Six: Echoes

“We’ve come to see the baby…”

Muireann is practising songs for Friday’s carol service in the back of the car. I’m trying navigate the ice-glazed back roads between Cloughmills and Dunloy.

Meidhbhín is joining in, clapping her hands, singing the only word she can really recognise – baby – in between fits of giggles.

Soon we’re all laughing.

Tomorrow Muireann will file into the chapel with the rest of her class and perform carefully prepared songs to the acclaim of beaming parents.

Six years ago, I sat as a teacher in the middle of the same chapel, guitar resting on my knee and 30 children in front of me ready to sing.

Just days earlier, our daughter Fionnuala had been stillborn in the Royal Victoria Hospital.

I’d missed the main night-time performance the week before as Colleen and I tried to come to terms with losing our first-born child.

We’d decided I’d just come in for that particular moment, to play along with the children singing ‘Away in a Manger’, rather than co-ordinate the dramatisation that went along with it.

Behind me were the P1s, who will be in the chapel tomorrow as P7s. Muireann will sit where they sat that day.

It isn’t lost on us that had Fionnuala not been stillborn that December, Muireann might never even have been born.

Yet here she is, in the back of the car, singing away and trying to teach her baby sister all the lyrics. Getting a selection box from Santa in school.

Sitting in the same assembly hall I was in and out of constantly when Colleen was pregnant with Fionnuala.

Born exactly a week before Fionnuala’s first anniversary, Muireann turned five last week.

At night both her and Meidhbhín keep their ‘Fionnuala teddy’ cuddled in tightly.

Muireann speaks about her often, especially on the way past the chapel in Rasharkin where her grave is. Waves to her. Fionnuala is very much her big sister and a part of her life.

People fixate on milestones. First word. First steps. Cutting teeth. Potty training. Writing their name. Nursery. School.

We see Fionnuala in every milestone Muireann and Meidhbhín hit, but echoes of those few weeks in December 2016 also reverberate everywhere.

Echoes are supposed to fade, dissipate into the air until their memory is barely tangible, but our first-born daughter’s have found sounding boards everywhere.

Our Meidhbhín is a very different child to Muireann. She takes great pleasure in winding up her big sister and pushing the boundaries as far as they will go.

A lot of people tell us it’s second-child syndrome. It’s not. Meidhbhín is not our second child; she’s our third.

Those echoes remain full-voiced for us. They reverberate off every available surface, never ceasing, never fading. They never will.

For others around us maybe, the volume has dipped. The sound doesn’t quite bounce off the walls with the same veracity.

It’s a slip of the tongue, an absent-minded, harmless cliché. Not everyone hears an echo in the same way.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to leave Muireann to school quite often since she started. I don’t leave her the whole way to the door.

After I’ve let go of her hand, waved her goodbye and turned away again to walk back to the car, there is a feeling that I recognise.

It’s the same pang I get when I turn away after visiting Fionnuala’s grave.

It’s not guilt. It’s not joy of course, but it’s not sadness either. Nor is it a feeling of abandonment. It’s love.

One of the days I got back in the car and just sat for a while. This time of year sometimes needs that moment or two.

Glancing across the school car park I could see the spot I sat in six years ago, gathering my thoughts before heading to make Fionnuala’s funeral arrangements.

These echoes are all around us. Parents of stillborn children hear them loud and clear and unfiltered by time’s passage.

Say their names. Keep their echoes resounding.

Fionnuala Tunney - 15/12/16 🌈