Time

We planted a tree in our baby's memory last Thursday. Wait, when was that? Yes, last Thursday. I honestly cannot keep track.

It is quite frightening really.

I remember being quite superstitious about getting the plant out of its temporary pot and into some decent soil before midnight struck to signal the end of Thursday, as that had been seven days exactly since the baby was born.

It's a spiky yucca some dear friends interstate had sent us and it now lives in a gorgeous light terracotta pot we bought especially. We put it on the pool side of the fence, but instantly I saw it was all alone out there with no other plants around it. So I grabbed two jade plants we had on the other side of the yard, and placed them either side to do three things: to stand guard like some brave warriors, to protect the plant between them and for luck.

Once planted, T and I stood there in the darkness with our arms around each other while a light breeze blew. We cried in memory of our baby and in the realisation that every time we glanced at that plant, as well as at a thousand other times, we would think of our baby again.

Otherwise, the day-to-day is just happening. Night becomes day and vice versa.

Life feels like just an existence at the moment, with a few normal moments of joy, happiness and bright thrown in for a very frugal measure.

I am still unsure how to approach this grief. I know now that is does not follow a timeline, it does not progress or worsen or improve or stagnate; but rather does all of those things, sometimes within the same hour.

This is like nothing I rememeber experiencing in my adult life and while I know I just have to roll with it, that thought is a little disconcerting for a perfectionist control freak like me!

I have thought a lot about how this whole thing has changed me. And right now I keep thinking of the bad stuff - I suppose that's normal at this early stage.

I really feel like my optimism has completely faded. Not disappeared, but certainly been eroded. I feel like I can compare my old self and my "new" self and I realise that the old me was much more hopeful, more bulletproof about things always working out. That change makes me really sad.

I am someone who often forgets bad experiences. Until now, most bad things that have happened to me have really been trivial. I have decided they are not worth any memory storage.

Of course, that has changed now. This is unforgettable.

Please don't get me wrong, or feel unecessarily worried. Blogging about the way I am feeling right now causes me to shine lights harsher than they should be on the darkness corners of my mind. There is plenty of good stuff in my life today, just like there was yesterday, and before.

I know it, I feel it; but sometimes it shocks me to realise that some bad stuff has crept in too, tainting those wonderful spaces within me.