After Anabelle

Rituals are what get us through those important dates, those difficult dates. 

A plan quickly became incredibly necessary. A plan to give meaning to those dates, a plan so we knew what to expect of those dates, a plan gives us strength for those dates. I guess Anabelle's birthday, christmas, special dates have become a ceremony of sorts. 

I always see her birthday in. I see 00:08, the time she was born, on the clock before I get into bed. I see her moment in and then I sleep. Much as I did the day she was born. Oh how I wanted to stay awake with my tiny girl but after labour and morphine working its way through my system, my eyes could no longer stay open however hard I tried. 

On her birthday we get up. There are tears and sadness. The weight of the 21st June is so heavy on my chest. I breathe differently on her birthday. It aches.

Then we leave the house.  Taking with us her birthday gifts that will decorate her garden, her book that we'll read there. This year on her fifth birthday those gifts were garden fairies. 

We collect her birthday posy from the florist. The same florist where we ordered her funeral flowers and have collected flowers for each year on her birthday since. 

Then we collect her balloons from town. A big number balloon that decorates her garden and shows everyone visiting how old she is, or she should be. And two others balloons to send to her in the sky from her brothers. 

Then when we're ready we make our way to her garden. 

We tidy it up, making sure her headstone is as clean as it can be. I trim the grass around the headstone so it all looks neat. Then we fill the pots with flowers, flowers in pinks and whites. We place her gifts on her headstone. We place her posy. We tie the big number balloon to her headstone. We sit and read her story, the boys run and chase bubbles. 

And then we send her balloons to her. One for Alexander to release. One for Zachary to release. Pink balloons for our girl, their sister. 

This sending balloons always feels the most poignant part of her birthday to me. Almost like sending a piece of ourselves to her. The balloons feel like the physical connection between us and her on her birthday. 

After the cemetery we go for a drive or a walk. We take a pause. Allow the boys a sleep in the car and a time of quiet for us. Sometimes we find ourselves at Keeper's Pond. Sometimes we send balloons from Keeper's Pond. 

And when we go home the rest of the day becomes about creating her home garden. Each year we buy pink bedding flowers and create pink beauty at home like we do in her cemetery garden; but I guess I'll save more on this for another topic in a few days.  

Then there is garden play, cake, the boys bedtime and then candles to see the remainder of her birthday out. 

This is the routine on her birthday now. The rituals on her birthday now. We need it this way; its this that keeps me together. The plan. Always the plan.  

I dread the day I'm supposed to work on her birthday. I don't know how I will get through the day intact without these rituals, these routines.  The last time her birthday fell on one of my working days (and I wasn't on maternity leave!) I was owed a day in lieu, which worked out well for me, and for my need to get through her birthday in the only way I know how. 

Next year her birthday is on a non-working day but after that there are three years of birthdays where I will be in work. Where I should be in work. Gulp. I'm not in a job where I can just book days off, my time off is dictated by school closure time. 

Maybe by her 7th, 8th, 9th birthdays I should be better than this. I'm sure some people will wonder what the big deal is. But we've just had her 5th birthday and I'm no closer to feeling anywhere near like I cope with this day. The rituals gives us elements of it that are bearable, but its a day where I feel immense pressure, immense grief. Each year I react more violently to her birthday, each year feels more chaotic than the last, each year more and more painful, somehow. I don't feel mentally, emotionally or physically well on her birthday.  But I also realise it is unrealistic to expect to have leave of sorts on her birthday indefinitely. 

I dread the day we might, we'll likely, have to deviate from the plan.

Necessary rituals, routines, plans. 

Day 22. Capture Your Grief. Rituals. 

This is where we wrote Anabelle's eulogy. 

Keeper's Pond on the mountain pass near Blaenavon in South Wales. 

Throughout our pregnancy with her we had used this mountain pass between Blaenavon and Abergavenny often. A prettier route than the alternatives from the hospital and our home. 

After she died it became the quiet space we needed to sit for hours. We sat for hours and we wrote. Everything we wanted to be said at her funeral; all the joy in our pregnancy, how excited we were about her, how in love with her we had been from the beginning, how very special it was to find out we were having a girl, how very precious she was and so very wanted and loved. 

This place became Belle's Mountain. 

Since we lost Anabelle we continue to find ourselves at Keeper's Pond.  We've been here just to walk, just to sit, just to take a pause. We've been there to send balloons on her birthdays, we've been there to attempt sending lanterns in the darkness of the night at 00:08 and mark the moment she was born. We've been there just to watch shooting stars. 

It is often very cold and very windy at Keeper's Pond, but it is our quite place. Our sacred space. Somewhere else for our girl. 

Day 21. Capture Your Grief. Sacred Space. 

I think I'm getting better at forgiving others. 

These last 12 months a part of me has thawed considerably. I think I'm less hard than I was. 

Twelve months ago I let someone back into my life after four years of no-contact. I never thought I would be in this place. Some forgiveness takes much time. I also think forgiving is not the same as forgetting. I don't have to forget. 

Some general insensitivity and stupid thoughtless comments I can handle better, some I can let go over my head now and put it down to simply 'not understanding' - especially from those that don't know me as well as others.  Sometimes I just don't have the energy to correct or do anything else but let it go. Sometimes I just process it inwardly. 

It isn't true all the time of course, and I think it very much depends which part of the year we're in. 

News reports of murdered and ill-treated children that would have floored me a few years ago, furious that some evil excuse for a parent could do that to their child and not realise how lucky they were to have them in the first place. Reports like that used to greatly bother me, anger me. Why were they allowed their child to do that to them when mine who would've been so incredibly loved always was taken away from me.  I would rage at the unfairness of it all. Anger. 

Of course reports like that still bother me. But it is slightly different now. Now I feel less anger at the adult in the situation and instead imagine how terrified that small child must have felt. Now they bother me because I unintentionally imagine Xander or Zac in that child's shoes, knowing their fear. I'm bothered now because a motherly instinct takes over, knowing never in a million years could I do that to my children. 

The news is hard to listen to sometimes when you have children.  

I'm getting better at 'forgiving' others. 

But I guess I'm not really any better at forgiving myself. 

That familiar heavy guilt remains there. Guilt especially surrounding Anabelle's death. Rational and irrational thoughts battle on. I wish I could've saved her. She should've been safe inside me but it wasn't true. The guilt that my body let her down is immense, and still 5 years on I've not really the first idea how to make those feelings go away - two rounds of counselling have not helped with that. 

I often wonder if Anabelle forgives me. Because there are parts in the lead-up to her death I could've done differently, if only I was more aware, or less concerned with 'making a fuss' or what the midwives at the hospital would think of me. What a stupid stupid girl I was.

The possibility of her dying did not really cross my mind until it was already too late.

I should've been more aware. Less naive. Maybe then I would've made different decisions and maybe life would have a different outcome. 

I  paid the greatest price for it. 

I'm often told I am too hard on myself, and maybe I am. 

Recently this song by Jess Glynne has been resonating with me. Maybe I should take more notice.

The forgiveness of self is the hardest kind of forgiveness.  

Day 20. Capture Your Grief. Forgiveness. 

Stargazer was the last piece of music I listened to with Anabelle, as her Daddy carried her back out of the church at the end of her funeral service. 

You don't ever imagine you are going to have to choose music or songs for your child's funeral. You don't ever imagine you're going to have to choose anything for your child's funeral. We had a week to prepare between her birth and funeral. 

A week of visits from funeral directors, visits to the florist, hours sat on a mountain writing her Eulogy, visit shops to find the pink outfits we were going to wear to our daughters funeral, hours sat at the computer trying to decide how her order of service should be, hours spent pouring over hymn books and CDs deciding which pieces of music and which songs were going to be heard and sung at her day. 

Soul destroying hours. Broken hours. 

Anabelle was carried into a Gymnopedie No.1 by Satie, carried out to Stargazer by Hawes and in the service we sang children's hymns for her; Jesus Loves Me, Gentle Jesus Meek & Mild and There's A Friend For Little Children. 

I couldn't choose those 'classical' well known hymns for her, they were so adult, so irrelevant. So instead I remembered the children's hymns from when I was small; and this for us seemed the perfect fit. Children's hymns for a child's funeral. 

A child's funeral. It shouldn't have been like this. 

Oh it was so important to me that Alexander and Zachary had their happy day in church. After Anabelle's only day being her funeral I needed a service for my children that was something else.  A celebration of their life, that they were alive. Their Dedication days, choosing the hymns, the readings, the outfits and all of that. I needed that. Beautiful memories made with our rainbow boys. 

Anabelle's music; Gymnopedie and Stargazer came from this CD; Classic FM for Babies. We had spent hours listening to this music when we were pregnant with Anabelle. She enjoyed this CD. I sat in bed for hours with big headphones on my tummy, watching her roll and kick as she 'danced' along to the pretty music she could hear. So beautiful. Anabelle loved music.  

It is a long time since I've been able to bring myself to listen to any of these pieces of music. They break me. Music is so powerful at triggering memories and flashbacks isn't it. Sometimes it is just too painful to face. 

But I will finish with this. The video I made for Belle's 2nd birthday, playing Stargazer.

Day 19. Capture Your Grief. Music. 

On Anabelle's 4th birthday we bought her a book about the seasons; Sleep Little Angel and I will sing of summer and winter and autumn and spring. Another beautiful book to tuck into her memory box, to read with her brothers. 

Anabelle's season was Summer. 

Anabelle was born on the longest day of the year. 

June 21st.

Our summer solstice. 

I've always thought there was something rather beautiful about that. My beautiful girl; with only one day that is really about her and she chose to arrive on the longest day of daylight. The longest birthday. 

It was a beautiful summers day the day she was born. The sun shone. 

It shone the day she was buried too. 

The weather did not match the occasion. This perfect summer weather and we were broken, and smothered under black clouds. 

But the sun shone and ever since her birthdays have been sunny, some more than others; but all dry, all sunny.  Her 4th birthday was particularly hot and sunny.  So hot and sunny that I burnt quite spectacularly, there was suncream, but clearly not enough suncream! My favourite memory from that summer sunny birthday was eating a KFC picnic on a blanket over her grave. 

Sunny birthdays. 

And now I think there is something rather beautiful about that. 

Now I'm glad it was sunny on the day she was born, and sunny on the day we put her forever to bed.

My girl deserves sunshine. 

My summer born baby. 

You lose so much more than a baby when your baby dies. 

We lost everything Anabelle was, and everything she would've been. 

We lost who she was going to be at one, at two, at three, at four and now at five. We'll keep on losing those years and those birthdays. Stolen birthdays. 

We've already lost the first time she smiled, slept through the night, crawled, first steps. The first Christmas she would've understood about Father Christmas. We've been robbed of the dreams we had of dressing her up in a little pink ballerina costume and sending her to dance class, we've been robbed of her first day at school, we were robbed of her presence on our magical trip to Disney and being duped into buying her Princess Belle toys, dresses and things.  

Pretty soon we'll have lost the time her first tooth fell out and we got to play tooth fairy. We're going to be robbed of the day she would've started Junior school. The birthday where she went into double figures and that big milestone. The day she started high school. The day she became a teenager. The day she bought home her first boyfriend. The day she got her GCSE results, A level results. The day she had her 18th birthday, 21st birthday. We've lost her adult-ness. The day she might've gone to uni, graduated, had a wonderful career. We've lost the day she might've married and instead Jon had the most cruel alternative of walking his daughter down the aisle.  We've been cheated of the exciting time when she had her own children. We've even been robbed of those grandchildren there might've been.

We didn't just lose her, we lost all those milestones, all those dreams. We lost an entire future and a world where she lived. 

That list of secondary losses is endless.

But it doesn't stop there. 

I lost myself. Part of me died with her. I changed. I didn't know who I was anymore. Lost youth, aged beyond my years overnight. Lost. I was just lost. Lost trust in my own capability to make decisions when it matters. Five years on that ripples on. Plagued by fears and doubts. Slowly slowly rebuilding. A life of before and after Anabelle. It is likely losing my daughter is the defining moment of my life.

But it doesn't stop there. 

We lost the pure joy of pregnancy. 

We have such beautiful rainbow boys and we're so amazingly lucky they got here safely and came home, but the journey to get them here was dominated by fear. Today my 'On This Day' memories on facebook included my post when we were on the way home with Alexander; exclaiming that it was one of the very best moments on my life. And it was. Walking out of those hospital doors pushing my pram with my newborn baby in was euphoric. Being lucky enough to repeat that experience with Zachary was amazing because I'll never forget the feeling of walking out of those doors without my baby; the car just 100 yards away and me barely being able to get there because I was on the verge of just collapsing with grief. 

Pregnancy is frightening now. A fear that doesn't subside when you have that all-important end of first trimester scan. Fear that grows as your stomach grows. Fear of another death, another funeral, a fragile heart destroyed knowing you wouldn't survive this again. Knowing an often fragile mental state would never be this intact again. 

A fear that isn't just for your own. A fear that ripples out through everyone that matters to you. I'm anxious when my friends, family are pregnant. Anxious because I so desperately want their babies to get here safely too. 

But it doesn't stop there. 

Relationships were irreparably changed along the way. 

We lost friends along the way. Grief upon grief. 

The worst of it is secondary losses like this are not unusual. I'm not one of a few bereaved parents who saw a different side to people they loved, lost relationships with people they loved.

Bereaved parents are not always faultless in this, not by any means; Grief is ugly and selfish and brings out the less desirable side of you too, reactions that could be better. Things that should be left unsaid. This is true of us. 

Two years ago, around Anabelle's third birthday, I reached crisis point. I reacted emotionally violently to her birthday, to other peoples events that coincided with her birthday. I did not cope. I couldn't cope. I handled it badly and I was handled badly. And none of it can be taken back now. 

Bereaved Parents are so often misunderstood.

I had obviously been doing a good job with 'the face' because dear friends said to me they hadn't comprehended how much her birth, her birthday, still affected me.  It was her third birthday I realised I was most probably suffering from some sort of grief related post-traumatic stress disorder. Because her birth was traumatic. And every year I relive elements of it. Every June I'm stuck in a cycle of flashbacks and time standing still in 2010. 

Misunderstanding is what leads to so many more secondary losses because not everyone can manage a lifetime of Empathy. Because how can anyone really truly possibly even begin to realise the forever impact of the death of your child unless they have experienced it themselves? In those earlier days it was harder to forgive people that. 

And despite it all I miss those friends. I miss them and I wish it was different. 

Five years on and the reality is the secondary losses will probably not stop there. 

Day 17. Capture Your Grief. Secondary Losses. 

In the first year after Anabelle died some of that writing came in the form of a poem.  Poems came before I blogged. The first one I wrote was the day she should've been born; her due date. 

I don't even really remember writing it. In those weeks, months after her funeral. I've lost them. That summer is all a hazy blur. I know events that happened, but I don't remember living them. I was floating in a bubble; drifting from one day to the next, trying to block the sound of the world out, trying to remember how to breathe. 

Then at the end of September 2010 that bubble burst and the world suddenly felt so very very noisy and I was on the floor, crushed. I could not breathe. I found myself at a counselling office specialising in pregnancy loss, not even knowing how I got there, sobbing and sobbing as the utter forever realisation of life without our little girl really started to hit. The bubble burst and this blog started. 

Writing became my creative grief. Telling the story of Anabelle, our family and my grief journey.

Day 16. Capture Your Grief. Creative Grief.