The day we were discharged from hospital was a strange day. A day that seemed to drag on and on, sorting out the finer details, before inevitably heading home without our beautiful boy. Emotions were high while asking questions I had been sitting on for several days and being brought to tears when the midwife asked one final time, “Would you like to see him before you head home?” Followed by the discussion that Louis would be soon making his way to Melbourne for the autopsy.
There were several options to consider for the autopsy – a complete autopsy as opposed to a partial – would any samples be donated? This document and these questions were confronting to say the least.
We opted for a complete autopsy because selfishly, we wanted to know 100% that if we decided to have more children that whatever had happened with Louis was not a genetic diagnosis. I will always feel guilt for this reason, but knowing my mind, if there were answers, I needed to know what they were – I couldn’t just leave it to the unknown if we ever opted for another child down the track. Still, I felt like my own heart was being ripped out of my chest by ticking the boxes on the paper in my hands.
Amongst all the paperwork it was easy to get confused and at this point we actually thought we would be planning a funeral service for our beautiful boy while his body was still being examined, six weeks on. It wasn’t until we met with the funeral home a few days later that we were informed this was not the case and Louis would be making his way back to Numurkah the following week. For this information we will be forever grateful. The results from the autopsy however would indeed take up to six weeks to complete.
During our stay at the hospital, we were informed about a ‘Memorial Wall’ located on the ward. It was on our final day as we made our way through the corridors toward the exit that we stopped to admire the beautifully sculptured display containing the names of babies previously lost on the ward. It seemed fitting that when we were ready ‘Louis Byron’ would become a part of this display.
This is what I focused on as we said our finally goodbyes to the midwives – I honestly had nothing else to give, nothing to hold onto but a legacy of hope that our little boy would always be remembered. This is how I made my way down stairs and out to the car that day.
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Once home, I was met with my first dose of reality – coming home to a grumpy, tired and confused toddler.
Charlie had fallen asleep on the couch and was starting to stir awake as we pulled in the driveway. Now our first born is what we would call a ‘threenager’ and Nannie had messaged to pre-worn us that his awakening could turn either way as we came through the door, and he was in fine form – met with a wonderful scream-cry that continued for over 15 minutes.
This I could handle, this was just our Charlie being just that, a ‘threenager’. What I wasn’t prepared for was the looks of confusion that continued every time his eyes met mine for the next several days. It was a look of “that’s my Mum, but she’s different now.” And physically I did look different, I had lost weight, my belly was gone and I was moving slowly to protect my wound from the c-section. This became a difficult barrier for Charlie to understand, not only was he confused by all the emotions in the room, but he was also confronted by panicked voices anytime he got a little too boisterous around me. He just honestly didn’t understand what my body had been through in the past few days, but what hurt most was he didn’t understand that his baby brother had died.
Charlie continued to feed off our emotions daily and the scream-cry was a headliner. All he wanted was ‘Daddy’, but Daddy was grieving too and things were just overall exhausting.
We spent a lot of time going for drives with Nannie and Papa, touring the neighbouring towns or following the creek.
The Big Strawberry was a hit, giving us a glimpse of the ‘Happy’ Charlie, laughing and playing with Papa. They were two peas in a pod, listening for trucks and pointing out tractors, diggers, caravans and motorbikes as they passed.
These drives were the only peace Daddy got in those first few weeks.
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Peter Cox and Sons Funeral Home was a place I had driven past many times over the years, they had even hosted my grandfather’s funeral in 2019 – yet I had never been inside, that was all about to change.
We were greeted by Michelle, who welcomed us into the chapel before discussing all the details and different options available. The Royal Women’s Hospital paid the base rate of the funeral and because we opted to have a small service, St Vincent De Paul Society agreed to pay for any extras.
Although our parents had told us not to worry about any costs, we were incredibly thankful for the coverage provided by these organisations.
Meeting with Michelle opened up a lot of options we hadn’t even considered, but what caught us off guard was having to decide how our beautiful boy would be transferred to the hearse (I say hearse, but it was literally a ford station wagon). The problem was, for me anyway, that Louis had always been handed to me and then taken away, I had actually never walked away from him – so this decision broke my heart. I knew physically I wouldn’t be able to carry him to the hearse, which left Dave, but would he be able to do so without breaking down himself. This was something we would need to discuss on our own, and it ate away at us both for days.
That weekend I started to decipher through songs we would like to be played during the service. Michelle said we would need a minimum for four songs, but it was really up to us, and she would step in if we couldn’t find anything suiting. This was not a problem for me, I feel songs and quite often think “This is my funeral song,” as morbid as that sounds. What I had never planned was a song I would burry my child to – and that was hard. But I started with what I knew and that was Ed Sheeran, Small Bump, a song written for the death of a baby.
Then I moved onto songs that were sung to Charlie as a baby, which lead me to the song, Beautiful Boy, by Ben Harper and a song that was played at my grandfather’s funeral, Hearts I Leave Behind by Adam Brand (this one didn’t end up making the cut). The reminiscing about Grandpa’s passing led me back to Ed Sheeran and his song written for the Australian Promoter, Michael Gudinski, who he owed his career to – a song papa also loved.
Three songs down and I had nowhere left to turn but the man our boy was named after himself, Louis Tomlinson, and his song, Two of Us, written for his mother Johannah Deakin.
It wasn’t until the following day that I cried while listening to One Direction’s song, Little Things, and all my emotions hit at once – it was perfect and it was a song just for our little Louis.
'Our Little Louis' 