Loss and Lullabies

Motherhood can be beautiful and brutal in the same breath. Below Megan shares three of her poems which explore grief, identity, love, and the quiet moments that hold us together.

Content warning: traumatic birth and pregnancy loss

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I lost my beloved nan when my eldest son was approaching three, and my youngest, almost nine months. I was heartbroken, but did what every mum does, and put on a brave face for my children.

Two years later, and memories of my nan appear as if by magic. 

It is when the grief feels all-consuming that my boys bounce into the room; the epitome of joy. They guide me back to the present, and remind me that there is life, and love, after loss.

A memory of you.

Wonderful

and devastating.

I don’t know whether to smile or cry.

And so I do neither,

suspended in a state of stunned stupor,

until my sons,

my suns,

pull me back to reality.

To a place where I am needed so much more than I could ever have imagined.

Where pain will always burn below the surface,

and I must carry on regardless.

For them.

For you.

And this,

as I will tell them one day,

is what love means.

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‘A girl next time, eh?’ he says from across the aisle, tilting his head towards my sons.

He doesn’t know how hard it was, bringing these beautiful boys into the world.

How our gains were not without losses.

‘No more babies for me,’ I find myself telling this stranger on a train.

And I wonder if he hears the sadness in my reply,

or the relief.

Sometimes I wish I’d replied differently to this throwaway comment from a random commuter. I could have said I was extremely happy with my two boys, thank you very much. Or gone into great detail about the harrowing miscarriage I had at 11 weeks, alone in a pub toilet while my husband cut up fish fingers for our 14-month-old toddler. Or the major haemorrhage I experienced after the birth of my second son, which could have cost me my life. I could have described the acute loss of identity I’ve felt since becoming a mother (which, for the record, is unrelated to the sex of my children). Or told him how, in striving to be the perfect parent, I worry I’ve become a terrible wife, daughter, sister and friend.

However, the response I gave remains the truth. And it is something I have mixed feelings about, and possibly always will.

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A Friday night in spring. The three of us are in Mummy and Daddy’s bed.

You are four, firmly in your superhero era, sporting Spider-Man pyjamas and twiddling the ears of your beloved koala.

Your brother is two, all squidgy thighs and pearly-white teeth, peppering my nightly rendition of Hushabye Mountain with his excitable chatter.

Your heads are nestled in the crooks of my arms, and suddenly I have to stop singing, because I can’t bear the thought of you outgrowing me.

Then, just as your brother’s eyes are beginning to close, you say, ‘Mummy, am I a baddie? I don’t want to be a baddie.’

And I whisper into the half-light,

‘You are the best there is.’

I felt compelled to write this moment down, as it was the first time I’d truly considered the fact that my children won’t always be this little. 

They won’t always take a comforter to bed. They won’t always be soothed by a lullaby. They certainly won’t always fit so perfectly in my arms.

But they will always be the best there is, and I will always tell them so.

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