Getting sane takes time

As March draws ever nearer my sorrow grows ever more profound. Though nothing can quite compare with the immediacy of death for gut-wrenching agony, what comes later actually causes a great deal more distress, which you don't see coming.

Time does not heal your wounds, rather it dresses them with a cheap bandage that falls off numerous times a day. Every time it does so you're shocked to find that underneath the dressing your wounds are still as raw and weeping as they ever were, and in fact, in the interim, may have even turned septic. My wound hasn't scabbed, but instead grown deeper as time has passed and I've come to realise the enormity of the scar I will wear for the rest of my life.

I'm acutely aware of the fact that the baby I gave birth to over two months ago should not even yet be ready to join the world. I have this awareness on the inside, where the weeks and milestones of pregnancy are still etched on my mind, and I have it on the outside too, particularly with my friend Sharon whose own baby boy will be born on Max's due date (she's having an elective c-section and has kindly told me the date so I can perhaps prepare myself). Witnessing her prepare for the arrival of her baby not only compounds my pain as I look upon the evidence of her better fortune - photos of the newly decorated nursery; the uncomfortable but reassuring symptoms of pregnancy that indicate her baby is alive and kicking - but the jealousy I feel also takes my breath away, suffocating me and leaving my dead, bloated face with the ugliest of expressions - bitter and tortured.

I don't bear my friend any real ill will - she is my oldest friend and appreciates, even if she can't understand, the confusion and irrationality I am experiencing. But I don't want to meet her baby. I absolutely dread the news of his birth. I feel, though, that I also can't expect to be sheltered from the assault that other people's happy lives are to me, no matter how understandable it is that I should wish to be so protected. It's one thing to take my vengeful fantasies out on women at the traffic lights or on adjoining tables at cafes, but when you begin to begrudge those who mean something to you their own happiness you begin to realise you've got a long way to go on your grief journey, and the enormity of the road you have ahead of you is enough to make you want to end it all right here. I haven't got the stamina, or the shoes, for that kind of track and am instead forced to walk it everyday anyway with blistering feet.

As my friend shared photos of her baby boy's new bedroom, freshly decorated and waiting for him with all of his things laid out, I spent what was perhaps the exact same afternoon packing my baby's things into archive boxes - relics of the past before that particular future had even begun. What I have left of my baby is two sky-blue boxes, packed tightly with all manner of tiny baby loveliness.

Strangely, Peppy has been keeping watch over the boxes. 

I've caught him investigating a few times now.

I cried so much over the little garments and toys as I packed them that I think much of the weight of the box is made up from the density of my tears. The boxes sit in his room alongside a brand new cot still in its box, and his pram, which I've filled with the most valuable possession I have left - my doll, Lulu, who has been with me since I was myself a little girl. She's seen everything I've seen, and helped comfort me through every one of the adversities I've experienced, so it seems fitting that she's there - her little body marking the space where Max's should have been.

On display around the areas of the house I spend the most time I have put as many of Max's keepsakes as I've been able to collect. This is my way of having him around - with his photos in constant sight, his birth certificate framed and displayed, fresh flowers from his special rose plant always in a vase next to the candle that burned during his funeral service. All of them, whilst reminding me of my precious son, point towards his unfathomable absence. I look at his picture on my bedside table when I awaken every morning and every morning I panic - where is my baby? I run my hand over my stomach and for the several hundredth time am forced to remember that he is not here. He's in none of the places he should be. I've had moments of madness where I've wanted to smash the glass on the photo frame to get him out, so strong and primal is my urge to touch him and hold him again.

I also find myself obsessed with death - Max's and my own. It is impossible to reconcile that I still live without the little baby who I feel was the best part of me. Would it not have been more natural for me to wither alongside him, the maker and the made, the captain going down amongst the passengers it was his job to protect from the ravages of the sea. That's how I feel - like the cowardly captain of the Costa Concordia who let his prized passengers drown and who saved himself by abandoning them for the safety of a life raft. If he'd known. as I now do, the recriminations he'd be haunted with for the rest of his life he'd have bloody well let go and drowned himself, I'm sure of it.

The story of Max and I is littered with the messiest mixed metaphors - the story of his life has described me as at once on the sea and nursing gangrenous sores, for example. It's not just my inability to find words to express my experience genuinely, although of course that is also a part, but my feelings truly are all of these things at once. I flit frantically from one feeling to another. They all appear in different colours and voices, through both my waking and sleeping hours. My grief is a truly schizophrenic experience.

I recently read the wonderful Jeanette Winterson's Why be Happy When You Could be Normal. In it she recounts her descent into madness and back out again. She writes that "going mad is the beginning of a process [...] a process that might lead somewhere." In my present state of emotional instability this sentiment really resonated with me. Winterson says that living with life is very hard; that our feelings can be unbearable, but that ultimately that the mind wants to heal itself so we should let it "manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job" - for her it was voices in her head.

I think I read this book at the right time, as I seemed to find in it permission to grieve deeply and startlingly, and to consider for the first time that though it's terrifying to be inside the disintegrating self, this process can be a good thing. As going mad takes time, Winterson observes, getting sane takes time too. Crucially, she writes that we must make time for it despite the fact that as a society we are less tolerant of such extremes now than at any period in history.

My thought for the week, also from Winterson's memoir, is about the power of creativity. Creativity "is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness," she writes. In this bold hope I guess it's time to get cracking on my vogel-winning debut novel - which still only has a title and an opening line, despite the fact I promised to have 3000 words by this Saturday...

When you're lost for words

A lovely girl I've connected with in an online support group posted a message on Facebook today that really resonated with me. She wrote that 'grief becomes a lonely journey once people start assuming you're OK'. This mother lost her baby girl only a few days before Max died so it's not surprising that we have found we are each experiencing shared feelings at similar times. I'm not complaining that people have stopped caring about me or have forgotten what happened, for I know that neither of those are true. It is true that you're left alone with your grief day in and day out though as everyone else gets on with their lives. I recognise that no relationship could survive if the only topic of conversation was my sorrow. Understandably, people want to talk about normal things, and so do I. Now two months has passed I feel it's expected that I can again participate in the everyday world - to hold conversations about the tennis with my dentist without blurting out that I had a baby who died. I tried to cancel my credit card with the Commonwealth Bank this week and the teller asked me how my summer holidays had been. I wanted to tell him, but instead I just nodded and smiled and said how lovely a break I'd had. Every time someone asks me how I am of course I say I'm OK, or I'm fine. I feel there is no other appropriate answer. But of course I'm not fine in the least, so this becomes a horrible cycle where I tell lies but don't really want anyone to believe them. I want someone to say 'I know you're not, and that's OK'. 

I came across this really amazing line of cards that I wish were available in the shops, where everyday people could see them. The ladies who designed them have both lost children themselves and obviously at times also felt abandoned to weather the world without a soul on their side. There are cards you can send to someone who's just lost a child, as you certainly won't find anything specific to that situation in the Hallmark aisle. But there are also cards that people can send for the inexhaustible range of lonely days that will continue to be hard to bear into the future - cards for due dates, for mothers or fathers day, for baby's birthday. To know, just occasionally, that your baby has definitely not been forgotten, and that people know you are still suffering even though you're back at work and laughing at funny jokes as if nothing at all untoward has passed, I think would be really, really lovely.

When you don't know what to say, or whether to say it at all, these cards are the perfect solution and no doubt would be treasured by any grieving parent who is sitting at home feeling like the whole world has forgotten them. It's inspired me to find out if there are similar greeting cards for other difficult life situations. I shall research and report back, and will most definitely tell Kate the card maker that there's a very big gap in the market ready for her to fill!