Sucker-Punched

We found out last night that my brother-in-law and his partner are going to have a baby – the first in this generation of our families. For the record, they are both great people who will make marvellous parents and I am filled with profound gladness that, all being well, I will soon get to be an auntie to a very special little person.

I am thrilled by the thought of being Auntie Ink, and am already making plans about what I will knit for the baby (or babies, I suppose). Even though BIL & Co live across the country and I probably won’t even see the ankle-biter terribly often, just the thought of having a niece or nephew to brag about makes me puff up with excitement and pleasure.

But that isn’t all there is – even though it should be.

This is why.

I have dreamed for a very, very long time now of holding my own baby in my arms, of feeling a tiny creature announce itself with a kick from deep inside, of snuggling a warm, sleeping, trusting body on my lap, of clapping madly when the second sheep on the right remembers her (or his) line in the school play, of decorating birthday cakes and knitting mittens and shopping for the perfect back-to-school outfit. I have imagined what it would be like to see my mother’s eyes, my grandfather’s frown or my own pointed chin settled in a soft round face, or how I would giggle about how my child and my husband both play with their hair when they’re concentrating. I have wondered what it would be like to be there every day as an extraordinary little being grows and learns and becomes both more wise and more foolish. And I have been afraid I wouldn’t be good enough to do the job right.

In short … I have dreamed of being called Mummy or Mom or Mama. But it’s never going to happen. Not for me. Not ever for me.

The doctors have never worked out what is wrong, have never determined why my body will not – cannot – nurture a new life. And so, for four too-long, too-short years of infertility treatments (running the full gamut, including some experimental stuff) every month brought new hope and then it brought new pain. Finally, the toll – emotional even more than financial – grew too high to bear and we agreed it was enough.

That was five years ago. And I still grieve. I grieve for my lost child who never was.

Most of the time, I don’t think about it. There are twinges of course, every once in a while, but I am not jealous of other women’s good fortune. In fact, I get a great deal of pleasure watching a mother carrying her sleeping child out to the car, hearing children laugh as they play in the park, or even cuddling a co-worker’s new infant. I am tremendously, and unreservedly, happy for those woman who can do what I cannot … and I wish them all – each and every one – safe and well.

My grief is a thing apart from the world. It belongs to me and is mine alone. It is in some ways the child of my heart, created and sustained by – and for – me. It is, I suppose, a memorial to my little one that I have never seen.

I thought, after five years and more, that I had grief contained. I took the joy that I feel for other women, other mothers, and believed that I’d put my life in perspective and was moving on. I really thought my grief had become a gentle thing, settled and rounded by long acquaintance, no longer capable of anything more than a gentle ache of nostalgia and “what if.”

Until last night. My brother-in-law’s wonderful, exciting, unexpected news has made me realise I have not finished grieving. Not by a long shot.

And so today I have cried. And I have cried. And I have cried. And I know now that part of me will always be crying.

And the rest will dance.