Trauma and the odds

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Trauma and the odds

And anyway, those of you reading here will know: it’s not the numbers that matter anymore. Now that it’s been you, you know it’s always someone, that there’s a person behind those numbers, and hey, why shouldn’t it be you? I feel like I was trained, somehow, to imagine that it would always be someone else, that there was no reason it would be me. I think in 2023 we call that toxic positivity.

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Muddling through

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Muddling through

I used to think I was a good parent to a grieving child. We talked about sadness and anger, we played it out, we drew and sang and stomped when we needed to. And then - we stopped. I still say her name. I tell stories that start, “When I was pregnant with Anja….” But it’s not the same as it was when they were little and full of wonder about everything, including death.

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On writing

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On writing

It tapered off slowly, the writing. I’d find myself starting a new post with the bemused observation that it had been two months since I’d last written. Then it had been three months, then five, and now I might write twice a year. The last post was for her birthday. January. The only post this year. It’s been a crazy year, this one. But still, I wonder what happened to time when I passed it all writing. Where did I find it that time? What did I ignore or neglect or simply cease to notice while I was writing? How is grief so all-consuming and then one day… it’s not?

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The keeper

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The keeper

It’s late afternoon, Mother’s Day 2020, my ninth Mother’s Day without Anja. We walk across campus, keeping 2 metres distance between us and other families, this strange new normal we’ve already learned to accept. The children stop to climb a tree. I stoop down. A smooth round pebble nestled in a patch of bulbous brown mushrooms has caught my eye. I pick it up, rub it clean, pocket it. A keeper.

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On recordkeeping

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On recordkeeping

This here is a record. A record in time. December 2, 2019. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one days after I stepped away from that blinking cursor and a soon-to-be past life, one hand on my belly, willing her to move. I cue up the interview recording again. A moment where we are both laughing raucously at something only a bereaved mother a certain distance out can laugh at. And then we are serious again. We say his name. We say her name. We’re creating a record, carrying it forward, together.

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