Today Is Not For Celebrating

As darkness descends on this night, the eve of my daughter’s birth-day two years later, equally dark and unwelcome memories flash through my mind. It should not be this way. I should be fondly remembering the day before I gave birth to her, recalling the night I began to labour, thinking excitedly, this is it! But instead, I must relive the most heartbreaking night of my life. The moments no mother should ever have to endure. I so desperately try and block them out, but yet they play.

Over and over again. 

I watch the scenes as if a bystander, as if that could not possibly have happened to me. It’s simply a horror movie.

But then I feel the pain, and it’s all too real.

It happened.

Perhaps a part of me hopes that by writing the fragments down, I will banish them out of my head, relegated to hang forever hopeless in space and time. One can hope…

Fear.  

Clutching everything. Anything.

The nurse’s face. The doctor’s face. Horror.

Screaming. Bloodcurdling, primal, screams only appropriate for death.

No. No. No.

Silence. Emptiness. Stillness.

Weeping. So much weeping.

Numb.

Mom…our baby…

Men. Clinging to one another.

Numb.

A rotating door of comforters.

Numb.

A sink, dripping. Dripping. Dripping.

So numb.

Darkness.