Memory Monday

I've been sitting here for almost an hour now, trying to sift through my memories for today's entry, and for some reason this particular one won't disappear. It emerges quite often in my life and always leaves me feeling so…oh, I don't know…I don't have a word for it. So many emotions are tangled up in this one.

I know, even before I start writing, that I'm not going to be happy with the end result. I know I haven't got the ability or the words to do this one justice. It needs to be written in a very particular way, but I know I'm not capable of doing it.

But I will try.

I must warn you – in all seriousness – that some of you may find this disturbing.

17 years ago. It's late afternoon and I'm sitting in the lounge with a hot mug of tea warming my hands. The steady stream of traffic outside interrupts the silence – cars are travelling from A to B, people are going about their lives – and it makes me feel uncomfortable. I have random, unstructured thoughts running through my head. Unfinished sentences. Questions. I almost feel like crying, but don't, and instead let the steam of my drink waft over my eyes. I can hear my friend's footsteps from up above. She's packing a case and going away for the weekend. I don't think she should be going, but she won't listen. She says she needs to get away and that, I understand.

An hour earlier we'd been sitting on a train, returning home. The journey seemed endless. The rhythmic rocking of that empty, cold carriage, the noise of the wheels on the track, life going past in a multi-coloured blur outside the window…all these normal, familiar things felt somewhat alien right then. Almost as if they shouldn't have been happening.

A few hours earlier, she'd had an abortion.

Holding her hand in that carriage, she'd muttered the words "It doesn't feel right."
I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine back, holding it tight. And we continued to sit in silence.

I'd mistook what she'd been trying to tell me though, because back at home while I was staring into my mug, she ran down the stairs. I knew immediately from the look on her face that something was wrong. I have never seen fear like that on anybody else's face since.

I stood up and she pulled me into the hallway, dragging me down the stairs to the bathroom. I noticed her jeans were undone. She was shaking. She was talking too fast and not making sense. I told her to slow down. To tell me what was going on. She said again, "It's not right," quickly followed by "there's something there."

She took off her jeans and underwear and lay down before me on the carpet. She looked up at me with eyes like a child's…her body trembling…like she was putting every ounce of her trust and faith in me to look after her and make things right. More than anything though, she wanted me to take away whatever was there. Get it out. She kept saying it over and over again. "Just get it out. Get it out." I wanted to call the doctor, but she was hysterical.

With more care than I think I've ever taken with anything in my life, I very slowly, very nervously, slipped one, and then two fingers inside of her. I was so scared of hurting her. Her eyes were wide; boring into me, watching my every expression, reading me. She looked so vulnerable laying there – and that in itself broke my heart.

I felt something. Just a sliver of something. I was convinced it was blood…just a small clot, that's all…and the relief must have shown on my face because she relaxed a little. "It's just mess, isn't it?" she said. I nodded at her, telling her not to worry. "The idiots didn't clear you up properly," I mumbled. She smiled at me – a thin, forced smile, and swallowed. "Just get it out."

I tugged on it ever so slightly, and she winced. I took a few seconds, waiting until she was ready, and did it again. This time something loosened and came away. I pulled it into my hand, my fingers wrapping around it, and I held it there, not wanting to look. But she was asking me what it was, those big, brown eyes of hers searching my face for answers. I drew my hand up to my face and slowly uncurled my fingers.

"Just a load of mess," I told her, closing my fingers back around it. "But I'm calling a doctor."

She was already on her feet and getting dressed, half way out the door and telling me she didn't need one. She said she had a train to catch. I told her I wasn't letting her out of the house till she'd seen one, and shaking her head at me in annoyance, she agreed and went upstairs.

Alone in the bathroom, I took a moment to compose myself, my brain still trying to comprehend the enormity of it all. I held my closed fist in front of me. This time was going to be harder. So much harder. This time I knew what I was holding. This time it was me who was shaking.

Right there, laying in the palm of my hand, was a baby.

A tiny baby with the brightest blue eyes. Eyes so clear – like topaz. Like crystal. Like the bluest of skies. Like the purest of glass. Like….oh… like so many wonderful, beautiful things. And there was a tiny, perfect nose and a perfect, rosebud mouth, and ears, and arms and hands, and fingers and fingernails. Ten tiny, perfect, beautiful fingernails. I counted them all. I don't know how many times I counted them.

I couldn't…I still can't… make sense of what I was feeling right then. Humbled. Crippled. Frightened. I felt such intense, profound sadness. Such awe. It was such a breathtaking moment, yet so horrifying. I stood there for an eternity under an artificial light, in a grotty bathroom, on the edge of town, feeling so incredibly confused.

When the doctor arrived maybe 20 minutes later, I was still holding it. I hadn't been able to put it down. I led him into the bathroom, telling him he should see something first, before he saw my friend. We stood there in front of the basin, below the mirror, side by side, and I opened my hand.

He peered down at the tiny baby, then looked back at me. Without saying a word he very carefully, between thumb and finger, took it from me and turned it around in his hand. Standing there in the silence, he was no longer a doctor at that point…he was a just an ordinary man going through the exact emotions I myself had gone through. When I looked up at him I could see he was blinking back tears.

What happened next was incredible. He took my hand in his, and he gave it back to me. He didn't say anything, but I knew he wanted me to take care of it. He was telling me that this baby needed something. Deserved something.

Something…

He then spoke briefly to my friend (who was still unaware at this point of what had happened), and he took her to the hospital in his car. He looked back at me as I stood on the doorstep. I can't even begin to describe that look on his face.

I called her Mother, then my boyfriend, and when he arrived I was still holding it. Holding it so carefully, yet so very tightly.

I don't know if it's even possible to hold something that way. But that's the only way I know how to explain it.

I spoke to her later at the hospital and by then, she knew what had happened. She had been pregnant with twins but the doctors had missed it. They'd only aborted one of her babies.

She was obviously distressed, and what followed was a very difficult conversation. A conversation where amongst other things, I told her… somehow… that I still had the baby, and asked her what she wanted me to do. She was so unbelievably torn, but decided she didn't want to see it. She asked me to do whatever I thought was best. She said she trusted me to do what was best.

My boyfriend and I sat there through the night in a state of complete confusion. I was starting to question everything I thought I believed.

Later that night we made a decision. Even after we made it, it didn't feel right. It still doesn't feel right, but what else could we have done?

We wrapped her baby in a tissue and placed it inside a matchbox.

A fucking, tiny matchbox.

And we went outside to the garden, and I held it in my hand while he dug a hole under the rosebush.

He said some words – I can't remember what he said because I was looking up at the stars in the sky and sobbing my heart out, wondering why the world was so bloody big, and this baby was so fucking small, and wondering how the hell something can die before it's even been born – and then I lay it gently down into the earth.

That night my son…my own baby…slept in my bed with me. I didn't let him go for a second. I held him and touched him and smelt him and squeezed him and told him how very much I loved him. I looked at his tiny fingers and toes, and felt how warm he was and held him close to my heart.

And then I said a prayer for the baby…for all of the babies…for one of my very own babies…who, for whatever reason, were never given a chance.

And as I held my son I realised that there isn't anything more beautiful… more perfect…more special… more delicate…

…than a heartbeat.