The Escalator

Guest post by Jess McCormack

Sometimes living with grief is described as like being on a roller coaster. But a roller coaster has both ups and downs, highs and lows, excitement, anticipation, that moment when everything stands still and then a terrifying, exhilarating rush. For me grief is more like a treadmill and I am stuck facing the wrong direction. Or an escalator, a crazy long one like on the London Underground, where you bravely step on without being able to see where it ends. My escalator is moving down, and down, and down, but I am trying to go up, climbing and climbing, but getting nowhere.

I can see a glimpse of where I want to go, I can sense the light, the happiness, the freedom. But I climb and climb and never seem to move up. I climb until I am exhausted, my legs beginning to feel numb, my lungs burning, my head too tired to keep looking up at where I want to go. I am still in the same place, in spite of all the work, all the effort to move up. But I can’t stop climbing. Because if I stop, the escalator will quickly send me downwards, back to where I started. I can’t look back, I can’t think about what is behind me because it was too dark, too painful.

 . . .

I don’t know how I got through it. I don’t remember when the sobbing stopped, the involuntary, desperate crying that came from the depths of my soul and felt like it would never end. I was so afraid, because the world I thought I knew was suddenly ripped away from me and replaced by a world in which anything could happen, the worst thing imaginable, even though I played by the rules. I dare not even glance down to briefly remember how that felt, because it might make me lose my balance and fall backwards into the darkness. But to keep looking up is taking all that I have. I wish I could stop, stand still and just hold my girls, one in my arms and the other forever in my memory. But grief doesn’t stop, it keeps trying to move me down and down and down.

 . . .

Sometimes I feel so alone, like I am the only person on the escalator.  And then suddenly someone is beside me, holding out their hand, climbing with me, keeping pace, saying “Maeve, Maeve, Maeve”, reminding me why I need to keep going, helping me to believe I will one day reach fresh air, bright, clean light. Sometimes I am surrounded by so many people, the warmest of hugs, holding me so tight that I can stop climbing for a while, while others do the work for me.

 . . .

I know I have come far from those dark days in the raw depths of early grief. It has been a hard, hard climb, with many stumbles, shins crashing onto metal, bruised and scarred. But I got up again and again and I am still climbing.

. . .

I stop to take a breath, I close my eyes, and in my mind, I am holding my baby girl. I remember how it felt to kiss her soft cheeks, how she fit perfectly in my arms, where she was meant to be forever, not just for a day. I want to stay in that moment, but I’ve stopped for too long, I am starting to go down. I need to climb again, but it’s so hard. I could just stop, let the escalator carry me down into the darkness, to a place where there’s nothing, where it won’t hurt any more. Or I could put one foot in front of the other, just one step, just one will lift me up, away from the dark. One step and then another, not further from Maeve, but towards a future with her in it, not in the way she should have been, but in beauty, in memory, in love. And so I climb, for Maeve, because of Maeve, because I owe it to my baby girl not to give up.

. . .

 Jess McCormack became both a mother and a bereaved mother in April 2013, when her beautiful Maeve died during labor. Now she is so grateful to have Maeve’s little sister to hold in her arms, while both her daughters have a hold of their mom’s heart.