What’s the point in doing this?
This question was on replay inside Josie’s head as she dragged her feet down the leafy tree-lined Surry Hills street towards Life After Loss.
All the talking in the world wasn’t going to fix anything. Nothing could bring her babies to life. And, even though she’d had no mojo to do anything much lately, she could suddenly think of a bazillion things she could be doing instead on the last Thursday of her school holidays. Her hand flickered to her bag, her head and fingers craving the relief of a cigarette, but then she remembered she didn’t have any. She’d promised Nik no more smoking, only to drink if they were together and that she’d give this talking-to-someone bizzo a red-hot go.
Dammit. She kicked her foot against the footpath and then suddenly realised she’d arrived at her destination.
Like all the other offices on this street, the charity was located in a beautifully renovated old terrace house. The building looked innocuous enough, there were large leafy pot plants in the small courtyard out the front and the windows had lovely white shutters. How could a not-for-profit afford such a property? Perhaps a government grant or a bequest from someone they’d helped? Paige shook her head—what did it matter where the money came from? She was just dithering. With a deep breath, she pushed that procrastination aside, forced one foot in front of the other and headed for the front door.
If this was pointless as she suspected it would be, then she didn’t have to come back but at least she could tell Nik she’d tried. The door creaked a little as she pushed it open and a middle-aged woman looked up from behind a reception desk and smiled. ‘Good morning.’
‘Hi.’ Josie swallowed. ‘I’m Josie Mitreski. I’m meeting Clara Jones here.’
‘Wonderful. Clara won’t be a moment. Would you like to take a seat while you wait? And can I make you a coffee or something?’
Josie politely refused the drink, then retreated to the small waiting area and settled in a seat. She felt as if there were a circus of butterflies practising acrobatics in her stomach and hoped she didn’t have to wait long or she might chicken out and flee.
‘Josephine Mitreski?’
She startled at the call of her name, having not even noticed a woman appear at the edge of the waiting room, and stumbled to her feet. The tall, slim woman who had a slightly wavy, shoulder-length, golden bob smiled warmly at her. ‘I’m Clara,’ she said as she offered her hand. ‘It’s lovely to meet you. Come on through.’
A vision of the man who’d given her the business card appeared in Josie’s head as she followed Clara down a short corridor; it was almost impossible to reconcile him and this woman as being married. She wore smart black trousers and a blue twin-set, with a string of simple pearls around her neck, whereas her husband with his long hair tied back scruffily had looked like a burned-out rock star.
‘Take a seat,’ Clara said as they emerged into a bright yellow room with three plush armchairs and generic paintings of beaches and bridges on the walls. Josie wondered if they were chosen because they were two things that could not possibly upset or offend anyone.
‘Thanks.’ She perched herself on the edge of one of the chairs.
‘Can I get a you a drink?’ Clara asked, closing the door behind her. ‘We have coffee, tea and hot chocolate, or are you more of a soft drink girl? I’ve got a few Diet Cokes I keep aside just in case.’
Josie’s mouth watered at the mention of her favourite drink—during her pregnancies she’d abstained from Diet Coke, not that it had done any good—and she’d got out of the habit of drinking it. ‘I’d love a Diet Coke, thanks.’
‘Excellent. You get comfortable.’ Clara smiled again and then turned to a small fridge in the corner of the room. She retrieved two glasses and two cans of Diet Coke, then put them down on the table between them.
‘I can spot a fellow Diet Coke lover from a mile off,’ she said as she lowered herself into the chair opposite Josie’s. She cracked open her can, then poured it into a glass.
Josie did the same and then took a little sip. Despite Clara’s smile, warm tone and attempt to put her at ease, Josie’s nerves were rampant but the caffeine hit helped a bit.
‘Did you have to travel far to come here?’ Clara asked.
‘Not too far. We live in Coogee.’
‘Have you lived there long?’
‘About eighteen months. We moved from Perth.’
‘I see,’ Clara said, in that way psychiatrists in movies speak when they’re analysing someone. ‘And do you like it?’
Josie shrugged one shoulder. ‘What’s not to like?’
‘And how did you find me? Did a doctor recommend you talk to someone about your losses?’
Josie shook her head, her stomach growing hard. The small talk had been an obvious attempt to put her at ease but now they were getting down to business. Doctors had suggested she see a counsellor or reach out to an organisation like this one Clara volunteered for, but she’d resisted—believing talking would be futile. ‘Actually your husband gave me your card,’ she said, thinking of how kind he’d been that night at The Inferno.
‘My husband?’ Clara sounded as if she had no idea whom Josie was talking about.
‘Yes, we met outside a pub in Coogee.’
‘Ah, that sounds about right. Although he’s been my ex-husband for two years.’
‘He was very kind to me,’ Josie said. ‘I was in a mess when we ran into each other. He was a good listener. He told me you could help me.’
The older woman leaned forward and put her glass back on the table. ‘Well, I’m here to listen,’ she said, her warm smile back in place. ‘I hope that helps. Would you like to tell me about your miscarriages?’
Josie had mentioned they were the reason for her visit when she’d called and made the appointment, but once again that voice was loud and clear in her head questioning why she was here. No, she did not want to tell this stranger anything. Her grip on her glass tightened as emotion clogged in her throat. Her eyeballs stung, telling her she was on the verge of tears.
All the while, Clara’s smile—Josie guessed it was supposed to be encouraging—remained firmly in place.
Finally, she broke the silence. ‘I’m not sure you know but all of us who volunteer here as parent supporters have suffered our own devastating losses. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what you’re going through, Josephine—’
‘Please, call me, Josie. Only my mum ever used my full name.’
‘Let me guess? Only when you were naughty?’
Josie found herself smiling, the tightness in her chest loosening slightly. ‘Something like that.’
Clara continued. ‘Although every parent feels loss differently, I started volunteering because I wanted to help other mothers navigate their grief. I suffered a number of miscarriages and also a stillbirth at thirty-six weeks.’
‘Oh God, that’s awful.’ Josie felt like a fraud sitting here when all her losses had been early enough to be classified as miscarriages, but at the same time she felt a horrific jealousy that at least Clara had been able to hold her baby. ‘I’ve only had three miscarriages,’ she said, almost apologetically.
‘One is too many,’ Clara said simply, leaning forward and pushing the big box of tissues on the coffee table towards her.
Josie didn’t take one.
‘Any loss is devastating. It changes your whole world. It changes you. You’ve probably found it also changes the way others—people you considered friends—act around you and this hurts. I remember people actually crossing the road to avoid me after the death of my daughter.’
‘Yes.’ Josie nodded. ‘I’m a teacher and I’ve noticed some of my colleagues leave the staffroom to avoid talking to me.’
‘Remember it’s not a reflection on you, and it’s not that they’re trying to be cruel, they simply don’t know what to say. The majority of folks don’t know how to act around people who have suffered tragic loss.’
‘I guess that’s why people say you shouldn’t tell everyone till after three months. My first miscarriage was at eight weeks,’ Josie found herself saying. ‘And we’d already told everyone. We went to our obstetrician appointment all excited to get our first ultrasound but,’ she blinked back tears, the memories fresh in her head as if it all happened yesterday, ‘the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I must have heard wrong. I started bleeding the next day.’
Josie swallowed. Clara didn’t say a word.
‘We didn’t tell anyone the second time we got pregnant and although we were terrified it would happen again, it was still a shock when it did because the doctor had told us it was very unlikely. It was almost exactly the same time as the first one. Although everyone said there was nothing I could do, I can’t help wondering if I’d done something wrong. If I ate something or …’
‘We all wonder that,’ Clara said when Josie’s voice drifted off. ‘But you didn’t.’
She shrugged, unsure. ‘Third time we got past the safe mark.’ Her voice filled with scorn on that word. ‘We did the obligatory cute announcement on Facebook and even started buying stuff. I felt a little nervous about doing so but I was so sick with morning sickness and I never had been with the other two, so it felt like this was it. It was all going to be okay. Only it wasn’t.’
A tear slithered down her cheek and she ignored it, hoping if she did so no more would come.
‘How far along were you this time?’
‘Eighteen weeks, so still technically a miscarriage. The doctor called it a “spontaneous end of pregnancy”, but she was my baby.’ Josie winced as fresh pain crippled her. ‘I’m sorry. Every day I wake up no longer pregnant, not a mum, and I feel as if my heart has been smashed to pieces. All I want to do is cry.’
‘And you’re allowed to.’ This time Clara actually picked the tissue box up and held it out to Josie; she took one and buried her nose in it, making a great big ugly sound.
‘It doesn’t feel that way,’ she said through her sobs. ‘Everyone just wants me to snap out of it, but I can’t.’
‘Of course you can’t and neither should you have to. You feel like you’ll never be happy again and that’s a valid emotion.’
After a long pause, Clara said, ‘Did you name your babies?’
‘Yes,’ Josie whispered. ‘We don’t know what gender the first one was but I have a feeling it was a little boy. I call him Jamie. The next two were girls, Sophia and Isabelle.’
‘They’re beautiful names.’
‘My husband didn’t think I should use my favourite names, in case we have other children, but I felt like my angel babies deserved beautiful names.’
Clara nodded. ‘They definitely do.’
At the thought of Nik, Josie recalled how touchy things had been between them. She wondered if that was normal? She wanted to ask if the same had happened between Clara and her husband and that had been the downfall of their marriage.
After a long silence, Clara spoke again as if she could read Josie’s mind. ‘Are things okay between you and your husband?’
Josie sniffed into the tissue, then held it tightly, scrunched up in her hand. ‘Not really. But things came to a head the other night and we finally talked properly.’ She explained how Nik had been holding it all inside, because he’d been trying to protect her.
‘I’m not a relationships expert or counsellor, and that’s not my role, but what you’re describing is very normal. Men think we’re complicated beasts but they are just as complex. They may feel differently to us as they never actually felt the child growing within them but they feel loss just as deeply. It just manifests in a different way.’
Josie sighed. ‘I see that now. I feel so guilty that I didn’t see Nik was hurting too.’
‘Our organisation has male parent supporters too—fathers who have been through the loss of a child. Your husband might benefit from talking to someone also. Or you could join one of our group support sessions, in which couples talk together about their loss with other couples.’
What Josie thought of that must have been clear on her face for Clara smiled and added, ‘It might sound daunting, but a lot of couples find it really helps.’
‘We’ll think about it,’ she said, and found that she meant it.
‘You said you moved from Perth. Did you move for work? Or did you come for family reasons?’
‘We came for Nik’s work—he’s an aircraft engineer. But I was happy to move. My mum passed away just before I met Nik and I was missing her so much. My dad’s very social and he had lots of friends to look after him but Perth felt wrong without Mum just around the corner.’
And suddenly Josie was crying all over again. The tissues were yanked out at a rate of knots.
Clara let her sob and then when the tears finally started to subside, she said quietly, ‘You were obviously close. Was it sudden?’
‘A heart attack. No chance to say goodbye.’
‘So it’s not just your baby losses you’re grieving, but also the death of your mother. All that on top of a move, a new job … I’m so glad you decided to reach out to us.’
‘Me too,’ Josie said. Although she’d never been one to talk much about herself, she’d found it surprisingly easy to open up to Clara. This other woman might not have been able to bring her babies back, but just talking about them to someone who really understood did make her feel a little better.
When Clara glanced at her watch and said, ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to wrap this up,’ Josie couldn’t believe how fast the time had flown.
‘How about next week? I’m guessing you’ll be back at school and I also work at the hospital, but I’m here late on Thursday afternoons. Does that suit?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
She usually covered after-school detention on Thursdays. First week back there hopefully wouldn’t be too many students misbehaving, but too bad anyway. Someone else would have to cover it; her mental health was more important.