By REBECCA SPARROW
I remember the exact moment I became a different person.
The moment when the old me sort of dissolved. Faded to black. Blew away in the softest of breezes. The moment my protective casing hardened while my heart became more vulnerable, splitting open like an over-ripe summer peach.
I remember the moment I started seeing the world through a new prism. A ‘well no-one died, no-one is dying’ prism.
It was the moment I sat alone in a hospital room in 2010 and stared into the face of my stillborn daughter.
That’s when something in me shifted – like a Rubik’s cube. From that moment the past would forever be categorised as either the time Before Georgie Died or the time After Georgie Died.
The time when I worried about book reviews and family spats and being late for meetings and parking tickets and how other people saw me and thought of me and what they said about me.
And the time when I realised that none of that shit matters. When my skin became Teflon. When I lived my life not just knowing but living and breathing ‘the main thing’: living your life with the people you love.
Needless to say when I read The Age columnist Wendy Squires’ column on the weekend about the death of her mother and the profound impact it had on her — I got it. I had one of those reading experiences where my spirit just vibrated ‘Yes Yes’ to each beautifully crafted line. Because it was a column that reached out and grabbed the hand of those of us in the club. Those who have experienced the slamming-on-the-brakes defining moment of losing someone close to us whom we love. It was a column about how that loss irrevocably changes you and how you see yourself, what you do and the people around you.
Top Comments
So much power in this article, Bec. To actually feel the moment of the shift is quite an insightful skill. It took me two years to recognise the shift in my perception of life, to lose the innocence of youth and to feel the full weight the suit of armor I had grown. I thought I had already experienced a seismic shift, when my husband and I nearly died at sea. But the moment of truth came 2 years later, when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour- I was 6 months pregnant with a 1 year-old. Life was never the same again, and I can now see that the quality of this experience has given me the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, love and hypocracy, light and dark. You really reached in deep with this piece, Bec. Thank you. Caylie J
In 2010 i also came upon the hard reality that a baby was not something you always got to take home with you at the end of a pregnancy. It did more then shatter my innocence of motherhood, it shattered a part of me i always thought i would keep in one piece. I could never again look at another parent and be happy that they had this tiny person in there arms, all i could feel was jealousy that they had the opportunity to have what was taken from me. I had not been given any warning as to the condition that caused my daughters death during my labor and have since learned that it is something that only happens in about 1% of mothers but this does nothing to help my empty arms or broken heart. I am lucky to say that i had an extremely supportive Husband and family and i already had an 8 year old boy, so i was able to walk away without the fear that i would never be able to be a mother to a live person. just under a year later i was lucky enough to give birth to my second beautiful son and am currently six weeks from giving birth to another daughter with the hopes that this one will have the chance to have her father walk her down the isle, the chance to fall in love and the chance to grow, love and have the amazing gift that children are herself one day.