We've been moving some stuff around in the apartment, changing our bedroom, and other such things.
We're trying to create more floor space, so that when we eventually put the apartment on the market, it will look "spacious". Which is kind of funny given that our apartment is small!
Anyway. As a result of our reorganisation, we've got lots of stuff left over! Stuff which we really don't need. So I've been selling it online or giving it away.
:::
One of the things we sold last week was a cupboard from I.KEA. We had bought the cupboard just before Kees was born, so that I would be able to put all his clothes and things in it.
Given that Kees died when he was 7 weeks old, we didn't use it for him for long.
Then I stored handbags in it for a while.
But last week we decided we needed the floor-space more, so we sold it.
:::
A very nice lady came to collect it with her husband. Her husband and Craig were busy taking it down our (three flights of) stairs, so the lady and I chatted a few minutes.
We were standing in our hallway, watching the blokes take the cupboard down the stairs.
As we stood there, she saw my photo gallery. I have five A4-size photos of each of Kees and Jet on the wall in our hallway (Freyja's photo is in our bedroom). She asked if I had children. I told her we had three children but that our children were dead.
During this conversation we are walking down the stairs, following our husbands.
The whole conversation probably took about 2-3 minutes.
Just as we were coming to the bottom of the stairs, she said to me " ... but, life goes on". And that was the end of our conversation. They went outside, and we closed the door to go back up to our apartment.
:::
I've been thinking a lot about those words, "life goes on". I disagree with the statement and the conclusion.
Because for most people it is both. It is a statement of fact, ie. life does go on, unless we die. But it is a conclusion as well, because no matter what happens, unless I die, life goes on. People say it like somehow it's meant to console me. That I should take comfort that even though my three children are dead, my life will go on.
But in actual fact, my life stopped. My life stopped on 24 July 2006, in the early afternoon, when I was told that my daughter's heart had stopped beating. That the precious child inside my womb was dead. My life stopped.
I stopped being that happy newly-wed woman. My career in Melbourne at a big law firm stopped. My hopes for the future disintegrated.
My life came to a screeching halt, and proceed to smash into a thousand pieces over the next few days when I gave birth to my dead daughter and when Craig and I buried her.
:::
Craig and I worked hard to make some sense of our lives after Freyja's death. We tried to put things back together again. But it didn't work.
We took time to travel together, to spend time together, to mourn the loss of our daughter and our hopes for her and our lives together as a family. We even moved from Australia to the Netherlands. I got a new job. We moved into my apartment in Amsterdam.
Then when we brought Kees home from the hospital, eighteen months after we lost Freyja, we thought finally our life can go on. But it didn't last.
Again our lives stopped, on 21 March 2008, when Kees died in our arms for reasons unknown. Again our hopes were shattered.
By this time both Craig and I were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, which, together with our complicated grief, meant that our lives were virtually at a stand-still.
Again we took time to travel together, to grieve together. To try and understand why such a terrible thing could happen again, to us and our beautiful son.
And of course, eighteen months later, on 1 September 2009, we held our son Jet, dead in our arms. Another one.
Three dead children.
:::
Our lives stopped. Again and again. Our dreams died with our children. Our hopes shattered. Our lives lay in ruins around us, and there was not much we could do.
But people still say "life goes on", and all I can do is stare at them. What can they be thinking to make such an inane comment?
My life stopped. Three times my life stopped. And each time, just when I thought it would go on, it stopped again.
:::
The life I lead now bears no resemblance whatsoever to the life I lived before my children died. There is no resemblance at all.
I don't have a job. I have no career.
I have no hopes or dreams.
I live in the moment, I have no plans for the future.
I have no joy. I am always sad.
My thoughts are incoherent. I am unable to concentrate for long.
Our friends are long gone.
I have very little sympathy for others.
I have no patience or tolerance.
If I got a photo of me then, in the Before, and put it next to me here, in the After, I doubt anyone would even recognise that I was the same person.
My life did not go on. It stopped, again and again.
Before. After. Two completely different lives.
