Mother’s Day in a Dublin Graveyard
by Eamonn Furey
Primo Levi proposed that society may be divided into those who have been saved and those who have drowned. The saved, however, are not true witnesses. The witnesses, instead, are the lost and the vanquished, those whose names are spoken of with an air of quiet reverence. In their absence, we are required to testify in their stead, to ensure that their legacies survive.
Some years ago, I found myself standing in an alleyway waiting for a wooden gate to open. Beside me, a delivery driver stood impatiently with a cart stacked full of A4 paper and ball point pens. Eventually, a girl slid the entrance partially open then respectfully called my name. In the service yard behind her, I could see green and black refuge bins, standing beside yellow containers marked ‘For Incineration.’ I nodded an acknowledgment before she handed me a small basket made of wicker, then I set off along the side street to where my car was parked. In it, my wife sat silently, guarded on either side by our young sons. It was the last day of school, the day before their summer holidays would begin. The boys and I had planned a trip to the park, and possibly ice cream, before visiting their mother at the maternity hospital. Instead, they sat, subdued, as we transported their sister Aisling home, for the only night she would ever spend with her family.
The previous night, my wife had been a patient in a local maternity hospital. She was in a unit alongside other women who were approaching full term, but were at risk of premature labour. On the third evening of her hospital stay, she reported to a midwife that she might indeed be in labour. The midwife dismissed her concerns. A few minutes later, her mother raised these concerns again, but she too was dismissed. When my wife pressed the emergency bell shortly thereafter, she was rushed to the delivery suite. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity to deliver our daughter safely was missed. Every day of her admission my wife was informed that she was in the right place. Unfortunately, when it mattered, a person of ineptitude was also there.
We never discovered why the person in charge of our child’s care chose not to act that evening. Maybe she was tired at the end of her long shift, or she was looking forward to a night out or maybe planning to start her own family. We, too, had plans, none of which included organising a funeral service.
Grief is an unwanted gift, but a gift that, when received, is hard to relinquish. Following our daughter’s death, our hurt refused to subside. In the first month after our loss, my wife relived the trauma of her delivery, night after night. On occasion, she would sleepwalk, searching for her lost child. She continuously checked on our sons, in fear that they too would succumb to premature death. At summers end, when the schools reopened, she stood alone, away from the expectant mothers she had befriended the previous term. They were now pushing their newborns in prams as they waited to collect their older children from class. They seemed afraid to acknowledge her.
There is a sense of isolation which accompanies grief. It results in further hurt and anguish. Friends and family, who regularly would have visited, stayed away. In social gatherings, we were avoided; it was as if our pain was contagious.
In the months that follow an unexpected death, life around you carries on as normal, but for you it feels like the world has stopped spinning. The feeling of grief following the death of our daughter was deepened by the manner in which she was lost. I like to believe that the midwife who was on duty that night made an error of judgement, but maybe she was just careless, either way she will never know the extent of the pain that she has caused.
This pain was compounded by hospital processes which dictated that our child was to be collected from the service entrance. The same gate by which deliveries were made and through which refuse was disposed. Although senior hospital clinicians were informed of the error that lead to our daughter’s demise, they failed to investigate the events of that evening, until a legal process forced them to. Instead of being permitted to grieve, we had to construct a court case. That case would culminate in a high court apology and the enforcement of changes to hospital policies, so that the possibility of this tragedy being visited upon anyone else is now minimised. As a result of Aisling’s death, no other dead babies will be removed via the hospital’s service entrance again.
Pursuing a legal action against an institution is exhausting and places unquantifiable strain on individuals who have already been let down by that institution. Our legal action would never have been initiated if the maternity hospital had decided to simply admit to the shortcomings in my wife’s care. They resisted the truth being revealed for five years. In doing so, they consciously chose to cause our family more pain. It was all so unnecessary.
On Mother’s Day, our ten-year-old daughter helped us to tend to her sister’s grave. She often laments that she has no ‘big’ sister to play with. Despite having older brothers, she feels like she is alone. As we laid fresh flowers and watered the earth, she asked me if I had ever wished that Aisling was still alive. Caught by surprise, I paused for a moment as a twinge of dormant grief resurfaced. My eyes then met those of my surviving daughter, and I considered the joy that she has brought into our lives. I have no answer to give her, but am acutely aware that she is but one part of Aisling’s legacy, a legacy that outshines the futility her death. Instead, I just smiled silently, waiting for the conversation, to meander on.
BIO: Eamonn Furey is a short story writer who resides in Dublin city Ireland. He has previously been published in All your stories magazine in the UK and online in Flash Fiction magazine under the pen name Joseph Gatz.