Back to the land of the living

Today was Leslie’s first day back at work and it felt like this event signified the end of our allocated period of mourning. It’s not that anyone says out aloud that they will tolerate a deviation from your normal affairs for only a specified time after trauma or loss, but you get a strong sense that it’s true nonetheless. There are pragmatic reasons for having to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get on with life, I guess. If everyone in the world who was suffering decided to just drop out of society and nurture themselves until such time as they were healed completely, there’d be a whole lot of empty streets and office buildings. There’s also the argument, of course, that activity in itself helps to heal grief and sorrow - that the quicker you get back to ‘normal’ the less pain you will feel.

Still, there are a number of ways in which this is cruel. Firstly, I deeply resent the allocation of an allotted bereavement time by workplaces, especially when this time is dismally short. I believe it’s normal to be allocated only a couple of days of bereavement leave in most corporations, which just seems offensive to me. Others I’ve heard will offer more leave ‘at your manager’s discretion’. Well, this is fine if you have a compassionate boss who exhibits evidence of human feeling, but what if your manager is an unfeeling ass-bag, or who is just not willing to fight for an extension of the policy on your behalf?

Leslie has been lucky in that he was able to spend three weeks at home after I had Max. This is only because he was able to take two weeks ‘parenting’ leave also, because I gave birth to a live baby and the policy did not state this right was to be revoked upon the death of the baby. Even then, there was some confusion as to what he was entitled to. Is it not the job of HR professionals to iron these things out? I feel his work should have contacted him to tell him not to worry and that they would sort it out rather than making him chase it up himself. The last thing anyone wants to do when they are trying to organise the funeral of their baby is to worry about whether they have enough time off work to attend it.

Secondly, I resent that anyone gets to decide what is ‘enough’ time before we are expected to resume our old lives. At the moment, for example, it is very difficult for us to see or be around other small babies - every one of them is a stinging reminder of what we have lost and may never have again. People have been understanding and sensitive to this over the last couple of weeks, but I can’t help but worry how long it will be before we begin to be considered selfish for not attending other people’s baby showers, christenings or first birthday parties. How long before I’m expected to greet the news of friends babies with joy and happiness instead of bitter anger and jealousy?

It feels like forever will not be enough time for us to adjust to life without our baby; to let go of all the dreams and plans we had for our family’s future. I don’t believe we will ever resume our ‘old’ lives. How could we when we have changed, irrevocably, as people, and as a couple? Though I know there will come a time when our grief is not so raw, normal life for us can never again really be ‘normal’. I feel that life will be forever divided into two epochs - Before Max and After Max. On the one hand I would never want to go back to Before Max as I would not take back a second of the time I spent with him, nor the love he gave me. At the same time, life After Max seems like too much to bear in the long term. 40 or 50 more years of living without him? How do we manage that?

Despite my fears of being alone without Les today, it’s almost 6pm and I’m surprised to discover I’ve survived. I met up with a couple of friends - Leah and Yvette - for brunch, which I really enjoyed. We went to Porgie and Mr Jones in Hawthorn and listened to blissfully innocent Year 12 students talk animatedly about their ATAR scores and how their lives would never be the same again because they did/did not get the score they wanted. We watched Leah’s little girl experience a moment of the purest joy upon discovering that she’d be getting peanut butter on toast for brunch. We teased Yvette for ordering weak lattes because she can’t handle a full shot of espresso in one go. And we chatted about our plans for Christmas and the holidays, whose madness we agreed was about to descend upon us whether we were ready for it or not. In short, I did some living, whether I liked the idea or not.