It seems amazing, incredible, prophetic and deeply ironic that last year, on this date, I added my little egg in a basket to my blog header and announced my pregnancy. It was just Halloween then, though I was reading some books that were showing me a way of thinking of this time of year as one when the most precious of our dead come close to whisper, when some things end and some begin, where shades of the gone are simply to faint to see, not absent.
And now… all I have seen this year is how October 31st is the Day of the Dead, the day to celebrate and communicate with loved ones no longer walking this earth, the day when they whisper in our hearts and drift around the edges of our souls.
I have no rituals to commemorate Freddie. I used to have ones for being pregnant: leaving any san-pro I had in my handbag there for the duration, just in case taking them out brought on a miscarriage, never saying when, only saying if, just in case I presumed too much. They didn’t do any good. I blew my last one out of the water on the night I deleted 2 of the 4 bits of film I have of Freddie from my camera, so I could take more the next day. When I went back, he was suddenly getting ill. I still have those 2 remaining bits on there, I can’t bear to remove them, though what harm I think it could do, I have no idea . Lord knows I have them saved in a million other little places, those snippets of film that I saw hope in for one night, but look at now and see just how damaged and weak he was.
I wish he whispered to me, I ache to hear him, I would beg him to haunt me but I think that he won’t and that if I’m to carry him with me, it will be in actions, not shades and spirits. I can reach, but he isn’t there. Perhaps he’s round the corner, waiting till I’m ready to walk with him.
There is no shrine in this house, no grave with trinkets hanging from trees and ornaments that I bought for him. He isn’t there, he can’t be called forward that way. For once in my life I’m minimal, dignified in some old-fashioned spartan sense, reserved and outwardly silent. Except here. There are 3 photos, tucked away in our room and sometimes when I go past I say hello, but they aren’t him, just a memory of him. Nothing else in the house says that I walked with him here for 9 months.
Freddie is with me in every breath I take, in every in and every out, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. And in trees; every tree and every leaf is where I see him. I keep trying to make him. I keep thinking perhaps I can make the perfect tree and call him forward.
Written for The Day of the Dead Celebration at StillLife365.
Beautiful- and you are right- he is with you… always.
Carrying Freddie in actions would be good.
There is something in your house, there is your family. They all know, they all feel him too. The love you all share for him is there in your house, may not be tangible but it’s there. *many hugs* xx
I found your blog while reading another one about comparing baby loss stories as to whose was worse. I clicked on your name because out of the twenty six entries, yours made the most sense. The comments are closed on this blog where you addressed this. But no you are not any luckier because you have other children. I have been shunned by other baby loss mamas for similar reasons. I am so sorry about Freddie and no, the other children can not even begin to ease the grief of his loss (nor should they). They lost him, too and you have the burden of worrying about their grief as well.
Kelli, it is rare indeed that anyone uses the phrase making sense in relation to me 😉
I’m sorry you were hurt by that conversation too. I suspect it is one which, on reflection in a few years, those people will perhaps think was easier to have one view on from their particular moment in time.
What is hard, i think, when you have no child, is understanding the way your heart expands to fit all your children. I didn’t really believe I could love each new one as they came alone, until they did. That to line them up and say “which one can you do without then?” is simply not a question that can be answered. Yes, I can say now “if I had to lose one, it was better that it was the one who had only just come” but if you’d lined them up and said “choose” – well, that would have been so hard, so very, very hard. From the minute he was here, even so terribly sick, I would have killed to save him, if I had thought it was right for him to do so.
Oh, this is just beautiful Merry.
Oh Merry, I haven’t posted to you in some time, but I read all the time. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss, for the grief you feel. It’s a pain no mother should ever have to endure.