Think Speak Run

Here I am again on Tuesday 6th December 2011. My heart, throat and eyes so full behind the surface that I can hardly breathe, that I can hardly type, that I wonder at the tears not falling. I need to get this pain, this thorn, this splinter out. I need to hold together for just as long as it takes to get this all down on paper and then I can fall apart; quietly, maybe imperceptibly to those around me; gently.

I spoke to * today and said I would email her the pages I wrote last week or maybe it was the week before? Anyway, I thought I was fine, thought I’d said all there was to say, but then comes this evening. I was sitting here, colouring in a butterfly I’d drawn as part of Ella’s Annual that I’m making for her for Christmas. Then all of a sudden I was thinking of W.H. Auden’s ‘Stop All the Clocks’ and I was pulling apart inside again. That wound, so freshly recently re-opened; so recently growing new skin – has started to rend itself asunder again. The wound is what is holding the inside of me together.

I remember being in my room in *. I do not know how many days old Ella was. That time is one melded blur of pain and bewilderment and not understanding. A wash of time that has no seeming beginning or end, but all folds and wraps over and over itself like a nightmare wave that drowns you even as you try to flee it. I remember hearing next door’s dog barking. Or rather, yapping. It never would shut up. And I could hear next door laughing; in their garden, or in their kitchen, and I remember thinking no you can’t laugh. Don’t you know what has happened? Don’t you know my daughter is dead?

Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent that damn dog from barking with his juicy bone. Silence their laughter and with the deafening drum of my heart, bring out the coffin that holds my heart; let the mourner: God, come. Let all aeroplanes circle like mewing buzzards overhead. Let them scratch indelibly on the sky the ageing news: she is dead. Throttle with your bare hands the innocent, painless public doves. Let my father wear his black funeral gloves. She was my North and South my East, my West. She lived in my working week; she kicked in my Sunday rest. She woke me at noon, at midnight. I was the talk of all but I lost my song. I thought my body could hold her forever: I was wrong. Put out the stars. They are not wanted now I cannot show them to her. Cannot sing her Twinkle, Twinkle, little star. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. There is no light; no need for light now. She was my light. The light that shone in my darkness of life; the glimmer of faint hope I had. But she is gone. Pour away the ocean of my tears and you will still drown in my grief, as I have, yet, nightmarishly, am still alive. Sweep up the wood. Gather the forest I dwelt in, hid in, suffered in. Pile them into a tall pyre; bind me and throw me on it. The sacrifice. Set it alight. My life is on fire yet I do not die. My heart is burnt to grey deathly ashes, yet has lost it’s flame. Truly nothing now can ever come to any good.

And so my parents sent me to ‘the land of no-speak’ as Ian called it. I went for three days. I don’t know what I expected, but I was not healed. I sat in the silent darkening tiny chapel, but heard not God. I walked the paths and saw the beauty of nature, but felt not one word. I watched films and still bled, feeling wretched. I found a book of Christina Rossetti poems in the library there. And found the poem that spoke my heart for me: Baby Lies so Fast Asleep.

I wrote in the little book that they had there – you were not allowed to speak to anyone other than a greeting – so the book was for people to write in if they needed to. God said one thing to me while I was there.

He does not take away my pain but binds the hurt with peace.

And when the lady who runs the place came to see me on the final morning I said what God had shown me, but I burst into tears when she asked me how I was, I think. And I showed her my picture of Ella. The same one that my dad made me use for the announcements. He wouldn’t let me use the one I wanted to use, where she looked so beautiful and my baby. He insisted on the one where she has a cone-looking head and is lying in the hospital blanket, in the hospital plastic cot. Still lovely, but not my choice. And not allowed my own wording for my own announcements about my own baby. Not allowed my own baby. Not ALLOWED my own baby. Not allowed my own baby. Do you have any idea how painful that is. It makes a nonsense of my life because I existed to carry her. I lived so she would live. So to separate the two is nuts. And then afterwards my fool of a father saying, “Well you know I think you should never separate a mother and baby unless there are serious concerns about the mother’s fitness to parent.” Er, no, you never said that. And did you think I was unfit? I’M HER MOTHER!

And then this evening, Phil Collins’ song with Genesis, ‘Since I Lost You’ , which has been one of my favourites ever since R first introduced me to their music back in 1991….. It’s reaching me again at that place of need cos it says it all: