written February 2015….. What powerful heartbreak in these words…

5 months on and I still feel this deep sadness after your passing. I do not want to see newborn babies and have difficulties seeing pregnant people. Why am I learning this bitter lesson? Why cannot someone else learn it? Why does it have to be me? I question but no answers come. Sometimes in life we will not get the answer to the questions we most want to know about. Grieving is ok. It is ok to mourn the loss of our babies of our dreams and hopes that we had for them. It is ok to do this, as long as our grieving is constructive. Easier said than done. I struggle with this. I grief for my loss. I wish that Sebastian was alive! Alive he is but he’s alive in heaven. I wonder is he being looked after? Or is he there all alone? Except he isn’t alone. He has got his sisters and cousin David. But no he doesn’t have his mommy and that rips my heart out. My heart breaks because his mommy is not there for him. His mommy is walking this lonely path on earth. 

When I was in hospital I nearly died. I wish that I had died. I wish that God took me instead of my son. At least I know that my son would have given hope and healing if I had died in his place. Ok. He would not have had a mommy but he would have had so many family that would have loved and cherished him the way I would have. Why I cry did my son die? All I want is my son back. This is all I ask! All I want. I do not want anything else. I just want my son. My children. My daughters. I want my children to be with me. Except I feel this loneliness and emptiness that never leaves. That just stays and whimpers. Stays and stays.

My days are spent waking up and looking at the sky and thinking what it would feel like to be finally free from all this pain? Free flying like the elegant birds that you see beneath the blue sky. Must be exciting, refreshing. I wonder if the birds of the sky are ever scared of flying. Do they experience phobias like we do? Or are they fearless? I wish I was fearless. I wish I was strong. But I have become a shadow of my former self. A weak shrinking shadow. Just existing, breathing, eating just to keep living when there is no point. When all I wake up to is silence that rings painfully in my ears. No children to look after. An empty crib stands in the corner, untouched. Untouched as dust collects and layers itself on top like a blanket.

My days barely resemble what used to be achieved. Now I just breathe and look on through the looking glass at the reflection that stares back. Every morning I wake up and I put on a mask. A mask that hides my grief, the pain of losing Sebastian, of losing Elouise, of losing Micheline, of losing nephew David. Just this long empty barren road of grief as flowers slowly grow and make their way through earths hard ground as the tears drop and stain earths surface. 

Memories float in and out as I remember that dark September day when I knew that the season would turn and my life would change forever. I did not know which way. I thought it would be an upward climb one full of happiness love and joy but instead it was a rough down hill descend into misery. Faster then a plane crashing my world plummeted and all was still. My son’s heart was still. A silence echoed the rooms. All you could hear was the murmurs of the ultra scan and the whisper of the doctor as he tried to trace my son’s heart. But all was still. A flat white line floating endlessly on a piece of paper as my sobs echoed the room and the room started spinning and all you could hear were the wails of a broken mothers heart. A broken heart. And the silence that drowns with the music into nothingness. There once was a galloping heart within my body a little kick boxer ready to come into this world only to be still and fall into the depths of water once more. My son a bringer of healing.

And as I went through the contractions, through labour hour by hour but no progress was made I wondered if I too were to die from blood poisoning. I begged God to have mercy on me and to take me away to be with the angels but he did not grant my wish. He silenced my wish. Thus, the labour continued as I wailed into the silence and all my hopes and dreams drowned with my son who was laying in the womb tomb of his mother’s haven. It was supposed to be a place of safety, a place of rest but instead evils little hands appeared and ripped out my son’s tiny heart and crushed him so his heart stopped beating. People texting, praying. You will be ok. You will live and I saying No! I want to die with my son. Sobbing like a crazy woman as I laid lifeless on that old creaking hospital bed begging God to do a miracle with his hands but none came. And so labour continued, and my own mom came into the room weeping, completely emotional, giving her eldest daughter a choice of two. 1 to die and plan a funeral and 2 to fight to live. Which of the two would be better. And as the tears flowed down her face, the hurt etched on her face as she made the calls to family of my predicament I made a resolve. I will fight this and live Sebastian’s legacy. And so this new will to live came and I pushed and laboured on till Monday lunch time when my son was born still and silent yet gracefully into this world. As quickly as he came as quickly he left and all you could hear between the 4 sterile walls was a mother’s grief, a wailing heart that bounced against the walls. And in the next rooms across and behind and in front you could hear the cries of a fresh bundle popping out of the oven. The cries of a newborn latching onto mothers breast and the welcome sigh of relief. My baby is safe. I sailed through this pregnancy. Then there are people like me who go through pregnancy and lose hope at the end and everything comes crashing to a startling halt. Life stops. The clock stops ticking. And life is captured into a timeless seam as reality hits and you get put into a glass box as you watch the world continue but you just watch and don’t move forward. Stuck you are in a box. Trapped with those memories. The love trapped within your wailing heart. This is what life is like for a grieving mother.