9/Nine months

Neve, not long after she turned five, approximately half way through her life. Painted in Indanthrone Blue, Pipestone, and Grey Ochre.

Today marks nine months since Neve died.

Somehow, this time period, bookended by her final breath and a chance date on the calendar, feels significant. Nothing will change today, yet a door will close. A circle will complete itself, a denouement of sorts. Nine months of pregnancy, almost ten and a half years of life and now nine months of death. It is perplexing to feel so drawn to this symbolic period of time. Neve’s pregnancy, like most pregnancies, was not precisely nine months long. So to equate the time span of her pregnancy with the time span since her death feels clearly irrelevant.

However, it turns out that my brain doesn’t care for rational thinking. Nine months is an instinctively meaningful time period, for me. A baby grows, from a tiny cell into a small person. Magical, really, if you think about it. A gentle transition, from not motherhood into motherhood. From foetus into living being in our world. Presumably the change from life in the womb to life outside must feel abrupt. Connection, contact, warmth, midwife’s orders, to ease this child into reality.

So is this post death period a reverse gestation? Warmth, connection and contact featured heavily in Neve’s final weeks. Her death felt as abrupt as her birth, despite them both being anticipated. Indeed, both were preceded by warnings, practice runs, is it, isn’t it, the baby is coming, no not yet, the child is dying, no not yet. But ultimately, when the tipping points were reached, both Neve’s birth and her death were irreversible processes. She was born and she died.

If this is all the case, has the previous nine months been a transition?

I might initially have thought this meant a transition from deep, raw grief into softer, gentler grief. Now I know this is not the case, at least not for me.

Nonetheless, it has been a transition. This transition began in Neve’s bedroom and this is where I sit now, in the same chair and the same location as I used to sit, beside her bed. I no longer have her soft, warm hand to hold; instead, I gaze at a recent painting of Neve.

A transition from mothering Neve in person to mothering her in words and in watercolours. A transition from flowers, through simple, wonky portraits and to the painting I gaze at as I write. It is without a doubt the Neve I said goodbye to last year.

A transition from hearing her voice, loudly, clearly, and with wit, to mostly silence. Her words and her voice exist only now in brief fragments within videos. Still sparkling, astute, and fiery, it has to be said. This transitional period was often accompanied by Neve’s phantom cries, calls for help, tears of sorrow. They are much rarer now. Possibly better for my nervous system, though another loss.

A transition from a room and a house full of medical supplies and controlled medication, to one emptied of most of the former and all of the latter. I still find syringes and gloves, often in unlikely locations. Leftover NG tube tape and dressings make surprisingly nifty blister plasters. We are still working our way through Neve’s prescribed paracetamol; each bottle now lasts an aeon.

Our house is quiet; the transition from a home rich in health care professionals to one void of their warmth and palliation occurred quickly, almost overnight.

It is also accurate to note the transition through grief. But not in the way I expected. Though perhaps this should have been predictable. I assumed it would get easier, like a baby’s early months. Never mind that parenting doesn’t appear to get easier, that it just changes. I still imagined that grief would soften and ease. Instead, maybe I need to see this time period as a reflection of pregnancy, rather than a carbon copy. In which case, it makes sense that grief gets harder.

I say harder but I am unsure if this is what I mean. There has been a transition through shock and a shift back down towards reality. With reality comes the beginning of the numbness wearing off. Without the shield of this numbness, my grief feels increasingly raw; it aches more often and more deeply. I stumble now, as I say the words, as I voice aloud that my child died, that she is dead. My throat catches, I gasp for breathe. The dissociation that has marked my grief over these nine months is slowly, very slowly, starting to lift. I am starting to feel the pain and the sorrow, in ways that were previously elusive. No longer merely thoughts and thoughts about feelings, my grief is becoming visceral.

Will anything change, once we pass the nine month mark? I doubt it. Does this loosen the hold of this arbitrary time frame? I also doubt this.

Nine months was my time to build the foundations of what I had assumed would be a long lifetime of mothering a lively and alive child. Nine months has now been a time to build new foundations, to begin the process of a lifetime of mothering a dead child. She may no longer be alive but she remains lively to me, in photographs and videos and in paintings and stories. I hope that her vigour and spirit will live on, in the ripples of her short but irrepressible life.

I will step carefully over the threshold, gently closing the door on this nine month period. The closing of an instinctive circle, of a life bookended by nine month stretches, reflections of each other. Neve may not have existed concretely in my mind before I became pregnant with her but there is no doubt of her identity and existence now.

Nine months of pregnancy and growth and development, nine months of death and absence and grief.