What if we didn’t celebrate her birthday this year?
This is the treacherous, traitorous thought that runs through my head this early January, as the rain falls ceaselessly and the gleam and glitter of Christmas fade into the background.
Read MoreI used to worry about the days somewhere far in the future when I might not think of her every hour, or even every day. I used to think that when those days arrived it would mean I had failed her, had forgotten her, had left her trapped in some kind of terrible limbo, neglected, lost for real. It’s not like that, though, and I wish I could’ve known that all those years ago. Someone probably told me. I know I didn’t believe them.
Read MoreI tend to chafe at anything I perceive as an attempt to silence my grief or force me to perform happiness. But here among other babylost parents, I am tiptoeing out of the dark barroom to ask, what if I don’t spend the rest of my life crying with the curtains drawn? Is that a betrayal of my daughter? Or the opposite?
Read MoreI think about how much I love this kid already, the nibling I’ve hoped for for so long, another baby in the family, and I think about how I have - how we all have - six months now. Six months of waiting. Six months of hoping. Six months of this buzzing that is excitement and anxiety. ‘Stay alive, baby,’ I can hear my heart urging as I tuck the kids in, brush my teeth, lay my own head down. ‘Stay alive, baby. Stay alive, baby.’
Read MoreI should be better at letting go. I’m not. I should scatter her ashes, dive into a wave and there, beneath the surface of the water, release her. Free her from the prison of my anger and resentment. Free her from the agony and tangible sadness that engulfs my soul, release her before it’s too late before I too fade to dust, and she’s left in a box in someone’s bottom drawer or an attic, forgotten. The child that should have been.
Read MoreWhen the wave crashes, I’m assaulted with memories—images of the hospital, my little boy covered in wires and unmoving, giving the funeral director the outfit we wanted him to be cremated in. As the wave is crashing down, it seems unlikely that I’ll ever be able to surface again, with the water pounding down on my head.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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