I have held onto that detail for eighteen years, and been told, gently and firmly, that I was confused, that I was exhausted, that grief does strange things to memory.
Because a few hours later, a doctor I didn’t know told me that my second son hadn’t survived the birth.
There was no baby to hold. There were papers I was too shattered to read. There was Harriet, oddly present, handling everything, telling me it was kinder not to see.
I grieved a son I was told never opened his
