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The thing about grief is no-one tells you how to mourn someone you never knew.
It’s been seven days. Stéphane’s had enough of caring for his sons, he says that it’s Sarah’s job to watch David and Nicholas, that they’ve been asking after her while she’s been sleeping the days away like a fucking glandu. Sarah just brushed that off, Stéphane has always had an abrasive reaction to grief. She’s trying not to let it get to her. Grief affects people in different ways, she knows this.
On day eight, Sarah gets up before Stéphane. She takes her first shower in over a week and she hates to admit she feels a tad better afterwards. She dresses and brushes her teeth and puts her hair up in a bun because Nicky’s in his climbing phase and she fears one misstep from him will cause her to snap. She swore she wouldn’t be that type of mother.
She stares at her reflection, and barely recognises herself. She can’t even take in her gaunt, haggard appearance without wanting to sob. Not even postpartum depression after David had hit her like this physically, and she wants nothing more than to curl back into bed and hide from everything until she’s ready to face the world again. But instead, she gives a sharp inhale to get rid of the tears in her eyes and folds up the towel to hang back on the radiator. Like clockwork, Nicky starts to cry out from his bedroom as soon as Sarah steps out of the bathroom. She pointedly ignores the locked door beside Nicky’s, and walks into her youngest son’s room with a watery smile. Upon seeing his mother over the edge of the cot as he clings to the bars, Nicky’s chocolate-coloured eyes light up and he gives her the biggest almost-toothless smile ever.
“Mama!” he squeals. “Mama, Mama, Mama!”
Sarah feels her heart start to crack as she watches him lift his hand in a grabby-hand manner, and she knows she has no choice but to reach down to pick him up. Immediately after being settled in his mother’s arms, Nicky settles his head in the crook of her neck like he always does and Sarah has to swallow her sobs, pressing a soft kiss to his head.
“My sweet boy,” she murmurs and gives him a gentle squeeze. “Should we go wake up Davey?”
“Davey!” Nicky yells, suddenly wide awake, and Sarah’s smile is less forced this time.
Maybe she can do this.
David eagerly takes Nicky from Sarah once he’s awake and dressed in his big-boy-school uniform, being very proud to be looking after his little brother while Mummy gets their milks ready. Sarah watches as David sets Nicky on the floor of their living room and starts to talk to him about rugby, David’s newest obsession. Nicky’s watching him intently with those big brown eyes and Sarah’s heart grows incredibly warm but then breaks into a thousand pieces when she sees the unopened cardboard box in the corner of the room. She blinks and she sees three littles in the living room instead of just two. She turns around to stifle her sobs. But, as she reaches out to open the fridge door, she’s greeted with a square photo of black and white, the last time they went to the clinic. Diane went with her then because Stéphane couldn’t leave work. The doctor had been slightly worried, but it wasn’t anything that warranted alarm bells at the time. Sarah wonders if things would be different had there been intervention then.
She can’t cry, not in front of her boys. Not when Stéphane could step into the room at any moment.
So she exhales, blinking her tears away, and plucks the photo from its magnet. She stares at it for one, two, three, four, five seconds before pocketing it in her hoodie pocket and opens the fridge door like she intended to. David’s still chattering to Nicky, who gives timely squeals in response, and everything feels normal for once.
Sarah hates it with everything inside her.
She asks Stéphane to take David to school, seeing as it’s on his way to work, and he grumbles in French in response, barely acknowledging her. She struggles not to take it personally, as she clips a happily babbling Nicky into his high chair. Stéphane barks at David, and David hurriedly gives both her and Nicky kisses before he scampers after his dad. The door slams shut, and the resulting silence is deafening.
Diane calls at ten like she has for the last eight days. Sarah’s cuddling with Nicky, whose attention is fully on Monsters Inc., and she can’t help but laugh at the way he scrambles off the sofa to stare at the TV in awe from the floor. Diane celebrates a little and Sarah feels awful. How can she be happy after what happened? It’s too soon, much too soon.
She and Diane talk for a bit. She begs off Diane’s offer to set her up with a therapist that specialises in this type of loss, and tells her she’s going to take Nicky out to the park so they both can have some fresh air. Diane offers to go shopping for her or to bring over lunch and dinner, but Sarah says no.
She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want anything like that at all. But she doesn’t know what she does want.
She manages to get off the phone with Diane a few minutes later. She swallows her tears as she stares at the TV blankly, not taking in the scenes that make her Nicky shriek with giggles. She should really pay attention, what if Nicky hurts himself because of her negligence and she loses him too?
“Mama.”
The babble, mixed with the sudden pressure on her left leg, breaks her out of her stupor and she looks down to see Nicky staring up at her with his deep brown eyes, his chubby arms wrapped around her leg in a tight hug. His little blonde eyebrows are furrowed like he knows there’s something wrong with his mama.
“Mama sad?”
She tries a smile to reassure him, to play the fun mama she usually is with him, but, apparently, that’s not good enough for him. With a frown, he disentangles himself from his mother’s leg and clumsily climbs onto the sofa to throw himself at her in one of his famous hugs.
Sarah buries her nose in Nicky’s blonde hair to ground herself, reminding herself that, though the pain of never hearing her baby girl’s wail after hours of labour will never leave her, she’ll be okay because she still has her baby boys, her David and Nicky. Her darling David, who always gives her a kiss on the cheek in the morning and evening no matter what, and her baby Nicky, who clings to her like a slobbery koala. It’s the life she loves to live and she’ll have to adjust with the pain but that’s part of it, isn’t it?
So, when Nicky leans back from his hug and places a slobbery kiss onto her lips, her smile isn’t forced at all.