Inbetween Days

These strange inbetween days.

Yesterday, I took Jessica to nursery for her second visit. She stayed for an hour and a half and I left her there.

With strangers.

On her own.

It is the first time I have left her with anyone outside of the family (and only the second or third time I have left her for any reason other than to go out and earn money). When I left the nursery, I missed my turning. Which necessitated turning around and driving back the same route I had come, past the nursery building.

I knew that the little frame, those bones, that skull with its thin covering of hair and skin that I have pressed my face against so many times, that brain, that sweet face, that child of mine. She was inside that building. And I couldn't see her. A woman who I hardly know was responsible for her.

Would comfort her if she cried.

Or so I hoped.

Every instinct I possess was screaming at me to storm back in there and retrieve my daughter. But I didn't. Because she deserves to have some normality, playing with other children, a break from her overly protective and hovering mother. 

Before I had children, I remember hearing this quote. 

'Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.'

At the time I found it at little . . . hysterical. Kind of over-egging the pudding.

But it isn't. And it is even harder when you make the decision to have your heart go walking around outside your body when it doesn't walk around. When it dies instead. When part of your heart is lost to you forever. When part of your heart is ashes. Momentous indeed.

Georgina rises to the surface of my thoughts during these inbetween days.

Two years ago she was alive. She was alive. She lived. It seems so improbable that she ever did. Those words seem so incongruous even as I type them.

Georgina was alive.

That tiny child.

My daughter with her blue eyes, her tiny hands.
Lived.

I was in the supermarket with Jessica after her nursery visit. The supermarket has just re-opened with the addition of a large clothing section. Supermarket clothing is, generally, very cheap here in England. As the department was new there was a 25% discount on top of the already tempting price. I spotted a duffle coat. Navy blue and cream with a pink stripe and a hood. Large buttons down the front.

I frantically calculated the discount and walked around the shop internally debating whether I really needed another coat (I don't), if the coat was a bargain or not (it was) and how pissed off my husband would be to find another coat in the wardrobe (mildly).

My thoughts were full of this potential purchase.

Then . . . . 

I thought . . 

this time last year she was alive.

And suddenly I wanted to rip that coat up. And the 25% reduction. And myself.

In front of everyone.

I wanted to be mad. Shredding clothes in a surburban supermarket.

Keening in the aisles.

Banging my head on the cold, bland, uncaring shop floor.

Because my daughter died.

A while ago now.

I wanted to burn down every item there.

Because I was so full of rage.

Because my daughter died.

Even after all this time. All these days.

I am still, sometimes, incandescent. 

In my own feeble way. 

But, of course, I did nothing.
I reached a decision.

I paid for the coat. I left.

Because that is all anyone can do.

In the face of this. 
In the face of all those hidden pains that inhabit the discount clothing section of a supermarket.
More than just mine I fear.

Three days.

These inbetween days.

They are simultaneously long and so painfully short.

Three days.

Can pass very quickly. 

Time flies by when you are having fun as they say.

On the other hand, if you are experiencing intolerable pain, I should imagine that the time drags rather.

I wish I knew.

Did it hurt?

Was she in pain?

I hope that the morphine did as they promised me, wrapped her in a comfortable haze. That the pharmaceuticals embraced her body, soothed the pain that her mother could not.

That question will resurface throughout my life.

Did it hurt you my sweet girl?

And I will never, ever know the answer.

I've asked it here before. I know I'll ask it again.

Georgina.

I know that you will never be far from my thoughts.

Birthdays.

Christmas.

Your sister's first day at school.

Your sister losing her first tooth.

Your sister's first . . . well, everything, anything.

Jessica is accompanied by a pale sister, a transparent filigree of a might have been. 

Delicate and gleaming. A glimpse. A ghost. 

A sister forever at an angle, leaning away from us even as I lean towards her. Angled away. That child who escaped me. Who I can never hope to touch.

I drove myself to tears by attempting to imagine how I will feel at Jessica's wedding.

This was when Jessica was still in hospital. Not even three months old.

And already I was conjuring.

As my mom would say, "do not go and fetch the baboons out from behind the hill, they will come anyway."

The English equivalent would be something like "never trouble trouble, until trouble troubles you."

But the loss, the inverse of Georgina will, I think, always be there. I don't have to reach for it, it is already a part of me.

I already imagine how I will feel when I can no longer have any more children. That day may have already come for all I know but when it comes conclusively. How will I feel? To know that I will always be missing one. That my child bearing years started out like this and are now complete. That there will be no more chances.

When my mind starts to falter. When I can no longer remember. Myself. My name. Her father. Her sister. 

Will I remember her still? 

Will I remember my Georgina?

As more than a sister that could have been?

As more than my child that could have been?

More than a twin that wasn’t?

More than a shadow?

As her very own sweet self.

Who was.

Very briefly in this world.

That particular person.

Georgina.

Never again.

But she was.

Georgina.

I miss you.

I love you.

Still.

And I still don't have anything new to say.
But I am so very without you my girl.
Without you.

In these inbetween days.
And those that follow.
And next year.
And the year after.