Experts.

They said I should grieve, the day you were born.
Mourn the child I had imagined.They said it was ok. To be expected. 
Deep down I knew this not to be true. 

The same experts

Gave me permission to end your life, before you were born. 
They said it was ok. To be expected. 
Deep down I knew this not to be true. 

Other experts told me I had simply arrived at a different destination. The plane had been diverted to somewhere new.  
Deep down I knew this not to be true. 

Each expert expertly dishing out a new sense of entitlement to add to my collection.

Gathering up our things, we left the hospital some weeks later. Your eyes wide with adoration and wonder, you carried in your arms only dependency and a total acceptance of all you met.

My eyes wide with adoration for you. Yet wide also with fear
at how I might protect you or worse, fail you. I carried you, tightly, so tightly, in my arms. You weren’t that heavy. Yet you came weighted down. The scales of injustice, entitlement and expert opinions tipped heavily against you, but in reality, weighing me down, not you.

You were even given a different chart to follow in your little red book. The shock of the standard, socially acceptable, growth chart being ripped out in front of me – as a sticking plaster is ripped from a wound – will stay with me forever. You won’t be needing that one, the expert said. 

And in this post neo-natal world that we now live, you and I; we are almost a decade on. We now have a collection of expertise and entitlements to fill a library. More recently, Pandemic life has brought out all kinds of new publications. Hospital appointments/therapist meetings, education meetings and more all take place via a computer screen. And, faster than you can say “lockdown”, I can spin around to my zoom backdrop of strategically placed books, and whip out the relevant chapter and verse to quote to whoever will listen. I can read them my rights. Your rights. We have lost so much this past year and ‘Someone’ needs to give it back. You are entitled. I am entitled. Now I’m the expert.

Pandemic life has, I think, brought out so much entitlement. Bookcases are groaning under the weight of expectation. Rights.  

Yet never once have I seen this entitlement in you. It is a weight you steadfastly refuse to pick up let alone carry. You have no need for this burdensome thing. ‘Someone’ can keep it.
Every day you tell me to put it down, though you never say a word.


You are the expert. You always have been.
In humility. In being human. In welcoming another’s life, not mourning it. In asking nothing more than to be loved whilst you freely give of your own endless supply. In moving on to the next experience once one has ended. You were always destined to be here. Not somewhere else.

You are the expert In showing me how to live my own life. You have shown me that I do not have to carry the weight of entitlement for it is a false prophet. I have not given anything up, lost anything, been robbed or have need to mourn. None of it was mine to own in the first place.

With your extra chromosome – oh what a gift I have been given! Undeserved. Not entitled. 

Gifted. 

There was never any need for grief when you were born. Or any other weight placed on you or me since, for that matter. Your very being tips the scales of what is deserving and honourable. It turns the wisdom of the wise upside down. Weightlessly so.

Deep down, I know this to be true.