Seven: Joy

Shoppers wrapped in heavy coats and scarves are carrying bags. An older lady pulls her brightly decorated shopping cart behind her.

Men in hats with hands in pockets shuffle up the street, eyes darting to shop windows in search of inspiration.

Smiling friends greet each other in coffee shops for pre-holiday catch-ups.

Parents push prams along the busy street. Toddlers toddle and older children bustle around excitedly.

Lights twinkle in every window. Speakers play tinny festive tunes over the heads of those pounding the pavements.

The annual calendar shop is doing a brisk trade. No Leeds effort this year though.

There is less than a fortnight until Santa comes and we're in that week every year where Christmas past raps our door once again.

An expected guest now after seven years, its appearance can still juxtapose with the season’s giddy anticipation.

Fionnuala – born sleeping in December 2016 – would have been seven this year.

There’s no tangible moment when the past suddenly touches your shoulder; no wistful looking back cradling a pint or staring into the fire.

It creeps in during happy moments; playing with the girls, celebrating Muireann’s birthday, watching Meidhbhín mastering yet another way to jump headlong off the sofa.

And it’s fleeting; a momentary silence, a memory pang. The sound of the doctor’s voice. The look on the sonographer’s face. The shake of my voice seeking one final ultrasound.

Flashes of memory from those purgatorial days between finding out her heart had stopped beating and Colleen giving birth to her.

Wrapping her heartbreakingly peaceful frame in our arms in those precious moments afterwards. The rattle of the trolley as we reluctantly let go.

Silent mornings. Mumbled conversations. Funeral arrangements.

Those final moments in the funeral directors, saying goodbye. Lifting her tiny white coffin from the hearse to the chapel.

Christmas Eve spent in numb disbelief, having buried our daughter the previous day.

New Year's Eve passing in a blur of tears and the turn of a new page into a year that would end with the birth of our second daughter.

Fionnuala's age is beginning to creep up on that of the children I was teaching at the time she was born.

Many of them are now in their mid to late teens, working around the village. At a recent Christmas fair some were working stalls, others milling around the hall.

I often wonder if they remember that run-up to Christmas 2016. If they noticed anything different as I grappled with what was happening.

Their kindness towards each other lifted me when it was badly needed. Muireann and Meidhbhín’s does the same now.

Moments of recognition come fleetingly to them also. Muireann pointing to the starlit sky and asking which one is Fionnuala's. Including her in her copious pictures.

Meidhbhín turning her room upside down looking for her ‘Fionnuala teddy’. Muireann losing hers at one point and refusing to give up the search, eventually finding her weeks later.

“Fionnuala is really good at hide and seek,” she said afterwards.

Their emotions are rooted in joy, but we harbour feelings of bereavement, sadness, even guilt from Fionnuala’s stillbirth.

Those feelings will never go away, but they can be managed. They must be.

This is just one way I do it. Speak about her. Write about her. Tell her siblings she existed, that she lived, however momentarily.

Another is to focus on the joy she brought and continues to bring. The months she lived, the uninhibited excitement with which we greeted the news.

The spectre of this week seven years ago has become a traditional festive visitor, but it no longer outstays its welcome.

Instead it leaves a gift and allows us to get on with things; to remember in our own way our firstborn child amid the joy of Christmas anticipation.

Happy Birthday Fionnuala 🌈

15.12.16