Graveyard's -- A two year old's perspective

Just a little bit of advice. Never bring a two and a half year old boy to a graveyard. My aunt's anniversary is coming up later this week so I offered to go to the cemetery with my mother today.

When we arrived at the graveyard this afternoon my husband volunteered to stay in the car with our young son. In a fit of optimism...stupidity..call it what you like I said that he wouldn't be a problem and we started to walk in to the cemetery.

Now this is an old cemetery. My aunt was one of the last people to be buried there five years ago. She only got in (God I make it sound attractive!) because her family had an old plot. Graves date back to the 1800's. Many are sunken or in disrepair. Whole families are buried in a number of the plots. It is a big place and as Murphy's law would have it my aunt's plot is way in the back of the cemetery.

It started off well with my little boy holding my hand and chatting away. Then he realised that the cemetery resembled an obstacle course and started leaping Tigger like over every gravestone. He jumped off ledges. He tried to steal little figurines of the Virgin Mary. I swear I saw a small statue of Jesus make a run for cover.

I ran after him and managed to throw him to the ground before he fell in to an old grave belonging to an Italian family called the Silvestre's. ( There was even a picture of the mother -- I all but apologised to her).

It was sheer and utter madness. Got to my aunt's grave and being the morbid soul that I am instructed my son to "Say Hello to Josie." I forgot about Josie Jump one of his favourite characters in a TV programme called Balamory. Now as her name suggests Josie likes to bop about and that started my little boy off again.

So he stood on her grave singing "Josie Jump is my name. Laughing and sport are my games. I am always feeling rhythm..I feel it in my toes...it tingles through my body..go on and have a go." Lovely! I think my aunt would have appreciated the moment. She always loved a bit of anarchy. But that is another day's story.

Anyway, we put a few flowers on the grave and made a hasty retreat. Then I had the audacity to complain about my son when we got to the car. Like it was his fault. He cried on the way out saying he didn't want to leave. If grave jumping ever becomes an Olympic sport he will be our man!! It was like going to Disneyworld for him. He loved the place.

My favourite moment was when he saw a particularly majestic looking headstone with white little stones around it and said "Wow, what a great grave!" I was stressed out of my mind at the time but it is priceless now when I look back on it.

Maybe Babies -- A death with no sympathy card

Over one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage -- statistics are all fine and dandy. But nothing prepares you for when you are the statistic. My best friend who lives in another city phoned me the other day to say she had lost her baby. She was only six weeks pregnant.

But what a six weeks. She had the child's life planned out. She and her husband had told their respective families. She bought an outfit for an upcoming wedding in a bigger size with the expectation of being over two months pregnant. She imagined the house cluttered with baby chairs, cots, toys and all the other vital paraphenalia. The joyous family situation was no longer a dream but was due to becoming a concrete reality.

Then it happened. She noticed bleeding and went to the hospital where she was informed that she had lost the child.

The sense of sadness has been overwhelming for her. We discussed it at length and realised that nobody really talks about miscarriage. It seems to be still a taboo -- women talk about sex more openly than losing a baby.

My friend has had a lot of serious medical problems in recent years. But she was healthy again. We felt that losing the baby was particularly unfair in her case. Childish I know but there was a sense of hasn't she been through enough and all that.

Maybe it is our Catholic upbringing that is responsible for this train of thought -- recompense would follow suffering etc. All the mad talk about pain purifying a person for reward and so on. Her baby would have to live because she had tolerated a barrage of disappointment to reach this stage. We thought a positive outcome was as inevitable as the rising sun or the incoming tide.

However, it wasn't to be. I struggled to know what to say. Part of you wants to go down the "it will all work out well in the wash" route but you have to acknowledge the grief she is feeling now. I really do hope that she will have a baby in the future. I imagine she will -- but she doesn't want this future baby. She wants the baby she was carrying.

My friend expressed concern about turning this quest to have a baby in to the alpha and omega. She would like to have a sense of proportion about it. She has a great husband and that will always be the case baby or no baby. But then in the next breath she admits that it is all she thinks about. The complete package -- the ideal of the happy family.

For now tears are her constant companion. She says she weeps when she is on her own in the house, when she is walking along the street through bustling crowds or in bed at night. Swollen bellies seem to be everywhere when you have had a miscarriage. Older mothers annoy her because they have managed to have a career and a family whilst younger one provoke her wrath because they have made motherhood a priority.

I know she will work through this. She is an upbeat person. But it will take time. I just wish other women who have had miscarriages were more open about it. I think most people just put it behind them...they go on to have babies and forget about the pain of losing the 'maybe baby.'
Perhaps that is the best thing to do. Why torture yourself with what wasn't meant to be?

For now sadness is difficult to mask for her. She says she is morose -- sleepwalking through the motions of life.

I feel guilty in one way because my little son was unplanned. I wasn't exactly thrilled when I found out I was pregnant...it took me about three months to come around! Silly really when I look back on it. I pray that she will go on to have a baby. I just wish she didn't have to lose the one she was carrying.

ends