Left Behind

All things are changed. One mass of shade... I walk in a foreign town.

Is it changed, or am I changed?

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~

"His words were written so long ago yet they are just as true today. When I came home from the hospital the world appeared a different place from when I had left it three days before; acute, surreal, transparent. Everything seemed different, but it was I who had changed. I belonged to a new world, a world touched by grief. In the world of grief you see all in a clear, sharp focus. It is well defined, but more cutting somehow. You are tender and sensitive to any fresh pain. Your heart feels as if it has a gaping wound from which you will never recover."
A.Axelby - Grief and Grace

Sat 17th April
"You can go home tomorrow," were the words I dreaded to hear. I had very little desire to leave this 'safe' world of mine - a world of transition, a world of relative isolation and a world that still included my baby girl...

Sun 18th April
Time to say goodbye -
.... to the loving midwives who had shared this part of the journey with us.
... to my safe haven, untouched by the pressures of life.
... for now... to my baby girl. There are no words...

 SEPARATION

Walking through the corridors

Towards my new reality.

Empty arms, wounded heart,

Mind closed.

Passing faces

What do they think?

Bags... Flowers... Mother... Baby?
Ah the doors... to the real world.

Driving in a bubble of disbelief

A tiny hole... my bubble is shrinking.

Capsule empty, heart crushed

Mind closed.

 Home... everything has changed,
I'm not the same.

I can't get up, I can't think,

I can't do anything.

I am frozen and consumed

With the distance now between us.

The grief of separation...

Arms empty, heart crushed -

...Mind closed.