When I was born, half of most of my toes were missing. The doctor, delivering me unexpectedly alive, handed me over.
“I expect you took something,” he said accusingly, dismissing my intelligent, medically trained mother in a flick of disapproval.
I expect it was your fault. I expect you didn’t take care. I expect you didn’t understand how fragile that life inside you was.
I expect you thought you could get away with treating your body disparagingly.
It was your fault. And she bears the scars.
My mother, pragmatic and not to blame, tucked my toes inside a babygro and made the best of it.
And if she grieved, as I grieved when 24 years later my first child was born with a cleft lip, she never tells me. She says she didn’t think about it.
***
As time passes, never ending grief becomes a character flaw. Outside of a specific community – close friends, my siblings – to mention his name is to bow to weakness, another personality flaw.
It is my fault I cannot get over him.
It is my fault I cannot close the gap around the space where he should be.
It is my fault that I still… still.. cannot count. I cannot say how many children I have.
I cannot see how lucky I am.
It is my fault that everything now is coloured by how I once watched breathing slow and stop and felt for a pulse and knew it gone.
It is my fault that my resilience to any illness is built up each time, starting from “will she/he die?”
And as any mother who has lost a child who was not their first and not their last knows, it is my fault that it hurts so much.
My fault that I could not count my blessings on that day in a hospital bed and go home to my breathing children and carry on.
My fault that I saved my tears till bedtime and curled up on the sofa roaring tears of pain into the cushions so that the girls wouldn’t hear.
My fault that I functioned (“I don’t know how you do it… I couldn’t have carried on if that happened to me”) and my fault that some days I couldn’t make it from my bed. (“It is time to move on, try not to think about the things that hurt”).
My fault that even now, with a growing, living rainbow baby to love, there are days when the grief bursts out, the unfairness bites.
And all that, without even daring to poke at “whose fault is it he died?” The fundamental question, the big truth, the one I know everyone thinks if they ever do ask about him.
Was it your fault?
What did you do?
Could he have lived?
It’s easy to judge the mother: for grieving, for living, for crying, for standing, for carrying on, for stopping still, for mentioning her child’s name.
***
I don’t wear socks. When I was a child I tucked my imperfections inside socks and shoes that I didn’t like the feel of.
I thought if I hid my difference I could be the same as everyone else. It didn’t particularly work, because my difference is written through me, the years of feeling at odds with the world of toes made me just too unusual. It was all in my head (and on my toes).
Plus I can’t balance in quite the way other people do, so there doesn’t seem much point in hiding those lack of digits (I can’t really count my toes, are they whole even if they are only half?).
***
I don’t hide my son. When he was first born and the shock had passed I thought I could hide him in my heart and suck up the pain that I didn’t like the feel of.
I thought if I could absorb the being of my fifth child, I could be the same as everyone else.
It didn’t particularly work, because his loss is written through me, etched on my face, my organs, my turn of phrase, at odds with most of the world.
He’s not in my head. He was here.
And I don’t balance quite the way others do. I can’t really count my children, but I do know none of them are half children.
I do know how many I should have.
Six.
Shortly after I submitted this post, I heard the devastating news that Matilda Mae, the 9 month old daughter of my fellow blogger Jennie, had gone to bed and died in her sleep. This post is dedicated to Matilda and to Jennie, David, William and Esther who must go on without her.
Beverly Clark says
I feel your pain and see your feelings in this ink!
Beautiful and poignant
I love it