It’s been a difficult weekend for our family. Friday 15th May was the anniversary of the day we had to say goodbye to our Little Bubba. He had been our hope in the face of so much pain. But sadly it wasn’t to be, and at just eight weeks pregnant we had to say goodbye. Even amongst the baby loss community the loss of a much-wanted rainbow baby is seldom talked about. It’s an isolating experience within an isolating experience.
Little Bubba’s goodbye was swiftly followed by 17th May, the day on which it was eighteen months since our beautiful Kaitlyn died and was born. It’s a strange milestone, eighteen months. It’s not a birthday, and therefore not widely remembered or recognised. But to my mind it is a significant milestone in a child’s development. We have four videos taken on the day that M turned 18 months old, and you can see that she had started to really show her cheeky personality. She’s walking and running steadily. In one video she points at herself and says her full name, in another she points at my hand and says “Mummy’s” then points at her hand and says “M’s” (obviously using her actual name). In yet another she is running after some poor ducks, flapping her arms and yelling “QUACK QUACK!!” She has the chubby face and gorgeous fine hair of a baby, with the visible personality of the child she is today.
Kaitlyn isn’t just lost to us in the past. She is lost in the present. We have lost a newborn baby and a child, a toddler. Would she have had a similar personality to M’s? Would she have been even more outgoing, or more circumspect? Would her hair have grown like M’s did? And the clothes, the beautiful clothes all lovingly packed and stored in the loft, waiting for Kaitlyn’s turn to wear them. I had dreamed of her in those clothes.
If I were to speak in general terms, I would say that most people think of Kaitlyn’s loss as in our past now. It’s been far longer than a year, that “year of firsts” that we are taught marks the end of grief but is really only the beginning of loss. Nobody says these things out loud, but we feel it in the way the conversation has shifted and Kaitlyn is spoken about far, far less. Sometimes it feels like people are thinking that surely we’re “better” now, we’ve “processed”, maybe even “moved on”? Surely we’re not still in pain, are we? I suspect some think we shouldn’t talk any more – it’s time to stop posting, stop the pictures. Perhaps they struggle to know what more to say to us. And perhaps that is understandable.
The trouble is, for us it doesn’t work like that. I haven’t lost Kaitlyn once, as an event in my past. I lose her every day. My family has a gaping hole in it that is never going to close. As time goes on, and fewer and fewer people can understand this, it gets harder to bear, not easier. I live a life as two people now, two people that constantly exist side by side, and to be honest it’s exhausting. One ‘me’ functions outwardly, laughs, lies and says I’m fine apart from to a tiny handful of people. Inside is the shadow person, fragments of a person, sometimes wanting to scream and sometimes just surrendering in silence to living in a world that largely has no idea what I’m talking about. It’s not the first time I’ve said it – we simply have to get better at dealing with death, grief and pain in our society, especially if that grief and pain is perceived to be “prolonged.” Eighteen months of grieving, talking, sharing – that is perceived to be too long. But eighteen months is the blink of an eye, it is no time at all. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with people that are still grappling with their heartbreak just eighteen months after their baby has died.
Our usual methods of grieving are severely restricted during lockdown. Granted we could now go to the seaside again, but firstly I don’t believe this to be a sensible idea just yet, and secondly I didn’t fancy being preoccupied by trying to keep my distance from the other billion people that might be desperate to get to the seaside now that there is some leeway in the rules. Last year, just two days after I had surgery, we threw a little mini memorial with family and friends at Kaitlyn’s bridge; no chance of anything like that this year. So we marked the day in quieter, home bound ways. I visited the crematorium; Kaitlyn doesn’t have a memorial there, but it’s a place I often go to feel close to her, as it was the last place that I was physically with her. We spent the last few weeks rearing some butterflies and were absolutely delighted when all five of them thrived and emerged gloriously from their cocoons. We had hoped to release them on 17th but they were ready before that, so on 14th we held a little butterfly release in Kaitlyn’s garden. I ordered a new bear for Kaitlyn, something I have been mulling over for six months now. I adore my Kaity bear, but she is fragile and not very transportable; sometimes I just want something I can hold close without worrying. The new bear is beautifully soft and a wonderful size. A few months ago I ordered a charm with Kaitlyn’s photo on for my Pandora bracelet, to match a similar charm I was given at Christmas when M turned one year old. Deliveries slowed for a while when Covid-19 hit but have recently picked up again, and my wonderful new charm arrived just a couple of days ago.
We didn’t manage to do much else, but we talked about Kaitlyn lots and held her just a little bit closer in our hearts. A lot of the time we are focussed on managing our “new normal” within our “new normal”, since the phrase has now shifted from the bereavement world and seemingly into mainstream terminology. And I’ve shared her with you today, through my words, which is something I have really been struggling to do lately. But I owe it to Kaitlyn, I vowed I would keep her memory alive and I owe it to her to find the words, however inadequate they feel these days. I read on the social media account of another bereaved mum the quote that we die twice – once when our body dies and again when the last person says our name for the last time. Kaitlyn has died once, before her time could even begin. I will fight with every breath I have to make sure she does not die twice, not while I am here to prevent it.
A Keepsake for Kaitlyn 