The Million Tiny Goodbyes of Motherhood

'Widow Bird' from The Comic Natural History of the Human Race by Henry Louis Stephens, 1851

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By the time Monday morning came, I knew the spell would be broken.

Still, I went to sleep as if it weren't true, and moved closer to his warm body, my thighs finding the bottoms of his, locking together like Duplex. I pulled the second duvet around us, as if tucking him in for one last time, before the room filled with a life we couldn't avoid, and people we inevitably had to be.

When I opened the door, the air smelled stale, suspended there as if to remind me that nothing was left for me now. Even the light from the window made no effort, and the bed lay in wake — too neat, too quiet, betraying the brief life that had once warmed it only days ago. Even the row of teddies, sat snugly on the armchair, looked unhappy to be here. The room’s inevitable lifelessness stared back at me, exposing the fool I hadn’t realised I’d been.

I reached for the sound of our laughter, hoping that their echoes might permeate my heart, but the walls refused to speak. C.S Lewis very rightly said that he never realised grief feels so much like fear. But a person's nature is never one dimensional and grief's is no different.

I never realised that grief feels so much like motherhood. All the versions of them you've loved, and will never meet again. The million tiny goodbyes you say without ever realising it until it's too late.

As our bodies had weakened over the past five days, our laughter soothed the aches, and pains, and shivers that ran through us. It's uncanny how a bear with a marmalade sandwich, and a girl getting her revenge on a pigtail-swinging Headmisstress, can be everything you need.

When you have each other. Cocooned in our own universe - no pretence, no need for closed doors. Grief requires motherhood to knock, to hesitate, to step away. And yet life demands that we must remain on the periphery, guarding the perimiter like an assasin in the night. Motherhood requires you to exist in both realms but never whole in either.

You prepare them for a marathon, knowing that you won't be there to greet them at the finish line.

I close the curtains and lie down on the cold bed and close my eyes, thinking about marmalade sandwiches.