Dear beautiful babies. I’ve been wanting to write you a letter for a while now, but I just haven’t found the words. Every day I feel like a little piece of me is still missing. Well, a big piece really. Every day I wish you were here, I wish that I was feeling your kicks, growing out of my jeans and feeling fat. But part of me is glad you never had to feel how cruel this world can be, or feel the pain I do.
Did you know I see a counsellor now? Every few weeks I sit and I tell her about you. She asked me the other day what the worst memory was. I wish I didn’t have any ‘worst memories’. I told her it was the second scan. The first was hard, but I was so excited to finally see you, and I did; your little bodies on the screen made me panic – two of you! But I was so happy to see your heart beating. I knew your sibling’s heart wasn’t. I could see that. But I still had some hope – maybe you were too young, that’s why it was so weak. Maybe it was just hard to see. I ran every scenario through my head and I Googled and I waited – a whole week. Hope is a funny thing; it makes the pain less painful and the worry less stressful but then, when hope has lied, the pain is far, far greater. Then I went back. I was nervous; I couldn’t focus at work at all that day. I lay down and she began the scan. You were both hard to find, I knew that wasn’t good. When she finally found you I could see the little flicker wasn’t there anymore. I knew you had gone. I so wanted you to be ok, but you weren’t. You had to leave this world before you even really began to discover it, and in that moment a hole in the floor opened up and I fell. I sat up, numb. From that moment it was different. I was different. My view of the world was different.
You left this world and I would have given anything for you to have stayed, but I know you couldn’t. I don’t know why, but I take comfort you never felt fear, or hurt, or loss. I still look at the tree we planted for you; with you. Sometimes I tell you how sorry I am that I couldn’t keep you with me. Sometimes I avoid you because the pain is too great. When people ask me if I have children I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry that I usually say I don’t. It doesn’t mean you aren’t mine and that you weren’t real, it’s just easier you know?
I’ve lost a lot of weight now. I fit all the clothes I grew out of with you. I grew so fast it worried me! I fit all the clothes I nearly got rid of because I never thought I’d fit them again. And I feel guilty for that in some ways – like life just went on and back to how it was.
But it didn’t, I promise. I’m trying really hard to work through my grief and my fear, but I don’t want to lose you all together. Sometimes I think if I let go of the pain I will have to let you go too, and I don’t want to do that. I am sorry I sometimes say I wish it never happened; I don’t ever wish for you not to have existed, I just sometimes don’t know what to do with all the pain. Sometimes I feel like I might implode, or worse explode. I don’t understand how a person can feel so much at once, but just keep going with the world.
I want you to know though, that your mum is resilient; I love you but I have to keep going. I have to keep reminding myself that there will be new days and new hope and new happiness. I just need to find it.
I will always love you my little butterflies, and I will always miss you. But I need to let you go a little bit more each day and that kills me. I would spend every moment with your memory if I could; I would close my eyes and picture my tree – my safe place – and I would sit there holding you both, loving you with everything I have. But I know I would open my eyes again and you would be gone and the pain would creep in again.
I hope you feel the love I have for you, I hope you do. And one day I will meet you, and I will tell you all the wonderful things we would have had together. But for now, I am here and you are not. And that is the most heart wrenching statement I have ever had to make.
Forever and always,
Your mum