Sunday, bloody Sunday

Easter Sunday and my waking thought today is, "That carpark was so familiar to me and now I don't visit it any more."

The hospital carpark. The one I knew like the back of my hand. The timing required to find a park in the rare as hens' teeth undercover spaces. The best tree shade in the vast lot. Where the ring road went and how it's better to cut through between buildings if you have a careful driver in front because it means they will go all the way around and you'll make it to the gate before they do. The distance to the entrances. All of them - the one to the lift and then the undercover breezeway, the one that most visitors use, the entries that are less commonly used except for the serious visitors - the long term ones like you.

I woke up gradually, after startling somewhat that this thought - out of any number I could have had - was the one my brain chose to lay out before me as dawn crept into our bedroom. What purpose could that thought have? Why have it if not to change a perspective, find some kernel in it that is useful to me (or better yet, someone else)? Do I have all the ingredients to make pancakes for breakfast this morning? Did any mice get the Easter eggs that were carelessly dropped by a less than stealthy Easter bunny last night as he hopped clumsily from the LGBB's bedroom and out the front door?

Thoughts are mercifully funny like that. They can change on a whim and distract you from yourself.

~ • ~

After my dog Pepper was cremated in February, her body was returned to us in the most exquisite carved heavy wooden box. Nailed shut. Tamper-proof. Amazing. So respectfully and tastefully done. These were animal lovers, they understood what it means to lose a beloved faithful pet. I could just tell. It was a stark and sobering contrast to what we were confronted by at the end of 2004.

See, when Steve finally plucked up the courage to collect Ellanor from the funeral parlour after almost ten months had passed - we just couldn't, could not face the scenario.... would you race down there do you think? I don't know, I still don't know what I would do and I've already done it! - he returned home with her ashes. In a plastic cannister.

A plastic cannister. Not unlike the kind you'd store your spaghetti in.

It was up to us, the parents, to transfer the contents of that unnatural vessel into a new place. Something we had to go out and choose and create for ourselves. A job I would neither recommend nor ever wish to do again. But on the other hand, an ultimately cathartic one.

We laid our daughter's remains to rest exactly one year to the day after she was born.

I've been awake for an hour now. And the longer I'm awake, surrounded by dusted bunny feet that I am just itching to vacuum off my otherwise clean floors, the more horrified I am becoming that a funeral parlour - just any old one, who KNOWS who they are? - were entrusted with the body of my firstborn child and returned her to me in a plastic container with a screw-top lid. Thanks for coming, so sad she couldn't make it. And yet, our dog is given the respect she deserves; someone who knows the profound importance of a long-time companion and gets that you want their remains treated with care and compassion made sure that they were.

It's harsh and it's hard. If it's hard to read, you can guarantee it's pretty difficult to reconcile with as the parent. These are the things that aren't considered. But sometimes it's just the little details that would make all the difference. You know?

That right there. That is why society has to collectively pull its socks up. Understand that these babies are people. Important. Equal to those of us who live. Sure, we've come a long way since the days of whisking a stillborn child from its mother and not allowing her to see him or her. But have we really done all we can?

This may be a privileged world we westerners live in, but it is the corner of the world we live in. If we can walk in to a shop and buy pretty much anything we desire, then we should also reserve the right to have our deceased loved ones - no matter what their size or age - treated with dignity and respect.

My daughter came home in a temporary jar. That's what my thoughts are stuck on today.

~ • ~

Please oh please, sweet mercy, let Lolly wake up soon.

BRING ON THE EASTER EGG HUNT.

I need to escape.

8 years on and finally: I'm OK today

The floating feeling for thirty-one days between the anniversaries of her birth and her death did not happen this year. For the first time, I was healed enough. Perhaps it was just that I was distracted enough. We'll be going gently today, Steve and I. We know what happened on this day, eight years ago. We were both there, after all. The weight of that tiny body will forever be felt in our arms.

The LGBB began school a week ago. If this day had not fallen on a weekend, I wonder if I would have had any time to notice the date at all.

You are newer to my story than I. It has been seeping in to my core for eight years now. I am not new to it. You may be coping with your own recently started infant loss journey. It may seem unfathomable that today could be anything but intensely sad forever... I get that, completely. I previously couldn't have imagined the day of the anniversary of my firstborn's passing being less than horrid every year myself.

In any case, I do not wish to diminish the impact I have previously always felt on this day. But I cannot deny that there has been a lightening of my burden. I hope this is a comfort to you, rather than insulting.

I have done and written all I can, from every angle and every which way but crazy.... well, no, that's not true; I'm quite certain at a few points during the life of this blog I have written whilst under the influence of my own tormented insanity - a mother's insanity - and I make no apology for this maternal crazy-insane slant in some of my earlier posts. I am sure that Ellanor will continue to provide me exceptionally well-timed points of learning.

For today, however, I hope that each of you will take the time to welcome her fairytale life into your hearts by reading the story in the link below.

Can a baby's short life be seen as a fairytale? Can there be any meaning at all in a passing that is so tragically soon?

I think, yes. On both counts. It is truly breathtaking. The message is Universal, in a way it represents the profound meaning of all life. But if you are currently in the turmoil of this in your own life, then it must be you who decides.

Please do come back and leave a comment here if you are moved to do so.

Little Ella: The Story of an Earth Angel  

(grab the tissues and settle in! This is a short story, beautifully told with a very important message 

- written the week Ellanor passed away, by Susannah Brindle)

Dear Miss Ellanor

Hello, lovely girl.

I'm getting swept up in wistful thoughts again. Wishing you were here this week.

Your little sister and I are getting ready to make a sweet feast on your birthday. You would have turned eight this Friday. I know 8. I remember 8. I felt so old, so grown-up. So ready to take on the world. It felt like an important birthday to me. Seems like such a wholesome number.

I feel a bit cheated this year for the first time in several years. Perhaps because I can remember being 8. And that hope-filled eight year-old in me is confused by all the hurt and pain. I have to nurture her, too, you know. Break this to her very gently. The world hurts. But it is such a beautiful hurt.

Thank you, my darling soul mate, for teaching me that lesson as well.

The other day, I was distracted in the kitchen. Stirring something on the stove, thinking several things at once. Deep in concentration. Out of the corner of my eye, my little girl walked in from the next room and stood a short distance away, saying expectantly, "Mum...." I looked up and said "Yeah?", expecting to see Lolly. She wasn't there. No one was. I stared at the vacant spot, disappointed my head hadn't turned a split second sooner. Lolly was metres away, caught up in her Barbie website. She looked over at me when I spoke and asked me, "What, Mum?" "Oh... nothing," was all I could stammer.

It was you, wasn't it? Well, thanks for coming, anyway! It was so wonderful to glimpse you. It's been too long.

You're there. I know you're there. Here's our song again, just for us. You and me, sweet pea.

You gorgeous, soft, strong, delicate rose. You hold the whole world, the entire Universe, in your soul. I know you do.

I miss you, Boo. I truly do.

Love

Love

Love,

Your Earth-bound Mother x




To view more letters to Ellanor and anniversary posts, please click here and scroll down.

Remembered into being

Ellanor was borne into being long after she became a thought. I had introduced her to my closest confidantes before I got pregnant. She included herself in our lives before she was born. She touched down here for the most fleeting of days - 31 to be very exact - and then tripped back off again. Leaving me to gather together all the memories she had left me with, so I could lean on them. Desperately at first. Despairingly, longingly. But always fondly. Even the hard memories. And then I got stuck into sharing them, mostly here on this blog (and my old one). The more I did, the more I discovered that she remained vital in not just my life but the lives of others.


Later in 2004, I had not a clue, not a whisper of a dare of a hope that I might ever feel like opening my eyes for one more day on this Earth, let alone wonder if any more children were to be our fate. It's just lucky for us that it was. That I never continued my thought process to my eventual untimely end (and how to do it).


It's a tricky thing.


She had to leave. I had to stay. But I know why now. 

Miss Lolly, a month after she burst my heart open even wider

The most endearing face in my world, 2008

Even when she makes more work for me, she is still my Heaven - 2011

For if she had not, the world would not have been able to welcome the shining light that is Ellanor's little sister. Like revolving doors, the two girls slipped past each other. Never destined to meet in the flesh.


But those memories I hold in my soft mother heart are Lolly's. They are there for her to wade in, explore, develop for herself. Memories that did not bring Ellanor into being but that ensure she has no beginning or end here on Earth, as it is wherever she goes now. She is the one who is free. She is the one who had the vision to come. And to go. How can I ultimately be anything but impressed by that sheer will? I am frankly in awe of her.


As long as we keep remembering. Their existence will continue to flourish.

In dedication to all the babies who are being cradled 

in the memories of their families this festive season. 

Peace be with you all. 

Together, we will never let them fade.

Tales from the #12wbt: Today, I made a weighty discovery

I found an expand-o-file thingy in the garage today. It contained a pile of papers and documents that basically chronicled the good stuff and praise I'd ever received in any of the four jobs spanning my 10 year-long office "career" I had before bearing my first (prem, ultimately not surviving) child.

I threw three-quarters of the paperwork out, easily and unemotively turfing it and keeping just a small handful of things for snapshot of workplaces in the 90's kind of purposes. It bore little significance to me now. So much so, for I had been so proud of it all once, that I had to step back and be gently with myself as I took stock of what had transpired in all the years in between then and now.

There were many times as I stood there sorting my office life where I recalled that forward-thinking Me as she slipped the documents into the archive file. She had put them there even as her belly expanded with who was to become our girl, Ellanor. She was expecting that one day, her son or daughter would like to know what his or her mother had been doing prior to becoming their mother.

Today, none of that seems to matter. The praise and achievements of a string of jobs that served only to pay off the mortgage - even though I put my heart and soul loyally into every workplace that hired me - are of no importance now.

It struck me deeply that I used to rate so highly my work-a-day jobs that, really, were soul-less. Why is it that I kept a succession of performance reviews with their studiously signed and counter-signed cover pages as evidence of having done anything worthy of this world, when I have been berating myself for the state of my body that has cleverly borne two live children and kept recovering through the loss of twelve others?

I didn't mean to write a post. This was meant to be a vlog only. I'll shuddup now. Here, watch me bare more honestly than I planned so please be gentle!:

A weighty discovery from Lolly Lovers on Vimeo.



Ok. Things I didn't say...:

• Firstly, I forgot to go back to my train of thought after Pepper kindly interrupted! Suffice to say, I realised that it was a conscious choice I had to make - to stop blaming my body gaining increasing amounts of weight seemingly unstoppable weight, stop blaming the pregnancies for affecting the hormones and making me a chemical jumble of a mess, stop blaming the IVF for setting up my already overloaded system, stop blaming every other external factor.... and stop blaming ME, possibly most importantly, for the decisions I was blindly, unconsciously making. Without that first step of ridding the blame, I couldn't have spurred myself into action.
• I have lost over 10kg so far in 2011 (I haven't stopped counting yet!). Although I have been told a lot in my life that I am "lucky" because I have no one problem area, it also means I have work to do everywhere! But it's true that whilst I may gain weight everywhere, I also tone everywhere evenly. Which is a blessing. So sometimes it's hard for anyone other than me to see I've gained or lost weight - a bonus, you might think, unless you're the one in a too-heavy body;
• No longer is it an effort to: climb out of bed, walk up a few stairs, get down on the floor to play with my child, squat to look in a low cupboard (my legs would cramp and ache within 30 seconds, so poor was my muscle "tone");
• After just seven weeks on this fitness program, my mindset is... well, set! It has been an emotional wasteland, that void between my head, heart and mouth (rather, willpower) - the realisation I had during this vlog (that I had given up) has really struck me.
• Plié (or sumo) squats with an upright row thrown in holding hand weights = killer! Ditto to a raised lunge (with front foot on a step). But these two techniques in particular, for me, feel oh so good. It feels so powerful knowing my thigh and glute muscles are working hard to raise and lower my upper body.
• I am feeling the familiar heady rush of adrenaline that I used to crave in the years when I went diligently to the gym and had a personal trainer. I had all but convinced myself in recent years that I didn't miss The Burn of working muscle and was too far gone to ever experience again. Amazing stuff when I know that just two months ago, I couldn't get off my couch without a LOT of effort and not a little bit of audible grunt to boot.
• No small thanks to Michelle Bridges' 12 week body transformation for the kickstart to my return to fitness.

A little bit of give

I sat with the LGBB on the couch this morning while she watched one of her latest favourite movies...

Her secret love's no secret....
an-y-moooore

Opposite the couch is a wall where Ella's picture hangs. This one:

I sat gazing at it while the movie played.

Oh the Deadwood Stage is a-rollin' on over the plains

With the curtains flappin' and the driver slappin' the reins

Beautiful sky, a wonderful day

Whip crack-away, Whip crack-away, Whip crack-away!

I got lost in the photos and everything else in the room slipped into the shadows. Even Doris Day. It was just me and my girl. My first girl.

Before the movie was over, the LGBB came back into view. I shelved my precious stolen thoughts out to Ellanor and got back to chores at hand. Lunch was made, chortles were shared (Lolly loves the part where poor old Francis has to dress up like a girl because the hick townsmen were expecting a "real live woman".... if you don't understand, then you've missed out.... it's an old Hollywood musical thing).

Then she laid down again. "I'm tired," she said. She's been saying that all weekend. And just laying down wherever she is. This morning, she woke with a headache and it didn't leave all day. The trooper that she is, though, the LGBB didn't make much of it and didn't complain of it being sore. If I hadn't known any differently, she was just a tiny bit darker around the eyes (something that comes out in her naturally pale complexion whenever she's a bit under the weather) but that was about it.

I held true to my word on the promise of a craft session after lunch. What was going to be a rocket ship turned into the Love Boat. She decided it was a ship and I was commissioned to fit-out the peg passengers.

He's king of the world. He's also largely ignored by the other passengers.

The Party Ship. With the playboy, Cleopatra, a washed-up woman in red and
a ballerina attempting valiantly to keep her remaining thinning locks....

Not sure he should be looking at her like that,
especially when only in his Y-fronts.

But she only just made it to the playing part (she was itching to play with it while we were making it all together). No sooner had I lowered the boat to the floor for her maiden voyage than my girl grabbed a cushion and also lowered herself to the floor.

"I'm too tired, mummy," she said again. It was the first time my brow furrowed and I decided I didn't like something about all this. You know when you just have that moment? She still had her headache and I commanded her to our bed for a rest, where she slept for two hours.

-------------------------------------------------

In the midst of the sleep designed to relax and re-charge her, the LGBB woke screaming, terrified. I raced in, wondering if the pain had gotten worse. "What is it?" I asked calmly, rocking her. She was trembling. And hot. And scream-crying. Staring at the wall behind my head.

I got her out of the room and changed the scenery a bit. In the kitchen, rocking together in a chair, she managed to get out that "a man was dancing me too fast." What the? Her description made it sound like one of those awful dream sequence scenes in the movies where the fish-eye lens camera is being stared into by the maniacally laughing crazy-character as we, the audience/camera, gets spun around. I agreed with my sweaty little poppet that that would be a bit scary. "But it's all over now and it wasn't really real, was it?" No reply from her.

-------------------------------------------------

While all this was happening, I fielded a phone call on my mobile. A number I have seen as a missed call about half a dozen times in as many days. They never leave a message. This time, phone in hand, I was able to answer and solve the mystery.

"Hello there, it's Lou here from Heart Kids..." and Lou proceeded to launch into a typical telemarketing "we need you and your dosh" speech.

Now, this is where I normally huff and puff and wait to say loudly but firmly, "No thank you, we give to our chosen charities already but best of luck... *click*"  But Heart Kids is something close to my heart. Today, especially, when I was already feeling so drawn to Ellanor and with my heightened mama-care reflexes towards Lolly, it seemed fitting that I should receive the call.

Lou - well, Heart Kids - did well for himself. I came away $50 lighter and have a jumbo-sized beach towel coming my way within "seven working days". I find it no strange coincidence that on the preschool fundraiser shopping tour I went to last weekend, I carried around a beach towel for the LGBB (she doesn't have one and we're taking a beach holiday soon) and ended up putting it back on the shelf, not making the purchase. Just this morning, I cursed myself for my decision not to buy the towel. I sighed that I'd have to go to a shop and probably buy one at full price.

Now I know why I didn't buy it. Tricky, clever Universe.

I gave today. It was such a small thing, really. Ultimately, I know that no money in the world is going to help some causes if it is ordained to go "that way" - look at our girl, in the best medical care - but I will always extend my circle of thoughtful care and consideration to those families going through the toughest trial of their lives with precious children with sick hearts. Every time I look at my girl's beach towel.

Do you give to charity? Do you have a blanket "sorry, no" rule for telemarketers? Or does it depend on the day?

-------------------------------------------------

Update: Tonight, the LGBB is much better. After a bath,  a sausage in bread with a good serve of fresh steamed vegies for dinner and a play with her cherished Love Boat with Daddy, she is tucked up happily in bed. But not before storytime. Steve came back and reported that he decided to himself that he would read her something they had not read for a long while. He started looking on the shelves for the book silently and then heard the LGBB in the background say, "Oh, Dad, it's in here." He turned around and Lolly opened up a bedside table drawer and pulled out the very book he had been looking for.

He blames me for passing it on. I say to him once again... no harm, no foul. But it's going to make teenage years interesting I think.

Fostering the Big Questions - moving on from the last ones

Today was filled with the kind of curly questions only a child can ask. And again - just as last time -  I was compelled to answer as truthfully as I could.*

It's like that when she looks me straight in the eye and squares her jaw; there is no getting around it any other way than honestly. The sort of tactful, metered honesty that shields from the gritty details yet doesn't shy away from the facts.

"What happened straight after I was born?" she asks me.
"Straight after?.... Well... your Dad and I brought you home and fed you and looked after you." I smile at her, remembering fondly.
"Yes, I know," she frowns, looking a trifle frustrated, "but what happened before that?"
She's getting her before's and after's mixed up at the moment. It's a stage.
"Before when?"
"Before, when Ella was born." 
I don't quite know what she's trying to decipher with her line of questioning so I can't guide my answers toward anything that will succinctly nip it in the bud for her. So we continue with the short answers-short questions.
"You want to know what happened just before Ella was born?" She nods.
"Well... when Ella was born, she was very little. I stayed in the hospital with her for a few days but then I had to come home. And when I did, she stayed in the hospital." 
She pouts sadly. I am certain I see a little look of sympathy in the way she tilts her head and makes a slight grimace. 
"But every day," I assure her, "I would wake up early and drive to the hospital and feed her my milk and talk to her and her nurses until it got dark and late at night. Then your Dad would drive from work and come and sit with me and we would look at Ella and talk to her together. She was a very lovely little baby."
My other very lovely little baby is sitting across the room from me, a range of emotions moving across her face now. I can't gauge if it's compassion for us or a sense of loss for herself, mixed in with a good dose of "I feel I've missed out on something you were all doing when I wasn't here". I daresay it's all of that. Then I realise she is trying to pinpoint where Ellanor is again. She does this, searching for her sister, a few times a year. I invite the conversations openly.... but they are still heart-searingly difficult.
"But... why did you leave her at the hostible?" she asks, her large blue-green eyes suddenly looking heavier, her little brow furrowing.
"Because she died, darlin', we had to."
Stated simply, just like that, it sounds callous and cold and hard-hearted. I know what she's thinking. I'm thinking it too now as we look at each other and the distance between us, across the rug and the arm of the couch to where she's leaning seems somehow suddenly further. If her father and I could leave our baby somewhere to be handled by goodness knows who, what's to stop us taking leave of our senses and doing it to her? I feel wretched for a turn, before my logical mind catches up and keeps me moving along before I get too morbid. That would not help either of us.
"Who has her now?"
"Nobody. She's not at the hospital any more."
"What kind of hostible did you leave her in?"
"A people hospital. Where doctors and nurses help sick people. You know, Lol, you wouldn't be here if Ella was."
"Yes, I know that," she answers me with a tone beyond her five short years. And she frowns again slightly, a pained, longing look on her face. She really does get that, I marvel to myself. "But why can't I see her? I want to see her." Ah. Getting it and living it are two completely different things, though, and it is this knowledge - that my child has been forced to remain permanently separated by her living from a sister she yearns for deeply - that really clutches at my mother heart.
"I know you do." Matter of fact. It's the only way. We agree it's shitful without saying any more.
"How did she get to Pixie Hollow?" she asks, changing tack slightly and mercifully saving me from the always uncomfortable "Well, why didn't any doctors and nurses save my sister" challenges.
This is the moment my heart swells to bursting. The Pixie Hollow explanation is something that Ellanor's sensitive little sister came up with quite on her own one day earlier this year out of the blue while we were driving. She told me that day decidedly that Tinkerbell and the fairies had taken Ella to live "on another planet because I think.... Yeah! That's where Pixie Hollow is!"
I hasten to quantify here that the LGBB is also very partial to the unabridged J.M. Barrie book, Peter Pan - the whole Lost Boys in Neverland premise fascinated our Lolly. What's more, I believe that Pixie Hollow (perhaps more due to the gorgeous name rather than the Disney-fied slant on "fairies" and, indeed, Tinkerbell herself) and Neverland are a mash-up of one and the same place in her imagination.
"You know what? That I don't know," I tell her honestly.

Our talk peters out at this point and I am left with a vacant but equally full feeling for the rest of the day. When we catch up a few hours later, Lolly is sitting playing on her bed with various tiny bits and pieces of some monstrosity that look like bottom-of-foot attractors if ever I saw them. Jagged and pointy bits everywhere.

She hands me a green glass-looking rubbed stone. "Is this a wishing stone?" she asks.
"I think it might (as) well be!" I exclaim.
"I've been making lots of wishes and they're going to come true," Lolly says nodding and glancing around her room before she launches into what I think is going to be her long list. But she only tells me one wish.
"I want a baby brother. And another sister." Again with the direct gaze and the square-set jaw. My goodness, but her eyes are beautiful. I'm distracted by them when I should be thinking of an answer. Fast.
"Wouldn't that be wonderful, to have both." I smile at her.
"Then I can have someone to play with," she says earnestly. Honestly. My loins don't feel any sort of stirring whatsoever, regardless of wishing desperately my only child was not an only child. We tried. Honest to goodness, her father and I tried.
"You know, though, babies take a long time once they're born to be able to play. Look at your cousin Blake. He's pretty little still, isn't he?"
She's unwavering. Her eyes look into me - through me - and I can kind of see she's not all here. I wait, watching her face, until she finally answers.
"I think they're not babies. Maybe they're older than me." 
Despite myself, I raise my eyebrows and nod in agreement. Yes, that's right. Perhaps they are.

I completely forgot until today that I have been tossing up foster parenting with Steve for some years now. It comes up once every year or so, since we said goodbye to Ellanor, but it never felt "right" to go ahead with it.

Perhaps? Maybe now? Lolly seems to know more about it than I. We shall see. If nothing else, I trust the Universe will advise, devise and deliver all in its exceptionally good, right time.



* (Just as an aside, that last Big Questions post is a really important read if you are dealing with them yourself - or trying to find a way through them with your surviving young, inquisitive children and wonder how the heck to start... also, take a deep breath in and just go with your best instinct! ;-)

Smile... no matter how awkward you feel.

Every year the same

"We're pregnant! Due in September, she's six weeks along already," my brother saw fit to tell me and Steve when Ella was about a week old.

It was lovely news. Just wonderful for my brother and dear sister in-law. I felt a familiar pang but brushed it off - I didn't have to feel that envy now! We finally had a baby of our very own after four failed attempts.

Of course, little did we all know but three weeks later there would be tragedy beyond any measure in our family when our own daughter, Ellanor, died suddenly before ever making it home.

Now, of course, each year on this day in September our focus is on our beautiful, sweet niece as she celebrates her birthday. She is a classic of a kid, sharp as a tack, quick-witted, cheeky, all those things that make her deliciously unique. She will also forever remind me of the age our daughter would have been turning - seven this year - and it is this connection that both tugs at my heart and brings a wide smile to my face at the same time. The cousin she would have loved who lived and died before she herself drew breath.

How do we possibly instill in these boisterous, life-full children the bittersweetness of their very existence? We don't. Of course, we don't. But I, Ella's mother, can hold that thought. Perhaps when my nieces are adults, with or without babes of their own, they might want to learn more. For now, the presence of Ellanor's name in our family, her pictures on our walls, her name on our lips occasionally, are enough sign-posts for them to be used to the very tricky concept of the death of a cousin. So young, before they met. One day, if it's ordained, I will be so happy and proud (of my nieces and of my daughter) to have that chat with them.

We are reminded in ever more subtle ways of our lost baby daughter, Steve and I, on days like these where it would be considered unnecessary or impolite or otherwise self-focused of us to mention what the day means to us.

Instead, I mention it here, where my family may look but is not likely to. Where it might strike a cord of familiarity in those who are my peers - other bereaved parents, at varying points (weeks, months, years) in their own journey of life without one of their precious children. Where it is more useful a moment shared, both for me and perhaps just one reader going through something similar.

So, whomever you are, I tip my cap at you in solidarity and just want to say, I get it. Get me?

Cousins

Conversations with friends: The beauty of keeping it short

I am limping, guys.

I'm on a slow dongle (settle down) that's giving my laptop some pissy lame excuse for "internet connection" while we swap providers. I hereby solemnly declare.....

TPG, I promise, we will never leave you again

We left them at Christmas time because Steve grew indignant that we couldn't get ADSL2+ here with them (they took their time rolling it out) so we changed providers. WELL. Hasn't that been haphazard, to say the least? Let me just say, I know why their plans were so cheap. Down-time was a lot higher than what we'd previously experienced with TPG.

Now we're moving back to them and changing a few other home services around as well. But this interim period is going to be around twenty days long. I reached 50% of my limit in a DAY, folks! This does not bode well for blog posts (or visiting yours).

So please know that's why I've gone quiet. Bad timing, really, given that Blogopolis is just around the corner. I can't very well keep up with what you're all doing. Ack. Ah well, can't be helped. If you think there's something monumentous that I haven't commented on.... fill me in if you see me on the day. Yes?

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Now, to me being a winner:  No, really. I won something! From the very delightful and amusing Megan Blandford (she Writes Out Loud...). Thanks so much, I was very surprised to win the Coles Myer voucher. And very chuffed.

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I have a cold. I feel like shite. That is all I can say about that.

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My baby girl turns five on Wednesday. As with many of her milestones (and all of her birthdays), I am heading into the strange bittersweet balance-dance of being happy for her, proud of her (and us) and thinking about Ella. Not sad, not anything really. Just... holding her in my awareness more, I guess.

The other day, Lolly had a dear friend over. They played joyfully for five hours straight and both had eyes standing out on stilts when she went home. During the afternoon, I was doing dishes while the girls sat at the kitchen bench eating sandwiches.

I heard my daughter tell her friend, totally unrelated to anything they were nattering about.

"Before, in the hostibool, I had a sister. And her name was Ella. But her heart was a bit funny, so then she died in the ground."

I didn't turn around. Didn't weigh in at all, although I listened keenly to how her friend would respond. Lolly tends to throw this in at moments that don't seem to fit. But they do to her. And this is what I respect about her and the friends she will no doubt gravitate towards and learn to keep - for her friend merely said, "Ah" with a half-interested, half-"this-sandwich-is-yum" tone.


Simplicity, people. Simplicity is what I need to get back to. And ADSL2+.



So, I will see you when and where I see you! If you're wondering where I am, just imagine me under my pile of tissues, stalled by my grossly underweight data usage cap and struggling with my own self-imposed project to "keep it simple." Mark my words, though, I WILL be back with birthday cake photos some day soon.

You Are There: Hearing the words for the first time

I began my long-awaited call to duty this week and took my first round of grief counselling calls  (miscarriage related). They were, of course, really poignant for me on a personal level. I have begun to see my role as a future counsel take shape. I like what I see. Most of all, I am shocked at how little it takes out of me while I am still being of great shape-shifting, behaviour-changing use to others I am in dedicated service to - going on feedback such as that which I received just yesterday from one of my lovely clients (not a grief counselling recipient), who called me a "miracle" (err... perhaps I ought to give her Steve's phone number and he can fill her in on all the ways I might not quite be one of those...).

Such humbling work, I can't even share it for it is not mine. But I will get a post out before long regarding my personal growth from what I have been involved with. Sometime. Not yet.

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It's time to share with you another moment when something so sweet and uplifting has come through all my conscious filters to reach me in a most intimate, private, lonely, sole, soul space.

I was in the kitchen by myself, cooking dinner for the family after a long day working outside with Steve. He was with the LGBB while she had her (much needed - she made puddles today in a back yard that was already a mud pit, soooo much fun!) bath.

I started an iTunes genius mix, which had the old regulars in it:  Madeleine Peyroux, Biréli Lagréne, Eva Cassidy, Sara Gazarek, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald... We listen often to music like this. One of our latest finds (and favourites) in the past year or so has been Stacey Kent, thanks to none other than Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith fame. She sings beautifully and complements our stable of gorgeous music perfectly.

I've heard the album of hers that we have many times now. Certainly heard this particular song so many times that I couldn't count for you how often it has played through our speakers. But tonight, for whatever reason, while I was thinking back on the week that has been, I was unconsciously casting my net out wide to capture the essence of my forever-babe.

My beautiful Ellanor.

While I busied my hands, pulling pasta out of the cupboard, shallots out of the fridge, heating the olive oil in the pan, thinking at the same time about the little piece of us who would never take her place at the table after a bath, the song below came on. And I heard the words for the very first time.

Love songs are like this. The more wistful or yearning, the more they could just as easily be singing about a lost loved one and not just an unrequited love.

So, I hope you enjoy the voice of Stacey Kent and this charming heart-pull of a song.

In the evening
When the kettle's on for tea
An old familiar feeling settles over me
And it's your face I see
And I believe that you are there

In a garden
When I stop to touch a rose
And feel the petals soft and sweet against my nose
I smile and I suppose
That somehow maybe you are there

When I'm dreaming
And I find myself awake without a warning
Then I rub my eyes and fantasize
And all at once I realise

It's morning
And my fantasy is fading like a distant star at dawn

My dearest dream is gone
I often think there's just one thing to do
Pretend the dream is true
And tell myself that you are there

Questions about questioning a loss (rewind post)

Hello, dear people. Another week down and I find myself - crestfallen - still unable to 'pen' the second part of that awesome lesson-filled Ebay exchange I had a couple of weeks back. I shan't do one more new post until I do! *shakes fist at sky* But until then, I would like to repost/rewind with something I wrote in January 2010. It's a shame so much can get buried so quickly! I have this creeping concern that I am missing out on other blogs' amazing, funny, insightful, vital writing and it is one of those parts of blogging that frustrates me, just as much as realising that stuff I write - so heartfelt - is lost almost the day after I write it sometimes. Phooey.


Annnnyway... to the old post (below). It's yet another very looooong one. But given my lack of daily posting, I hope that's okay. I also hope it is of some use to someone, currently. Let me know your thoughts. I will also add it to my Highlighted Posts page.



Originally posted on Sunny Side Up, January 22, 2010

(in which she finally gets around to answering the question posed by a commenter over a week ago...)

"So, is it getting any better, love?" Dad asked. He had phoned to say he was thinking of us, after also sending a really beautiful card, 'remembering our Spirit Girl, Ella.' So simple, yet majestic in its offering. My Dad is a masterful card-writer and his secret, really, is to be short and sweet and coming from a place most heartfelt, without even seeming like he's tried or searched or struggled for the right words.

It was an interesting question he posed to me on our daughter's sixth birthday.

"I have to say, it is... and it isn't," I fumbled in reply. How was I going to catch my father up to speed about how much more I had worked on myself [my attitude, my sense of self-centre, my further acceptance about what has happened to me in my life, learning to tailor my responses to people even further so they were real me responses, the genuine ones - after much time and understanding had passed, I would finally feel safe to be me in 2009] when he only asked this every year or so? Beautifully posed cards aside, I don't get checked in on at any other time of year. Not by anyone in my family. Save for my sister in-law sometimes, bless.

"Of course, it's easier in some respects," I continued on, with a real 'comma-but' implied in the trailing off of my sentence that indicated I had more to say.

"Ah, well that's good. I'm glad then," Dad said. He sounded relieved of his post. I left it at that.

There's no way to "nutshell" this process, really. At the end of the day, I'm now beyond needing to hear words of solidarity or comfort from my family and friends. But it's so good to have them delivered on us randomly - it's actually more poignant to be reminded, on any ordinary day during the year, that someone was "just thinking about you and how you're doing" or "had a moment, thinking about Ella today." Those gestures are priceless, this many years on.

So, to the question that was posed in the comments section of a post I made last week. I have to preface my attempts at answering this by clarifying that I am just one of many millions who have suffered the loss of a child over the 'lifetime' of this world. And I don't claim to definitively "know" the answers to these sorts of things. But, of course, without sounding too simpering, I know that I - and so many others like me - have more of a grip on this reality I'm in because of my strive to seek clarity and information and understanding for myself. It is this understanding and perspective only that I can share. And each person's will be different, even if only slightly, because we are all individual. Yes *say it together now* We are all individuals.

The comment:

Years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I was cheerfully chatting to a lady in my workplace and I asked her how many children she had. Two, came the reply. I then asked how old they were, she replied that one was three and the other had died as a newborn.

It totally floored me, I didn't know what to say or where to look. Did I ask what happened and seem nosey? Or should I say something like 'I'm sorry for your loss' and sound glib or insincere, even though I most certainly wasn't? Or should I just bring up the latest episode of Friends and seem uncaring... It all got really awkward and I started babbling about how terrible it must have been and felt like such a clumsy idiot.

In all honesty I'm still not sure I'd know how to react tactfully to the news a person had suffered such a terrible loss. So please, do you have any hints? What is a sensible, tactful response to the news that a person has lost a child?

Firstly, I can't answer this easily. I need to give a bit of background "depth" to this, for it is a situation that happens on a daily basis, I'm sure.

I think the most important thing to remember here is that.... at the end of the day, the woman gave birth to a gorgeous baby. Are we all not very proud of this achievement, as women and mothers, when this happens? The very moment that bubba passes, it's as if all of that joy and wonderment and empowerment gets sucked out of you (the parent) - and mostly, it pains me to have to break it to you, this process happens at the hands of others. Well-meaning they may be, but those who • change the subject, • go straight for the pained or tragic slant on the whole "thing" without properly acknowledging the (albeit short) life of the child, • ask only questions relating to what happened (why the child died).... feel very vampirish. Now, I know vamps are all "in" at the moment. But when you feel like your catastrophic event is being sucked on, it really isn't pleasurable. That joyous moment, the euphoric post-birth high gives way to.... nothing happy. Nothing rewarding. Which urges me to point you to this post (the tulip flower link on the right of this page) about miscarriage and the deep and lasting effects it can have on a woman's body. If people around the parent/s begin to reinforce the fact that theirs is a taboo, ugly, dark, too-hard-basket situation, then the parent/s will eventually have not many places in which to proudly talk about their baby and the experience/s (and life journey, however short-lived) they shared. SO.... my point about all of that paragraph is, what a blessed gift you would give a parent, if you were to provide them an opportunity to talk about the joys, the hope, the blessing they saw/see their child to be, their memories as a normal parent, basically - it is far more rare to receive this welcome opportunity, let me tell you.

All of that being said, one of the hard lessons of becoming a bereaved parent is the difficult realisation of "a-ha, I really DO have such a great duty of care here." When you start to lift yourself out of your own fog of grief - which can literally take years - and see that the responses you've been inflicting, on members of the general public or workmates, etc., who are completely unaware of your situation, are actually really affecting the person in front of you - reactions vary from visible crumbling, instant tears in the eyes, avoidance of meeting your gaze and so forth - that parent then has to become very quickly sound in their delivery. As if to buffer the receiver of the information. So bereaved parent becomes the comforter, if you will. It's a strange dynamic.

What to say, though, in far fewer rambly words than I've just unleashed from the depths of who-knows-where? Well, for starters (see - I can't be succinct with ANYTHING), I'm not a huge fan of directing anyone towards The One Ideal Sentence. There actually isn't one, if truth be told. Because the 'ideal' response is as varied as there are dynamics between personae - both the bereaved parent and the person who is attempting to offer some words of sympathy. Suffice to say, a great start would be - absolutely - "May I ask what happened?" Note that this is very different from asking "What happened" without the "may I ask", for you are giving the parent the choice to decide whether they will or will not go into it.

It takes much energy to explain, for me, even this many years on, and dependent on how interested the person is and how many subsequent questions they ask, I could be drained for the remainder of the day (without properly focusing on why that might be). So be mindful too that whatever you ask, you really are extracting memories that the parent may not be feeling up to delving into at that moment in time. Remember too, then, that that too shall pass (the moment of not feeling up to it) and it shouldn't be taken as read that you should never again attempt to enquire or seem interested. If your relationship with the parent is longer than a fleeting passing in the street situation, it would pay you well to perhaps revisit at a point in the near future - if indeed you have been thinking compassionately about the parent - and say something like, "I've been thinking about you and your baby, I can't possibly imagine what you've been through. But I would be interested/would like to learn some more about your experience with him/her sometime." And leave it at that. You may be pleasantly surprised at the appreciation you receive, if in fact you are genuinely interested.

You could also try:

(totally dependent on timing - both of asking the question and how recently the baby passed - and on your familiarity with the person AND not least in importance, being sound in your own agenda: why do you ask, why do you really want to know... a rhetorical question worthy of some consideration)

• I'm very sorry to hear that. (And leave that as your last sentence.... don't trail off into "But at least you've got one child" or "Are you planning to have any more" etc. etc.... these are extreeemely personal questions that I have never ever heard as being useful or received inoffensively in all my years of reading and talking with bereaved parents)

• Did you spend some time with him/her. (Again, VERY dependent on your comfort level of receiving the answer, your reason for asking in the first place, the nature of your relationship with the parent, the nature of the passing - although, in saying that, I think it is fairly standard these days for parents to be given the choice to determine how long they stay with their child after he/she has passed away... I stand to be corrected if anyone wants to weigh in here)

• Don't forget, the very simple "I cannot imagine."

Mostly, if you really would rather not know "details" and just want to back out without causing harm or offense, the first and last response are fine and would be suitable in pretty much all circumstances as a quick pull from your Memory File marked Social Etiquette Techniques.

It's an extremely important question that has been asked - What is a sensible, tactful response to the news that a person has lost a child? - and one that has no really short answer, as I've *aherm* illustrated. It's also something that can really blindsight a person, asking a seemingly obvious and simple question as "How many children do you have" and receiving the reply that one of the counted is no longer living. I'm unsure if I would be gracious and unflappable in response, had I not now experienced the journey I have.

So you'll find, by and large, that the mother or father you are feeling very inadequate in front of (in terms of a fitting reply, I mean) is going to be very forgiving of whatever response you give. Either way, I always maintain, one must act from the heart. To truly communicate and convey from this very private place within yourself, you have to first really know yourself - the Self you are today, forgetting tomorrow because things are going to happen today that could change that truth and standing of 'tomorrow', aren't they - and from there, that's when the giving and connection (between parent and innocent bystander) can truly begin to unfold the magic. Depending how you do it, you could deliver on each other a most astounding gift for the future, without either of you even realising. I think it's called........ unconditional, Universal love, in that brief moment. Remember this post and its story.

Don't know if that makes anything clear at all. I'm pretty satisfied with my response. But I know I've probably disappointed some by not being dot-pointy. I tried! I did. See the dot-points? I just don't do abbreviated, though..... Hnnngh.

But I guess, in closing, I have to refer back to the beginning of this post and my comments about my father's card: an honest, sincere and simple gesture is probably almost always going to work best.

By the way: please excuse any inappropriate Google ads that may appear beneath this post... they change at random and sometimes aren't offensive, but the one I just saw was about as poorly placed as a Libra oddspot.

Old Mother Turtle

Hello, dear readers! It feels like it's been weeks since my last confessional post. I have begun cataloguing some really old posts from my old (hidden from the www now) blog. More on that in a later post sometime. For now, I wanted to share this one. I cannot quite believe it's been four years since I wrote this (below)... It honestly is so fresh in my mind that it feels like it was only last year, if that, that I got it down. This is a very pivotal post in the blossoming of my book.


Hope you like it.


More soon!

-- ~ --

14th June, 2007

I have no idea where this is going to end up but I need to log it in this timeline somehow.

I've been clearing a space each morning (energetically more than anything) to enable me to carry out work on this writing I'm doing. I go in with a ritual of shifting and clearing any incorrect energy so that I remain focused and responsible.

It's usually the same old subjects: myself, Steve and the LGBB, our home and belongings. They all get thrown in there when I do a clearing. The past few mornings when I've gone to do it, though, Ella's name has inched its way into my consciousness. One of those inclusions that just flowed so easily that I knew I wasn't forcing it in there. I've been hesitant to include her, wondering why or how on earth my doing a clearing could possibly pertain to her. I see her as a soul far wiser and more capable than me down here doing my bit.

But I think that's where I've gone astray. Perhaps just misguided or naive.

I included Ella in the process this morning and then got started on my work. An hour passed without feeling like even a minute had gone by, when I raised my head out of it again I realised I'd hand written four pages without stopping. Such is the way I write when I really need to, it's so much more constructive too when it comes to me like that.

Anyway, I started back on the computer for a brief moment before Ella's name popped into my head again. It wasn't "her", as such, not like old times - certainly no dialogue was exchanged - but I felt the need to talk to someone about it so I gave one of my intuitive friends a call.

What ensued was a "lightbulb moment" of a conversation. Just incredible. Once I had finished explaining that Ellanor seemed to be wanting to be included lately in my clearing and protection, my friend said, "Why ever would she not? She is a part of your family - yours, Steve's, Lolly's. You're her mother, you represent her connection to Mother Earth in this lifetime, of course she would come to you when she feels the need for some added protection." 

Hearing it in such simple, factual terms just made me crumble. I don't know why it took her to say it, after all, I have been struggling (it feels like) for so long to retain the title of "Ella's mum" to anybody who's still willing to hear me rant about it. And then, something so easy and flowing as a simple morning ritual is the thing to really bring it back into perspective for me.

Now I am clearer.

And the turtle connection? When I rang, my friend had been researching and meditating with Turtle, who had come to her first thing this morning. Her mother passed away (she too had experienced a neonatal loss some 60 years ago, back in a time when there was no such thing as expressing oneself on the largely accepting realm of the internet, or anything similar for that matter) and she was drawn to uncovering a bit more about Mother Earth and the mother connection today. My phone call came right in the middle of this work for her.

What I gleaned today is that Turtle, who lays her eggs in the sand, where they hatch and many not make it to the ocean as they fall prey to predators, never loses her threads of connection to all her babies.

And I blubbered. Hell yeah, I did when I heard that. Just beautiful.

Heartfelt

I am torn.

I want to attend this information meeting next week. Heartfelt is an organisation I wish we had known about in 2004, when we had a rather shady digital camera that did its best in the Newborn ICU but was all we had and, after all, we were going to have a lifetime to get perfect angles and correct apertures and capture our baby and ourselves in our best light.

Weren't we?

Little did I know that when the only thought going through my mind was "Leave us alone, there'll be time for family photos when we get out of here" when the nurse insisted on taking this photo of us - and making me lift my head and smile when all I wanted to do was keep my eyes on my child because it was so rare to have her outside of that plastic box that was keeping her alive - that nurse actually took our ONLY family photos together. All three of us. Steve, Ellanor and me. She snapped four and it's all we have now.

I wish I knew her name so that I could remember her because she'll never know what she did for us.

I'm smiling but my face says "There'll be plenty of time for happy snaps, go 'way."

It's little wonder that I feel compelled to attend the Heartfelt session when I come across the cute Miffy photo album of carefully placed photos that my husband put together in the weeks after his daughter's death. He made it up to have with him at work - he was still a proud father and he still liked to show people photos as much as I, but it became a chore rather than a proud parental moment when, one by one, people did not want to see photos of our baby with wires and tapes all over her face and body, especially knowing now that it had all been in vain.

It was this that initially prompted me to turn photos of Ella into works of art. I had the hours, after all, so I painstakingly went through and improved many of the 370 photos we have of her. I made all the bruising, the velcro tapes, the needle marks disappear. I improved her skin and it soothed me to see her look like she wasn't in pain or being inflicted with medical procedures to keep her alive.

Dozens of photos retouched like this...

I only wonder now what it would have been like if I'd had professional photos to work with. I've done the best I could with the camera we had. It makes me wonder the results I could come up with for people if I was given their photos taken by Heartfelt photographers. I don't know! Once again, my lack of a piece of paper (for I am self-taught) is messing with my head and self-worth.

And it is this that is the single-handed reason why we now own a proper digital SLR. We went out and bought it as soon as we started IVF. Talk about expecting lightning to strike twice...

On finding the Miffy album yesterday, only minutes after I found out about the Heartfelt information session, the LGBB came up and wanted to see what was inside. We sat down together and from the first page, she shut the album, crying and scared of seeing her sister that way. This was an album of the raw photos. Lolly has only ever been exposed to the ones I have improved. It stung me in my heart a little. I was all at once sad that she couldn't face them - but understood perfectly why she couldn't - and really relieved I had done this to the photos so that she has been able to connect with her sister and not be repelled by all the scary looking stuff on her body.

To be honest, I don't know whether I would be able to help the Heartfelt project. I do know they are after professional photographers (which I am not) and photo retouchers (which I would think I am) and it is actually a service that I have done for a couple of people in the past, but never pursued.

I have many projects on the go at any one time and I wonder if I would be able to commit myself to the time it would take. On the other hand, I ask myself, if I have this skill, how could I not? Are there many other Photoshop artists who are skilled in doing this and willing to give of their time for free and work with this subject matter? I'm not sure. That's why I feel compelled to go.

But I'm also scared to go. I would not be able to live with myself if I committed to helping out and then let anyone down if I couldn't keep up in high demand times.

What to do?


At any rate, I want to spread the word about this network of amazing photographers. You can join their Facebook group, visit their website and follow them on Twitter.

Heartfelt, indeed.

Thank God I Blog

When you pat my dog, Jazz, it's a really satisfying pat. You know like when you pat a horse? A really smacky-good pat? Well. There's something very comforting about giving Jazz a honking great pat. And she loves it. So that's a bonus. She is such a solid dog. If I patted Pepper like that now, she'd wince. She is far too frail for anything more than very gentle movement.

As Pepper slips further into senility (there is surely no further she can go, she is quite past it now), I am coming to really appreciate that little purchase Steve and I made during our first Christmas without Ellanor, in 2004.

Everything is speeding up, not slowing down. Do you feel it?

Jazz was a pup! I must have blinked, for now she is a middle aged dog.

Jazz and Pepper in 2005

And today, wisened old Pep and chunky Jazz the clydesdale

Jazzy was supposed to be an "only child" - Steve's cat, the beloved ginger and white boy we named Rusty - died in early 2005 from skin cancer, when Jazz was about six months old. He was 14. We still miss him very much and talk of him from time to time. Fact: He was 1m long from tip to tail, tall and lanky like his "Dad". He was our original "furbaby". He and Pepper were all we had, during all those years of trying to bring home a baby, and even before that - when we didn't even know what troubles lay ahead.

When we brought Jazzy home, Pepper was already ailing like she was at death's door. Now, she seems to be in a race to outlive the young brown Labrador who's been brushing things off tables around our home with her ridiculous novelty-sized tail since 2004. Pep should be dead. She really should. But something is keeping her here. She gave me the most intense, gracious, unconditional love and connection I could ever imagine an animal was capable of giving. And I am her palliative care nurse now. I owe her.

So here I was this morning, completing the enrolment forms for the LGBB. We've picked a school for next year! I am relieved it's sorted. Once Steve and I took the tour last week, it was a pretty clear winner for us.

As I signed the final page, I suddenly came over very emotional. And as usual, tears followed.

Not happy tears, not sad. Just tears. This is something we missed doing for Ellanor. With Ellanor. Here is our family, all around us, and I don't know what my little girl would look like now. I don't know whether she'd prefer to wear the school uniform dress or the track pants and polo shirt. Would she be chocolate ice cream or strawberry? Would she mercilessly tease Lolly? Would Lolly even exist??

So. The end of another era. I thought, somehow, the outings with the LGBB to local coffee shops (with Scraps, of course - he is such a coffee fiend) were never going to end. That we would be able to share these times with each other whenever we wanted. But I am about to lose her to school. Soon, these moments will be just that: moments in time. A thing of the past. And the thought leaves me quite bereft, for the time being.

"Thmile, Thcrapthy!"

It snuck up on me, this one. This little emotional release that was simmering under the surface.

I reached for the phone to call a dear friend who is forever going to be in the same situation as us with all these milestones. She lost her firstborn, a daughter, mere months after we lost ours. We lost babies in between, around the same time as each other, uncanny as it sounds. She called me after she got pregnant again (with the son who is now about to turn five) and told me she'd had a dream where she was riding a white horse and came to find me in the middle of a beautiful forest. She lifted me up on the horse and we rode it together. Less than four months later, the LGBB found her way to my womb.

I left a blubbery message for my friend this morning, for I was not teary before I rang. But just hearing her voice unbolted the safety valve and I blurted. I won't need to apologise. We have an understanding, she and I. I asked her in the message if she had filled out enrolment forms yet for her son and how she had found the experience. Surely a reason to catch up over a coffee sometime soon.

My little baby has been replaced by a young girl rapidly growing in her independence. Not that I would expect or want anything different for her. I have taught her to be independent. It's how I survived my childhood. One day soon, she won't need me at all. I didn't realise how much I need her to need me, this tall leggy blonde who already at the age of four has a joyous glow and the kind of knock-em-dead natural poise I always wished I'd had. I have the glow... but I don't have any poise, not like her, that's for sure (must get that from her Dad, he is, after all, the one I call Daddy Long-Legs). If she can overcome her shyness, this kid will be more than comfortable on a stage, she is that theatrical it's almost embarrassing at times.

"Life is a Cabaret, old chum"

I guess I just have to stay open and grateful to the times I am sharing with my beautiful daughter. They have become so much more precious and poignant this year already as I realise I'm about to be on my own again.

So it will be back to me and whichever dogs are still alive this time next year. I told my brother last time they visited two years ago that, surely, it would be the last time Pep would be here. I've been telling him that since the year 2000 - no kidding there - so who knows?!

Please, please let there be something solid for me to pat and hug. If Pepper does outlive Jazz, as she is threatening to do, I'm screwed.

The thought quite overwhelms me at times.

Thank God I Blog, that's all I can say. I think I might get that made up on a sticker for my car...



This post is part of FYBF, currently being hosted by Where's My Glow. Thanks Glowless!