‘It feels disloyal and unfair to Mary now, two weeks on, to look back on her birth, and how it was like a scary time. But that is where it started. That is where Mary’s story started and where our story took a fairly unexpected turn. Thursday two weeks ago, we went into Holles Street [a maternity hospital in Dublin] in the morning, tentative but full of hope, and by two o’clock, our hearts were broken and our lives were turned upside down. … People ask now how we found out, did we not have tests done and so on (some people say the most appalling things to you. But you know, people don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t either.) … There is no good way to find out. But they handled it as best as anyone can handle it. And at least when we did find out we had the consolation of Mary being there, the consolation of having a baby whom we loved. If you found out in the abstract, you have months to worry about it, without the consolation of Mary being there and us knowing we love her. We were also in the right place. …
‘The next few days were a bit of a fog. You’re in shock, they tell you. And you’re grieving for the baby you didn’t have. I don’t quite buy that. I was grieving for my life before, and for my dreams maybe. But we had a baby and she was very cute, and I also had a toddler to manage who didn’t deserve any of this no more than I did, or Sarah did, or Mary did. So gradually, you tell people. You tell them Sarah had a beautiful baby girl and then you say she has Down Syndrome. …
‘So now I know that people are amazing. And I have more of an idea what love and friendship and family and kindness are. Some days, in my more elated moments, I would think that having spent 40 years looking for the meaning of life, sometimes in the most self-destructive ways. Mary had taught it to me in a few days. …
‘I would be foolish to think that things are normal in the way they were normal before. But you know, I think we are happy. Some days now I can even look to the future. I wonder, as I did with Anna, who Mary will be. Each day she opens her eyes a bit more, a little more alert, and I feel I know her more and she is unveiling her little self to me and I think I like her. She has great muscle tone, is 10 times the feeder her sister was, prefers when she is in control of the bottle, likes music and I suspect she is going to be a laugh. In short, I think she’s an O’Connor. I had a feeling before she was born that this one would be a writer, and not just a scribbler like her dad, a real writer, more like her mother. I still think it. And while it begins with a slight surprise, I think she’ll have a great story to tell. …
‘I think I’ve learnt one really important thing in the past two weeks. I’ve got my cross to bear now, so I won’t be looking for any more, anywhere else. Everything else now has to be about joy. My family is going to have the joy imperative, and that means we might have to travel the world and go to lots of amazing places and eat lots of food and drink lots of wine, but that’s the joy imperative for you.
‘The funny thing is, you know, very quickly when something happens whether everything is going to be okay. … There might be sadness ahead and there might be challenges ahead. But everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Better than okay.’
The above is only a small extract from the article, but I hope that I have given you a good flavour of it – there is lot more!
