Monday 14 October 2013

Enduring Love

I never meant to fall quiet.

But it shuts you up. As somebody far wiser pointed out.

It does. It simply shuts you up, it grabs your words away and runs off into the middle distance.

Whatever 'it' may be.

***

I bob about, broadening, surfacing occasionally from whatever heaviness it is that presses down upon me so. Guilt mainly. I think. I'm so clogged up with it that no senses are free to probe its precise identity. It is something that I press through, viscous and syrupy, I squelch along, my body like an ever expanding rock.

36 weeks pregnant now. But I find that I can't really think of her at all.
I can't imagine her alive, can't imagine her dead either.
Either the first or the last.

I try to speak. For my eldest daughter, my first child. But I find that it has  . . . .  shut  . . . me  . . . up.

Because I can't talk about her, or about what happened to her, in a way that anybody would want to hear. Or that would even make sense.

The quick phrase that I have prepared for occasions when I feel that I have to mention her, 'my daughter was one of twins but her sister died in intensive care' is as dry as tinder.
But it never catches alight.

Five years on and it is still only a howl that will do. Or silence. Which is the more acceptable option.

My silence peers at others. Where it sees a suspicion of a companion, sticking out around the edges of conversations and glances. Not properly tucked away.

I sigh and avert my eyes. Because what could I say? In places where there is no comfort. There is simply nothing. It shuts you up.

When people talk to me about this pregnancy, I want to change the subject. I don't want to draw any attention to myself, to her, to any of them. I don't even feel like I want to draw attention to Georgina. Which is daft - I mean what is the worst that could happen to her? Didn't it already happen? Well, one variant anyway. There are whole worlds of 'worst' out there, it transpires.

So it seems best just to quietly drift along, trying to remain inconspicuous, hoping to stay on the right side of the numbers.

***

Jessica selects a library book, 'Hello Twins', and I feel a slight stab, somewhere in a minor heart valve. We read the book, I try to explain that she was a twin. She looks at me, utterly mystified. And I lapse back into silence.

The same old battles rage inside, guilt and regret. Wishing that I were a better parent, a better mother. Perhaps none of this would have happened. I still expend a foolish amount of energy on simply wishing that it hadn't. No matter how many healthy babies I can birth, there will always be the first two. The unexpected and half finished twins. They look at me reproachfully, heavy with symbolism and meaning.

Although I don't believe in either of those liars, symbols, meanings. Not anymore. Doesn't mean I don't miss them from time to time however.

I plough on.

Struggles with homework and communication and toilet-ing. The slow, grinding acceptance that I am not a minor deity, that I cannot rearrange this world to suit the needs of one small child. Instead I am forced to assist in squishing her into a more socially acceptable shape instead.

Reuben bites me (unexpectedly as I thought this time had passed) and looks up, toothily satisfied. I can hardly blame him. If I had access to the being seemingly in charge of all this would I not be sharpening up my own teeth, ready to get my quick chomp in when an opportunity arose?

***

But, in the quiet, something still murmurs.
Despite my attempts to stuff it down into various holes, to stop its incessant, small voice.
It might have shut me up.
But it can't shut this up.

It won't let me forget.
It won't let me give up.
It won't keep quiet.
It chants.

I think that this un-shut-up-able element  . . .  might be love.

16 comments:

  1. It is love. Tugging away at you, never forgetting. I get this - I too am silent about Sam. I rarely talk about him to anyone yet he is always there, just beneath the surface. George is starting to mention him more and I find myself struggling with what to say - mostly I just tell him he had a brother and he died. When he asks where he is, I'm stumped.

    36 weeks. Hang in there mama. You can do this. Anxiously awaiting news on your end and sending heaps of love across the ocean.

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  2. I couldn't imagine M, dead or alive, either; not even on the way to the hospital to have him cut out, not even in the operating room. And then there he was, the tremendous relief of him. Wishing you as much peace as possible in the next few weeks.

    And, yes, if I could bite, I would, too.

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  3. I too spend tons of otherwise useful energy wishing for things to be different. Wishing that things didn't have to happen to me, to Alexander, to our family the way it had. First pregnancies unfold with warm, squishy, healthy pink babies...and new mothers want to relate to my experience with Theodore...

    I turn away. I go quiet. The chant of relentless heartbreak as I brought home my newest son isn't something most find relatable. So I too have gone a bit quiet as the holidays commence here in Canada.

    I want to speak of him more...but the joy on these new mothers faces doesn't welcome my ongoing heart break.

    What you said about Reuben made me smile. Damn straight, I thought. Damn straight I would give a bite every now and again to the ruler of my world.

    The unshutupable element I believe is love.

    36 weeks. You are on my mind constantly. And I'm happy you've put a number on your course so I can stop doing the math over and over every time you cross my mind.

    Love to you
    Love to Georgina
    Love to the little babe in your belly

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  4. 36 weeks. It goes by so fast, but yet so slow, doesn't it?

    Sending you lots of love and hugs and positive thoughts.

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  5. oh this is beautiful...this unshut up able element...yes it IS love. Love!

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  6. Love it is! Beautiful. Your post reminds me of something my midwife said after Acacia died and I was in her office a few weeks later... "she's still not here." I come back to that often, because Acacia still is not here, and never will be. Georgina is not here. And yet - they are "here", within us, between us...somewhere they are here.

    And obviously I have not been keeping up on my blogs as I didn't know you were pregnant! So happy for you. And I know it's far from easy. So lots of love and peace to you during these last few weeks.

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  7. Yes, love, it won't be shut up will it.
    As always there is so much here your pregnancy and trying to press your girl into a shape and the missing . . . I wish I could sit down with you for tea, though our conversation would be punctuated by biting and needs to go to the potty and she hit me and you can't play . . . still would be lovely.

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  8. Catherine - I have only recently learned of your newest pregnancy. And now you're at 37 weeks! You've survived most of it. Sending you lots of light as you endure the final days until you can meet your third daughter in person. Gosh, 3 girls that sounds overwhelming and delightful.

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  9. Beautiful words as always. Yes, love is unshutupable. I love how you've put that.

    And ermegerd! I am such a slack blog reader I didn't know you were preggers again either. Congrats. :)

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  10. I also miss those liars. Love you and keeping you in my background mind all the time.

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  11. Sweet Catherine, I didn't know you were pregnant again. I'll be thinking of you over the coming weeks. I think, for me, as the years go by, she becomes the constant, the consistent. Everything else changes in me and around me, but she continues in her absence.

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  12. So much here, Catherine. I am thinking of you and your little ones and wishing Jessica knew her twin and hoping that the biting is a phase and that everything goes ridiculously well with this newest baby. I miss the liars, too. Some days I wish I could just talk myself into believing them again.

    And this - "Five years on and it is still only a howl that will do. Or silence. Which is the more acceptable option." - oh, yes. It seems less acceptable to howl as time goes on. I think I'm cranky about that.

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  13. I keep coming back...check and checking. Making sure I didn't miss anything new. Thinking about you. Every day!

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  14. Think of you and wishing you well in whatever part of the journey you are in. <3

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  15. Thinking of you and all of your children. Sending hope and hugs.

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  16. So glad little Alice Mary landed safely. Go well, darling girl.

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