Anniversaries

Today marks the first anniversary of the loss of our second baby boy. And six days ago it was the third anniversary of the loss of our first baby boy. I went to the cemetery where our boys' ashes are scattered and spent time at their memorial, bringing with me a couple of all-weather toys to put in front of it, along with the plants my husband had put there. It was a blazing hot, beautiful day, totally incongruous with the significance of the event. It was bizarre, standing there, thinking that about four and half years of our lives, almost all of our married life, has been taken up with heartache, each one arguably worse than the previous one. It's not something we were designed to withstand.

In a way I'm glad we've got to these anniversaries. While I want to start putting it behind me, drawing a line under things, I don't know if such a thing is possible, or at least, I realise I'm not in control of my feelings over any of it. As I've said once before, I'm sick, if not bored, of my existence on Planet Dead Baby. It's a place far, far away from Planet Earth, where the scenery is an unchanging grey, lunar landscape. And it's a planet with a population of one. Me. But perhaps I'm accepting this is where I have to stay for the foreseeable future.

Part of me is very discouraged by the realisation that possibly the only true source of release (but not the solution, by any means), is another baby - live of course. At least you have to spend most of your day focused on this new baby rather than on your dead ones, as I do now. The bloggers at From Under the Weeping Willow, Stillborn StillStanding and Knocked Up, Knocked Down have gone on to have new babies, and for the last two at least, they have stopped feeling the need to blog any more, which I'm enviously interpreting as a reflection of their 'happy ending'.

I was off work for seven months following our last loss, and to be honest, looking back now, the whole period is a blur. I wonder what I did in that time. Some people could manage to circumnavigate the globe several times given that amount of time, but for me, just getting out of bed and getting dressed was an achievement. It took me that long to pick my broken soul up off the floor and be able to put on my office 'face', but going back to work did not mean that everything was now fine. Far from it. Furthermore, it's the sort of experience that sorts out your friends and family into those who genuinely care about you, and those who are the fair-weather type. At least I now know who is who.