certainly wanted you here. I prayed all the time the doctors were preparing us for the brutally awful reality; we weren't getting to keep you.

Were we less deserving than the parents of the survivors?  Were we too far down the queue when they were giving out miracles?  Were we selected to receive the harshest punishment a parent could receive?  Or is this place just a series of accidents where some children live and some children die as randomly as the roll of the dice?

I am happy for the recipients of the miracles,  I really am. I'm glad they won't know this pain. But miracles Hurt because we didn't get one.

What Doesn't Kill You

It was a joke shared on Facebook. "Dear Whatever Doesn't Kill Me, I'm strong enough now. Thanks". After I shared it, I noted tat a lot of bereaved Mum friends had also shared it.

It reminded me of a lovely lady I met, who was fighting cancer. She was a young mother and had a lot to fight for. While chatting, I mentoned that we had lost you. She said "It makes you stronger, doesn't it?"

I did nod and agree, as I didn't want to pour my negativity into her already full cup but it wasn't what I felt inside. And I wondered why people think that losing a child would make you stronger. To me, losing you was the emotional equivalent of having a stroke. I feel weakened. I used to be able to go food shopping without running away to another aisle when I see a two year old girl or a small baby girl. The person you should be now and the person you were when you left us

I used to be able to go to family parties. Now I either don't go or if I do, I have to brace myself for weeks beforehand.

I used to be able to walk through the girls' section in Next without getting tearful.

I used to be able to handle conflict without crumpling into a heap afterwards. It's as if all my strength is taken up with missing you and I can't take any more. I used to look forward to family holidays, and not be sad that I wasn't booking another ticket, ordering another passport

I used to read books about things other than spiritualism.
I do think perhaps I have more compassion than I used to and maybe I'm a little kinder. But stronger? Hell, no.

Eight Hundred Babies Like You

When you died, the staff at the hospital were wonderful. They were so kind to us in our shock and grief, so supportive. And so well trained. There were two chaplains, both Catholic nuns and there is not one thing that I could fault them on, they treated us and you with dignity and respect. Your little body, all that remained mortal of you, was treated with the utmost reverence, you were clothed in a white hat and white blanket and laid in a Moses.basket. Nothing was too much trouble. When your organs which the hospital had needed to retain for post mortem were returned to us, they were in a little white box, which we were able to have buried with you. One of the hospital chaplains came and prayed over your grave. It was effectively another burial, but again, tastefully and reverently done.

Your grave is not always as pretty and tidy as I would like it to be but the place where you are buried is marked with your name and the day you died. It's a place to visit, a place which tells the world, "Sylvie-Rose was here, she lived. She Mattered"

All this week, in the news,  there is talk of eight hundred babies, who lived and died in a mother and baby home in Tuam. When their little lives came to an end, there was no grave for them, no little white cross, no plaque, no place to leave flowers. Their bodies were cast into a septic tank, en masse. There are women alive today who do not know if the baby they gave birth to, was one of those eight hundred babies, or whether their fate was to be adopted in Ireland or abroad.

Cast into a tank because they didn't matter. Did the people who cast them in, even think to whisper a prayer as they did so?

Those babies did matter. They were little human beings like you. And I know they mattered to their mothers, even though those poor young women were told to move on, to forget. But mothers never forget. And there is nowhere to move on to.

Those women need answers and they need them now. And the Ireland that judged and shamed those young mothers and treated their innocent babies as less than human, should be banished forever to the past.

The Day of the Dead

Every year in your cemetery we have The Blessing of The Graves.  The Rosary is recited and the priests sprinkle holy water on the graves. The dead are remembered in prayers. Beforehand, each family tidies up the graves of their loved ones, fresh flowers are brought.

Most people come and stand at the grave of a parent or grandparent.  This is sad for them but it is at least the correct order in which things should happen. Some of us have sadder stories.

In your row of graves, there are, including you, six babies, of these the other five were born sleeping. You got to see the light of day at least and we are glad that you did have those few weeks.

The lad buried beside you was twenty-one and killed in a road traffic accident.
Three graves up, there is a teenage girl who took her own life.
There is a young mother who died suddenly an hour after giving birth to her third. baby. Her other children were only toddlers at the time.
All these graves to remind us how dreadfully unfair life can be.

Time is marching on. There are new graves every year.  At the moment, when I drive past the cemetery on the way to your brother's nursery, I can see your grave from the road. At night, I can see if your solar lights or candles are lit.

 But the row next to yours is filling up.  If four more people die, another grave will be placed behind yours and I will no longer be able to see your grave from the road. I am not looking forward to that day.

One day, your grave will be opened again and my body will be lowered down next to yours, deep in the dirt. Some people believe that that will be the end of the conscious part of me. If that's true, I will join you in oblivion and leave life to the living.

I choose to believe though that my consciousness will live  on in another realm and will meet yours again. Since you left our world, you have given me little hints and signs that this is so. I choose to believe that this is so because it is the only way that this can ever be made right.

When You Were Real

You were only here for seven weeks. You were in my tummy for 28 weeks before that of course, but we didn't really know you.

After the seven weeks were up, and you were gone, I thought of you as an angel, soul or spirit. Someone whose presence is always here although the part of you that was physical was gone.  I talk to you all the time in my head and talk about you a lot to others.

Your brother, the youngest of our boys, talks about you as if you are living another life elsewhere. "Sylvie-Rose is a toddler now" he says as if he has the same image I have of the child you should have been, growing up three years behind him. 

One day, he said something that broke my heart. He was talking about you, when you were here, when you occupied the Moses basket and had your nappy changed and were fed expressed milk from a bottle as you had only ever latched on rather lazily at my breast.

He said "When Sylvie-Rose was here, when she was Real."

And it seemed so harsh, that truth, than when you can't see someone, hear them, touch them, then they aren't Real, not in the true sense of the word.

There is comfort in Reality. Comfort in hugging your brothers, physically feeling their presence, knowing with absolute certainty that they are least are Real and no-one can tell me they're not.  I can't ever truly have that with you. I feel that you have sent me signs, little reassurances that you're still with me. Nothing that I could ever prove was truth, no Empirical Evidence of your Reality.  Just about enough for me to say "That was Sylvie-Rose" And on bad days, I don't even have that.

All I have is faith, hope and love that floats out somewhere into the ether. And I miss the reality of you.

Not Being Grateful

"Well, at least you have your boys" said my friend two years ago, trying to think of something to make me feel better.
Or the lady who had struggled to have her one child telling me that she had had to have IVF and that I should be "grateful for what I had"

Oh, that it were that easy! But it's really not.  I adore my boys. They are the reason I get up in the morning, the reason I carry on and in all honesty, if I didn't have them here, I'm not sure that I would have carried on.

It's not the case that if you have a lot of children, losing one here or there will have less of an impact on you.. The hole that they leave after they have gone is so much bigger than the the hole that was there before we had them. They come, these children and they put down deep roots in your heart. And when they are ripped away, you are left with a huge crater in the centre of your world and you are left, standing with your living children, teetering at the edge of the abyss.   The hole doesn't get filled in with the passage of time either. Perhaps the edges soften but the hollow remains.

I do hug my boys a little tighter now, worry more than I should when they are out of my sight, I fear more that I will lose them, because when things have gone very wrong, you lose faith in the statistics that lied and told you everything would be fine.

But grateful for this shattered life? No.