5 days

Death shows it face in places where it's least expected and least welcomed. One simple twist of fate and suddenly you become a part of the loneliest club around.

Sometime after 9:01 pm on Monday, September 25th, 2017, Death walked into my life. She didn’t take what She came for at that exact moment, instead, She simply sat and waited. Alone and unwelcome in the corner, knowing that her time would come soon, and She would scoop up my newborn baby son and take him far away from me.

Sometime after 9:01 pm on Monday, September 25th, 2017, I fiercely pushed my 7th baby into this world at home, surrounded by a midwifery team, my husband, and my mother. With that final push a beautiful baby boy was born into my arms and took his first deep breath, letting out a mighty cry. With that first giant breath, death began. The clock started ticking and She waited. At that moment when our sweet son Theo took his first breath, he triggered the valve in his heart to start closing.

36 hours. We had 36 hours with him at home, blissfully unaware he was dying. When I reflect on my blurred memories of those 36 hours, Death is everywhere, in every corner, in every shadow. As I lay in my bed nursing my new baby, I can see Her laying across from us, stroking his hair. When I slept with him in my arms, did She whisper stories of the universe waiting for him into his ears? Did She whisper in my ear to pay attention and I just missed it? When I didn’t know he was in pain, did She try to soothe him? When I didn’t know every organ in his body was without oxygen, did She promise him he would be ok soon? She is there, everywhere I look.

I have such a strong sense of Her being in the room with us when my baby left this universe. She is there, in the corner, but this time not alone. Other people are there too; people who have left us too soon. Everyone waiting to take him. The exact moment when he left, I am standing with my back to the corner and my son in my arms and my husband behind me. She was there. She walked up to me and kissed my forehead, scooped my baby up, and walked right through me to another universe.

Death shattered my world at 8:40pm on September 30th 2017.

I have learned to love Her, I have learned to be jealous of Her. And when I am saddest, I see Her rocking my baby in her arms and telling him stories of his momma's love and I am comforted.

Death’s touch leaves a hole so big it can never be filled. Many times a day, the reality of death rushes over me and takes my breath away. My baby is dead. He died. It is so fucking big, so fucking painful, and so fucking forceful that for one split of a second it takes over me and I allow myself to really feel it. In that split second I feel everything slipping away from me as though I’m stuck in a cyclone and nothing makes sense, and everything is looping around me.

Major heart defect. May not survive the flight. Major brain damage. Organ failure. Not coming home with you.

I can feel my world spinning, and spinning, and the room getting darker, and the air getting heavier, and then my mind screams at the top of its lungs, “NO! ADDIE HOLD ON.”

Hold on to your other children, hold onto your husband, do.not.go.down.this.path. because you will not come back.

I take a deep, deep, deep fucking breath, and it hurts. It’s like razors inside me. In and out. In and out. I force myself to snap back into this life. Here I am. Alive despite it all.