Anniversary

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of our daughter's death. By this time five years ago I knew that she would die but I still had to go through the labour. The odd thing is that I'm not upset at all. I've just spent an hour reading posts on the SANDS (UK stillbirth charity's) website. Usually I finish up having a good cry if I do that. But no! Of course, it's stupid for me to be upset because I'm not upset. I should just make the most of it in the certain knowledge that there will be a day when - randomly - I'm really upset. I know that some people would assume that I'm not upset because five years have gone by. But actually it is only eighteen months since the last miscarriage - and the final, final knowledge that we were at the end of the road. I think that the truth is that for the last two years I've just been entirely frozen. Loss has piled up on loss and I've just ceased to have any reaction. I don't look as though I'm frozen. In fact, I look quite normal but I really don't feel anything about anything. After Laura died, I promised myself I'd write a letter to her every year on her birthday and that I'd put all the letters away in her special box. But last year I didn't write the letter because I didn't have anything to say. This year is pretty much the same. My husband is away. So I'm here on my own with my son. I keep thinking I'll call someone but I don't really feel like it. Maybe I'll just go to bed and read a book.

The cricket team

Suddenly it has all come to bits because of the cricket team (I ask you - the cricket team!) and I'm sitting here crying when I haven't cried in months. The story is that my son (age 7) isn't in the cricket team. He's nearly a year younger than most of the other boys in his class and many of them are a whole head shoulders taller than he is - so although he's really keen on sport and tries really hard he isn't in the team. And it tends to happen at his school that if you aren't in the team at the beginning then you're never going to be in the team. There's this clique of big, beefy, hearty, sporty, loud boys who are in all the teams and my son is small and quiet and thoughtful but he really wants to play sport. But I can't even bear to hear myself say all this because I've always had a total contempt for all those pushy parents who care so much about whose child is clever / sporty / top of the form in this or that. And yet here I am in tears because my son isn't in the team. But, of course, it isn't really about any of that ..... I just tried talking to a couple of other mothers and they made comforting noises about how some children are good at some things and some are good at other. But for them there are children. For me, there's a child. And I know I'm lucky there is a child. I can't explain. It's too difficult. I suppose the thing is that it's the fifth anniversary of Laura's death on the 19th May and I was talking to my husband about that the other night. I said, 'It hasn't got any better, has it?' I expected him to say something comforting about how things have got a little easier with time. But instead he said, 'No, it hasn't got any better.' And that's just it. And now I start getting upset about the stupid, stupid cricket team.