Nine months without you

My darling Max,

It's been nine months without you. And what does it feel like? Well, most of the time now it just feels like my new 'normal'. The days still pass without me having much awareness of where the time goes, just as they did in the early days after I lost you. But I feel like doing more things more of the time, I guess. I can hold an idea in my mind for more than a few hours at a time. I've stopped saying if tomorrow comes and started assuming, as I once did, that it will come; that I and all of the people I love will more than likely survive to see the sun rise again.

I see things very much in terms of this concept of likelihood these days. I am very much aware of risk, and illness, and death, and uncertainty, and randomness, and fear. Many times this has threatened to overwhelm me. When you died I lost everything I had ever believed in. I lost the ability to trust. Most of the time, now, I am able to talk myself down from the ledge of hysteria that tells me my world is about to come crashing down, again, around me. This is because I have survived, against my every expectation, things that I would have once thought would kill me. I have tested my strength and I know my might. It's also because I have worked bloody hard, wringing out my heart and soul and mind to get my bearings in the world again; to begin to make some sense out of what it is all about. There is a very special doctor who has helped me so much. She helps to keep your mummy safe, and for that everyone who loves you, and your mummy, is very, very grateful.

When I go to visit her, you are very much alive in the room where we spend our precious hour. Apart from here at home, it is perhaps the only place I have in the world where you are real, and present, and welcomed without fear, without thoughtless commentary. We talk of other things, of course, but all with the understanding that you are there beside me, invisible to most anyone else, but vivid, oh so vivid, to me.

I wonder how many others see you as I do, how many others see you at all. When I stare at myself in the mirror I see you behind my eyes. You inhabit me still, just as you did for the precious five months you were alive. Who else can see you there? When I think of you, as I do most moments of the day, the pain of your absence is heavy, but you are light. You are so light. You are my light, my solace, my guiding, twinkling star. People say it must be hard to think about you, and dream about you, and talk about you, and write about you, but they've got it all wrong. It's the easiest thing in the world. Talk of your pours from me from all the holes in my heart. It's a deluge. It washes me clean, warm and clean. The hurting is in the plugging it up, the conversations where you remain unspoken or unacknowledged. There is pain is in the nightly revelation I have before I go to sleep that you won't be there when I wake up in the morning, that still stings and burns and threatens to take my breath away. But to evoke you, the very essence of you, in a thousand different ways, is my healing salve.

Lots of people mummy knows have given birth to healthy, living babies this last couple of weeks. All of them, without exception, have been able to take their babies home. One was a few weeks premature. I overheard some people coo about how cute and tiny she would be, wearing doll's clothes. I swallowed hard. I thought of the most creative ways to derail that conversation. Nothing like a line about a dead baby to shut people the fuck up. But I swallowed that too. And then I left the room.

Some more babies are expected soon. Sometimes I fantasise about flushing my phone down the toilet when the text messages arrive while I'm trying to enjoy my breakfast. I simply do not want to know, and if that means cutting myself off from everyone but a select few people then that feels like an entirely reasonable solution to me right now. Who needs 'em? Of course I don't mean everyone - the few in my inner circle, including everyone who reads here on your special blog, know that these sentiments don't apply to them. They've earned the right to share fabulous news with me if they've been willing to sit and hold my hand, without taking issue or offence, while I cry during its delivery.

Because I am so concerned with doing the 'right' thing, the 'right' thing is what I do - I congratulate them, I send bubbly text messages of celebration that feel so inauthentic, so fake, that even my own words even begin to make me sick. I hate myself for it. I truly do. I'm too polite, too accommodating, for my own good. I'm a hypocrite. But I don't know how to act any other way, its not in my DNA. And, it's not my place. Who am I to rain on their glorious baby-making parade? But then again, I often think, who are they? Who are they to intrude upon my mind, my heart, with equally as little regard for the consequences?

I'm not happy for them. I'm not happy at all. I'm angry. I'm angry that I'm on someone's group text message list, that they want to shout their happy news to me from the rooftops, but don't care for an ounce of sensitivity in its delivery. Mostly, I just wish I didn't have to know, especially when it's concerning distant friends, relations or acquaintances. What possible benefit is there in this knowledge for either party? None, as far as I see it, especially since as soon as I receive the news,  I hear myself, almost sotto voce, express what I know to be the truth of how I feel. 'Guess I won't be seeing you again' is the sentiment. Yes, I cut them off. Just like that. I'm pruning the branches of my life, darling, so there is more room for you.

Nine months brings us close to Father's Day. I see your darling daddy flinch in anticipation of its sting. He's had a hard week. He's lost his job, and it was his last day today, and he doesn't know what to do next. He's like me, afraid of moving on because he doesn't know what the future holds. He's probably afraid of closing the door on a part of his life where he was once happy. Where he was once just a young professional guy with a heart unbroken. We both long for those times past, but at the same time we would never want them back again, because to do so would mean to erase you. Though the breathtaking pain of your absence is hard to bear, we both know that we'd do it all again for you, even knowing that you would not be ours to keep. We'd do it all again, because you changed our lives. You showed us love. You made us realise what we want most in the world. You strengthened our bond so that it is now unbreakable. You made us a family.

You are our gift, our prize, our heart's song. We love you so much. We miss you so much. You are our little son, still, forever. You are with us always and everywhere. We remember you. We give thanks for you. We mourn for you. We love you.

Your adoring Mummy. xoxox