40

There was a time, not so long ago it seems, when I could tell you exactly how many weeks Hope had been gone. I think I counted the weeks until she was gone for about 15 of them. Then it got fuzzy, and I moved to months. Easier that way. Not as many anniversaries. Got tiring being sad every god damn Tuesday. I think I've done the same with each of my living children. Counted their weeks on earth until about 15, then it just gets impossible to keep track, at least for me anyway.

Then after her first birthday, it got harder to remember the months, especially around the 15 month mark, when Angus arrived and true sleep deprivation set in.  I know I stopped to remember 18 months, and of course any time a 19th fell on a Tuesday, that stung a little more and then it was really only the second birthday that stopped me dead in my tracks and made me check out of my life for a couple of days.

And of course her third birthday, just a few months ago, fell when I still had a catheter in, so fresh was I from giving birth to Juliet. And if I'm any good at maths, on that birthday it means she'd be gone 36 months. That all of a sudden sounds like a damn long time. Longer than the three years it represents.

So Juliet has been here with us for four months now, which means Hope has been gone for 40. Forty months. She's been gone a month for every week I carried her, and that seems absolutely incomprehensible to me.

Pregnancy seems to just drag and drag and draaaaaaag, especially your first, and carrying her seemed like the longest time of my life. I was so impatient to get my hands on her, and I wanted to sprint through the months, while I was sadly only able to shuffle. Yet now when I look back, it was the absolute shortest time of my life. Those paltry nine months just weren't enough. Not even close.

When we lost her I didn't know how I'd survive the rest of that damn minute. It was like the hands on the clocks fused together in the searing heat and pain and agony of that moment when we were told her heart had stopped. But I kept surviving, in spite of all the odds that seemed impossibly stacked against me.

When I got home from hospital, bereft, empty and defeated, I wondered how on earth I'd survive until the end of the August, then until the end of the year, then to her first birthday, then until Angus arrived, then until her second birthday, Angus' first birthday, another Christmas without her, then until Juliet arrived and so on and so on and so on....

There are so many  new stories of loss out there. Many of which I am reading. And I want to say that somehow, you can and will survive, even if it seems impossible now. Time will drag you on - you get no choice in this matter. Then like me, you will stop one day and realise you are 40 months away from ever having laid eyes on the absolute love of your life, and you will look back in amazement and wonder how on earth you did it, because in those first moments, it seemed like the one thing you couldn't do. Survive.

It won't necessarily get better or easier and it won't always feel as if it has been that long, because in many ways, it still feels like yesterday to me or at a pinch, last week, but you will go on.

I know one day down the track, I will (if I'm lucky) stop and take pause to remember the 40 years she's been gone. A year for every week I carried her. And one thing I'm fairly certain of: it will still shock me that it has been that long and that short a time without her and it will still hurt as much as it does now.