After Forever Ends (33 page)

“Of course,” He was laughing softly. He kissed me on the lips, “Whatever you like.”

“And someday, Oliver…someday when it’s right and my body says yes again, I want to make a baby with you,” I was falling asleep “A whole bunch, a basket of muffins…chocolate dipped cherry muffins with a surprise inside that makes each one just who they are…very special muffins, each and every one. I love you, Oliver and I want to bake you muffins…”

“Close your eyes, Love, and go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.”

“OK. Then when I’m awake, go get me a puppy.” I was incredibly tired, “If I can’t have a muffin then I want a dog…a Scottish one…Scottish like me. And he’ll need a leash. I can’t have him dashing off and getting killed liked the chicken,” My head fell to the side and off my pillow. I was almost asleep before I remembered, “Oh! Do me a favour?”

“Yes?”

“Go and get a wee rattle, the nicest you can find, and put it in the circle for me. Tell Lady Folia and Lord Copse it’s to celebrate their boon and to say thank you. They saved my life, Oliver. I think Alfie got them for me. I’m not sure, but Lady Folia took care of me and Lord Copse fetched Alex. Don’t you think that they didn’t.”

“I know they did. I’ll get you anything you want, Silvia. Absolutely anything you want.”

If someone had told me the day I lost our daughter that happy times would ever come again, I’d have called that person a liar. But they wouldn’t have been lying at all. Headmistress Pennyweather had told us that life could be cruel and downright ugly, but if we kept looking for the thing that made us first know we loved the other and kept finding it, there was nothing we could not get through together. Sometimes things happen in a marriage and those things are big enough to either tear a couple apart or make them ten times as strong. Oliver and I kept searching each other’s eyes when things got tough or ugly. Sometimes it took a little effort, but we always found that spark in each other that we could ignite back into our original passion. We took time for each other. We took time to listen, we took time to care and we took time to let the other one know that they were still top in our heart. Because of that we were stronger than anything that could ever come our way.

I was able to hold our baby later after I’d come round again. She was so tiny, as Ollie had said. She weighed in at nine ounces and was only seven and a half inches long. She was whiter than snow and smooth as silk. She had all ten fingers and all ten toes. She had little round eyes and a bump for a nose, delicate, sweet lips and perfect, minuscule ears. She looked like a real baby, no different from any other I’d seen except her skin was so thin that all her many veins were visible. I stared at her as I rocked her in my arms. I wasn’t able to weep. I just held her for a long while knowing that I would never be able to do it again. I wondered about her, what she would have been like. I would never know. I would never know how her smile would have looked or hear the sound of her laugh. I wondered what colour eyes she had beneath those sealed lids, what shade her hair might have been had it been able to grow. I held her to my breast and I whispered to her promises only mothers make to children. I told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was that I’d not been able to protect her. I only had a while to prove my love to a child I was going to have to give away too soon.

“Mum wants to know,” Oliver whispered later when I was almost ready to let her go, “If you’d like a picture of her.”

I looked down into that tiny, beautiful face and I shook my head. I didn’t need a picture. I’d never forget her. She was going to be a part of me forever.

I let the nurse take our daughter away. She did it with such loving hands. I never told her how much I appreciated that and I should have. Even in death that child was treated with nothing but gentleness and respect. In that way, maybe she was the luckiest of us all.

I went home two days later in a daze. The only thing that made me know that any of it was real or had actually happened was that my heart ached and the pain kept me from sleep and food. There was no laughter in the cabin. Oliver and I barely spoke. The doctor had warned us not to try to conceive for a while and had given me a prescription for contraceptives, which I threw in the rubbish bin on the way out. I knew he meant well, but in my mind the chances of me getting pregnant again so quickly were astronomical. The other thought was that after what I had gone through with losing our baby there was absolutely no way that I was going to destroy another. No, nature was going to do what it would do and I was going to allow it to happen.

Then there was the business of having a funeral. I might have just had her buried quietly and kept her memory all to myself, but it was important to Oliver that her life be validated. I had been unconscious when he’d filled out the birth and death certificates for our child. Not having any idea of what we would have called her if she’d been born alive, he simply wrote “Cara”, a Welsh name for “Beloved”, on the line for her name.

Our precious Cara’s short life was honoured on a sunny Friday morning. When we first got to the funeral parlour, Oliver and I walked in and went straight to the casket. We wrapped our arms around each other and stood alone before the coffin and stared in numb disbelief. Then we sat together on a single, metal folding chair and we held tight to each other, knowing if we didn’t one of us would fall to the ground. Neither of us sobbed, we just clung until we could rise and then we turned our backs to the casket and greeted our guests with hugs and handshakes.

They filed in one by one. Some sombre, some forcing smiles, all of them trying to support us through something that we didn't completely understand. Oliver and I held hands and soldiered through as the line grew longer and longer, trying not to remember that that tiny box was the only bed our daughter would ever know.

“I won’t let you go, “He whispered.

“Never," I responded as I squeezed his hand tighter.

“It’s just me and you, Sil," He didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead, his eyes focused on something I couldn’t see. I watched the muscle in his jaw tighten. He turned his head slowly and showed me his face. The light caught his dark eyes.

“I love you,” I whispered. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. I watched tears well up in his eyes and I watched him blink them back. He looked away. I just stood with him and shared his shock and sorrow while the world we knew crumbled around us. Helpless, we let it fall.

Alexander made no secret of his sadness or his tears, nor did he shy from opening the lid of the coffin and placing his hands inside. He cradled his niece with his fingers. He kissed her tiny head, marvelled at how perfect she was, and whispered to her in Welsh for a long time. No one interrupted him. No one suggested that he hurry or stop. No one told him to close the lid. He was given his time to say his hello and goodbye all at once. When he was through, he sat at the right side of his brother and he took my sister under his arm. He did what he could to comfort Lucy through her grief. I watched him wipe her face with the sleeve of his suit, saw him kiss the top of her strawberry coloured hair and rock her in his arms. I thanked God that he was there to do for her what I absolutely could not. I was frozen in my shoes, unable to reach out to anyone but my husband. I kept digging my fingernails into my skin to check if I were dreaming.

Lance sat in the back of the room with Josh McGuigan and Gareth Hughes, a boy Oliver used to play rugby against from Kerry. Loads of people came. It was truly amazing how many people cared. None of them said much to us. There was no need. They were there. It was all that mattered. My father came to call later in the day. He drew me close in what was supposed to be a fatherly way, but I was too stiff in his arms and he let me go.

“I'm so sorry, Silvia,” He said sincerely, cupping my face in his dry hands. He brushed the hair from my shoulder, “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

“No,” I answered him simply, looking a little too hard into his eyes. I was so angry with him. I was his daughter. I was his healthy, living, breathing daughter and he’d sent me away, sent me off to school like I was some rubbish he hadn’t the time to deal with. My daughter was dead. My daughter had been torn away from me before I had the chance to even know her. How dare he come now and try to be my father when he’d had every chance before and passed them by?

He knew I was angry with him. He's known I was angry with him for years, but he'd never worked out why. If he had taken the time to look at himself, really look at himself, maybe he would have seen me there, lurking, begging for the attention I never got from him. If he had taken the time to notice, maybe he would have seen he had a daughter who once loved him with all of her heart, but didn't need him at all now. He'd never been there when I did and I'd learned to care for myself. Even in this chaos, even in all of my pain and suffering, his daughter, me, didn't need him. And not only did I not need him, I didn't want him. It was too little too late.

He said nothing else to me, but turned to Oliver instead. Oliver, in his kind way, put his hand on my father's shoulder and squeezed it, “There's nothing you can do,” He said simply, “Thank you for being here. Lucy's quite torn up, though.”

Dad nodded. He seemed relieved to be set free and hurried over to Lucy, who made a loud huffing noise when she saw him and fell into his embrace.

“Good,” I thought, “They can take care of each other and leave me to my business.”

I hid my face in the coat of Oliver’s suit.

Dad lingered awhile, but he left later without saying goodbye.

Oliver’s entire family including aunts, uncles, his ancient Gran, and all of his cousins came by in sets. Most of his cousins were near our age and they all had little ones. They’d dressed them in clothes fit for Easter and held on to their little hands, worried that their presence would bother us. Oliver told them no and to let them run about.

“Let them do what Cara never will,” He told his cousins, Karenna, who by then had a boy and a girl who were toddling about, and her brother, Mike, whose son, Rhys, was getting into everything he could reach. “Let them play.”

Ana scolded Rhys when he stood on his toes and leaned against the casket with his hands to smell the flowers.

“Don’t touch that!” She screeched and made to slap his shoulder, but Oliver leaned back and touched her arm.

“It’s all right, Mum,” He said quietly, shaking his head. He pulled one of the flowers from the spray and handed it to Rhys, “Here, Lad. Take this one and leave the rest, yeah?” He didn’t smile, but his voice was soothing. He looked back at Ana, “Mum, it’s all right. Really. None of this is what anyone wanted. It’s just what it is. He‘s a child. Let him do as a child does.”

Ana fell silent. She nodded and sank into a chair. I watched Eddie take her under his arm as she began to cry. Oliver looked away.

There is nothing more terrible in this world than a coffin made for a baby. By the time the service was done, the casket was filled with plush little stuffed animals, a rattle, some plastic rings, a book of nursery rhymes, even an empty bottle, a jar of strained peas, and a silver spoon. . It haunts me still, the sight of that delicate, rose pink box laid on a slab of white marble like some sacrifice on a pearl polished alter, covered in beautiful flowers so it could barely be seen.

We left her there, in that place, lying alone beside the wall. We went home and we sat together and we said nothing.

Our Cara was buried with her toys the next morning. Oliver and I leaned against each other so that we could stay standing as the reality of what had happened finally sank in. It was only moments before Edmond and Alexander had to support us. They collected us under our arms and kept us vertical, all of us in a cluster, while we went limp and sobbed. They kept us standing as we watched our baby being lowered into the ground and then they practically carried us across the grass and to the car when her casket had been swallowed by the earth.

Oliver and I fell against each other in the car and we wept as neither of us had ever wept before. I pulled away from him as the car left of the cemetery, straining to see the spot where she lie, pressing into my memory the picture of the place where we had buried every dream we never even knew we had.

And just like that she was gone. Cara, who should have been our miracle, had left us as quickly as she had arrived.

Bizarre, really, that tradition dictated we have a lunch after, as if either Oliver or I could think of taking a bite of anything. The only thing I could think of was drinking and drinking heavily, but I was too numb to lift the glass. “Tell me it’s not real,” I whispered to Oliver, “Please, lie to me.”

He blinked several times before he placed his hand against my face and stroked my cheek with his thumb. He said nothing, but his eyes replied, “Tell me the same.”

After, we went home to the cabin. Alex drove us, afraid we would be too distracted to get there safely. Lucy sat with him in the front of the car, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Nobody made a sound. Alex and Lucy saw us inside, both still unnaturally quiet. I went straight to the kitchen and took a sedative that the doctor had given me. I didn’t want to be awake. I didn’t want to think. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up to find that it had all been a nightmare. The pill stuck in my throat and burned as it dissolved.

My sister made a pot of tea and sat with me at the kitchen table until the medicine overtook me. Neither of the cups touched, she helped me into my pyjamas and put me into the bed. Oliver had taken a pill as well just after me, but it seemed to take longer for it to affect him. I could hear him speaking quietly with his brother from the other room, their Welsh words mingling in the otherwise silent house.

Lucy lie with me on the bed, holding me the way a sister holds her sister when she’s afraid to let her go.

When I woke up hours later, the house was soundless. I knew Lucy and Alex had left long ago, probably at Oliver’s request, but I wished that they hadn’t. I stumbled out of the bedroom to check on Oliver, a feeling of worry sweeping me. What if something happened to him? What would I do without Oliver? Again, the thought plagued me. My heart and head both pounded as I caught my weight with my hands and held myself up against the wall.