Anniversary

Tuesday (19th May) will be the fourth anniversary of my dauthter's death. I was actually told that she would die on the evening of 18th May and then she was born dead at 3.00 the following day. So maybe the anniversary is really tomorrow. I don't know. One of the things that bothers me is that I'll never know exactly when she died. Oddly, I feel more or less OK. Exhausted and a bit shaky but not worse than that. We were in London for the weekend. We stayed at the house of friends and it was in that house, four years ago, that this whole nightmare began. I didn't go in their downstairs loo because that's where the bleeding started. I did walk in the park where I walked on that morning. The people who walked there then do not exist any more but I felt their shadows around the place. We haven't been to that house for the last four years. It wasn't a plan that we should go there at this time - just an unfortunate coincidence. Then today (still in London) we went to a big lunch party where there were lots of people with big happy families. I managed all right. I never said anything about the anniversary because those people can't really get it. None of it was too bad. It was just that sense which I often have - the sense that I am not occupying the same planet as other people. The kind of things which interest and concern other people don't seem relevant to me any more. I'm shut outside the whole thing, watching it. But I survived it. I suppose what bothers me about this anniversary is that we are still exactly where we were four years ago. Things did not move on, they didn' t change - or certainly not for the better. It was good to come back to our house this evening. I like this place, at least.