I'd said my goodbyes, and
walked out the front gate towards the overflow carpark, hoping to beat
the rain. But then I was running. My legs had decided before I'd even
formed the thought. Back across the rain-slick road, through the back
gate and down the dirt road to the bush chapel and Z's spot. I slowed
only as the path wound me back to a sacred pace, stopping momentarily to
touch a palm to the old man banksia tree, and to the granite memorial
rock.
You have a cousin. I knelt in the sandy dirt. You
have a cousin, my love - your Auntie E had her baby on Thursday.
She came early, and she's tiny, but she's doing well. I did the maths -
she's two thirds of the weight you were when you were born. Except she's breathing.
In
the weeks after the accident, my brain had worked and worried over the
numbers of Z's gestational age, her weight. When I heard of babies
smaller or earlier than Z who lived, it shot a pang of irrational
mathematical injustice through me. How is it that they are here, while
she is not? But then my nephew (my best friend's son) was born at
exactly Z's birth weight and lived, and I felt only gratitude and love - for his aliveness, and for the small numerical connection between our babies.
When my sister was admitted on Thursday to have the baby, I sat in the
surgical admissions waiting room. Everyone else there was in a hospital
gown, save two women accompanying an elderly Italian gentleman who'd
fallen asleep. We knew the baby would be small - it was her size and
concerns about cord blood flow that had led to the early c-section. I'd
brought my laptop, in case surgery was delayed and I needed to get on
with some work. But I also brought it with me as the modern-day
equivalent of the electronic maths game which I'd had with me in 1983,
where as a seven-year-old I sat in the B Community Hospital waiting
room, while my mum was giving birth to my sister. It took four hours,
and when Dad called me in the first thing I said when I saw my new
little sister was, 'what's that white stuff on her face?'
(Something super-geeky like this. Image from here:
http://www.computerworlduk.com/slideshow/infrastructure/3291946/kids-computers-through-the-ages/7/)
The timing for a c-section is much more predictable though, so when I
hadn't heard anything from my brother-in-law after forty-five minutes, I
became convinced that something terrible had happened. Just as I
started shaking with sobs, my phone vibrated - a message from my brother
in law, with a photo - baby was on E's chest and clearly well enough
not to need immediate assistance with breathing. Suddenly I was
grinning through the tears, and madly passing the good news on to
family members. I looked up and caught they eye of the two hospital
gown ladies sitting near me. "My sister had her baby - both well".
Smiles broke out, and one woman said, "yes, I thought that was a happy
cry".
A
bull-ant makes its way across the sand near Z's spot. It considers the
pussy-willow stems and moves on. The small pussy willow heads shake a
little. The rain is setting in. I can't believe that it has been more
than five years since we dug a little hole here, knelt and tipped her
ashes in. I think of the picture from my
brother's baby album - me at nearly five, holding newborn J on my
lap. Oh little Z. The stories you would have told this baby. You and
Ali, in cahoots to make her giggle. But these are just pictures in my
head. Meanwhile, the bull-ant marches purposefully. Kiss her for me,
dear bull-ant.
