April 28th

Grateful for moments of recall.

Well, actually, that's a stupid thing to be grateful for.  But I'm lost as to what to be grateful for today.

Sure, there's plenty of small things.  Grateful to be alive.  Grateful to be free.  Grateful for huge pleasures, like running water and sushi at a moment's notice.  But everything, EVERYTHING seems insignificant in light of what happened today.

When your four year old child is dabbing the tears, streaming uncontrollably down your face, while you can barely utter the reason why.

When her small arms encircle your body, because instinctively, she knows that's the only thing she can offer her mother in this time of raw grief.

 When you try to explain why a babe, who has only just come down from the stars, is on his way back up again, four days later.

When you try to explain to your child that tears feel good, that tears are helpful, that they create a river that flows back up to the stars, just in case that babe needs help finding his way back up, because he doesn't have his mama with him, to help guide him.

The image above is of my two sisters and me, and our dear friend J (far left).  I was the eldest at fifteen.  She was the youngest at twelve.  She was best friends with my youngest sister Chell, from about the age of about seven and was a big part of our lives from that point until this.  Tonight, her four day old son died.

Tonight was also the night they got to hold him for the first time.

The first night he wasn't attached to tubes and wires.  The first night he wasn't wrapped in a hypothermic suit.  Tonight was the first night they could gaze down at their beautiful, amazing, perfect son, stroke his skin, feel his toes curl around their fingers, see his fingers enclose around theirs, kiss his warm cheek, will his eyes to open, silently beg for him to make a sound, just one sound.  A sound they would never hear.

Their first born child.

A much longed for, awaited and uneventful pregnancy.

A conception achieved after overcoming not one, but two terminally diagnosed cancers within her body within the last two years.

 A grandchild her own mother would never meet, after having lost her challenge with cancer more than ten years before.

My heart aches for this woman in so many ways.  So much grief, over such a short stretch of lifetime.

I feel so fucking useless.  So far away.  So inadequate.

My hands yearn to be busy for her, for me.  To be useful.  To create something.

But what's appropriate?  What sends the message of love, without trivialising.  Everything just seems so insignificant.  Everything just falls so short.

They will leave hospital in a few days and return to a home still hosting a birth scene, which was left behind to attend hospital.  They will walk past a room filled with items bought specially for him, drawers filled with clothes bearing his name, a wall proudly displaying his name.  He will attend work and field questions and pats on the back of excitement about his brand new babe.  She will watch women whose pregnancies she shared, birth babes the same age as her son.  Watch them grow from babes into children and yearn for her own.

And no one can take this pain away from them.  No one.

No one can say anything to ease this agony they both must feel.  No one.

An experience to be endured.  Day by day by day.

J, M, I am so, so sorry.

So sorry.