Two

It doesn't seem possible that two years ago I was trying to sleep in the same double bed that still stands in this room this evening. That I was curled up on the floor not a few feet away from where I'm typing this. Just hoping that whatever was going awry with my pregnancy would simply stop and go away.

It seems wrong that I still have the bed, the carpet, the house, the computer desk that I sit typing this at, the same books on the shelves. That all these things are still here. Exactly as they were two years ago.
That I can still touch them.
Sometimes I hate them for that. If you can hate a bed, a desk, some books, a shelf. Like they care.
Sometimes I would like to smash them all down for their sheer, implacable continuity.
For their bare faced cheek of continuing to exist when Georgina is dead.
When anyone's child is dead.

Two years ago, Georgina was alive.
Inside this room.
Inside me.

I wish that I could go back.
Not to be that person again.
But to go back as some sort of ghost of childbirth past and advise the old me.
Tell myself to give up and go to the hospital.
That this wasn't going to end here.
That this wasn't going to end as I wanted it to.
That this wasn't, in many ways, going to end well.

That if I thought this was painful, I had another thing coming.
That this puny physical pain wasn't even the half of it.
This was going to get much, much worse before it started getting better.

Part of me wants to go back and put my arms around that stranger of two years ago's shoulders.
Hug her tight.
Hold her hand.
Because what she is about to go through is not going to be easy.
Not how she imagined it.
She doesn't even know what the acronym NICU stands for.
She doesn't yet know the meaning of PDA, CLD, NEC. ROP. But she will.
She is still counting the days until the magical point of viability at 24 weeks gestation.
Her pregnancy isn't going to get that far but one of her babies will die on that awaited date.
That she won't be bringing home the twin daughters that she had led everyone to expect.
That she expected.

I think she could use a friend this evening, 25th of August 2008.

A friend that would tell that one of her children is going to die. Soon.
That time is short.
That one of her children is going to survive this.
Despite a number of moments when that does not seem probable.

That her daughter will grow up to be the child that she already fancies she knows.
That the occasional jabs and hiccups are signals.
That the slight bones and defiant mewling cry that she will hear in just a few hours time are indicators.
That she knew her children before they were born.

The one who dies.
The one who lives.

Similar in their tenacity.
Similar faces.
Yet distinct.

Jessica.
My sweet child.
I am sorry.
That you had to enter this world so unprepared, so unready.
That you had a twin sister who died.
I'm sorry that you were promised a friend and companion.
A sister. Georgina. Only to have her taken away.
I have so many regrets about the beginning of your life.

But I can't regret you.
Or your sister.

When Jessica was still very, very small my sister picked out this song for her.
My sister spent a lot of time with Jessica during the first three days of her life. Just watching her.
As my husband and I hovered on the opposite side of the room as Georgina slowly died.

Although, oddly, I don't think I have met many people as alive as my daughters in those early days. Perhaps because I could see the effort that living cost them, how strenuous and risky the process of living actually is.
To breathe, to digest food, to filter out toxins.
Something that is hidden away in humans in good health.
Work.
So blatantly alive in the face of it all.
Defiantly.
Rebelliously.
My daughters.

The song . . .

The song is called Bright as Yellow.

And you live life with your arms reached out
Eye to eye when speaking
Enter rooms with great joy shouts,
Happy to be meeting.
And bright.
Bright,
bright as yellow
warm as yellow.
And I do not wish to be a rose,
I do not wish to be pale pink
But flowers scarlet, flowers gold
And have no thorns to distance me.

My little girl. My Jessica. Bright as yellow. Scarlet. Gold. Truly.
I love you.

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