Resilience

It's late. The house is quiet and dark.
My husband has gone out to the pub with his friends.
Jessica is still ill and is sleeping, a little fitfully, in the room next door. I'm listening to her breathing on the monitor, it sounds as though a very small Darth Vader has come for a sleep-over. Snortling, as my husband calls Jessica's, occasionally rather noisy, night-time breathing.

She has a chest infection which, whilst it isn't great news when combined with her ex-preemie lungs, she seems to be coping with pretty well. I'm just hoping to steer clear of the hospital. To that end I have spent the day studiously spooning honey & lemon linctus into her mouth, and reading 'Green Eggs and Ham' in various silly voices. I've tried to replace 'Green Eggs and Ham' with other books whilst Jessica seems distracted but she isn't buying them. Even 'The Cat in the Hat,' Despite the same author, same rhythmical nonsensical thing going on but no, no dice. I'm sure I'll be murmuring the words of 'Green Eggs and Ham' in my sleep tonight.

For the first time this week, a number of people have said to me something along the lines of 'shouldn't you be over this by now?' Including my husband. Even I'm starting to wonder.

It is strange. I hadn't really noticed how long it has been or how much I still talk about either Jessica's premature birth, Jessica's health or Georgina's short life and death.
Perhaps I should be thinking about it less frequently?
Mentioning it less often?
Writing here less?

My mum mentioned an Afrikaans saying to me the other day which roughly translates as 'that which is upon the heart, rises to the lips.' Whilst this is not the case for some people (my own mother included), whose self-possession I can only envy, it is the case with me. That which is on my heart inexorably rises to my lips. Despite my frequent promises to myself to be more self-contained, more dignified.

Regardless of how inappropriate it is or how boring it is or how often my listeners have heard it. It still comes out.

My poor husband, he tries to introduce a hundred other topics but I will bend them all back to my heart, our girls, Georgina and Jessica.

When the doctor (a general practitioner who doesn't know Jessica's history) mentioned that he didn't like the sound of her breathing, the whole story bubbled up to my lips with an eagerness that took me by surprise. I still want to tell people. I still want people to understand that when this child was born she was no bigger than a 500ml bottle of soft drink. That she had a twin sister. That her sister died. I'm not even sure why I would want to tell people this story any longer. Why can't I let it go?

Something within me is so deeply, deeply hurt by what happened.
And I'm ashamed for feeling so hurt. For being so very ungrateful.

I seem to have lost my resilience.

One minute, I am all happiness. I look at Jessica and I am plunged headlong into wild elation. I still can't believe it. I still can't fathom it. Not many children born at that gestation survive. How is it possible that something so unlikely should happen to me?

The next, all despair. I miss Georgina. I miss her terribly. I ache. I wonder what she would have been like. Not many children who are born alive in this time, in this place, die. How is it possible that something so unlikely should happen to me?

All at once.

And I can't seem to turn it off. This continuous up and down of screeching emotion. I'm tired. I miss Georgina.  I miss her so very, very much.
I'm so very grateful and happy that Jessica is here, breathing with her noisy lungs in the next room.

I wish I knew what the future held. But I'm stuck here, for the time being.

"But I can see, 
The planets are aligning for me, 
And I dare not breathe for then 
The clouds will come and then deny me".