The Ebb & Flow

Yesterday, we attended a memorial service at the Mater for too many beautiful children, gone too soon. I had not intended to write specifically of it here but then something Angie wrote at Ava's memorial site last night and I wanted to share it. Her words are so beautiful and make me proud to call her sister. A beautiful way of marking this important day in my journal here. Angie, Aunty Angie, thankyou.

The Ebb and Flow..

My darling Ava. How you have changed my life.

How you have changed the lives of so many.

I can see so many positive things that have come out of the tragedy we have suffered in losing you and for the most part, I cling to those things like I’m holding on to the only tree in a flood of water rising. Sometimes that water rises so fast and I can do nothing to save myself from the emotion.

I don’t want you to be a little girl who is remembered in photographs on a memorial site.

I don’t want balloons to be let go.

I don’t want to light a candle for you in a far away continent in an ancient church, under the patron saint of children.

I don’t want to hear the sadness in my sisters voice on days when I know from just a tone, that her heart is breaking over and over.

I just want you to be here.

One day I watched you come out of nanny’s room in a long flowing dress. Your hair was loose about your face and it seemed to me like it was spun from gold. You had bare feet. You looked at me and in that instant I felt my heart fill with awe, with pride and with something else. A feeling I cant describe. As a mother of two children who I adore and cherish like they are gods greatest gifts – I looked at you in that moment and saw the most beautiful child I had ever seen.

When you were born, and your exhausted mummy and daddy could hold their eyes open for not a second longer, they trusted me to hold you in your first precious hours. We just peered into each others eyes. I am sure you were as in awe of me as I was of you. Everything was new for you. A face. A sound, a song. For weeks if not months after I saw you being born I looked at the world in wonder and awe, not unlike a newborn.

Today at the memorial ceremony, I looked on in disbelief that your photo was there with the other angels who had been lost at the Mater. The day you went isn’t something that needs to be spoken of right now, but I want you to know that as painful as losing you was I am honoured that you felt ok to make that journey with me beside you. I see just how sweet your precious soul is, that you would wait that moment that your mummy and daddy had to go to your brothers and sister – to protect their already broken hearts.

I remember your brothers swinging on the love swing at Nanny’s – with you in the middle between them. I sat perplexed, worried that they would swing too high.
I watch it like a movie in my mind.

There is nothing I can do but wait for the water to recede in these moments. I am drowning in my tears and the tears of your mother and father. I am drowning in the tears of all the parents who have lost the ability to hold their babies in their arms. When it does eventually go down, I will still be clinging to that tree, but perhaps I can take the hand of my sister, and of her loving husband who share that tree with me and we can hold each other instead. Maybe we can hold the hands of all the parents, aunties, uncles brothers and sisters, cousins grandparents and friends who also fear the inevitable rising tide of grief and together we can not feel so alone.

Thankyou to all the parents, families and friends who came to the Mater Hospital today to honour the memories of our babies taken all too soon.

Sheye I am so proud of you for the strength you showed today. I am proud of the strength you and Crayton show everyday of your lives.

- Aunty Angie

xx Sheye