Heartfelt

It's going to be a little quite here for a few weeks now.  My father and his partner, Marilyn are visiting us here for three weeks. I haven't got any expectations as to what it is going to be like, I can draw on old experiences, but this is all new territory for all of us now and can only hope for the best.  I do know that it will be nothing like the visit from my mother and her husband, just six short weeks after Elizabeth's birth - had I known how that would be, I'd have cancelled and bailed.  My fingers are crossed in so many ways for so many outcomes.

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I went to the Heartfelt exhibition this morning with A.  This volunteer organisation of photographers in Australia gives the gift of photography to families, not only to those who have experienced the death of their child, but ill, premature infants and terminally or seriously ill children.  This organisation didn't take our photos of Elizabeth, but is the first exhibition I've heard of this kind and will support any and all of them.  We walked around the gallery for an hour drinking in the information separately.  We saw the photographs, we read their stories.  I was fighting the flow of tears and the sizable lump in my throat.  We walked out of there dumbstruck.  I actually walked straight into Hope's Mama who was revisiting the exhibition and managed to fumble a few words.

The exhibition was so powerful.  Reading and seeing those precious photographs, being immersed into their worlds, their pain, their love, their sorrow of the unknown.  It just left me heartbroken for them all.  I felt apart of a bigger 'club'; I'm not the only one who has had to kiss goodbye to their child and that felt oddly comforting to know that I'm walking a very well worn path.  Also reading from the photographers point of view, seeing how they have their own hurdles to overcome, dealing with such an important role with a family.

It took sometime to adjust being back in the living world after being submerged in the sadness, all the while thinking about the children in the pictures and of our Elizabeth.  Something so silly knocked me back into life though - seeing a photo of a fried breakfast in a shop front.  It was a happy plate, eggs for eyes, a tomato nose and a lovely great smiley sausage and I smiled inside and out.  I thought if a plate of food can make me feel better now, then our treasured photographs of our daughter will always bring me close to her.  It was a strange feeling, something just clicked inside and knew that I'm better off not worrying about the future - it'll get here in its own time.

I am still in a strange sort of limbo right now - I can't really feel Elizabeth as powerful as I once did and I can't get close to this new soul yet.  It is just something that I have to accept and work on and going to the exhibition did help me feel that all familiar sadness again.

I carry you in my heart Elizabeth, not in my arms and that is the difficulty I am adjusting to.