June 24, 2023
4 you
by
I guess after so long other people will just begin to move on, stop asking about her, about me, about what we went through (are going through). After all, the grief is not theirs, it’s ours, it’s mine and I’m still learning to navigate my life hand in hand with it. But it’s talking about Luna and her story that helps to keep me sane.
Today is 11th October 2020. It's now 15 months and 5 days since our twins were born, 15 months, 2 weeks and 2 days since Luna died and 18 months to the day since we found out that only one of our twins would be coming home with us. 18 months of knowing it, living it, feeling it, grieving it. With baby loss I now know that time is not a healer, as commonly suggested, and that actually the heaviness gets heavier and heavier until it's offloaded a little and we enjoy a moment of gratitude and acceptance. And then it piles on again until the weight of it becomes unbearable and you must open your mouth and let it spill out again to release the pressure from that lump in your throat. It's a constant cycle. Some cycles are longer than others. You can be lured into thinking that you're doing ok, that you’ve got this, that grief no longer has a hold on you. But then it creeps up on you when you least expect it, sometimes when you are feeling your happiest. It's so unpredictable.
People don’t talk so much about Luna these days, about what she looked like, smelt like, how much she weighed, about our experience. And that’s ok, I can’t expect people to still be as curious or feel the need to mention her as much as I want or need them to. So this blog is my offload. There for when I need it, when I need to release some of the heaviness and dislodge that lump in my throat from time to time. It’s there for when I need to have my mind flooded with thoughts of her and only her. It’s my therapy, and my way of showing her, and the world, that I still love her as much today as first day I heard her heart beating.
I was very undecided as to whether I wanted to write just for me privately, or for others to read. But then some of the feelings I have about our story and the way Luna’s life ended made me want to share. I want this blog to spread awareness of the devastating experience of TFMR (termination for medical reasons) and the cruel reality of what the parents must go through. Perhaps most importantly, I want to help break the silence and try dissolve the stigma still attached to TFMR. This experience alone is excruciatingly painful, but it is magnified when you feel like you’re not allowed to grieve, like your grief is not valid, that you ‘chose’ this. This is a reality that needs to be extinguished. Our baby girl died and it will hurt forever. She was wanted, she was loved, she was special.
The moon will rise, the sun will set, but I won’t forget.
