Adaptation

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality

Is this really me?
Is this really my life now?
Did my child really die?
At times I find myself going about my daily business and I stop....as the thought hits me that "holy shit. My baby died."
Having been one of those overly dramatic girls who in the past caused many a scene in a high school drama queen fashion, it feels at times as though this is some story I have concocted. As though it couldn't possibly have happened to me because things like this DO. NOT. REALLY. HAPPEN. And I always considered that if anyone in my close family died, I would just not be able to cope. I would just fall apart and cry all day every day and just be entirely unable to function.

But look at me.

My baby is dead. The child I planned, desperately wanted, wished and prayed for, carried for nine loving months, dreamed of, and loved...well he died. Inside me. And I gave birth to him. Dead (that word still brings automatic tears). And yet my life goes on.

I have to visit my child at his grave.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine going along and taking toys, rearranging windmills and flowers at your child's grave?

How horrific. Who could ever imagine such a thing?

And yet...a quote I heard on tv the other day stands out to me. To paraphrase Nigella Lawson...the human ability to normalise the abnormal, the tragic, is astounding.

It has become quite normal to me to visit my son's grave. To take him little token gifts. To water the flowers other parents leave their babies who are also buried there. To read stories of other deadbabymamas. To look lovingly at momento mori photos of the loved little precious babies who were born too early, born still.

Hmm. Isn't is strange how we are able to adapt.