I think about how much I love this kid already, the nibling I’ve hoped for for so long, another baby in the family, and I think about how I have - how we all have - six months now. Six months of waiting. Six months of hoping. Six months of this buzzing that is excitement and anxiety. ‘Stay alive, baby,’ I can hear my heart urging as I tuck the kids in, brush my teeth, lay my own head down. ‘Stay alive, baby. Stay alive, baby.’
Read MoreI had so many years of waiting and longing for exactly this life: The two children, the big farmhouse in the country. Space to breathe and walk, more trees than people, peace. They say, don’t move too soon after a tragedy, like leaving is the same as giving up, but all I wanted from the day I lost him, if I couldn’t have him back, was to run away.
Read MoreFor my sixth birthday, my parents surprised me and took me to a bubble show (that’s actually what it was called) where a woman literally put herself inside a giant bubble. I remember thinking how safe she looked. Nothing could touch her. Bubbles were safe.
Read MoreI should be better at letting go. I’m not. I should scatter her ashes, dive into a wave and there, beneath the surface of the water, release her. Free her from the prison of my anger and resentment. Free her from the agony and tangible sadness that engulfs my soul, release her before it’s too late before I too fade to dust, and she’s left in a box in someone’s bottom drawer or an attic, forgotten. The child that should have been.
Read MoreHe sits with me in my stiflng pain, silently, faithfully, patiently. He makes himself comfortable on her changing pad beside the crib – the one he knew better than to even consider laying a toe on while she was alive, but immediately staked a claim to the very first day we were back in our home after her death – and settles in for as long as I need to mourn.
Bereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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