Thursday, November 11, 2010

Bewildered

For some reason, my grief has returned with a vengeance.
This post will most probably be some non-sensical rambling because I dont actually have a topic in mind, I just feel melancholic. Why even bother being mature and using big words about it?
I feel crap.
I am starting to come to terms with the fact that Sybella died 29 weeks ago, and I am weeks 24 pregnant.
My goodness, I am so in love with this baby. I feel so so lucky that on top of everything else, I didnt have to spend 18 months trying to get pregnant (like I did with Bella) and that it just happened. One small mercy. A big surprise, but a lovely surprise.
However, somehow, I feel like my main grieving time was "interrupted." I couldnt focus on processing my feelings properly, because I had another (happier) focus. I never put Sybella aside, or forgot her in light of my new pregnancy, but I was physically unable to concentrate on grieving...mostly because I had my head down the toilet. And was majorly preoccupied with anxiety and fear.
This pregnancy wasnt even confirmed until I was 7 weeks. Experiencing implantation bleeding led to an ultrasound, where I was told that the embryo was non-viable, my sac was misshapen and to expect to miscarry in a week. I was 7 weeks before my proper obstetrician quashed that scenario and threw me a jar of Blackmores Pregnancy Gold.
Anyway, as a result, it is only now that my grief is resurfacing, when I stop and realise that I am a mother with a dead child. It was always my greatest fear, for a child of mine to die. And it happened. It happened to ME. I think it is Hope's Mama says her grief makes her feel "dirty" and "tainted." My God, I get that. I feel forever stained, that my baby passed away and I will never escape that stamp. Forever and ever, I am someone with a dead child. That concept is completely surreal to me. How can it be? I will never rid myself of the pain, I will never able to rid Kelvin of his pain. I look at that man, mowing the lawn, tying his tie and think "his daughter died." He aches, I know it. I think of our life as a couple, dating, buying our first house, getting married, going on holidays. Back then, this life now seems unbelievable. Two young adults, getting drunk on a Saturday night, a lifetime ago before children, mortgages and the like...who were those two? Those two (shinier, thinner, more attractive) people, who, in a few years time, are going to share the worst possible experience of grief that a couple can share?
It's the same with Jack. When I was 4, the worst thing that happened to me is that I burnt my hand on the iron. Jack is 4 and has already experienced the death of a sibling. He has a sister who isnt alive. That breaks my heart. He is only a baby himself and has experienced grief that he doesnt even understand. It's so damn unfair.
Today I went to Dick Smith's to have the photos of Sybella's birth, her name in the sand and the balloon release printed. Finally. After seven months. I have a scrapbook...a beautiful white leather bound album ready, filled with handprints, footprints, hospital bands, cards, messages, funeral service booklets, even medical bill receipts and hospital discharge papers, for God's sake...everything that was ever connected to Sybella, to be lovingly compiled into a book of her life. All I have of her is a book. I dont want the damn book. I dont want to have to make a damn album of memories. I want HER. In the flesh, alive and pink and babbling away, I want people stopping me in the street, like they did when Jack was a baby, telling me how beautiful she is. I want them to ask me what her name is. I want to say "her name is Sybella." The name we kept a secret because it was SO beautiful that we wanted to unveil it with the utmost grandeur..."here is our beautiful daughter, and her name is Sybella Eve." I got robbed of all that.
All I get now, is the woman at Dick Smith's asking me what is the word written on the sand in the photo of the beach sunset. I tell her the word is "Sybella." She looks at me expectantly, to expand on this. I sigh. "She's my daughter. She died." As if Kirsty in Dick Smith didnt know that. She printed out the name in the sand, and asked me what the word said. If she saw that photo, then she saw the rest of them, the coffin photos, the birth photos of Sybella's beautiful but discoloured face, the 137 photos of the little girl who never has her eyes open. She sleeps in every picture.

How can I have a baby and not even know the colour of her eyes?

5 comments:

  1. I feel everything you've written here. Just two nights ago I was thinking about Matilda and then I cried - how is it that I'm 29 and have already outlived one of my children. Something people hope will never happen to them and here I am not even 30 and it already has.

    And I still struggle with the forever thing - forever I'll have some level of pain that Matilda isn't here. There isn't a point in the future where all my children will be alive. It hurts and I try not to think about it.

    Huge hugs.

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  2. You both are not alone. I was 23 when I lost my Connor. My precious Connor, who I only got to know through his kicks and squirms in my tummy. I only held him for a day and he passed away in my arms.
    I will be forever in mourning. My family wont feel complete. My husband greivs very differently to me. I get that it's an individual thing. But it still hurts not to be able to share and cry with him coz he sees things in a different light than I do. Bless him.
    3 years on and I have been feeling every ownce of pain still. Just bouts of it. It's something I guess I am just going to have to live with.

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  3. I think it's so amazing that you have the strength to not only deal with these feelings, but to share them as well. Everything you've written is true, and you're right, it's not fair.It totally sucks. But you're doing such a wonderful job of loving and remembering Sybella for yourself and for everyone else. It sucks that you have only a book to hold, but I can't wait to see that book if you ever feel like you want to share it. x

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  4. Yep, I did say that. I still feel that way every day. I could write an essay here about this post, but I just want to say I get it. All of it (and while I'm at it, Maddie's comment as well).
    This is so bloody sad. I wish this didn't happen to us. To our babies.
    xo

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