Arily Faith Kinsella O'Halloran
Mummy's Journey Through Grief
July 12th, 2006
Today,
it's been a week since we first got the news that Arily had passed
away. Yesterday was such a hard day to get through, everything
made me cry. Today, I wasn't quite as bad, we even went out for a
while, while maintenance installed new windows in our apartment.
I was in pretty good form until we stopped for lunch in
Middleburg, VA, and a pregnant woman came and sat at the table next to
us. One of the waitresses was talking to her, she was pregnant
too, and was due in October, like Arily was. I couldn't keep it
in any more, I had to go and left the restaurant in floods of tears.
It should have been me that waitress was talking to about due
dates, I was supposed to be the one with the swollen belly and ankles.
It's not fair, damn it! We did everything right, we took
care of her, taking my vitamins every night, giving up that occasional
glass of wine over dinner, why does someone who doesn't care or even
want a baby get a healthy bundle of joy and all I get is the down sides
of pregnancy and childbirth with none of the benefits? I feel
like I've spent forever catering for a party, and then being told that
I'm not invited, but, hey, we'll take the food anyway. What did
Arily ever do to deserve all this? Her tiny body was almost
perfect, according to my ultrasounds, why wasn't she one of the babies
that made it? How does a child with severe physical deformities
get through an entire pregnancy and get to spend a little while with
their families, and Arily, almost perfect, never got to know anything
other than my womb? It's not fair...
Then there's the feeling, in the middle of it all, that maybe it was for the best. How would we have coped with such a severely disabled child? Would it have been fair on subsequent children, to have them, but not able to give them the same attention we would have to give Arily, just to make sure she'd make it through the day, then that night, and the next day again? Would it be fair to have to put her through so many surgeries, just to extend her life by a little bit more? Some children with T18 look so normal, alert and you really have hope that they'll make it in life somehow, but some children I see don't seem to even realise that they're living in this world, could we have coped with having a baby with no future? Even if she had made it, our dreams for her would still be dashed - no drawings from play school to hang on the fridge, no teen crushes on a boy who doesn't even know she exists, no gaining entry to, and graduating from college, no wedding plans, no grandchildren. A feeling of calm descends, the sadness remains but the tears stay away for a while. It doesn't last very long though. It doesn't change the fact that my baby girl never came home.
July 27th, 2006
Then there's the feeling, in the middle of it all, that maybe it was for the best. How would we have coped with such a severely disabled child? Would it have been fair on subsequent children, to have them, but not able to give them the same attention we would have to give Arily, just to make sure she'd make it through the day, then that night, and the next day again? Would it be fair to have to put her through so many surgeries, just to extend her life by a little bit more? Some children with T18 look so normal, alert and you really have hope that they'll make it in life somehow, but some children I see don't seem to even realise that they're living in this world, could we have coped with having a baby with no future? Even if she had made it, our dreams for her would still be dashed - no drawings from play school to hang on the fridge, no teen crushes on a boy who doesn't even know she exists, no gaining entry to, and graduating from college, no wedding plans, no grandchildren. A feeling of calm descends, the sadness remains but the tears stay away for a while. It doesn't last very long though. It doesn't change the fact that my baby girl never came home.
July 27th, 2006