Monday 15th March: Cemetery visit

Last Friday I visited Salome's grave alone and it was very worth it. I took with me these beautiful flowers that were a gift from my great aunt Jann and great uncle Tim, and they were perfect for the grave, perfect flowers for a baby girl. It is a beautiful place to sit for a while. It's not bleak, or maybe it's not anymore bleak than everywhere else is for me these days. There are lots of fat healthy rabbits living in the cemetery and the bush around it. They look like they have escaped from a pet store, and they certainly aren't worried about people walking around. I like to think of Salome enjoying the rabbits hopping about, "lippety lippety" as Beatrix Potter would say. I went for a walk on the beach, and as I walked back through the cemetery I think I scared off a rabbit that had been eating the flowers on Salome's grave. To me, that alone is a enough reason to give Salome flowers, if it brings more cute bunnies her way. I know they are ferals and there are probably local action groups planning their destruction, but I am finding comfort where I can .

It was good to talk to Salome there and tell her all the things I've been thinking, and to cry with her, or as close to 'with her' as I can get (is she there in any way or not? I can't decide). I told her I am so sorry the world wasn't kinder to her, so sorry she never got the basics, so sorry she didn't even get to the starting blocks. Some of her cemetery neighbours lived till 82 etc, but that's not the life Salome got, and it's so unfair. It was a very hard pregnancy Salome and I went through together, and for it to end in more sickness for her is wrong. There is no justice in her death, or the manner of her death. There is no use looking for justice in life and death outcomes, in who gets to be pregnant, who gets to take their baby home, or who gets happy healthy children. We get what we get I suppose. Matt and I have got 1 nervous energy propelled 5 year old, 1 contended chatterbox 4 year old, and 1 dead baby. And Matt and I have each other. We have huge amounts of support too.

Matt spent much of this weekend filling a skip-bin we hired with rubbish garden waste. He smashed a lot of concrete with a mallet, and he said it was kind of theraputic.

Here is a song I have liked for a long time, 'Ghost in this House' by Alison Krauss and Union Station. When I hear it now it sounds a bit like how this part of the grief feels for me:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWRGZaHb8xE