Keeping your friends close

It was something that we had often talked about as a group so in the year when we were set to welcome new babies to the gang it felt right to holiday as a village, spread the load and have solidarity in sleepless nights and mild hangovers in the sunshine.

The trip was one of the first things that I began to grieve the loss of outside the painful stillbirth of our baby. “Well, we won’t be going on that holiday now” I said out loud in the confines of the hospital bereavement suite. How could I possibly consider spending time with the kids that should have been her friends, lying by a pool relaxed and happy on a trip that should have been our first family holiday seemed inconceivable.

Thankfully we never cancelled the flights.

Our families have always been there for us and in our time of desperate need of course they stepped up, rallied round and managed their own grief whilst they cared for us. That’s what unconditional love is all about. It meant everything to us.

Our friends did the same and we will never be able to thank them enough. In the words of one they were there “with warm hugs, hard drinks and soft tissues” They sent us nourishment, we received words of support in cards, letters and books, gifts that were so well thought out and sent with such love that each one of them was met with tears as we realised how far the sharp shards of our pain were reaching.

It would have been very easy to avoid all contact with the outside world for the rest of forever. Lock myself away from anything that might hurt, might highlight what should have been, might make me feel sad. The love from our friends thankfully made that impossible.

As we gingerly began to take our first steps back into the real world it felt important to find a way to spend time with the kids. Yes it was going to hurt, yes it was going to be hard to do but Ben realised quicker than I did that we couldn’t risk not having these people in our lives because we couldn’t spend time with their children. After all, I don’t want their babies, I want ours.

A complex web of feelings entangled me in anticipation of our trip. Ottilie should be with us, our friends love us and will be there for us, so much time with kids is bound to have its difficult moments, I bloody love the sunshine, have I lost the ability to find joy in life, will I just bring everyone else down, a whole week with our friends is a luxury we don’t often get, so many thoughts and feelings that bounced around for weeks.

We gave ourselves the option to drop out at any point. If we got to the airport and couldn’t do it we would leave, if we couldn’t find peace in the villa we would find a nearby hotel room, if we really weren’t coping we would jump on a plane home. I think we both needed to know that all of those options were ok, but none of them were likely.

What a wonderful week.

Of course there were tears. Some days I missed her so much I couldn’t hold them back. Surrounded by the kids that would have been her closest mates it is impossible not to feel her absence. Watching their characters develop and personalities emerge I can’t help but wonder what would have made her giggle, how much would she have loved the pool or the sand, what food she would have loved or refused to eat.

I’ll never know the answers to those questions, but I do know that this bunch of little tearaways will always know about Ottilie. Their parents speak her name with love and saying good night to her is even sometimes in one bed time routine. I can’t ask for more than that from our very special group of friends.