Heard and Unheard

I have finally managed to start reading again. Slowly.

I'm not counting my many renditions of The Gruffalo, The Hungry Caterpillar and That's Not My Monster / Dinosaur / Puppy / Lion / whichever one of the seeming three million variants on this theme that I happen to have in my hand.

Anyhow. I was reading when I was confronted by this epigraph.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
John Keats

It stopped me in my tracks.

I suppose in any family containing more than one child there is always the temptation to draw comparisons. It certainly happened in my own family. I am the quiet one, the bookworm, the sensitive one. My sister is the loud one, the funny one, the acerbic one.

In the extended family, even more so. There are so many of us that we almost need to be reduced to one or two defining character traits. Without that familial shorthand, we would probably be at risk of our brains exploding as we tried to take in the complexities of about fifty other people.

Perhaps this tendency to label or compare is even more pronounced in the case of twins. Where you have two children of the same age who will, inevitably, progress at different speeds. I even started doing it whilst my girls were still in the womb.
Georgina was the quieter baby, the shy baby, the larger baby, the iller baby.
Jessica was the more active baby, the more outgoing baby, the smaller baby, the healthier baby.

And now sadly, the comparison could not be more stark. A dichotomy.

The quick and the dead.
The live daughter. The dead daughter.
The seen daughter. The unseen daughter.
The heard daughter. The unheard daughter.

I love them equally. But they are different. Growing increasingly different.

Georgina was my first born. I am the first born.
Georgina and I have the same middle name.
Georgina was the baby I saw within minutes of the birth. She was held up for me to see. I didn't see Jessica for at least a couple of hours. I tried to but there were too many people working on her.
Georgina was the baby that I held first.
Georgina was the baby that I spent the first few days with.

By the time I held Jessica, a fortnight after Georgina had died, something within me had broken irreparably. I wasn't the person that I had been. I didn't seem to have that kind of love to give anymore. I wonder if I held something back. All I could think of was another funeral, another tiny white box, another bag of ashes.

Will I always be searching for Georgina in Jessica? The very last place that I want to look. I find myself doing it. Even when I know that Georgina is not there. Looking for an echo of her in the turn of her sister's head. In her sister's eyes. In her sister's smile. The curve of her sister's cheek. The smell of her sister's fuzzy head. Georgina?

But I don't know. Far be it from me to contradict Mr Keats but, on reflection, I'm not entirely convinced about this unheard melodies being sweeter stuff.

They are simply unheard.
Unplayed.
Unlistened to.
Imagined.

Nothing can be sweeter than the music that we hear. Now.
Or perhaps my imagination is just a particularly crummy one.

I think I can still hear Georgina. She is still with me. On the outskirts but still with me.
Not in my imagination. Not entirely.
In the blood that swooshes in my own ears.
In the lines on my face.
In my eyes.
I think about her so much that she must surely have left some indelible trace on me, a well worn groove in my brain.

I will never forget her.
I think about her every single day.
I cry for her every single day.
I still hear you sweetheart. My girl.
I'm listening. I'm always listening.