Late night triggers

Winter evenings in this household always signify one thing: northern hemisphere summer sports season. We're both sports nuts and sport in various shapes and forms has always been part of our lives.

For years now we've sat up in to the wee hours of the morning watching all sorts of sports played in different time zones on the other side of the world, generally in the blazing summer heat while we sit here shivering in our winter woolies.

The Tour de France has always been an event we've enjoyed and we waited so patiently for Cadel Evans to finally come home in the yellow jersey last year. 2008 was a year that promised so much in the tour, but Cadel fell disappointingly short. Bit like my pregnancy I suppose.

2008 was also an Olympic year and there was one thing I was pretty certain of during my entire gestation and that was my baby would be born sometime during the Olympics, given my due date was smack bang in the middle of them. Aussies would be sure to bring home gold and I too would be going for my equivalent of life's most treasured gold medal - my first child.

It was the 8/8/2008 when the Olympics started and I felt so excited to be plonked on my couch, feet up, watching the huge spectacle that China was putting on for the world. I was already on maternity leave and we were ready for the baby. I had hoped Hope would be born on the day, but that wasn't to be. So we kept waiting.

Two days later Simon and I went and had curry for dinner (trying to coax baby out) and we barely spoke at all, as we were glued to the tv in the restaurant, watching Aussies compete in whatever sports we could. We came home and watched wall to wall Olympic coverage as we waited for baby. I went in to labour and the labour dragged on over an entire weekend, and we kept watching the Olympics. She died in my body one chilly Monday morning then I went to hospital to birth her dead body the next day and still, we watched the bloody Olympics. And when we came home the next day bereft and ravaged with grief, we kept on watching. Because what else was there to do? There certainly wasn't a baby to distract us with all the things new babies are supposed to do. There was a funeral to plan, but thankfully, somehow, that all got organised around us.

Though shock had taken up permanent residence within my soul during those early days, I knew on some level I'd never be able to enjoy the Olympics properly again. But I also remember thinking that four years seemed like a very, very long time away. And now, here we are. How the bloody hell did that happen?

The world seems to be gripped with Olympic fever right now. Wimbledon is over, and though we're not even half way through the Tour, the Olympics cometh.

And I am so completely underwhelmed by it all. Sigh.

Four years, it is just beyond comprehension. And at what point does any of this begin to feel easier? And is easier even the end goal anyway? Because next year will be five years, and five is such a big, chunky, solid number. Half way to ten, huge. And the year after? Six. And she'd be going to school that year. Also huge. Then seven, eight, nine then 10. And still, she'll be dead. She'll always be dead. And forever more, there will be triggers, such as late night sport in the winter, that will make me think of her and miss her.