The Miscarriage

Just a warning about this poem. It is about the time we suffered a miscarriage and my emotions about the loss. . . . .

The Miscarriage

Eleven weeks pregnant, life seems good.

A phone call received in work.

“I don’t feel well.

The doctor said I should go to The Coombe.”

With a nurse, she disappears in to a room.

Sometime later, she emerges.

“We have to come back on Friday.

The nurse said she couldn’t tell.”

I now think that was a lie,

the nurse was not the appropriate clinical level.

Friday. A doctor enters the room.

She begins the scan of the womb.

The little blob on the screen.

My face starts to beam.

Then the words I will never forget.

“There’s no easy way to say this. It’s dead.”

My emotions crash to the ground.

I drop my head.

After the surgery, the hospital said,

“not enough material to bury, not enough to retrieve.”

No place for us to go and to grieve.

Staff so callous, so uncaring, so cold.

My child will never be born, never grow old.

We didn’t talk about it for a very long time.

My grief I tried to bury deep inside.

Years later, I now only cry twice a year.

On the anniversary of that dreadful day.

On the anniversary of what would have been her birthday.

“Her?” You ask. “At eleven weeks, too small for a sex to be seen.”

Have I not told you of my dream?

Two weeks before the dreadful day,

two weeks before the loss of my light.

I had a dream, it filled my night.

I dreamt I was introducing my daughter to relatives long dead.

I never saw her face. Her back was to me.

Long dark hair flowed from her head.

The room felt like my granny’s house.

But it was different.

So calm, so bright,

a room filled with blinding light.

An aunt, an uncle, my granny.

Not very many.

But people I know that my child would be safe with.

My father? Absent, not there.

Not that I care.

On reflection, I don’t think this was a dream.

Mock me if you dare.

I don’t care.

I was being used by a higher power.

I was handing her soul over to the team.

The team that will protect her until we finally meet.

When I pass from this world,

and on the bus to heaven, take my seat.

On that day, I will hug her so tight.

Finally meeting my daughter in such blinding light.

I never got to meet her in life. Never got to hold her.

Never got to laugh with her, never had to scold her

But my daughter is not gone.

In my heart, she always lives on.