CHAPTER 31
Beau Francis McCarthy was delivered at 6.08 pm on Friday the first of December 2000; he never took a breath and was instantly declared stillborn. My uterus had ruptured either from the force of the impact of the car or from the force of landing on the cold concrete, nobody could tell me for sure, my baby was delivered and an emergency hysterectomy had to be performed to stop the bleeding.
Beau was brought to me to hold at 8:30 pm that night when I came around from my surgery, my whole family were around my bed, but I asked them all to leave. Marley refused and he stood and watched as I bathed and dressed my perfect little boy in the coming home outfit that was packed in my hospital bag, which was already in the car and had travelled everywhere we did these past few weeks, thanks to my very organised Husband.
Beau had a mop of curly brown hair and looked exactly like his Daddy.
I wrapped him in the blue fleece blanket that Milo and his Wife had bought for us, it had guitars on it and Sean had asked where it had come from and ordered a half dozen more.
I sat on my bed with my brother as he held my son, his nephew and sobbed while we waited for the nurse to come and fetch me.
At 9:45 pm I was wheeled in a wheel chair up to intensive care and allowed to introduce Sean to our son. Lennon and Bailey helped lift me onto his bed, where I curled into his side, his arm around me and our little boy.
Sean’s life support was switched off at 11.28 pm, and he died peacefully at 11.43pm on that same night, with me and our son in his arms, surrounded by all of my family and his parents.
We buried them together two weeks later, when I was eventually ‘recovered’ enough to attend the funeral.
My only regret was that I wasn’t already dead and going in the ground with them, my life was over now anyway, so it was only a matter of time before I joined them.
I wanted to be numb, and I wanted not to feel but I was in agony. Once the funeral was over I knew exactly what had to be done.
I stayed alive purely to say my goodbyes and to see my Husband and Child buried but as it turns out, I really don’t remember anything about the day, I don’t remember much of anything about the past few weeks. All I know is the pain, the massive aching hole inside me and the pain that comes from it, but now the funeral onceover, I knew I could put a stop to it.
When I was at school, a very over enthusiastic religious and social education teacher told my class that suicide was wrong and that God would not allow any one that chose to take their own life into heaven. Heaven is exactly where I knew Sean and Beau were so I had to wait until after I’d said goodbye to them forever at their funeral before I could do what needed to be done.
I laid in the dark on the bed in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, the combination of Valium and sleeping tablets finally pulling me down into blackness I so desperately sought. I wasn’t scared, I was impatient, I wanted the black nothingness so badly, I wanted the pain to be gone so desperately that I just gave myself over to it, without any kind of a fight I let it take me.