We are sometimes as if covered and suffocating in cement.
Being pulled and dragged down into depths unknown.
We are sometimes as if wearing masks.
Masks of perfect form and detail, but lacking in expression.
We are sometimes as if alive, our shell being so life-like.
Yet it is but a shell, eyes closed, mouth closed, nose barely breathing - barely living.
We are sometimes as if gray.
Life existing without colour.
Ten years ago I found myself wishing for an unhappy Mother's Day, wishing for any kind of a Mother's Day. I had survived a nine week whirlwind which took me from Bride to pregnant with Twins, to losing one baby, then weeks later losing the second baby and a few weeks later surrounded by the throws of Mother's Day in a land which worships The Mammy.
I wished for unhappiness because that would have been so superior to the pain that was ripping my heart into shreds. It had all happened too fast. It had collided with disastrous outcome into a day celebrating the things, the Beings, I had just lost. They were not with me, and I not with them. They were not who they should have been, alive and growing and strong. I was not who I should have been, incubator, nest, Mammy.
Everywhere I looked there was happiness, gorgeous smiles, hearts bursting out of beaming faces, arms embracing, eyes so full of love and adoration that you could feel it by looking into them, flowers of every colour, best dresses, little suits, round protruding bellies, hands held, bizarrely beautiful handmade cards with inscriptions and drawings only a Mother could understand, bright beautiful colours exploding everywhere you looked.
There we were. Pain so intense words escape. Gray, colourless mounds of hurt. Hearts ripped open.
Ten year anniversaries bring a rip in the heart, when that anniversary is not a fond one. When that anniversary commemorates a pain, a death, a loss, then it can be nothing less than a reliving of that first heart-shred. Your mind and heart meld together to touch into the past and in doing so, my mind, does not just take in today, or ten years ago, but eight years ago as well. February and March took my three babies from me.
I have always thought Mother's Day at the end of March a particularly cruel joke.
A day which, from ten years ago onward, became day for which my aim has simply been to survive.
Mother's Day in Ireland has never been far enough removed from the loss of my babies for me to have been able to digest it. It's never been a cause for celebration for me. It has only been a call for survival.
To all the Mother's who never held their babies or felt their breath on their skin, but who knew and loved those babies from day one, know that this too is YOUR DAY. It's just a little bit different to the rest.
