NYE

This is the day I have dreaded all year, the new year countdown.  This time last year we were arranging for our two older children and close family to come to the hospital and meet Freddie before his breathing equipment was removed.  At noon everyone said their goodbyes and left Simon and I to hold our youngest close while he slipped away... only he didn't... not straight away like we thought. My CT scan was postponed (I remember point blank refusing to move - as if you'd forfeit any second with your child!), we sang songs and took videos and I think we probably convinced ourselves that he might even stay - despite his lack of vitals.  So at 11:50pm when Simon left the room to call his brother, it was a huge shock when he decided it was time to go.  Simon arrived back just as Freddie took his last breath, just before midnight and I remember the registrar coming in to confirm his death as fireworks went off and people in the corridors sang Auld Lang Syne.  A part of me remains convinced he meant it this way, a lesson or gift, making the old year firmly his own... I don't know.

His birthday passed by peacefully, brilliantly and positively a few days ago - it felt wonderful to have a day all about him and I've since wondered why it was so much easier than I expected. Some of it is possibly because I have no memory connected with his birth, I wasn't conscious. I didn't get to see or hold him for well over a day so perhaps this disconnection has made his actual day almost blissfully ignorant for me; if that makes sense.  I remember the events leading up to arriving in hospital but there is no sharp focus memory of his arrival.  Unlike today.  This day last year I remember it all, so I've been thinking all year that I wouldn't survive the celebrations going on around me this evening, that I would have to go to bed with ear plugs (for ever more). 

However, I'm lying here thinking about death and renewal, and whether that's the crux of the new year, not leaving anything behind as such, but a bow and a curtsey to the old year and a look towards the new with a view to new opportunities and growth.  This thought has made me smile because I feel it's another lesson from Freddie.  I don't need to have a wine in hand and a big old knees up, or see the new year in with a drunken kiss, because this New Year is about contemplation and new beginnings.  2016 will bring me a little sister for Freddie - whatever happens she exists, her heart beats and I feel her tiny feet in my tummy. It is so difficult to outwardly acknowledge her for fear of tempting in the title of "that poor woman who lost two children".  I guess it won't be OK until it's " OK".   But still, she exists within me, she is not Freddie, she is she, my gift from Freddie. I am enrolling in pottery classes and I hope that I can find a way to start learning reflexology and ultimately work for myself. Freddie has brought me so much already - a deeper understanding of myself and a need to rediscover my creativity. 

I suppose what I'm trying and failing to say, is that when the clock strikes midnight tonight, I want to acknowledge that and not hide away.  I want to say thank you to my boy for bringing so much love and wisdom to my life, and I want to thank him for the opportunity of another year to live life for the two of us.  This may be blind optimism of course, it's so difficult but I'm trying.  In some ways the New Year is an hourglass reset, it is the green light to put away the things you don't want to carry with you any more. Guilt, anger, isolation.   It is permission to discover new paths.  All of these are more than possible whilst still carrying those you love.

Freddie's 1st Birthday poem

This year we have gazed so many times upon your face
Studied your slumbering philtrum
In which you carry your Daddy's genes
Your peachy skin and clenched up fists
We've studied you so very well that
You are imprinted behind our sad eyes.
I've carried you within me for a double gestation
And kept you alive within my soul
On my ascent each night I walk past you
And every time ache for the yesterday and tomorrow missing within us.
I swam furiously until I realised
I wasn't going to drown
And you took me to another place where you gently made me submit to your absence
I finally found some peace in our deepest grief and gave up struggling to mend..
For whatever I do my heart always wakes up full for you, despite the journey of before.
And when I light a candle for your big day
I will hold you close
And tell you that you have taught me my true self
Imperfect, sad,  happy, self centred but full of endless love, newfound patience and acceptance.
My heart is fractured for the loss of all the times I haven't got to teach you things too.
The pots and pans and wooden spoon you never got to bang,
The mushy rusk you didn't throw on the floor
And the first tooth I didn't go sleep starved over.
Your firsts have been my firsts
We have to create our own unique future.
#FJB

Tis The Season To Be Jolly Grieving

So here we are.... December.  The question that keeps entering my mind is "how is it possible to survive a year without my child?".  It obviously is possible because we've nearly done it - another three weeks and Freddie hasn't been with us for a whole year.  A first birthday without presents or a party, without kisses and cuddles and wows at his latest achievements.  A visit to his grave and a look at his beautiful face in our few photos.  The little face which never grew big enough to smile and laugh.

I can't even sum up this year, in part because it isn't over - because I have his first Christmas without him coming up.  And because I know that hearing a joyeous rendition of Auld Lang Syne will be like my life ended all over again.  How on earth I will live the rest of my life having to endure the memory of life leaving his body as people began to sing that.. well I don't know.. we survive.   The one thing I have come to accept this year is that I AM brave.  I have picked myself up and endevoured to give Sam and Tilda the best I've got.  For Freddie.  For them.  For Simon.   Sometimes I wonder how I do it,  I wonder if I'm fake, or dysfunctional because I don't wail into a pillow every day.  I wonder how I manage to keep going when people ask me how the baby is or when people who I expected more from miss Freddie out of the equation.  I wonder how I stay sane when people look at my bump and ask me lots of questions that no longer seem safe, relevent or polite.  They are presumptious, naive but at worst well meaning.   When are you due?  How many children do you have? (me: "four" them: "wow you're brave, bet that's a handful") or when people know what happened to Freddie and tell me that things will be fine this time - amazing how psychic people become when they don't know what else to say...

But back to Christmas and New Year;  I am driven by the need for my children to know their brother and remember him, but to also never feel that his death has disadvantaged them.  I don't want them to be burdeoned by an eternally grieving mother; to be sat in therapy in ten years time saying how their mother was essentially emotionally void and vacant post their baby brother's death.   I want them to be able to speak without fear or shame but with conviction that life goes on and they have been happy and nutured and loved despite this tragedy.  So this Christmas and New Year, as much as I want to run and hide is going to be met face on.  The tree is up and Freddie's bauble and angel sit on it.  I grieve terribly for the boy who didn't get my promise of a lifetime together and didn't get to be so completely loved and doted on.   I will cry often and sometimes Tilda and Sam may ask what's wrong.... but really they know... and that's ok.  It's ok to miss him, all together.  It's ok to acknowledge the insanity of him not being with us for a whole year, it's ok for us to collectively mourn the empty space as we open our presents on Christmas morning.  But it is doubly ok for us to carry on loving and laughing during this time, in fact more so.  Freddie existed because of our bond, he was wanted by us all, and our strength together during this difficult season will keep his memory safe and warm.

Longer than with you

Freddie, you were born thirty-four weeks ago.  In two weeks time we shall be on the cusp.  We will have been apart longer than we were together and infact already we are apart longer than I knew we were together - complex and difficult as that is.    I feel mixed up about this.  There are moments when I'm glad the passage of time has happened - I'm grateful for the element of new normality that has rebalanced my family, but then caught up in the torture of what should have been.  This morning I cried for a while thinking of the children you'll never have,  I mourned that for you - your entitlement to the richness of life.

The thirty-six weeks of pregnancy with you were fraught.  I convinced myself something terrible would happen and spent a rather embarrassing amount of time going to and from the doctors and fretting about mortality.  These days I have a rather philosophical outlook on our time - I'm a worrier - what happened was an awful coincidence.   I didn't cause nor predict your untimely death, I merely worried because I love you.  And now at the dawn of a new journey I have to recognise this trait within myself and surrender as such to fate.  I can be the best that I can be, I can protect your brother and sister to the best of my abilities and whatever else happens I accept that life is frequently unkind and unfair.  Freddie please don't take this to mean that you have taught me to give myself up to the Gods and accept cruel fate; in fact you have taught me to savour both good and bad.   Surrendering to sadness is as important as immersing myself in laughter from the belly.  Emotions these days are clear,  better understood and much easier to allow - I am in far less conflict.

And so worry not little one, our physical time together was shorter but your legacy is my lifetime and I teach your brother and sister your lessons.  I will never forget the desperation I felt to be with you, knowing what little time we would have.  When we united you gave me as much as you possibly could and I bow to you always for giving me the greatest gift of your company for those twelve hours.   I miss you endlessly.  You are my courageous little lion forever.

These are the things that I know

That without love, there is no grief.  Grief is acute and painful love which has no physical channel.   I always find myself overcome at watching human emotion - love and family predominantly.  If you ever want to see the essence of what it is to be human, go and sit at an airport and watch people be reunited.  I think that may have been the end credits of the film "Love Actually" but it's true - I've done it. Several years ago I went to collect some friends from Gatwick airport and I sat quietly for a few hours watching people.  I was moved to tears by some of the reunions.  That is what it is to be human.  To belong, to love, to feel, to need and to appreciate.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps with the exception of warring ex partners.  Grief is the emotion of extreme physical absence of one that is loved.   With Freddie I was in love; without him I am painfully and wildly in love.

What have I learnt about myself since January?   That my love is powerful... That life is fleeting.... That life isn't about happy ever afters, wads of cash or a pimp car (I can't deny I would turn any of these down...) because when one or all of those disappear - life still exists and you have to find new meaning.  I've never believed in happy ever afters as such - I'm far too much of a pessimist for that, but I did think my darkest days were behind me, I've learnt that we walk into darkness - the unknown, so try and live for the light in the here and now.  Make plans, have dreams, be excited but take stock every day of what is good right now.  I go back to something my wonderful friend taught me about listing even the smallest pleasures day by day.
Above all else love.  Just love. Love your friends, your family, love as much as you can because it's all we can do in the end.

Diluted

My blog has been getting increasingly dark as this week has progressed.  It seemed to start out in the early days as determination to not be defined by this awful tragedy and has now become everything defined by tragedy.   Inevitable I suppose.   I can't blame myself for naivety and shock at the start.   Just like being a parent for the first time,  with all these hopes and dreams and ideas,  you gradually unpick it all to find out what the real you is as a parent.   In fact I'd say this is true of any child you bear.  I had so many ideas of what kind of parent I'd be to Matilda and as time has passed,  I'm not quite the parent I thought I'd be - not worse,  or better,  just different.   The same applies for being a grieving parent.   I'm not the grieving parent I thought I'd be.  I thought I'd be gutsy and by now would be involved in some kind of bereavement work bringing a positive outcome to Freddie's death.   I'm not doing that,  in fact I'd say the last few weeks may have been some of the worst.   It's OK.   It's really ok to not progress,  in fact progression scares me and there has been a stubborness to my grieving of late.   A refusal to take a positive step because walking ahead has felt like leaving him behind.   I allow myself to waiver,  I allow myself to fail.   I'm still learning to mother him and it's so much harder without him here.

The blackness has temporarily been lifted.   I brought home a kitten yesterday.   I wasn't sure this was the right thing to do AT ALL.  I've been resisting this all week,  I bought kitten things and then didn't go to a viewing.   I sent Simon a heartwrenching email about what a failure I am because I couldn't even make up my mind about a pet; but then I saw a bigger picture.   I saw two children who didn't ask for such horror and desperately want some happiness and distraction.  My rawness and sadness is acceptable to a point because I firmly believe emotion isn't something to hide behind closed doors, however of late it needs diluting.   I began to imagine my kids in the future talking of how, after their little brother died mother was never the same again.  How she shut herself away, how the house became sad and lifeless.  This is perhaps just me being "histrionic", whatever, I felt they deserved some life back.  Tilda has been asking for a pet for a while and the time for them seemed right.  Strangely I found the act of bringing a pet home more of a moral dilemma than whether to have another child.   Up until the kitty was placed in her carrier I was wanting to run and hide.  Perhaps somewhere in my psyche I felt I was trying to substitute and knew that it wasn't possible, but I also felt this guilt at separating her from her mama.  I'm either a psychologist's dream or worst nightmare at present.

 As it turns out it's quite fun having a little playful ball of fluff.   Therapeutic if you will.  I still sit here worrying that I'm sadly trying to quench the insatiable thirst of loss - and by next week I'll have lost interest because it hasn't fixed the hole in my heart.  Then I remember it's not all about me,  my children have a new lease of life and new excitement and smiles.  And they deserve it, because life is just as much theirs as it is mine and Freddie's.

Dirty grieving

The hardest times are the ones that others expect are the easiest.  I remember feeling taken aback at Freddie's funeral because I didn't really cry and I remember laughing at the Castle afterwards at something and getting looks as though I was crazy or disrespectful.  But it didn't feel real, and it wasn't.  There were people around me, I had total love and support from those I chose for it.  Freddie wasn't far away and everyone focused on him.  I almost felt proud that everyone thought so much of him.   The hardest times are when life has continued. The kitchen still needs cleaning, relationships still need nurturing but yet this living is a function.  The hardest times are when you realise not much else is happening between the duty and the sobbing down country lanes in the dark.

This week may have been the hardest, yet I thought that about the week before and the week before that.  When there's just pure grief for Freddie it is almost a relief because the pain is real.  The rest of the tangles and traumas make little sense.  "Dirty grieving" is how my psychologist calls it.  When one is unable to grieve properly because of other mental distress.  Bounteous mental distress.  Where to begin there.  If I had a penny for every time I have sobbed "is it not enough to lose my son"....  The trouble is life is not as we believed the earth once was.  It is not simple or empty, static nor flat.  Life is a screaming avalanche of beauty, loss, laughter, tears, success, failure and ultimately death.  We can try to counter much of the negative aspects but even whilst locked in a cupboard and packaged in bubblewrap we still age and think and die.  What I suppose I'm trying to say is that I can't grieve Freddie at all purely when life around me kicks up the dust.  Work, whether to have more children on my shortened biological clock, mistrust in my body felt not just by myself, worry for ones family and so I drivvle on in total self pity.

The goal here is to grieve healthily - it's achievable of course.  I've spent the best part of a day compiling a leather bound photo book online, only to discover I've ordered it with a screaming typo.  My mother is "Mr mother"... And so begins another email argument where I have to pull the "poor me" card.  Poor me I really did double check the pictures and spelling three times over, I really am trying.  But you see that grieving has made me tired, and clumsy. I thought I'd spent so long looking but the loss has distorted my sense of time.  Some days eight hours go by and I realise I've only had a tin of soup and have stared at my phone, aimlessly trying to find ways of remembering a dead child.  Biodegradable balloon releases and the like.  Other days I feel alive again and time skips alongside me.  I start to feel like achievements are possible only for them to be undone by careless errors or reminders of other people's lives which are glaringly more normal and even more obviously less painful.  However the person at the end of the email helpdesk probably doesn't give a shit.   So that's another good day.

My psychologist tells me I have an issue with creating tabloid headlines in my brain which cause anxiety.... Given that I've just created a crappy day before its even started I'd say he has a point.