To My Lost Child

she said I play victim
but I’m lying here
unable to move
I don’t want to move
tears weighing me down

three times before I’ve felt like this
weighed down by trauma
cruelty inflicted on me
the revenge of my husband
the late-term abortion
ordered by the enlightened yoga teacher
collapsing at university
unable to escape my sick
sometimes violent sister
my fucked-up birth family

and now (it was actually a year ago)
turned on by my daughter and her partner
and she says I play victim
doesn’t feel like play to me
it feels very real
trauma on top of trauma
how much can one person bear
how much can I bear

as I lie here in bed
unable to move
I don’t want to move
I don’t want to get up
I’m drenched in tears
overwhelmed with sadness

it’s been one year now
and my daughter does not care
that I am not well
that I could not even be here
who is playing victim here
who taught her to treat people like that
was it me
her father
he did not care if I was sick
he’d go off to work
say sickness is not his reality

that child that baby
born at home
under water
given the gift of the continuum concept
hardly left my side
my chest for the first nine months
seldom cried

safe and content
I was so happy
we all slept on the floor
on a futon
the four of us her brother dad and me
snuggled in together
and she goes on about her traumatic childhood

what I would give
to have had my first nine months like that
my mother was not happy
drowning in depression
not wanting to be alive
me removed at birth for the first few days
or was it a week
then parked in a nursery
did she let me cry
I never asked her
then I was handed over to an aunt
stayed with her for months
must have felt forever
how old was I
was I even walking
mum could not cope
could not cope with me my brother my father
and the one she gave away

her secret

this sadness I am carrying
is it her sadness
my mother’s sadness
that has cascaded down
leached into my daughter and me
am I crying for little Mary
who is two months old
even younger
crying for little Mary
those early years
with that big smile
trying to be brave
to be happy
when my mother was so sad

I get out of bed
and howl over the sink
howl from my guts
howl out my mother’s sadness
oh it is you mum
your sadness
of course of course
your sadness in me
in me from the start

hold little Mary
rock little Mary
things are going to be okay

(if they read this perhaps they’ll say
oh here she is making it all about her again)

Mary Garden is a freelance journalist with a PhD in Journalism (University of the Sunshine Coast). Her writing has appeared in a range of publications, including The Australian, The Guardian, Newsroom (NZ), and The Humanist. She is an award-winning author of three books: The Serpent Rising; Sundowner of the Skies; and My Father’s Suitcase, which has won multiple international book awards. She also wrote a collection of poems, Coming Together, published in 1992.