Remembrance
Remembrance the doctor says, ‘your baby is not alive’ yeah I know but it’s the missus I’m worried about now the Simpsons play on the TV in the side room but you don’t laugh instead the missus lets out a wail that no actress can reproduce no cliche ridden bullshit will let you hear no poetic crap about darkness or pretendy metaphor nonsense the fact is that it’s not what you think losing a child yeah you hang onto each other and yeah there’s anger but there’s more fear fear that not being kicked by that ball of hope when you spoon in bed will cut the thread the umbilical of kindness that makes cups tea shares jokes holds hands in the street And no you are not the same when later you lay in bed hand on her belly wishing that fart was a moving finger a flickering eye a thought and you do despise the sympathy the well meaning advice the imposition of grief the morons who say ‘oh how dreadful’ ‘I can’t imagine’ ‘you have to keep talking’ fuck off and then there’s the coffin in the chapel of rest and the instruction not to open it because the veins are too small for the formaldehyde and you won’t like to remember what you see which will not be that child who was born dead and lay in perfect stillness on the blanket your missus crocheted with the rattle you bought in an idle moment of expectation it will not be the child with pink fingers the scratch mark under the eye that you imagine was done when waking from sleep in the womb and not when dying those bowed rose lips thinning and darkening from which no sound ever came in the few hours you spend together that child who you dressed in a white Sunday dress with white tights and white shoes and tended with all respect and all duty in death because you couldn’t in life so you do what you are told the coffin stays shut and you kiss it and embrace the sharp edges and then a day or so later tears rolling down your face you lift it from the hearse it don’t even cover the spare wheel and carry it into the chapel in front of your family and friends and cry and cry and hold onto each other and then the little white box slides through the curtain and you get ashes in a plastic pot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLVcrmRMn3U&t
