I am a 28 year old gardener. It might sound unimportant but I’ve realised my love of watching things grow underpins a lot of what brings me pleasure.
On our mantel piece are the dried seed heads of artichoke flowers, still beautiful to me in their crisp, golden hibernation. If you asked me my proudest moment of 2018, it would probably be that I’d successfully grown a glut of raspberries, not that I got my band 6 at work. When I ask a favour, I offer a bag of Irish potatoes or strawberry infused vodka in return. When I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling, I choose to gift a plant that best represents my emotion…
But I skip ahead.
Monday, laid on my yoga mat, watching those around me preparing to do their shoulder stands, I couldn’t move. I was inert, probably appearing lazy until you noticed the tear shine on my cheek. In the midst of my Monday night ‘switch off’ my mind made my body remember the loss of the week before, momentarily but dramatically, before letting me join the group in the next pose. At the end of my class is Shavasna, when, like a pack of lions, we lay to rest. Alas, I couldn’t lie with the pack because of an allotment-induced back injury so instead I sat, cross legged, exposed and separate from the others. I found myself focusing on the small Dragon Tree on the windowsill and wondering if it had grown since last week…whether it might need me to water it. I momentarily became lost in my enjoyment of simple pleasures, only to wince, remember and recoil from my selfishness. Who gives a crap about yoga and whether or not the Dragon Tree is growing. The glisten on my cheek turned into a silent torrent, landing drop by drop in my lap.
** Note prior to reading on that I cover a subject that may be distressing. Here I only discuss my experience as a midwife, because I couldn’t possibly assume to know the thoughts of others **
Jumping back in time, to two Mondays prior.
My little clinic room has no windows but I still bring the office plant on to my desk to keep me company. I think plant + coffee mug ( strong and always nearly gone) shows a little more of me than the shirt-wearing polite lass with ringlets they see on first meeting.
But this wasn’t our first meeting. On the contrary, I’d been getting to know her and her partner since they first booked with me at 8 weeks.
That Monday She and I discussed her birth plan.
The movement I recommended she make from bed to toilet to ball to bath. The birth places she could choose from. The pain relief options she could use if needed, the bath she could float in, the items she should pack in her bag for her family, soon to grow by one, much anticipated person.
.
Ten days later She and His little Girl passed away when she was 37 weeks pregnant. I write this with no preparation or delicacy because, so unfairly, this is how it happened.
As I sat reading what had happened in Her notes, it felt like an act some invisible god committed specifically because of something I had, or had not done. There is an unspoken understanding between her parents and I because we both have our versions of the relentless question…
‘What could I have done to prevent this?’
There will always be something, but at the same time, devastatingly, absolutely nothing.
Perhaps answering their questions is something I can at least do to potentially aid their healing. Once I know She and Him are on that road, I will step back and find answers to my own as her community midwife.
An investigation has already shown nothing could have predicted her passing…but the question repeating in my head right now? Where is the switch to make this right?
Earlier on the day of my yoga class, I had walked down a secluded cobbled street to visit She and Him, a street oddly separate from the flats and busy roads just down the hill. A child’s red bike lay discarded in the road. It’s brightness seemed so cruel.
How do you console a couple faced with this kind of truth?
I stood at the blue door, noticing the bouquet of beautiful lilies in the window and started to question what I do myself by gifting flowers at times like these.
Do we send flowers to make up for what is intangible? Do they represent the love we can’t hold in our hands and present as a gift to our loved ones? Why is it that the flowers we choose; the dozen red roses, the fragrant white lilies, the long stemmed french tulips… Why is it that they are so fleeting?
Hold on to them for too long and you end up with a mess of petals and pollen. But we, rightly so, cling to those few days of beauty. She and Him had precious moments with their little girl. Made even more precious because they have come, and gone. Like a bouquet of lilies, full of colour and scent and promise, they knew that her existence with them would be fleeting. They gathered as many memories as they could into material form but when we talked about it He pointed to his head with a quivering hand. ‘She’s in here, and she always will be.’
As a simple gardener with nothing to offer to ease their pain, I have tried to think what I should plant in their little girls memory, something that will return and grow year by year. I am doing so with their permission and love.
They chose for me. Rhododendron, her namesake, with buds erupting into blooms and its blooms forming a litter of colour on forest floors, all in a matter of weeks. Beautiful in it’s impermanence.
.
I am struggling to accept that she is lost somewhere we cannot see, but I find comfort in the thought that it is somewhere with flowers whose petals never fall.
Being Ivy 