the worst pain is in the details

Wednesday 19th July 2000

It’s 7.10am and 10 degrees outside, raining and windy. Today I am going back to the Angliss for the first time since Aaron’s death. Although we did go there on the Monday morning after he died, this is the first voluntary time I will set foot in that hospital. Don’t know how I’ll be, I see it so clearly in my mind, all those little booties and bears in the entrance, those stairs. Up for the baby, down for the classes. I never dreamt during all those visits for our antenatal classes that something like this could happen.

We have not been back to the hospital, and that is a big thing for me to do today. Sam and I went to Dr Bailey’s rooms to pick up my records, and that was hard. I don’t think Sam can realise just how awful it is to walk back into those green rooms, see all the info that I was consuming when I was pregnant, the video with the baby picture on it, and I used to think that will be us soon. I could see into his office and I was just wanting to go in there like before, to have my check up, to turn back time and have Aaron live, and come home with us, to be like the picture on the video. How on earth did everything go so wrong? I just cannot get my head around it all. I don’t let my mind dwell on the details, the worst pain is in the details, the feel of his skin, the way Aaron looked in the video, limp and sick. And Sam saying, “you’re a mummy.”

God, God, God, even the word looks stupid, how could there be a God that would take newborns? Don’t talk to me about God, about him wanting our son for an angel, what a load of crap. Pick someone else, why take our little boy? I waited so long for him, I felt him move inside my body, would put my hand on him to calm him when he kicked, joked about his hiking boots, and couldn’t wait to see what he looked like. Would he be like me? Would we have a boy or a girl, couldn’t wait to hold our baby, to breast feed, to change nappies, to have all those sleepless nights that other parents take for granted and complain about. How can they complain, especially to me, even when they know about Aaron they still go on about how sick their kids are, at least they’re alive, how can they be so insensitive? I don’t understand.

I can’t make small talk anymore. I can’t make it home in the car without crying. It’s such a despairing kind of crying, even writing about it brings that feeling, back of the throat hurts, and I feel like I can’t get my breath, then I wonder if that’s what it was like for him. Did he feel that awful can’t get enough air feeling, did he suffer, did he know what was happening in his short life? Did he know I loved him so much? Tears. Did it hurt? Did he know we were there, we were with him in the ambulance, hoping and praying, and making wild promises to God to never make another bad move in my life if my baby could just live. Please. Tapping on the door handle of the ambulance like that would keep him going long enough to get help. The cars in front of us on the way in to the Children's, thinking GET OUT OF THE WAY! Up Lygon Street, and one car not moving, all the time thinking my baby is dying. MOVE. Trying not to cry, stay calm, he’ll be alright, looking back at Sam sitting in the back, wishing that we could be together, it’s cruel seating, when I wanted to be with him, hold him tight, he looked stunned, just stunned.

I have to go back to the hospital today.