Poem for My Daughter on What Would Have Been Her Fourteenth Birthday

Little Song

Photo by Dea Andreea on Unsplash

Fourteen years is a long time. But it is also yesterday.

We lost our daughter fourteen years ago on a spring day full of blue sky. She died during an emergency crash delivery. She was an IVF baby, very much loved, very much wanted. Later, an investigation was carried out and clinical negligence was flagged around our care. Later still, after five rounds of IVF and two miscarriages, we called it a day and decided to embrace childlessness. It’s been a journey.

I find it difficult to imagine what she’d be like today. She had lots of red hair and looked like my husband, so I have a vague idea of what she might have looked like now, but mostly she is a blank in my mind. The further away we get, the harder it is to imagine. I find that I cling to the facts of her existence, as if someone might try and take those from me.

Each year on her birthday, which is also the anniversary of her death, I make sure to remember her in a way that is more than just the daily thoughts about her that I have. Writing her birthday poem, exploring the passage of time, exploring grief as an instinctive reaction to death is one way that I do that.

The experience of this loss has changed me as a person, has gifted me a different way of looking at the world.

Today I’ll mow the lawn, and head to her grave to lay flowers, then into town, lunch, perhaps a film. I shall be doing ordinary things, small joys. It took a long time to be able to take joy in small things again. Today we’ll be celebrating her existence, the joy she brought us.

Little Song

First year: words left, like Gods returning to the underworld.
In the second, I lived as if I we both were dead.
The words returned around year three, but hurt
to speak, so in the fourth I petrified myself instead:
rolled boulder, dumb and heavy-still, until the sixth year
broke the spell. And in year seven
things began to clear.
Though never once did I believe in heaven,
I listened at your grave, found your wild peace, let go of pain.
By ten you came back like the swifts in summer. I sang your song.
You’re still my favourite thing to hum. The song’s refrain
is every April, every year, and though the song is long
I wouldn’t have it shorter. You are still the first sign of spring.
Little Song, the cherry blossoms drift, the blackbirds sing.