"You Light The Skies Up Above Me, A Star So Bright You Blind Me" Remembering all our precious children.

[fioled]

For my beautiful baby Anabelle Violet, loved and missed to the moon and back, always xxx How hard we wish that you were here baby girl.

Twinkle twinkle little star,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

For all our babies and children, big and small xx

[chipmonkey]

Twinkle, well done for getting through the day! You are fantastic for finding the strength.

And I can see how that prayer must hurt. xx

[expatinscotland]

I don't pray at all now. I'm not entirely convinced anymore there's anything after this. I like to think so, of course, that I'll see her again, but don't really know.

[MiaAlexandrasmummy]

twinkle those are all huge achievements, I think. Especially the wedding. I am still refusing invitations to go to larger events where I don't know people as I know I will have to explain about Mia and this pregnancy... I used to love meeting new people.

It's silly. I still have problems believing that Mia is gone. That she will never grow up. I can see her in my mind - cheeky grin, funny toddler words, and a crazy red mop of curls. Why, oh why, isn't she here? Acceptance is so impossibly hard.

[expatinscotland]

I agree, twinkle, you've done REALLY well.

I turn stuff down, too, Mia. Don't feel bad about it! You do what you need to do for yourself. ((()))

[chipmonkey]

?I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.?
Albert Camus

I have adopted this philosophy as the alternative pretty much kills me. Except perhaps that I would substitute "God" for "afterlife"
And I would prefer to think that children dying as not as bad as it seems because we are infinite beings and the time we have spent here without them is just a drop in the ocean compared to the eternal life we have with them.

And that is really is just a game and we are trying to get to the next level.

But God, just a shred more evidence would be nice!

[MiaAlexandrasmummy]

chip you are very wise... I try, but there are so many holes in my thinking.

[Chez12]

Had a tough day today. Somedays feel like you have to carry on living as your baby doesn't have that chance, but living without your baby Isn't a chance you want to have.
Missing you Tayden, trying my best, but struggling.
What you went through was heartbreaking. You bought to me unconditional love and your void is so big that I just lost in it.
Thank you for sending your mummy new friends on mums net, butterflies and feathers. I love you my special boy xxxx

[chipmonkey]

[expatinscotland]

Chip, I would have cried listening to that!

Going to see our girl at the cemetary this weekend.

Miss her so, so much.

Know what you mean, Mia, exactly what you mean!

Chez, I'm sorry you had to find us. I read the story of your beautiful Tayden. ((())). We're here for support.

[chipmonkey]

Mias, I think there are holes in our thinking because there are supposed to be holes. We are not meant to know what's going on. At the moment, I feel like my life is too much like a badly-written soap to actually be real. There has simply got to be something else, seriously!

Oh, expat, I did cry! I often think it's symptomatic of allowing any organisation to be run by single men, to them, women and babies were abstract ideas, they had not direct contact with them so fine to theorise about human beings. The heartlessness of saying that unbaptised babies go to limbo and not to heaven!

[expatinscotland]

Princess Di's mother had a full-term, stillbirth baby and also one who died shortly after birth. At the time, of course, she was separated from them immediately. Decades later, she said her arms ached to hold those babies.

[chipmonkey]

there was another woman on the radio a while back ( I really should stop listening to the radio!) who had given birth to a baby with severe special needs. She was told the baby had died but found out years later that she had lived for four days and then died alone She was so angry with the nuns in charge of the hospital who had denied her the chance to hold her baby and give her a decent burial.

[MiaAlexandrasmummy]

chip yes, it might be an idea to turn off the radio for a while... such sad stories. That this sort of cruelty was possible, in the name of "humanity" or "decency" or '"religion", or however the flimsy excuse is framed.

As part of my existentialistic angst at the moment, I am wondering if I am supposed to have learnt anything from Mia's life and death. Otherwise, why it it happen? However, I simply cannot think of any lesson that needed such a terrible outcome, such a tragic cost. I knew that life was unfair, I knew that people can show incredible love and support when least expected, I even knew how love I would love my child even before she was born... ok, I didn't know how much pain and grief was possible, but that seems such a stupid, pathetic, and unnecessarily cruel reason to do this to my beautiful Mia, and to all our wonderful children.

[expatinscotland]

The idea that things like this happen to people in order to teach those affected something is wrong. Totally, completely wrong.

What did I learn? Like you know, I already knew that life is unfair, fragile, not to be taken for granted, etc.

And every single person I knew from her unit who has lost their child was well aware of that, too.

One couple there, they tried for years to conceive, finally becoming parent via adoption, only for their daughter to be afflicted with cancer and unable to find a bone marrow donor as of yet. The father is a doctor who used to spend all his holidays helping women in his native country access healthcare they otherwise could not.

So if there's any lesson to be learned, it's that if there's a god, he's/she's pretty shit.

[chipmonkey]

But we don't know who we are, do we? We only know who we think we are. I don't know if this was an accidental tragedy or a lesson. If we have many lives, then why next time, could the roles not be reversed, for example, so that Sylvie-Rose could be my mother, I could die young so that she could learn the lesson? I had this feeling she had been here before, that I knew her, also with ds2.
And I knew how good people could be before she died but I didn't know it first-hand. I did not know this pain of separation, I couldn't even imagine it. Certainly if I ever did imagine it, I was way off the mark, compared to the reality I now know.
And I never sought out spirituality like I'm doing now. I feel weirdly "expanded"
And I respect intellectuality a lot less. Give me a good soul any day over a clever mind!

[expatinscotland]

I have never known who I am. It changes all the time. I did know life was unfair and all that.

I don't believe in reincarnation.

She died. There's no lesson, no reason why it happened, etc etc. Don't beat yourself up thinking there is, MAM. Shit happens.

[expatinscotland]

I should add, shit happens and it happened to us.

[MiaAlexandrasmummy]

Thanks ladies - I really just wanted to hear if others also thought that the 'lesson' idea was complete tosh too. I think I will resort back to "I don't understand. I will never understand." There is no meaning in losing Mia. It just hurts, and it always will.

The next thought I am exploring is "Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all". Sorry if I am subjecting you all to weird type of debating / philosophy class... I really have no idea how I feel about this. The best I can come up with is that whoever thought of this saying never had our experiences...

[expatinscotland]

I don't agree with better to have loved and lost, either. I've known people who have committed or attempted suicide following bereavement of their child. Right there, better to have loved and lost is a pile of steamin' poo.

I've not heard platitudes like this trotted out by those who have lost a child. Usually by people whose experience of loss is pets or an older adult. Because it's a pretty wanky thing to say to someone who's lost a young child.

[chipmonkey]

I don't agree, expat. I am glad we had Sylvie-Rose even though we lost her. I feel privileged to have known her. I hate, hate hate that I've lost her but if I had the choice to either never have had her, to have stopped having children after ds4, or to do it all again with all the pain, I'd do it all again.

[chipmonkey]

Don't get me wrong, losing her has been utterly shite and the worst thing that could happen. But never having had her, is something I wouldn't choose now, with hindsight.

[expatinscotland]

But you don't have that choice, chip. That's why IMO it's a ridiculous platitude. It's speculative on emotions you don't get a choice to feel.

Any one of us would go back if we could, and in that case we'd do things differently. That may have well resulted in a different outcome.

But it's a moot point.

[expatinscotland]

People say, 'You have to move on.' Duh. You can't freeze time anymore than you can go backwards in it (at least, not by any means known to mankind). But why chase your tail examining platitudes written by someone else from the benefit of their own experience (in Tennyson's, as a man in the 19th century who never married)? It changes nothing. Part of moving on is accepting that my child is dead, and nothing in the world will change that now, and that because of this, part of me is dead, too. Again, nothing can change that. There is no choice but to continue forward in time for the sake of her brother and sister.

I do agree with MAM, there's no understanding it. It just happened.

[expatinscotland]

Sorry, Lord Tennyson did marry. Duh!

[expatinscotland]

I think the other issue is that my daughter died after 7 months of horrendous pain, illness and suffering. IF there are a magic police box, no, I'd rather have no had her at all than have her go through that again. No chance. It was awful on her.