Ghost child

Do you believe in ghosts?

Sometimes, I think I do.

"Look! Look at you, you little ghost baby! Come here you cheeky little ghost baby," I holler across the room.

...
...

Angus skips around the house after his bath with his favourite white towel draped over his head. He is playing dress ups by default though he doesn't yet know it. A little ghost. How cute and tragically ironic. He is screaming with glee as he bounces off the lounge and the dining table, falling to the floor in a fit of toddler exuberance, his body shaking with vibrant chuckles. We sweep him up in our arms to get him ready for bed, his robust two year old body starting to thin out as he storms towards boyhood. He is bright and feisty and anything but the ghost child I really have in my life, the one I don't stop to notice nearly often enough. But she is there, I know she is. In the periphery of my vision, painfully out of reach, yet sometimes closer than I dare to imagine.

When words like that slip from my mouth, I wonder if I should laugh or cry. Innocent daily occurrences in my busy, happy little home that remind me that we're one down, and it is Christmas, and god damn it we miss her.

...
...

Our house is just five years old. We're the first people who've ever lived in it, moving in when it still smelt of fresh paint and the oven was all shiny and new. But it feels haunted. These four walls have seen so much heartache and sorrow, and if we want to get technical, she actually did die here. But I wonder if it is even possible to be haunted? I feel it is. I see shadows, movement. And at least twice a day I look up to see who is at the door, when there is no one there at all. Or is there?

It is not a baby I see. Not a sprightly little three year old, either. This shadowy figure who comes to my door, it/he/she is adult sized, or bigger even. The black and hazy embodiment of my grief. And I guess when I think about my grief and who I am missing, I couldn't possibly be missing someone as small as an eight pound newborn, or even a busy three year old. The space she left behind is certainly bigger than who she was or who she'd be now.

But who or what am I missing? Sometimes I don't know. Previous Christmases, it was obvious, and the loss and the missing was more acute. But this year, it feels as if I'm missing no one at all, or something so abstract and huge, that I can't even recognise it anymore, manifesting itself as strange ghost like creatures at my front door. All I am really doing while people go about planning their happy family festivities is tapping in to my bottomless well of sadness, rather than stopping to just plain miss her.

The sadness seems as present as ever this Christmas as I muddle my way through another festive season without her. My fourth. I feel as if I should be getting better at this, but sadly it is as sucky as ever and I'm quite sure the intense fog of sleep deprivation I am currently living in is not helping with that. I attend parties with friends, and awkwardly smile in photos when someone says "lets get a photo of all the mums and their daughters!" And lucky me, of course I can get in that photo this year. But I still feel like I'd rather stick a flaming hot poker in my eye that be in that photo.

I know she is missing. I know I have only two children here instead of three, the flab on my belly makes that painfully obvious to me. But I don't think I actually notice that there is a three year old missing out on bouncing on the trampoline with her little brother out the back anymore. Once upon a time I did, but this year it feels different. Instead I just feel the familiar heaviness and the pressure to act happy and healed while the whole time I just want the world to slow down and remember, and tap in to that sadness with me.

...
...

I sent out about 30 Christmas cards this year and I wrote my ghost child's name on every damn one, yet her name was written on just two that I received in return. I'm not essentially saying I am upset about that - it is what it is at three years out. I'm sure people think they are choosing the safest option by not writing her name, and you know in some ways, that is perfectly ok. Yet whether I see her, imagine her, conjure her up as imaginary ghost visitors at my front door, my ghost child is here. I may not know what to make of her brief life or her exquisitely painful absence, but she is no where at all and everywhere at the same time, especially at Christmas. And Christmas, after all, is for the children, and I just want all of my children here. Especially my little ghost child, who never ever was, and never ever will be.

Oh, I miss my baby, the three year old she would have been and anything everything else she could have, would have and should have been. Our little ghost child who doesn't get to dance around our living room playing make believe, our little ghost child who is sadly, incredibly real.