Living with Leo

Living With Leo is the author’s first work.

Dear Leo

I hardly know where to start. I’ve made this decision to write to you every month, to talk to you through letters, to communicate my thoughts to you and now that I’m sitting here pressing keys on a computer keyboard I just don’t know if I can do it. It’s February the 27th, the date of what would have been your one-month birthday, a day when I would have been playing with you, singing to you, changing you, washing you and rocking you gently with my feet as you slept on that baby-bouncer contraption we bought you in John Lewis a few weeks before you were born. How can I switch from those thoughts and plans to this? To sitting in front of a screen, trying to picture your beautiful little face, trying to recall your smell, trying to feel again the warmth of your perfect little body. I miss you so much and because I love you so much I’m going to do this, I’m going to make it, I’m going to think of you and be inspired.

As for the scan itself, what apprehension you feel as the machine is switched on! What concern as the seconds pass and nothing appears to be happening! What joy as a shape finally becomes visible! And what sheer amazement as your baby’s heart, only twelve weeks old, is seen to be beating, the most wonderful result of your own heart having been lost to somebody so special. As for the grainy, sub-Polaroid standard, black-and-white photos that we were given after that first scan, whatever they may have lacked in clarity, they more than made up for in meaning and impact. To this day, I treasure them in the way that any parent treasures a photo of their child on his or her first birthday. To this day, I can still see the look of sheer happiness on my wife’s face as that small, unimpressive monitor revealed the shape and outline of her child for the first time. To this day l vividly remember how I started to cry as we made our way down the hospital corridor afterwards. Yes, cry, and for about the first time in ten years (but for the first of many times since) though I say so with no hint of male shame, no suggestion of retrospective embarrassment. In fact, if any man thinks that in crying, be it over the joy of a pregnancy scan or over the shattering sadness of the loss of a baby, he somehow becomes less of a man, he is quite simply wrong. I can think of nothing more humane, more honourable or more courageous than allowing others as well as yourself to know that you have been moved by an experience which was founded upon love and hope, upon dreams and plans.

If I am absolutely honest with you, Leo, and you can take it for granted that I always will be, I would have to admit that I still feel a tremendous amount of pain due to your leaving us the way you did. I know you know this. However, you mustn’t for one moment feel upset or even that you are to blame in any way for I am steadily coming to accept that you came to mummy and I to bring joy to our hearts and to change us, as people, for a lifetime. I accept, too, that your own lifetime was not without value in spite of its brevity. Nor was your contribution to so many other lives insignificant, simply because of the shortness of your visit. I think it was one of the many poems that we were sent following your passing which best sums it up: "I’ll lend you, for a while, a child of mine, God said. For you to cherish while he lives and mourn for when he’s dead. It may be months, or even years, an hour or two... He’ll bring his love to gladden you."

Okay, so I know what you’re probably thinking right now: "If you’re so gladdened by the love that I bring you, how come you almost always weep when you come to visit my resting place?! Why all the tears, Daddy? Why the silences?" Well, that one is not so easy to answer, son. All I can offer by way of an explanation is to tell you that I cry because I miss you and I miss you because I met you and yet never got to do with you all the things I’d planned and dreamt of. It’s almost selfish, isn’t it? Weeping for the disappointment that I feel, for the emptiness in me that I seem totally unable to fill. But perhaps it won’t always be that way. Maybe, as the months and the years go by, I’ll be able to celebrate you more and to cry less. To reflect less upon what you could have become, or what we might have achieved together, and to cherish more all that you actually were and will always be. You lived a complete life. You did. Where does it say that a life should last for seventy years, seventeen or even seven? Nowhere. But one thing I do know, and have heard so many people say, is that life is precious, a gift to be cherished. Well, as far as your life is concerned, I am certain of one thing. I will definitely not need time to pass in order to know that your stay on this earth, your whole life, was momentous, beneficial and a cause for genuine celebration.

The doctors had to work on him in the neo-natal ward, get him stabilised, get him connected up to more tubes and machines. There was apparently nothing his father could do to help. "We’ll just get him settled", the kind doctor said, "then I’ll come back and talk to you." And that was when I realised that my world was caving in all around me. Just then and right there, as I stood by the water cooler on the fourth floor, an hour and a half after the birth of my son. I was nowhere near poor little Leo. I had no idea where my heartbroken wife was, had not a clue what to do. And that is when I prayed. "Let my son live. Please God. I’ll do anything. Just let my son live." And he did live. Leo lived for thirty-one hours. No, he fought and lived for thirty-one hours. As the minutes passed I knew it wasn’t going to be a long life, a normal life or even one that would involve us taking our baby son back home. "Should I be optimistic?" I asked the doctor who kept her promise to come and give me some news after what seemed like an eternity waiting by the water cooler. "No", she answered, honestly, kindly and with a sensitivity for which I remain grateful to this day, "I don’t think so." At that point she handed me a colour Polaroid photograph of my son, just as I had seen him in the temporary incubator in the lift, when I was surrounded by doctors, lights and mirrors. That photo! It was Leo, lying flat, head turned to one side, and with just the slightest of blue emerging from beneath a barely opened eye-lid. And then she left me, to go back to work on my son, and I was alone again. Could any man have looked more hopeless and tragic? I just stood there, looked at the photo and wept. I wanted my son to live. With all my heart, I wanted my baby son to live. There was one other thing, too. I wanted my wife, but I had no idea where she was, much less what she was going through.

Sometimes I catch myself laughing and joking with work colleagues and feel as though I am letting my little boy down. Surely, I think, the world should simply have stopped the day you left us. Shouldn’t your cruel passing have removed all enjoyment from the world? Does anybody who met you, knew you and loved you really have the right to walk around as though nothing has happened? Who do we think we are?

Now, when I look back at those sad, tearful, quiet visits to your grave in February and March I feel as though I must have been experiencing a kind of restrained anger. Not that anger has been a regularly expressed emotion since your death, surprising as that may seem to some people. But I’m sure that what I must have been feeling when we came to visit you in those early days had every right to be categorised as anger. And why not? After all, you were taken away from us at the very dawn of life’s great adventure. You were so cruelly robbed of an existence which had been lovingly prepared for, which promised so much and which was to have been shared with your parents for many years to come. There were so many things you could have done, so much that you could have been. I ache at the loss of the opportunity to converse with you as a growing youngster with a whole host of opinions and beliefs. We might even have agreed on a few things! I mourn the loss of the chance to hear you speak, to laugh, to shout and to cry. I didn’t even get the chance to hear you scream your way into this world, or to have you passed to me by a midwife. Change your nappies? Feed you? Gently rock you to sleep? I only got to see the nappy that a stranger placed on you as you lay in an incubator, only got to stare at tubes that fed you, only got to hold you briefly as you did the sleeping for yourself with no need for help from daddy.

So, yes, it most probably was a kind of quiet anger that chose to pay me an extended visit back in the days and weeks that followed your passing. An anger that, although not expressed vocally or in any outward sense visible, was always strong enough to render me virtually speechless each time I stood by your grave. The anger of grief is a strange and complex thing.

The individual memories that I have of Leo’s funeral are still very difficult to reflect upon in detail. Like blurred snapshots, I suppose, which are difficult to bring into focus. However, I hope and pray that they will become clearer, more manageable and less upsetting as time goes by. For now, I feel able only to make specific reference to a number of moments and events from that most difficult of days that stand out in my mind. I recall our two little nephews playfully arguing about which car they would be travelling in at the precise moment that Marianne and I realised it was time to make our way to the hearse. I recall our arrival at the church where sixty or so friends and relatives were already seated. Those who looked at us both as we walked sadly but steadily down the aisle to the first pew offered us silent but loving consolation; those who didn’t look at us or with whom we failed to establish eye contact would have been thinking about us with just as much compassion and sympathy. I also recall, and will never ever forget, the sight of Marianne’s brother, Leo’s Uncle Jeremy, carrying in my son’s coffin, displaying a staggering sense of dignity as he walked sensitively and carefully from the back of the church to its front, where two grieving parents stood in painful silence. What kindness. What gentleness. Just as Jeremy held my tiny son in his safe, protective arms that day, so too have I since held his own baby son in mine and will continue to do so for as long as baby Lewis, the little playmate that Leo never got to see, will allow me to.

And now we are to be parents again. Mummy and I wonder what will happen. We live from day to day. We co-exist with our grief at your loss and our joy at the thought of giving you a brother or a sister early next year. We wish you were here to share our feelings with us, but then perhaps you already are. At times, I lie awake and wish for everything to be alright the next time. At times, I look at your picture on my desk at work and pray for it to be alright the next time. How will we cope if it isn’t? Please God we will never need to answer that question!

How ironic, then, that in some of the cards and letters that Marianne and I received after Leo’s death the writer claimed that he or she didn’t "know what to say" or couldn’t "find the words" to express their sorrow. Some even felt that what they were doing seemed "inadequate " or "insufficient" as a means of consoling us.

The truth is that saying anything is better than saying nothing at all. As grieving parents, you need to know that you are not alone in your sadness. You need the oxygen of sympathy just to get you through the twenty-four hours of each unbearably long day. That is not to deny that for some people it is extremely difficult to say anything to a bereaved friend or colleague. Perhaps this reluctance is based on a fear of causing distress or the worry of saying "the wrong thing". However, in our experience any sort of acknowledgment is welcome. For if a tragedy of the kind that befell Marianne and I is unique, private and personal, then the recovery process depends upon the involvement of others. They need to be allowed in. Better still, they need to want to be allowed in.

Within a few weeks of beginning this book I realised that it could have three purposes. It was a way in which I could honour you, my first-born child; it was something that could provide comfort to your parents, your family and our friends, and it was also something that might in some way help other fathers who have suffered a similar tragic loss. And that has since got me thinking, Leo. What about other fathers? What do they feel? How have they coped with their loss? What have they been able to do to acknowledge their grief and to survive from one day to the next? Am I any different to them in wishing that I could see my child again, hold him once more and tell him all the things I simply couldn’t manage to say at the time that I first met him, so overwhelmed was I by my pain and devastation? Am I right to reject the old-fashioned idea that, being a man, I should be able to pull myself together and get on with my life, that I should accept that when a child dies so soon after its birth it is the mother who suffers the most?

September 29. The day of Marianne’s scan for our second baby, due in February. It had been an emotional day, particularly as the scan had revealed that we were expecting another boy, a baby brother for our precious Leo. We had both gone back to work after the scan, and as I made my way home that evening the usual silence that accompanies my ten minute walk from the station was suddenly, and quite dramatically, broken by the sound of John Lennon’s "Imagine" blaring out of the sound system of a car that was parked in the road adjoining ours. A great song. A classic. But there was something else. What was it? And then I remembered. The animal mobile that we had bought for Leo’s cradle, and that we had wound up and played a hundred times in the weeks before his birth, had played only one tune. That tune was "Imagine". So, on the day that we "met" our second son, our first son’s special song seemed to come out of nowhere. "Don’t forget me, Daddy!" he might have been saying. No chance, Leo. No chance.

Coincidences? Signs? Messages? I don’t think it really matters what we call them. When they happen, they happen. No need for in-depth analysis, no point in praying for more. No sense in being obsessive about their significance nor sceptical about their meaning. They are what they are - things that occur which make us think of Leo. I expect them to continue. I hope that they continue. For if they do, they will be as clear a sign as any that although a loved one may die they can remain with you forever.

Losing someone is painful. Grieving for them is, at times, unbearable. But forgetting them? Impossible. For just when you least expect it, along comes another reminder.

My mothering of Leo has also been about recognising that he could never be anything other than what I myself imagine in my own mind. If I wanted, or if indeed I did not think about what it may mean, I could allow him to take a position where he could never or would never disappoint me. Or to believe that he could or would never have behaved in a way that would, I feel sure, have driven me to distraction. Potentially, if I allowed it, in my fantasy he could always be the perfect son. This has been an important idea to comprehend particularly in view of the fact that we are now expecting our second child. It is, I feel, so important to try to recognise the reality of parenthood, both the joys and the inevitable lows. It is also important to me that any of our future children recognise and understand that as much as I loved and will continue to love Leo, it will not stop me from loving and rejoicing in the fact that I also have them. I want them to know that I will love them, try to protect them and nurture them with as much tenderness, as much warmth and as much compassion as I would have bestowed upon their eldest brother, Leo.

He is with me in the morning at the start of each new day
He is with me in the evening in a sunset’s majesty
He is with me in the springtime, on the flowers the glistening dew
He is with me in the summertime when nature’s beauty is in full bloom

I see him in his mother’s smile so radiant, like the sunrise
I see him in a rainbow that colours the morning sky
I see him on a starlit night as the moon shines from on high
I see him in all that is beautiful, in all that is perfect and alive

I hear him in his father’s laugh so vibrant and so warm
I hear him in a melody harmonious and calm
I hear him in the peal of bells sounding hope from afar
I hear him in a sonnet read with passion and fervour

I feel him in a breeze caressing my face and hair
I feel him in a raindrop falling gently, barely there
I feel him in a snowflake so fine and so fragile
I feel him in a petal floating softly to the ground

He is with me when I am alone, a guiding light, my other self
He is with me in times of sadness, silently giving strength
He is with me in times of joy, inspirational, a lucky charm
He is with me for always and ever, keeping me from harm

My first thought on awakening, my last as night draws near
He is with me for all eternity, ever fixed, ever there

It was hard, standing beside your grave on Christmas morning with so many thoughts racing through my mind. It felt so wrong to be denied your physical presence on that most special of days. It seemed as though I was missing out on so much by not having you near me. I would have bought you so many presents that we would have opened together. Who knows how much, if anything, you would have understood about what was going on as your father paid more attention to opening your presents as he did to his own? But what does that matter anyway? You might not have understood what it was all about, but you would definitely have sensed that something special was going on, that your parents were getting to spend their first ever Christmas with a beautiful child whom they had brought into the world almost a year earlier.

But it wasn’t to be. So there I stood, beside your grave, along with you mummy on Christmas morning feeling utterly sad at your absence. Yet, as strange as it may sound, there was also something undeniably uplifting about the time we spent there with you. I have no idea if the other parents we saw standing or sitting by their children’s graves felt the same way, but I can tell you your mummy and I felt something truly positive. We talked to you and managed to smile at the same time; we felt your loss as strongly as ever, but we still managed to wish our special son a merry Christmas; and we left you gifts that we knew you couldn’t open but didn’t doubt for a single moment that your gentle spirit was able to sense them and the joint feelings of love and pride with which they were offered.

Nevertheless, Leo, and although I struggle to say this I do mean it, I will celebrate all your birthdays with a smile on my face and with joy in my heart. Tears will still be shed, and why not! But I will commemorate your birth, and your life, in as positive and as constructive a way as I can.

Listen to me, son. There are things to do, people to see, places to visit, and we’re going to do them, see them and visit them together. Me in person, and you in my heart. Living with Leo hasn’t come to an end. It has only just begun!

Happy Birthday Leo

With all my love always

Your Daddy

xxx