A bungalow of love and laughter

 The other day I wrote about the death of my brother and sister and how it might be linked to a feeling of sadness that I get on my birthday. After I had written it I feared that it sounded too sad; too ‘poor me’. 

Baby loss awareness week is really important. Talking about the fact that babies die is important. Not just this week but all the time.I love the fact that we have stopped calling it ‘stillborn’ and are also talking about miscarriage. 

It’s important that people can talk about their grief without fear of blame. There is a long history of blaming women that has lead to a feeling of shame. Our society is also really reluctant to talk of grief. It’s almost as though just talking about it will cause the sadness to swallow you whole.

It doesn’t.

Talk about it. It’s fine.

Writing about my feeling of sadness and thinking about what my parents had to go through has also made me appreciate the love and laughter that was around me at that time.

My early memories from before my sister was born, marked out by the fact that we lived in a different house are not consumed by grief and sadness. Instead, I lived in a bungalow filled with love and laughter.

We listened to the radio and danced and sang. Lily the Pink: while my dad, in a pink jumper ran round, pretending to catch me underneath it to my squeals  of delight as he sang, ‘Oompah oompah, stick it up your jumpah.’

Mum and I ate Heinz tomato soup and watched Mary Mungo and Midge at lunchtime and then tried to draw the testcard. The smell of my watercolour paints mixing with the tiny pots of enamel paint mum was using to paint toy soldiers. When they were dry we took them to the dolls house that Dad had made (with real working lights) and marched them around before stuffing them in envelopes to earn a few pence extra for treats.

There were Thursday presents; a cream cake in a box, a pack of colouring pencils, a comic: Endless hours with a xylophone and later a recorder: Enormous amounts of patience for clipping the toenails of a child with the most ticklish feel on the planet, which ended in proper tickles and zuberding (if you don’t know, zuberding is where you blow a raspberry on the naked tummy of a wriggling child): Laughing at the neighbours grumpy poodle who did white poos: Learning to ride a bike with Mum laughing as Dad had to run behind because I wouldn’t let him let go: Our dog Tess who knew it was walk time when the six o clock news came on.

The more I think, the more I realise that the list is endless.

That  little bungalow was full of love, life and laughter. The loss of the babies was never a secret and something that my parents never ‘got over’ but it didn’t stop them having the happiest of lives.