Here is a poem I have been reading by Petrina Barson called 'Fairy Dress' from her book 'Now We Are Four". (For more about this book and where to purchase, see http://www.cloudsofmagellan.net/Now%20we%20are%20four.html)
Fairy Dress
You would have had a clear opinion.
But we let tears dissolve us into neither shore.
It seemed such a big decision:
how would we dress you
to send you off.
The blue one to match your eyes
or the pink -
your favourite
for flitting around the lounge room.
Stockings for warmth
a book on your pillow
to whisper our love.
Knowing we were deceiving ourselves
somehow
made it more urgent.
This pretence of dignity
is all we have;
these final acts of parenting
so wasted on you
so beside the point
when the only point
is that you are gone:
gone from this much kissed
washed, stroked, dressed
coaxed, held, bounced
body that is your momento.
Now we are left
to manage memories -
sort them into the least
most painful configuration -
your absence screams
through all the photos
and the footprints.
We choose the pink one -
dress you one last time
spend all the reverence
we were saving for your wedding
your first day at school
your first child
on making sure your fairy wings
are not crumpled beneath you.
This really says it. The day Matt and I went with the girls to settle Salome into her coffin was a stand-out moment in this cavalcade of fucked-up events. It was sacred and beautiful and peaceful but it was also horrifying and.... don't know the word, maybe there isn't one. It's one of the memories that has a huge 'approach with caution' sign on it in my head. I don't even give a glancing look sideways at that memory if there is not someone close by to take over whatever task I am doing and to clean up the mess. On that day, all that huge emotion got boiled down to tiny decisions about where in the coffin to place the photos and letters, what to say to her, how much stuff to put in there, what to say to the girls about the fact we were talking to Salome after assuring them that Salome was not in that body any more. And as a backdrop, the innescapable fact that it didn't matter what we said or did, Salome was gone and her little cold body lying before us was the proof.
I love it that Petrina refers to this process as an act of parenting. We very much felt that it was parenting we were doing for Salome, and for us it was the only parenting we got to do for her. Putting our daughter in a coffin, writing her eulogy, escorting her empty body to it's grave and lowering it in; these were all parenting tasks. As was whispering to her as she died that the angels were coming for her, that she shouldn't be scared, that the angels were all around her and they would carry her to God. This was very painful parenting. If I could do it again tomorrow though I would, because in that intense pain and that activity, there was an intimacy with Salome even after she had died. There is no longer any mothering I can do for her, and that is another loss to grieve.
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I've found some of Petrina's poetry online. It really speaks to a lot of my feelings. And I completely understand this. My 2.5 year old daughter was cremated, I felt I had no attachment to her body once we left it at the hospital. But 4 days later, when we went to the funeral home, I broke down the minute I walked in the door. I looked around, and suddenly imagined my girl trapped in this dark, gloomy place, in a box. And I too, often think about how all of the things I did as a parent were seemingly in vain.
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