Anna's advent!

What do I write? Sympathy? “My thoughts are with you and Pete?” Some trivial comment to sooth the guilt? Or do I challenge the confusion of emotions and stare, white-eyed into the scars of their and our future? Disappointment and despair, trauma and an empty void; they push in on every side; utter helplessness, and the slow monotonous tick of time, an unwanted and changeless company. There is no short cut, no other gear, no quick fix, no spin to resolve this hurt. 

A life, conceived in love is at stake, and human intervention does not give hope, just graphic detail of prospect and potential. This foetus, this child soon to be, is loved, secure in its sack of warm, protective fluid. Oh why? Oh no! Oh yes! Why her? Why them? Why not? Nature has a will and logic of its own. Their hopes and expectations are destroyed, not in the technology of scans, but in facing truth and reality. And how do we come to understand, to make sense of this cataclysmic event, so small, and yet a tragedy for all, and for all time? 

There is no refuge in motherhood shattered in an image on a screen, in abnormality, in this child who lives on for how knows long. A child, her child, their child, our child, everybody’s. Tears which refuse to flow, a heart which will not break, a body shaken to its core, yet unable to bend. Pain is the baptism of maturity, pain is the birth of wisdom; pleasure … a fatuous smile on a mindless face. What now, what next, how to face the future with or without a child? Time is set in the dial of dawn and dusk. Delay is in the nature of prognosis. Our child is damaged, does it matter? After all, all creation has the potential to be loved. This child is their creation and we must care, if not for ourselves, then for this work of art, this foetus, this nameless babe who waits, who rests, who sleeps within those peaceful waters. When will they break, prematurely or at full term? And will our hopes and aspirations be that treasured memory of what might have been, or grow and thrive and shine in a world where touch and sight and sound have that unique and infant magic? Who knows?