What next?

What next?

We’d survived Christmas without our boy. We’d scraped through on our hands and knees, but we’d got there. What now? We’d thought about surviving Christmas, but we hadn’t thought of anything beyond that! There was no planning and preparation to distract me. The hype of Christmas had sort of reflected off me, unable to penetrate my armour, but I had been caught up in the business of it all. And now the page had turned and we entered a new year without Arlo, I was thrust into the deepest January blues imaginable and I truly didn’t know where to go from here. Turning the page to a blank, fresh new year was incredibly difficult. It felt like we were leaving Arlo behind in 2016 as we entered 2017.

I needed something to keep me sane. As you probably know by now, I’m not a person who just sits round the house, I’m not a person whoever takes things easy, if I’m not busy, I’m not me. I don’t need motivation to be busy, I need to be busy to be motivated!

I couldn’t bear the nothingness. Okay so I still had the day to day of dropping Alfie to school and walking the dog, but my empty arms throbbed with underuse and the daily stride no longer filled the void. I’d made a new dog bed, painted the kitchen, written a children’s bereavement book (more on this later on), but even with the extra ‘exercises’ the treadmill of life, that had once been my saviour, no longer seemed to be cutting it for me.

After dropping Alfie to school I’d go for walks etc, but it wasn’t enough, and I tried running, but without any guidance that seemed to flop too. All I had was sheer pig-headed determination that running didn’t hurt; what Arlo had been through hurt, and I should be able to run if he could withstand all he did in his short little life. At this time though, I seemed to be blindly running away from my troubles- think Phoebe from friends, yet more erratic!

I had always said when I left my weekend job of lifeguarding, I would return to hockey. I had left my weekend job the year previous, so now I had no excuse. I messaged a friend who I knew played for a local team and he replied telling me to message the clubs Facebook page and ‘pop down’ to training one night.

To me it was a lot more than ‘popping down’ for many reasons. I’d been thinking about returning to hockey for years, so that had already made this moment bigger that it should’ve been in my head. To add to that, everything was at it lowest; confidence, self-esteem as well as fitness. I felt like a shadow of my former self (maybe if I hadn’t put on so much weight I’d would have been a shadow). My self-esteem was through the floor and my self-belief was non-existent. Since March the previous year I’d been pregnant, pregnant and on bed rest, traumatic c-section and then superglued to my boy’s incubator for 6 weeks, so I hadn’t been active in the slightest. Add to that the mental and physical toll his loss had taken on me and I was in the worst shape of my life. I thought about putting off my return to hockey until I was fitter, but I also knew that if I didn’t shoot now, the moment would pass and it would be just one of those regrets.

When I asked for a hockey stick and AstroTurf boots for my birthday, just 2 months after Arlo died, Day did look at me briefly like a had 2 heads, before nodding slowly, but still eyeing me with vague caution. Seeing the shell I still was, he seemed unsure if he should question if the timing was right or not, but he let whatever fleeting thought that was in his head float on by and trusted my better judgement.

I set a date in my head to go to my first training session and I didn’t go because…[insert feeble excuse here]. I didn’t go because I let my insecurities, anxiety and fear of the unknown take over and I was so disappointed in myself.

The truth was I needed this. I needed to start something new. I needed to be someone else and something else, not just ‘the mum who lost her baby.’ I lived that part the rest of the time. I needed a small amount of time when I could be Sarah again. (Whoever she was.) I needed to delve into the unknown and find her. I needed to do something without a side-glance of sympathy and an undertone of sadness. I needed to do something new that had no memories or emotions attached to it. I needed to do something that was for me and no one else. I needed an escape. Even if it was for an hour, I needed to escape being the grieving mother.

And I WANTED to do something to make Alfie and Arlo proud of me.

I’ve talked before about grief, she lurks round corners, ready to snatch away any moment of happiness, well this time she’d brought her friend anxiety with her and they both clung to me, their restraints round my wrists, digging their heels into the ground, ripping up the earth like a plough.

Eventually the week rolled round again and I plucked up the courage to go. I still thought of an excuse at every milestone to turn back and not go. I felt safe in the knowledge that only I would know if I failed, but this time I pushed that aside.

A person from the club welcomed me, as I stood fidgeting in the sideline. ‘You must be Sarah.’ I was Sarah. I was happy to be just Sarah. Without the tag line or the whispers ‘who lost her baby.’ For a couple of hours, I was just Sarah.

Don’t get me wrong, I was useless to begin with, completely and utterly useless. However I was happy to have the simple focus of connecting ball to stick over and over again, like the simple tick-list task of Christmas, something cut and dry.

Something that took me away from worrying about when Arlo’s post mortem results would be back, how on Earth were we going to sit through that conversation in Liverpool Women’s? What questions would I ask? What would the post-mortem results say about us trying again? Did we really have to wait a year? When were genetics going to phone us? Would they find anything? When would Arlo’s teddy with his ashes sewn inside be ready? When would we receive our jewellery with Arlo’s handprints on? These were all incomplete jobs on the job list, and they were jobs that I had absolutely no control over, but it’s all that played over in my head. At that time it was enough to drive me insane, I needed a job (and any of them would do!) to be complete. This was all piled into the crater of missing Arlo, and they were all things that would bring us closer to him and would help us plan for our future.

None of them could be rushed and the amount of time they were taking couldn’t be helped, everything was in hand, but it didn’t help me rehashing them over and over and over again as we waited for something to cling to. So once again, we were in limbo.

I couldn’t have been that bad at my first training session (or maybe they were desperate for players!) because by the end of the session I had been asked my name and to play at the weekend for one of the ladies teams. I was Sarah and I was available on Saturday, and that’s all they needed to know.

All the way to the first match I was a bag of nerves, and it sounds stupid now, but all the way down I imagined that the other team were the reason Arlo had died. I needed something to make me angry, something to rile me, and that was the only thing I was angry about. I felt sick all the way down to the match, but I reasoned with myself that if I could turn up to training, I could play a match. This time though, I didn’t even consider turning back. I had a team that was relying on me to turn up, and I couldn’t let them down. This gave me the drive to park my car, get out and make my way to the pitch. Step, but step, I’d made it.

During the match it was was refreshing to think about the game solidly for 70 minutes and get some exercise whilst I do. Now I play week-in, week-out during the hockey season.

I joined the club at my lowest ebb, and I’m so glad I pushed myself onto the AstroTurf for that first training session, because I haven’t looked back. It didn’t mean I’d forgotten Arlo, it didn’t mean I was no longer grieving, but it gave me hope. I felt just a little better about myself as a person and less of a shell. Everything carried on as was the rest of the time with the constant over-thinking and those black clouds that threatened to consume me, but for a snapshot in time, I’d allowed myself to think of something else, and I’d allowed myself to be myself.

Over the years, news has filtered through the club about Arlo, and that’s absolutely fine. I’m more than happy that they know about all of my children. I’m proud to say I’ve made so many new friends through playing hockey and they know all about Arlo now. This may be through me talking about him and via my person Facebook or his page, but they knew me as ‘Sarah’ first.

Sarah who was available to play on Saturday.