Can I tell you what grief feels like

Can I tell you what grief feels like...

It is a knot, a feeling that you can feel.  I am convinced that if they took an MRI they could see it in me.  Sometimes it hits in the chest, right between the breastbone.  A messy dark knot.  Other times it is down low, a thought sparks it off, usually late at night and there it is below the stomach but centred, like it is on some invisible string along the central line.

It is palpable this feeling.  The most urgent, the most deep grief.  That feeling that hits when you realise that other times you have been existing, putting one foot in front of the other, but then it hits.

At other times, it's a sense of shock.  The overwhelming thing I keep muttering to myself is how did I end up with this life.  Why did I end up with this much sadness.

Has this really happened.  I keep your Miss T's cradle with its pink flat bear and dummy in the corner of our room.  Partly it is there as I can't figure out what else you could do with it.  It's also there as I am scared otherwise I would believe this is all just  a bad dream.

It's getting colder now, the days of being able to know what outfit she would have worn are almost over.

Now I can only look at catalogues and facebook posts, think I would have got that for you.  I've thought about asking my favourite shop if I could just go around their racks and collect what I would have purchased, they could put it back on the rack later.  I am so tempted to buy things for Lucia, Peggy, Charlotte and Heidi: your parents may think I am crazy, but you would have good wardrobes.

Once we got a week past your birthday, I have amazingly stopped thinking about this time last year.  I think it must be my brains way of coping by shutting off those thoughts,  as I long for those sunny autumnal days on the lawn in Parkville.

You were inside, safe but battling, unwell but in the right hands.  I think of all of those other parents and statistically know that they probably all of them still have their children with them, as most survive.  Even that woman who spent most days on her mobile trying to convince people she shouldn't have to pay bills as she had a child "at the children's".   Even the woman with 6 kids.  There's some I hope are OK, the kid who had was on a permanent care order with the same sex couple since they he was 5 days old (the stories you overhear along the corridor), the 14 year old aboriginal from a remote community who hadn't been home for 4 months.

I feel awful about this weekend, this weekend is "run for the kids".  Probably sounds like a great idea to  fundraisers but it tears me apart, a constant reminder that at your funeral I was convinced I would be thin and fit and would run it.  Here I am 5 months later, still fat and have only completed one month of couch to 5k.  Haven't even managed to do that for you.  Only able to squeeze in a couple of visits to the gym each week as I am too scared my boys might need me.  Still trying to catch up, a list of things to do.

It's 14 days since you would have turned one, I split my time between trying to look at one year olds for comparison and trying to avoid them.  I play with the girl who would have been your best friend and for a moment trick myself that she thinks she is with you.

I walk around a half built office and for most of the time I think of you.  I had planned my new office for you, where you would sit, where you would play, even a nappy change place.  Half the design is based on what I loved about the RCH, the kitchen design is a basic copy of the ward kitchens, our office doors are based on the doors in ICU.  Of course, you were in a planning meeting for it 12 hours before you died.

I treat myself to a pedicure, it reminds me of the times I held you while in the beauty salon.  I read a trash magazine: I realise that I know your age relative to every paparazzi baby.  You so would have had Harper's winter wardrobe.

That's what it feels like