Christmas day

So I started Christmas day with tears and more tears. With a huge rolling wave of, "it's just not fair" that smashed into my chest before I even got up. And it isn't fair, it bloody isn't. It's reminiscent of that childhood not fair feeling when you are so utterly utterly powerless, weak and small that all you can do is stamp your feet and rail against the big bad world.

A post from Hope's mama a while ago said it all really. Grief is hard work. It is so hard. Sometimes it's all too much to bear and I need to sit quietly and actively search for calm. Sometimes I need to howl and rage and sometimes I read about a mother who's baby was born living at a similar age to George and those parents got to spend some time with their baby alive... and there it is again, unfair... why couldn't we have had just ten small minutes to tell him we loved him? But then again why couldn't we have simply kept him for all time? Why did our son have to die?

But there is no fair to be found here and no answers that will ever satisfy.

Sometimes the absolute enormity of his death is too much and I don't know what to do with myself. And sometimes, quite often really, I laugh and everything is almost entirely normal.

I do know that the worst thing I could do would be to pretend that I'm ok and everything is fine. I'm not and it isn't and if you ask me how I am these days, you're likely to get the long answer. I've stopped protecting other people from my grief and as a consequence I'm finding out who my real friends are which, I suppose, is ultimately good to know.

Since we lost George we are not the same people. Our world is slightly different now, a little less bright and a lot more fragile. How could I be the same? I held our dead baby in my arms, touched his perfect face, marvelled at his tiny perfect mouth, counted his perfect fingers and toes and kissed his perfect nose and I will always feel his absence. This is the all new me with a vital piece missing and although it is far from easy and I didn't think it possible, I'm slowly getting used to it.

Ray's friend Joe of the broken heart ('aint we all) finally turned up for dinner after wallowing in a state of self-loathing and self-pity at home alone that morning and after Ray dragged his head into a much cheerier and normal mad-Joe place dinner was quite lovely. A traditional over the top sunday lunch affair with vegetarian options for the veggies amongst us (me).

When Joe had gone back to his dark pit of despair (honestly, he is his own worst enemy, Ray tells me his ended-relationship has been an on again off again disaster zone for years but then again he can't step back and see it from our perspective can he?) we went for a drive, parked by the seafront and stepped onto the beach in the dark to listen to the crashing waves. It was hand-achingly freezing windy so we drove around for a while, warming up and giving marks out of ten for the tacky house decorations (the more flashing lights the more points) before heading home. Ray, who doesn't celebrate Christmas kept telling me Happy Christmas until I said it back. I love him to infinity and beyond.


Today my monster period from hell has finally definitely finished but has left a cramp or two behind. Bloody fibroids.