‘The trivial round, the common task
Should furnish all we ought to ask.’
With the radio on to drown out all painful thought, ‘the trivial round’ was the narrow track of sanity.
Once when I was out shopping I saw the girl who had taken the census figures earlier in the year. Brightly she approached me and I realised with a kind of dread that she did not know about Amanda. Cheerfully, she asked me, ‘What did you have—a boy or a girl?’
Slowly and deliberately I replied, ‘I had a little girl, but she died a few weeks ago.’
Shocked, she turned away, and I, equally shaken, knelt and stared at the onions and carrots in a box on the floor, desperately trying to hold back the tears and recover my composure.
Another time, I saw a local girl whose baby daughter had been born within a day or two of Amanda’s birth. In other circumstances, we would have exchanged pleasantries about our two babies. As it was, I could not bear to speak to her and turned sharply away. Once I saw her baby’s pram outside a shop and peeped in to test my emotions. But the baby was nothing like Amanda and I felt no impulse to seize or steal her.
The task of telling casual acquaintances who might accidentally bump into me was so painful that I tried now to inform those friends who did not already know. My old boss, whom I contacted from time to time, and Michael’s ex-secretary were amongst these. The latter had sent us a card, telling of the birth of her own second child—a daughter—on the very day on which Amanda was buried, and I had put off contacting her.
I also wrote to the maternity home. How awful it would have been to have arrived there, pregnant again, and then have to tell the news about Amanda. I had the terrible feeling that Sister would want to say, ‘You fool; we entrusted you with that baby; I always knew you were incompetent,’ and I waited impatiently for her reply. But when it came, it was kind, sympathetic and reassuring. Such was the weight of guilt upon me that I needed constant reassurance from every source.
But paradoxically, when people told me of other similar cases of sudden death, my feelings of guilt may have abated a little, but their place was taken by fear; fear for my future babies and even fear for those around me.
Sometimes in the night, terror would overwhelm me, as it had that night in Majorca, and I would listen panic-stricken at Robert’s bedside for the sound of breathing; and even as I lay next to Michael in bed, that same panic would seize me. There was no logic in it; I had lost a tiny, vulnerable baby—but at those moments, I would fear for the lives of my well-built husband and perfectly normal son. I had believed we were immune to tragedy and now I felt we had lost that immunity totally.
From time to time, my mind would also turn to the feelings of concern I had had before Amanda’s death.
Perhaps premonition is too strong a word, yet I had felt a foreboding, and on the passing of her cold, a premature elation as if an expected crisis had passed.
I recalled a day when, whilst sorting through some linen, I had come upon some newly purchased pink sheets. My mother-in-law had seamed up my old white ones as spares for Robert’s bed.
‘And when these are worn out,’ I had thought, ‘I shall be able to use them for Amanda.’ She would be out of a cot by then. Then I had stopped myself angrily for thinking so many years ahead. It seemed wrong somehow, tempting Providence.
A few weeks before that, I had had to disagree with Michael when I was sending out greetings cards for the Jewish New Year.
‘I don’t know why you don’t get several dozen printed,’ he had said, ‘then you wouldn’t have to worry about them every year.’
The thought had flickered through my mind that we could not know the future. A year before we had been three and now we were four, and I had had to add ‘…and Amanda,’ to the few cards printed with our names left over from last year. Who knew what changes there would be by next September?
Above all, those strangely, but perhaps accidentally significant words of the day before and the very day of Amanda’s death would come into mind.
‘I’m glad I don’t have to have another baby tomorrow.’
‘You’ll give her a “nehora”.’
‘She won’t wake up!’
Despite the many negative emotions, I went on living; life was grim; life was dismal, but time was passing.
With the return to some semblance of normal life came the sudden realisation that Amanda’s death could not be put behind me and forgotten. At the time of her death I had taken no real interest in the death certificate, except that it appeared to exonerate me from blame. Now, four weeks later, it became important to know about this mysterious ailment that had robbed me of my child. I recalled seeing an article in a small newspaper devoted to mothercraft and advertising baby products. The article itself was about suffocation, but it was followed up by two or more indignant letters from mothers whose babies had died, not from suffocation, but from ‘Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.’ These mothers each pointed out that that group of babies that died suddenly and inexplicably in the night had neither been suffocated nor asphyxiated, but had died of natural causes. A fairly short search through some old newspapers piled up in the kitchen fortunately revealed the one I required. I selected one of the mothers and wrote asking for the name of the organisation to which she belonged—The British Guild for Sudden Infant Death Study. Her reply, fairly brief, but sympathetic, came in early November, telling of her own loss, a year before, and the expected birth of another child in March of the following year. I was heartened by her decision to have another baby. She also enclosed a booklet devoted to the subject of S.I.D.S. or ‘cot death’ together with a form for membership of her organisation.
I was wary of the membership form, containing as it did, space for a donation—I was aware of my vulnerability, and I had no wish to fall prey to some rogue seeking to rob distraught women of large sums of money. But the booklet was so full of reassuring facts; setting out precisely the sort of emotions of guilt and fear that I was experiencing and answering the questions I would have asked, if anyone had been available to be asked. The booklet also denied firmly the possibility that S.I.D.S. victims had died from inhalation of vomit, which aspect of our own postmortem verdict had disturbed me. The good sense of the booklet won me over and, albeit still hesitantly, I completed the form and enclosed a fairly small donation, so that if there was an unscrupulous rogue waiting at the other end, he would realise that there was little point in wasting his time with me.
My thirtieth birthday occurred in November, and I had never felt so old. A few short weeks ago, I had been a young woman with a new baby. Now without my baby, I felt aged.
My feelings were now reflected in my appearance too. I had no appetite, and with my suntan now faded, my face was sallow. My eyes seemed to become sore more often than usual, so that on a few occasions I had to put aside my contact lenses and wear my glasses.
Once, when Michael had accidentally taken away the car keys, I walked to the village in the rain with Robert, and as the rain dripped from my hair and my eyes watered painfully, I did indeed look the part of the bereaved. In a shop where I was an occasional visitor, I confided in the assistant who asked me the dreaded question, ‘How’s your baby?’
‘You have another one, dear,’ she recommended when she heard. But I needed no such advice.
‘Oh I will—I want to,’ I replied. The gap was widening; there was no chance now of any future baby being a companion to four-year-old Robert. Too many years had passed, and I was bitter at the months that had been invested in pregnancy, and all for no purpose—all wasted. Except that the miscarriages had not been entirely wasted, for they had prepared me a little, and now I was able to recognise the same emotions that I had felt then. The bitterness, the bereavement, the anger, the guilt—all there as they had been before, only more so.
To think I imagined I suffered then
, I thought wryly. ‘That was just an apprenticeship!’
On the same sad autumn day, the vicar’s wife drove Robert and me home, both heavily clad in boots and coats. When I had last seen her, I had been ruddy faced, and flushed with summer heat at the end of pregnancy. I asked her if she had heard, knowing already by the expression on her face that she had.
‘Yes, I was sorry to hear of your little tragedy,’ she said as we settled into the car. Then she amended her words, but not before I had felt a surge of indignation at the word ‘little’. It was not little to me—it was the most enormous and major event of my life—the biggest catastrophe I had had to face. I felt my loss was as great as if it had been brother, sister, parent, husband or wife. In fact, I couldn’t help thinking it was greater—at least they must have lived some part of their lives, whilst Amanda had been cheated of all her life.
As we drove round the circular path, the vicar’s wife commented on the garden, all neat and tidy—all the unrestrained summer growth of perennials severely clipped back and the blackened ugly dahlias cut down. The summer was passed; one must look forward to the bleak winter, with all the appearance of being under control. Once again, the garden mirrored my emotions.
Guiseppe had only just come to put the garden in order. First he had telephoned to find out where we had been, and a few days later, he had appeared one evening, not in old trousers and high waders, as we were accustomed to seeing him, but dressed in a suit, with his wife and two sons, similarly smartly dressed. They presented me with a bouquet of white flowers, with a few simple words of sympathy attached. I was touched by this gesture, so similar in a way to the behaviour of members of my own religion, who traditionally come to the house of the mourner in the week after death to comfort them. However, even we have rejected the trappings of mourning to a certain extent; and at that moment, I wished that, instead of wearing jeans and sweater, I was dressed in black, in the fashion of the Italian or French peasants to show that I mourned my child.
One morning, I awoke hot and uncomfortable and found myself covered in fine spots. A wave of panic swept over me; there had been no period since Amanda’s death and I had harboured a small foolish hope that I might be pregnant again; now I had visions of having German measles in early pregnancy; I must risk a deformed baby, or be forced to destroy yet another child from my womb.
I rang the doctor and, to my surprise, he said he would call round and see me; but when he came, he paid very little attention to the spots, (informing me briefly that it was urticaria [nettle rash]), or indeed to the potential pregnancy. Instead he talked at length about Amanda’s death, about the temptation to put a cause of death on the death certificate, even when the cause is not really obvious to the pathologist. Like the literature I had already received, he pooh-poohed the possibility of ‘inhalation of vomit’. Once the child was dead, the no longer functioning body became a receptacle, and fluid was likely to move from the stomach to the lungs. He assured me that he would still recommend laying a child on its stomach to sleep, if it was comfortable that way. (Note: The medical profession is no longer recommending this as a general rule.)
I was glad of the opportunity to ask questions and be reassured about so many worrying things. The nettle rash faded into insignificance, and yet I realised that, in some way, my mind had signalled to my body that I needed help, and my body had reacted in a physical way to summon that help.
A week or so later, I received a reply from the British Guild for Sudden Infant Death Study. The Secretary, a Dr. Knight, who had an impressive string of letters after his name, including something to do with pathology, had written briefly, thanking me for my donation, enclosing some more literature from his own and another larger fund-raising organisation, The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, and suggesting that I mention the existence of these organisations to those who might also be in need of support. His second line ran:
‘I have no other details apart from the fact that you unfortunately have suffered from the tragic “cot death” syndrome in your own family.’
I needed no second invitation to pour out details, and I described the death and all the other relevant information I could think of—the times and dates of events, the weather of that period, Amanda’s diet, her premature weight; Robert’s cold, and so on, and within days, a reply came, full of reassurance, as long and detailed as my own.
I felt as if I had been released from a glass prison. Certainly, I had been reassured many times by those that loved me, but that was not enough; at last I was in touch with someone who understood, and who had dealt specifically with this problem many times before.
I was also struck by a couple of unlinked sentences, which seemed to be saying something that was nothing to do with Amanda’s death.
Dr. Knight had started his letter by saying, ‘Thank you for your very detailed and clear letter….’ and later, he had stated: ‘We get so many letters like yours, though perhaps not so precise….’ Although I was not sure that it was very important that he had bothered to mention the actual quality of the writing of my letter twice, it stayed in the back of my mind, to be remembered later.
I read his letter and attached literature over and over again, hungry for every scrap of information. The fund-raising organisation, The Foundation had so many influential and reputable names backing it that all my worries on that score were put behind me. However, I was concerned that I was perhaps taking an obsessional interest in the disease (or syndrome, as it was described) that was responsible for my daughter’s death. I was a little apprehensive about showing the leaflets to my parents—I felt that their reaction would certainly be that I should put it all into the past, not dwell on it any longer. Yet my instinct told me that I could not do that. It was a wound that must be allowed to bleed freely, before being closed up. If all my emotions were bottled up inside me unexpressed, then surely they would fester. Of course, I did not think as logically as that; I merely followed my inclination, and my feelings were aired by conversation about Amanda with those good friends who would allow it, by interest in the whole problem of ‘cot death’ and by many tears.