Archive for October 2009
His name is Will.
“William, is that what you are naming him? Is that what you’ll call him?”
“Will” I reply absently.
It’s good and strong, I think.
Even though we had thought we would call him Billy while he was small.
Now, it seems wrong.
Too young for someone who has been through so much.
The doctor looks downwards as he tells us that our son will die.
My beautiful boy.
We cry after he has gone, this doctor, who looks as though he has given alot of bad news in his lifetime.
After, we move from the tiny airless room, we face the awful, unimaginable truth
that we have brought our baby boy into the world, only to lose him five days later.
We hold his hand.
We stroke his head, his soft downy hair, commit his face to memory.
His ears, his hands and feet, all perfectly formed.
We do not know how to let him go.
We do not know if we can.
“Don’t give up on him” I whisper, to no one in particular but I can see that everyone accepts his death as surely as I breathe in and out.
I don’t want to live, if he doesn’t.
We go home.
We tell his sisters.
“Will isn’t going to live”.
They cry and then run away, the sorrow too heavy, the grief too thick .
A call comes in the middle of the night;
“Baby is worseninng”
“His name is Will” I tell the night doctor
and by early morning I know, the pit of my stomach a heavy mass;
today is the day.
We hold him and talk to him
together
on our own
as a family
as grandparents, godparents, sisters, friends
mothers
fathers.
We watch as they pull the tubes away from his body.
“It’s over,” my father declares, almost panic stricken and pulls the baby into his arms.
“It’s all over.”
It’s not.
He stays with us for an hour before his heart just stops.
I don’t remember much afterwards
but I don’t forget much either.
His name was Will.
He is my son.
October 15th is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day.
I’ll light a candle for you, sweet boy.
The big boy swing.
“Dreams get you into the future and add excitement to the present” - Robert Conklin.
We took down the baby swings on the weekend.
We replaced them with open seated, no belt swings.
He called it his ‘big boy swing’.
It was his first go.
He was so excited!
(so were we).
This weeks theme at I heart faces is ‘excitement’.
Ready.
We are so ready for the IVIG tomorrow.
Meltdown week has been long and exhausting,
for everyone.
Here’s to a better week than the last.
Kevin.
I was two and so my memories are blurred.
Half merged with stories and other times that are sad and distant.
He was my brother
of three months
and one morning
he didn’t wake up.
My father pulled him, small and lifeless, from his bedding.
I remember the curtains in my parents’ bedroom.
I don’t recall what kind of day it was but the wind was blowing those curtains out in billowing crisp waves.
I must have been peeking out
because I remember the ambulance
and there is a vague recollection of people on the street, surrounding our house.
My mother said that I remarked;
“the ambulance is taking my brother away and he’s never coming back”.
I remember the navy blue cloth bassinet and thinking it was very high
but I could not see inside it
so I guess when my mother found me on the stool, looking in, that I was trying to determine if it was true;
that he was never coming back.
I remember my mother crying at night
for a very long time
but like I said,
I was two and days seemed to stretch like years and so I’m not sure how long those gut wrenching sobs lasted.
It might have been years.
It probably was.
As was the custom in the 1970′s, my mother was drugged, my father was drunk
and everyone carried on as if there was never a baby.
His twin and I were cared for as best as a grieving mother could.
We never wanted for anything
but I remember
life being quiet for a long time afterwards.
It could have been days or years, such is the memory of a young girl.
Probably just days.
I remember when I became a mother three times over.
I lived the first months of their lives in fear that one day they just wouldn’t wake up.
I told my Mum -
I could never imagine losing a baby.
until one day I didn’t need to anymore
because I was living the unimaginable
and all of those quiet tears on birthdays and anniversaries suddenly made sense.
October is SIDS awareness month.