Friday, July 16, 2010

Friday 16th July: Brief comment

Pressed as I am for time, surrounded as I am by washing, occupied as I am with a new job and school holidays, functional as I am with my lack of tears and easier social graces, I just want to say that today in the act of purchasing for a friend a card to congratulate her on the birth many months ago of her daughter, I was stunned again to realise that I myself had a daughter only 6 months ago, that I loved that daughter as much as I love my other 2, that I clawed my way through that pregnancy, that I did everything I could to grow her well and safely, and that right at the end she got terribly sick and she died she died she died. I had a baby and she died. She lived for 2 1/2 days in NICU with tubes down her throat and god knows how many drugs being pumped into her, born with a brain injury which got worse before our eyes as those 2 1/2 days went on. A fat full term baby in amongst the tiny premie ones, who were more likely to live than her. She had a short life, with no good and only bad, and then she died.

I just want to say that I miss my baby Salome, that this is grossly unfair, that although Salome's death is not news to anyone it is still a daily event for me, that the pain is enormous, that I still fret for her when it is stormy outside, that a world where healthy full-term babies die from stupid everyday infections is a fucked up world. I miss my daughter.

That's all I want to say.

Now I will do the washing up, fold some clothes, cry some more, kiss X and K in their sleep and go to bed. The grief gets platted into the day, and I do my best to relax into it when its at its most intense. It's like contractions in that way.

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