My Dearest Aoibh
This week marks a year since we found out that you had a heart defect. In my mind I can still see the waiting room and the room in which we were given the news with crystal clarity. I can see the doctor’s face the moment that he saw something wasn’t right on the scan, and the look of realisation on the face of the radiographer standing behind him.
I cried as soon as the doctor said the words ‘heart defect’, before I had even heard the words ‘TGA’, and ‘heart surgery’. The first of thousands of tears to be shed. Tears for you, tears for me, tears for an uncertain future looming in front of us.
Sometimes I think of the person I was before that day. A person so confident that everything would be ok that I initially planned to go to the appointment by myself. A person who had no concept that things might go wrong and was sure that it was going to be a wasted journey. A person who thought her biggest concern was working out which hospital would be easier to get to when I went into labour and whether or not I could manage labour without an epidural.
And then I think about the person I am now. Some days I am proud of the strong, resilient person that you have taught me to be, but on other days I am jealous of the person that I was. The person who was blissfully naive about the future that lay ahead, and I am angry that I will never get to be so blissfully naive again.
Finding out about your diagnosis feels like it happened years ago to a different person. I suppose in reality it did happen to someone else, someone, that if I completely honest, I don’t really remember or recognise. Although with that said I have no real desire to be that person again, because to be her would mean changing you, and being a heart baby is part of you.
Your story is much more than ‘heart defect’, ‘TGA’ and ‘she died’. It is a story of love, strength, family, parenthood, and hope. Sometimes I get caught up in the idea of your story being short, but I think I am beginning to realise that your story hasn’t ended, you have just handed me the job of writing the next chapter. I hope this next chapter includes stories of raising awareness about your condition and supporting others to see rainbows through the clouds, and more than anything I hope that in time perhaps you will have a brother or sister who can help us write a few chapters too.
All my love
Mum xx
Dear Aoibh 