Absence

Neve, February 2019, age 6. Painted in Grey Ochre watercolour paint from The Stoneground Paint Company

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wildcard: (wahyld-kahrd)

• someone or something whose behaviour is sometimes unexpected

• a determining or important person or thing whose qualities are unknown, indeterminate, or unpredictable

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Living in the world that we live in, I am surrounded by families. Previously, I didn’t pay much attention to how many children were in a family. Now, however unwittingly, I tally them up. As I do so, I mentally shift them into categories. With categories, come questions. 

That group, could they be a family of four children?

Which child is the third child?, I wonder, as I discreetly assess heights and positions within the family, my eyes seeking out the third child.

What are they like?

What will their life be like? 

Are they destined for tragedy too, like Neve was?

Did Neve look like that too, before any of us knew her future?

Is that what our family would look like, if cancer hadn’t entered our lives?

Does that family ever ponder life without their third child? 

Do third children die more often than other children? 

Is that third child the family’s wild card? When I was pregnant with Neve, I remember hearing that third births, third children, were often wild cards. 

What does it bring to that family, to have a wild card child in their midst?

If I see three sisters, I wonder, Was there a fourth sister?

What was she like?

Possibly I am instinctively looking for traces of Neve, wisps of her curly hair, a streak of stubbornness, a hint of her smile. Maybe I am looking to find out who she was, who she would have been. I wonder whether my brain can’t understand how a child just disappears. Is it possible that Neve is somewhere, traces of her soul and her energy, concealed in others?

I knew that Neve would die yet felt utter shock when she did. This feels similar, in that I know she has died but also, it feels impossible to imagine or understand that Neve has died. How can somebody with such vivaciousness, such a spark, how can they be here one day and then gone the next?

I feel a visceral pull towards third children, as though they, within them, contain some of Neve’s spirit. Rationally, I know they are not all like Neve, in looks or personality. Yet more often than not, I unearth something, a trait, a look, a grin, a curl, a stomp, that echoes my own lost third child. 

The questions continue, pouring, flowing through my mind. 

Do others look at my three daughters and assume they are a group of three?

Do they know that actually they are a foursome, but that one is invisible?

Can they see the gaping hole, the absence, where Neve belongs?

What does an absence look like? 

Do they look at my fourth daughter and think she is a third child?

But she is not a third child and never was and never will be. She arrived into our family as the fourth child, there was no ambiguity. This was a place she solidly and brilliantly occupied for five years. She has not shifted into a third child, just because Neve has died. That place is occupied, it belongs to Neve, even if she isn’t here. Even if it’s an absence that holds her place. 

I know I am a mother of four daughters. There is a space, that absence, where that third child belongs. Invisible to the world around us but ever present to those who knew her. I yearn for her absence to be visible to everyone. I am drawn to the idea of mourning clothes, a conspicuous symbol, a palpable indication that somebody is missing.  

Drawn to other third children, am I wondering whether aspects of them are the missing puzzle piece, the right shape for the space, the secret to making her absence clear? Will I find remnants of Neve, in these other children and in their families? There is sorrow, in knowing that the wound of Neve’s death, palpable as it is to me, is hidden. I won’t find her in these other children. She is no longer here to be found. Her absence is all that I have, to love and to nurture. How do you love an absence, I wonder?  

Neve, age 6, February 2019. Painted in Winsor & Newton Cotman paint, using the Camera Lucia app.