You don't know you're a Cemetery Person until you become one.
*Trigger warning: Twin loss, surviving twin and ICU story. Personal images were not included in this blog post
One day you're not and the next you are. Maybe some people are born into cemetery families. Yes, that makes sense, my children are Cemetery People too by extension.
This morning Rohan complained loudly as we turned into the cemetery. 'Not here again!' I could hear his annoyed cry intoning. I'm quite sure he'd been hoping for a piece of cake and milk from the coffee shop, rather than being lead in the pram to the boring graveside of his brother. Another day watching me remove branches and replace wilting flowers.
In Oct 2020 I gave birth to identical twin boys. born 1.9kg and 1.91kg I struggled to tell them apart in the first weeks. It was hard. NICU, breastfeeding them via Nasogastric (NG) tubes, isolation amidst a lock-down and still, they were the best moments of my life. The moments where I was exhausted, emotionally numb, waking and sleeping to the rhythm of my children's' breaths and complaining about the challenges of motherhood that I had unwittingly put myself through. The happiest moments of my life in truth. Pity that I did not savour them more, but also they would not have been so perfect if I had known what was coming a few short months later.
It was January 2021 when we had an echocardiography (heart ultrasound) for what, I thought, was an innocuous heart murmur found in both boys. That week they took Elias in for more tests and I brought Rohan along clutched to my chest as an emotional crutch for the mounting fear inside me. It was a week of nightmares; from the sombre look of senior doctors walking into the room alone, hushing the flustered juniors outside the doors; to the kindly nurses with knowing eyes speaking softly and giving us extra attentions. It began as a 2 day admission for 'more tests' and ended with us going home 7 days later with only one baby and an empty car seat.
I remember snippets of distress. The sensation of free-falling, holding onto the edge of the bed when they told us he needed an operation. Handing him over to the anaesthetist, her placing a mask over his crying face and squirming in protest. Seeing him post-op, intubated with countless tubes exposing his tiny chest. The sounds of urgent knocking at our bedroom door 'They need you now!'. The doctor, waiting patiently to intercept me outside the unit doors; a gesture that I understood immediately as I've done it myself as a doctor countless times when I'm waiting to break bad news... the worst news...and my own echoing screams down the ICU corridor of 'No, No don't tell me!' , ripping my mask off and throwing it on the ground, gasping for air.
Lastly, seeing him on life support and knowing that he was gone, yet feeling like I failed him by agreeing to switch off the machines that kept his heart pumping. I was so empty there was no goodbye in me at that moment. I was so desperate to get him into the ground to end the nightmare. I couldn't bear to see his body at the mortuary. The nightmare week was haunting me. Instead I watched them lower him into his grave with a dry sob with only my closest friends and family to watch my pain. And just like that it happened. I became a Cemetery Person.
The first few months after Elias was buried the weather was cold and the ground frozen. I would sit at home with a fire roaring in the grate, trying with every fibre of my being not to think of him alone, outside in the cold. I wished we had cremated him because then he could be there, in the house with me. I googled to see if I was alone in this feeling - I was not. I wished someone had told me this before; the fact that I still felt what he felt and knew he was so cold and alone in the ground. So I went every day and I apologised to him a million times. I was sorry for so many things. Most of all that I failed in keeping him alive. My humanity was upon me.
The realisation that you have no control over life, we just shroud ourselves in things we can control to give us comfort and the illusion of control. The truth is that the proportion of things we control are infinitely smaller than what we perceive them to be. Proven again over the following years where I have few memories of what passed yet made decisions on an hour by hour basis. The result was surprising, so much happened [Cafélias, a crowdfunding campaign, going back to work, an open heart surgery and EMDR therapy - highly recommend this btw] and so much was achieved - Cemetery Person me says that 10-year planning is overrated and a lot is done without knowing where you are going. It is collective decision making based on instinct that brings harmony. Whereas, overriding and pushing through with perceived control disturbs the universal balance and leads to disconnect from the self and others. Profound grief calls everything into question, including your own existence.
So what of the rest of the Cemetery People? Well we see each other at the cemetery and if not in person, then I see the freshly wiped graves and the fresh flowers lain down by their grieving hearts. I say hello to the people I have not met and wonder if we should hug because our babies lie next to each other? I hope that their baby angels have made friends with my baby angel. Angels do exist right? My daughter would be saddened if they didn't.
I see distant figures of husbands tending to their wives graves - green-fingered with spades and seeds and deck-chairs to pass the time. Sometimes I wave, sometimes a smile but sometimes my pain is too present to muster more than a sniff as we pass by the watering cans.
The gardeners who tend the multitude of commonwealth graves have shown me that we are a nation of Cemetery People. And then there're the grave diggers, maybe they are Cemetery People too but I'm not sure yet. They don't seem to carry the burden like we Cemetery People but maybe this is just not their cemetery.
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