7

I sit with six gingersnaps and a big glass of good red wine, drinking it all in. All of it. All of seven years of hope and despair and loss and gain and good fortune and mishap and everything that goes along with all of that.
Seven years ago, this minute, I think maybe she was already gone from my arms. I think, but I can't be sure. I am grateful to say that I didn't look at the clock when we said goodbye, so I can't be tortured by that moment of truth, that most awful of moments.
The reality was, when I finally gave her up for the second time, succumbing to the inevitable and watching her disappear, I think I sank back onto the scratchy, starched hospital sheets in pure and utter defeat. I think the smallest of whimpers may have escaped me, and I lay as torrents of tears soaked my bare chest, and that chest barely rose and fell with what little breath I could muster.
But my vision of the departure, from the inside, is much more dramatic. I can see myself, draped in white, falling to my knees, scratching at the bare earth, howling up at the moon in agony for her. I see myself, arms cradling my useless, empty belly, pushing into its vacancy and screaming out as I collapse onto the ground, dirt blowing into my mouth and nose, my eyes squeezed shut to the wind. I care for nothing; I care about nothing; I am nothing now, without her. There is nothing left. I am no longer alive.
Memories that couldn't ever be verbalized, could never be shared, really. Who, I ask, who has not been subjected to the terror of it all herself, would want to even imagine the depths of such pain?
And again, this being a year when a new baby was born to me, I feel closer to that birth euphoria, to that amazing, fresh, gorgeous and unearthly moment where this child emerges from me and I gasp in disbelief. And I shake my head at the tragedy of that moment of euphoria crushed with the limp limbs and still body of a baby who has already passed on. It is too much to bear.

As if she has been summoned, Fiona Clementine calls for me from upstairs. And I will go to her, as I always do, and I will bury my face in her as she nurses, and thank her for bringing me life. I will weep into her soft hair as I remember her sister, her much beloved, much remembered sister.

I still miss you, Charlotte Amelia.
I wish you could have blown out your candles tonight.

Seven years old.