Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [29]
Thank God for those wonderful people. I urged Tony to get counselling himself but he refused: ‘I don’t need to sit around fucking navel gazing with some ageing hippy.’
‘You don’t have to see Claire. We could find someone else.’
‘I’m fine. We just need to have another baby and things will be okay.’
‘But they won’t be. We can never replace our lost baby, even if we have ten others. You need to talk to someone.’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said and I knew nothing I could say would change his mind.
One of the things that Claire taught me was that grief, whatever its cause, will in the short term leave you with a great gaping wound. I’ve heard others describe it as being as if someone had violently ripped their heart out of their chest and stomped on it. It wasn’t quite like that for me. I felt I’d been admitted to hospital for another procedure that September day, the doctors neatly and efficiently opening my chest and surgically removing my heart and surrounding tissue, leaving a bare cavity where once life and hope had pulsed. So for me it happened quietly - almost by stealth - but the outcome was just the same.
By late October I felt I needed to return to work but it was still very hard. I left my office one day glowing and expectant and returned weeks later drained and defeated. Edward was kind and attentive but the wider work environment was another matter. Co-workers avoided me. They would talk about me in hushed and serious voices and if I was walking down a corridor I’d see them quickly duck into their offices and hide. Perhaps I would do the same if I saw a strange zombie woman without a heart coming towards me but still their attitude hurt. I began to believe they thought my grief was contagious.
My counsellors were able to reassure me that this was a common reaction: people do care, they explained, but because they don’t know what to say they end up saying nothing.
Only Melanie knew exactly what to do. That very first morning she enclosed me in a tight embrace and let me cry my eyes out in her arms. After that I felt a bit better, although it took me a good few months before I was completely able to concentrate on my job and get back to my best. Edward quietly caught a lot of dropped balls for me back then.
The person in the office who made most strenuous efforts to avoid me during this time was Christina, whose first baby was due at the same time William had been expected, her growing belly a daily reminder of what I’d lost. So one day I just walked into her office and said, ‘Please don’t feel you need to avoid me Christina. I appreciate your sensitivity but this is not your fault. I am happy for you, truly.’ We found it easier from then on. But in February, when an email was circulated announcing that she’d given birth to a bouncing four kilogram boy called Jake, I disappeared to the ladies’ toilets and cried the bitterest tears of my life.
It took a long time for that hollow feeling to go away, but eventually it did. A scar has now closed over, although I know from experience that it will always remain tender. For a while there I thought I’d completely lost my sense of humour but it has returned intact and I am for the most part fine these days. Isabel has seen to that. All the same, the strangest things can set me off. Just the other month we attended a birthday party for one of the girls at Isabel’s preschool. This little girl had an older brother who was almost exactly the age that William would have been. He was blond and bouncy and gorgeous and I found myself crying quietly all over again.
I still miss my little boy.
More than anything I’d love to re-experience the feeling I had that September morning - on a day which would subsequently turn out to be the worst of my life - when I watched my handsome husband walk up the road towards me. It’s silly really, we’d already lost William by then. But I want to relive the feeling I had that life was good and was going to deliver me all that I wanted. I know I’ll never