All This Time

After all this time, six years, I thought I might feel differently. I thought that maybe I wouldn't think of him every day, maybe I wouldn't still cry on his death day and birth day. But what did I know, back then? Not much, quite obviously.

I'm feeling very sad today, sadder than I could have imagined once upon a time. It's ok, I know, but at times I am so tired of feeling sad, so tired of missing Ben. I don't feel sad every day, but this week - well, this week is different, as I remember what we so nearly had. The Christmas songs don't help, the lights, the ornaments, all of it. Those things have always made me feel melancholy, long before my child died, and now, viewed through the lens of my loss, make me feel even worse.

In six years, what have I learned? That I will always miss him, every day, for as long as I live, or at least until Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia takes my memories of him away. Missing him is forever. Sad is forever too, but not in the same way. That will come and go. And I have realized that I will forever be the mother of a baby; as the rest of us grow older, as my two other children will grow to adulthood, as my husband and I begin to go gray, Ben will always be as he was the day he died: an infant, full of potential and possibility. Is it any wonder, then, how I long for a baby in my life? Any wonder that my arms still ache, after all this time, for the chance to hold him again?

Five Years

Today, five years ago. I sat in my living room, trying to eat some lunch my friend kindly made me, waiting for 6 p.m., waiting to return to the hospital I'd only just left, to deliver my first son. Preparing--as if you could ever prepare--to come home without him.

The poem below doesn't relate to stillborn babies, but the last line slides through my mind from time to time, as it has done for the last 15 years or so, since I first heard of (and briefly met), the poet, Seamus Heaney. He's Irish and has a way with words I envy. This poem gripped me the first time I read it, wrapped a hand around my heart and squeezed. I couldn't imagine, then, the loss of which it spoke.

Last night, before sleep, I thought of a friend of mine, E., dead for nearly 18 years now, whose youngest son was killed at the age of 16 in a car accident, in the week between Christmas and New Year. His name was Thomas, which was--is--Ben's middle name. I had a crush on Tommy, harbored secret dreams of marrying him when we grew up. People have pointed out to me that maybe that first angel, Tommy, led me to give my own angel, Ben, his second name. I don't know. But the timing...of their deaths, and those memories. I don't know. But last night, I thought of his mother, who I loved dearly, and pictured me, now, going back through the years to her, hugging her, both of us crying, and telling her, "Now. Now I understand."

I'm rambling, I know, full of thoughts I can't complete. Today, I remember, like every day. And long for what I'll never have.

Watch out for the poem's last line - I think it will grab your heart, too, and clench it with a mighty fist.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

--Seamus Heaney