Her finger jabbed the air again.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I went to open a cupboard door.
I could see frustration in her eyes.
‘Maybe she is hungry?’ JP tried.
She started to become agitated and I hated that I couldn’t understand her. This was the cruellest part of it all.
‘She’s pointing at something in the garden, Mam,’ Harry said.
She kept jabbing her finger and suddenly Harry spotted what it was that she was trying to show us.
‘Look, there’s a robin!’
My eyes followed theirs and I saw there was a little robin perched on the fence at the end of the garden.
‘Oh, sweetheart, it’s your bird!’ I cried.
The small bird must have known he had an audience because he fluttered down onto the patio and looked up at us with calm bravery. Harry quickly jumped up, opened the bread bin and took out a slice. He opened the patio doors as warm sunlight flooded into the kitchen and tossed it onto the ground in tiny pieces for the bird. We saw Robyn’s face relax as she watched him peck around on the paving before sending his wings in a whir as he flew off again.
‘Did you know…’ I began, ‘that on the day you were born a beautiful robin flew onto my window ledge in the hospital and he looked at me with his dark, clever eyes and I knew he was telling me to call you after him and that’s how you got your name.’
And even though she could no longer speak, I could see her eyes dance with a smile.
40
A shadowy black outline filled the spot where her face should be, I tried to stretch out my hands to pull it away, but the shape wouldn’t move. I opened my eyes, sat up in the bed and gulped back air. I stretched my hand across to her chest and relief flooded through me when I found she was still breathing.
‘Are you okay, Sarah?’ I heard Julia’s voice ask.
‘I can’t see her face!’ Beads of sweat had broken out across my body and the sheets were damp beneath me.
I was waking up in the middle of the night with awful nightmares. I would wake in a cold sweat, terrified that I couldn’t remember her. I would sit up in the bed and try to call to mind her face, but sometimes it was blank. Sometimes I had nightmares imagining her terror that she couldn’t voice. Did she wonder why her body was failing her and she couldn’t tell us? Did she know she was dying? I would lie in bed beside her, stroking her face, willing myself to remember every detail. We had taken countless photos and videos of her and prints of her small hands and feet too, but I was so afraid my mind wouldn’t be able to recall her. That was my greatest fear; that I would try to evoke the planes and contours of her face and they wouldn’t come to me.
Julia switched on the lamp, casting a warm glow around the room. I looked at my daughter sleeping peacefully beside me.
‘There she is, Sarah, she’s just asleep,’ she said, coming over to the bedside.
My heart was hammering inside my chest and I could hear the blood pounding through my ears.
Julia checked her pulse and listened to her breathing with the stethoscope. ‘She’s very weak,’ she professed.
I exhaled heavily.
When she had last woken, I had tried to feed her droplets of water and a spoonful of apple purée, but she had refused them both and Julia had explained to us softly how Robyn’s body was shutting down and this was a new sign that the end was almost upon us. ‘Her body is preparing itself to go on its final journey,’ she had said.
I was getting used to Julia’s spiritual ways and although I knew JP found her airy thoughts and metaphors difficult to comprehend at times, I found them strangely comforting.
‘Go down and get yourself a coffee,’ Julia advised.
I didn’t move.
‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call you if anything changes.’
Reluctantly, I headed downstairs and I met JP in the kitchen. ‘Hi there,’ I whispered.
‘Can’t sleep either?’ he said.
I shook my head and looked out beyond the window where darkness cloaked the sun that was attempting to rise outside. The wind howled beyond the glass. I had heard on the radio that a tropical storm was due in off the Atlantic and was tracking across Ireland.
‘I keep getting these nightmares,’ I said to him. ‘I’m worried that I won’t be able to remember her…’
JP got up from the table and put his arms around me. ‘We’ll never forget her, Sarah, she is part of us – she is in me, and in you, and in Harry. She is in your eyes; she is in Harry’s laughter and although I hate to admit it… she is in my stubborn streak.’
I smiled even though tears streamed down my face.
‘As long as we’re all here and we’re able to breathe, we’ll never forget her,’ he continued. ‘We won’t let it happen.’
‘Julia said it’s close now.’ I stood shivering in the cool morning air. I wrapped my cardigan tightly around me and poked my thumbs out through the ripped holes in the sleeves.
He nodded and put his arms around me. ‘I know.’
A photo reel of memories was continuously playing in my head: the sheer shock of that positive pregnancy test that told me, after all our years of infertility, we had managed to conceive a baby naturally; when Harry came into the hospital to meet Robyn after she was born for the first time, and we became a family of four; Robyn clutching her Peppa Pig lunch bag on her first day of playschool; her smile at our Christmas dinner just a few days earlier.
I looked out on the bleak day outside as the plants fought against the gale. Suddenly, the robin from the previous day appeared again on the patio, just inches from the glass. He remained still and composed as he looked in at me, his dark, clever eyes meeting mine. JP looked at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. I got up and found a stale heel of bread and pulled the crust off for the bird. I slid back the patio door and threw the pieces onto the ground for him. He fluttered back to a safe distance still watching me until I went back inside, and he began pecking at the bread.
The storm arrived first with a smattering of raindrops drizzling down the glass, but it quickly picked up into a howling wind, battering the house and rattling against the windowpanes, causing rain to hit the house in diagonal slants and dance off the pavement below. Although outside it was wild and raging, inside the bedroom was calm and tranquil.
Robyn had slept for the whole day with Mr Bunny beside her and, as day changed to night, the four of us lay in my bed covered up with a duvet like we had done on so many lazy Sunday mornings gone by. Harry had been out of sorts that day, he hadn’t left Robyn’s side, even when JP had tried to coax him downstairs to play the PlayStation for a little while. It was as if he could sense that she would depart soon. He eventually fell asleep in bed beside Robyn, and JP and I had climbed into the bed too and sandwiched the children on either side.
When Julia arrived that night, she lit tea lights and scattered them around and the soft candlelight sent flickering shadows across the room. Gentle lullabies were playing to make it as peaceful as possible. JP and I stroked Robyn’s face, her translucent skin showing a network of blue veins beneath. Nobody wants to imagine a setting where they have to say goodbye to their child, but I was thankful that we weren’t in a sterile hospital room, we were at home, in our bed, the four of us together where Robyn belonged. It was the most special way.
Her breathing became faint as the night wore on, so faint that several times I put my head against her chest to make sure she was still with us. How strange it was that the only thing separating her from this world and the next was something as simple as a breath. An instinctive reflex straight after our birth as our lungs learnt quickly to inflate; something humans did subconsciously thousands of times a day. But when those breaths were going to stop, that final breath became everything. A breath was all that stood between life and death.
Julia encouraged us to talk to her, she said our hearing was the last sense to depart us, so we spoke to her and told her stories. We told her tha
t we loved her and that it was okay for her to go. We told her that her grandad and granny were waiting for her.
She was cradled in my arms, her head against my heart, when she took a shuddering last breath, longer and louder than any that had come before it and I held my own breath waiting for another one, but when it didn’t come, we knew she had left our world.
People say they can feel a loved one’s spirit in the air after they die and, after Robyn passed on, the storm which had been raging outside suddenly calmed. Although the rain stopped pelting against the glass and the wind ceased, the air around us was electrically charged. I could feel her close by – it was physical – the same way that you can feel your heart grow when somebody you love hugs you. I knew she was with us.
Julia pulled back the curtains and opened the bedroom window.
‘It’s an old Irish tradition. Her soul is starting its transition and we have to help send it on its way,’ she explained as the air in the room grew cooler. Sweet birdsong filtered into the room, heralding the dawn of a new day, a day that was the start of a new world for all of us.
JP and I hugged and cried for a while and then we woke Harry and told him that she was gone. He was very upset as he hugged and caressed his sister. The only comfort was that her suffering and pain were finally over but ours was only beginning. I had carried her inside me; for nine months, we had shared a body, our hearts had beat together – she was a part of me – I had lost a part of myself.
Once again, I was so grateful to have Julia in our lives – she was guiding us through this alien landscape, and I would never be able to thank her enough. As well as her official duties like recording the time of death and completing the paperwork, she had let us be a family for the short time we had left. She didn’t intrude into the last hours of togetherness that we needed right then and so we stayed in bed as a family of four until morning broke and we prepared ourselves to tell our families and friends.
‘Will we bathe her?’ Julia suggested as the rising sun filled the room with a salmon-coloured glow.
I thought of the day she was born when JP had given her her first bath. ‘You do it,’ I said, turning to JP. It was a fitting bookend to her short life that he should give her her last bath too.
‘Okay,’ he nodded.
In the bathroom, I sat on the downturned toilet lid, with Harry on my lap. I was stroking his hair while we watched Julia guide JP as they began to wash Robyn carefully with a soft cloth, treating her as delicately as a newborn as they sponged water around her small body.
Harry
It really happened. Robyn died. I know Mam and Dad said it was going to happen, but sometimes grown-ups get things wrong. When they were putting the lid on the coffin Mam asked me if I wanted to say goodbye, but I was afraid to touch her because it didn’t look like Robyn in there.
We went to the church for the funeral and there were so many people there. I had to read a prayer and Dad came up to the altar with me because he knew I was scared with all the people looking at me and when I was finished, he whispered that I did a good job, and that Robyn was proud of me. I asked him how he knew that she was proud of me because she can’t tell us that now and he said ‘I just know’. When the priest was finished talking, all these people that I didn’t know kept coming up shaking Mam and Dad’s hands and hugging me and they were all crying and squeezing me too tight and I just wanted everyone to go away and stop hugging me and leave us alone. Then we had to go to the graveyard, and they put Robyn’s coffin into the ground, and they were putting all the muck on top of her and that was really scary because what if she woke up and was trapped under it all? So I shouted ‘Stop!’ at the men and they put down their shovels and then everyone was staring at me and they all looked really sad and I got embarrassed. Dad said it was okay because she is in heaven now and I said ‘she’s not, she’s still in the coffin’ and Mam squeezed my hand really tightly and Dad was trying to hide that he was crying but I could see the tears running down his face and then the men picked up their shovels and started putting the muck on her again.
Mam said that she’s all around us and she can hear us, so sometimes I talk to her when nobody can hear me, and I tell her all the stuff that is happening and that I’m taking really good care of Mr Bunny. Mam and Dad asked me to mind him for her. I’d be really embarrassed if my friends knew I was sleeping with a teddy, but I like it because it still smells of her and if I shut my eyes really tight it’s just like the way it used to be. I can pretend she is still beside me and we are just snuggled up together under the duvet again.
41
JP crept into the bedroom where I lay underneath the covers, staring at the walls. Everything was flattened. I was flattened and all the colour had been sucked out of the world.
‘Here, thought you might like a cuppa,’ he said.
As I sat up in the bed, pins and needles prickled through my legs and my neck was aching from the awkward angle I had been lying at. He handed me the mug and I took it between my hands. I didn’t want to eat anything; I didn’t want to drink anything either, but the warmth against my cold fingers was welcome.
‘You’re freezing,’ he said, taking the throw from the end of the bed and putting it over me. ‘I’ll get you a hot-water bottle.’
JP was taking care of everything, including me. He had spoken with the priest to arrange the funeral. He had chosen readings and songs for the choir to sing. He had gone to the undertakers and chosen a tiny white wicker coffin. Things I knew I would never be able to do, somehow, he had found the strength to.
Visitors came and went; so many people were coming to pay their respects and he let them in, served them tea and chatted with them. When they asked where I was, I could hear him from downstairs explaining that I wasn’t up to seeing people. I listened to their platitudes filter up through the ceiling about how Robyn was ‘in a better place’. Where was that place? I wanted to die too and go to it. Or another one was that ‘she was too good for this world’. Like what does that even mean? And I hated those words. There was no better place than here with her family, the people who loved and cherished her.
JP was taking care of Harry too. Poor Harry, he would come and lie down on the bed beside me, suddenly looking so small and lost. His head would rest on my chest, his body curled in against mine like a seahorse. We wouldn’t say anything to one another; it was as if neither of us could put words on our pain, but we would just cry together until JP would coax him back downstairs with some promise of a movie or a game of football. And some part of me somewhere, the part that was Harry’s mother, realised that life had to go on and I was so grateful that JP was able to do that – to keep parenting when I was too broken.
I thought I had been prepared for Robyn’s death – as much as you could be, I had accepted that she was going to die several weeks ago, but now I realised, I could never have been prepared for it. How can you prepare for something so awful? The human brain simply can’t comprehend that level of terror until it happens and then it hits you like a tidal wave and wipes you out.
Grief is a funny thing. Nobody tells you about the awful crying that physically hurts; it comes from deep within your stomach and hurts your whole body – ‘keening’ was the old Irish word for it and I could see why it was called that – sometimes it came out of my mouth and I sounded like a wailing banshee. All the love you still have to give now has nowhere to go and so it pools at the corners of your eyes and sits like a brick upon your chest until you can’t breathe. Nobody tells you how every cell, every synapse aches, right down into your very core. And nobody had warned me about the tiredness. The weeks of sleepless nights and living on adrenaline suddenly hit me like a tsunami and I was exhausted. I was so tired, my bones hurt, but still I couldn't sleep. I couldn't face waking up again to realise she was gone. My darling Robyn was no longer here. At least the exhaustion subdued me into a numb state where I felt as though I was watching everyone from afar. Fiona would come up and sit by my bedside and I could see her, I
could hear what she was saying to me, but it was as though I was not really there with her. I was in my head, where Robyn was.
Once, when Robyn had been around two years old, we had been walking through long meadow grass and when I turned around, I couldn’t see her. My heart had stopped – that stomach-churning panic that only parents know, the sheer terror of losing your child – and then after what felt like minutes but could only have been seconds, I saw some blonde curls emerge from above the green grass and my heart started beating again. That day I wondered how I would survive if anything should ever happen to my children. I thought I would have to die with them because how could you not? Being a parent was like handing over your heart to someone and hoping they would mind it. Except now my terror had been realised, I had lost a child, but somehow the human body kept going and the days were going past and I don’t know how they did, but time marched on. People still went to work, the post still arrived through the letterbox, bananas turned spotted brown in the fruit bowl, and everything kept going on and nothing stopped to grieve for my Robyn. Nothing stops. Everything keeps going on.
I miss my baby.
I miss her laugh; her head thrown back in a giggle to show,
Every gap in her teeth,
That I have imprinted on my mind.
I want to feel those pudgy arms around my neck;
Her breath as sweet as jasmine on my cheek.
I yearn for her warmth as she climbs into bed beside me in the morning.
The way she just knew if I needed a hug or a flower picked from the garden.
That special essence that made her her.
I miss my baby.
Epilogue
Seven Months Later
Beams of slanted sunlight filtered in through the kitchen window and dust motes hovered in the rays. The toaster popped, causing me to jump out of my daydream. JP got up from the table, his dressing gown wrapped around him to stave off the chilly morning air. He lifted the bread out and put it onto a plate. He spread butter thickly across it before handing it to Harry and tousling his hair.
The Last Days of Us Page 24