Unexpected moments...

I'm sitting in assembly, when the Muslim Students' Association get up to do a notice in the form of a short video. The music starts (it was a great song, but I can't remember what it was now...) and then the images start. At first it's rather innocuous stuff, and I start wondering where they're going with this. Then the hard-hitting stuff kicks in. The ad is all about getting together to pray and make a difference for starving children around the world. The message is great. The images that go with it are not.

The last image I saw was of a woman holding what I initially thought was a preemie. The child was curled into her lap, with its back towards the viewer. Then I looked again and realised it wasn't a preemie. It was a child of several months, but it looked like a preemie because it was starving to death. It had no fat. It's skin lay in an odd arrangement of shiny smooth sections with wrinkles and folds around its spine.

And immediately I felt that poor mother's sorrow. I remember how funny Janel looked - nothing like a normal newborn - because she was too little to have had time to build up layers of fat under her skin. I remember how I felt when she, a preemie, would not feed. I know how frustrated I was that she was unable to suck enough nourishment into her tiny body. I know how helpless I felt as I watched the weight fall off her. I know how confused and scared I felt as my milk came in but lacked the nutrition she so desperately needed. I know how desperate I became to make everything OK for her. I know how lonely I felt as she lay in the incubator under lights as the hospital staff put a tube down her nose to try and save her life.

And seeing that photo, I know how blessed I was that I had the money to enable me access to the staff and services that saved Janel.

And so I wept, right there in that hall. I wept for that poor mother who could not save her child, but who obviously knew it was dying. I wept for that poor child, who was suffering an agonising death. I wept for guilt that Janel had survived, while hers would not. And I wept for the emptiness that followed the loss of Zoe, the loss that poor mother would soon experience.

I don't know who saw me, because as soon as the tears started I got up and left the hall. I ran and hid in the bathroom. Then, when my tears subsided, I went to the staffroom and hid behind a newspaper. When the other staff returned to the staffroom, I went and hid in my classroom. The remainder of the day was spent under a cloud of grief. I battled to teach my lessons, drained of all energy. All I wanted was to crawl into a corner and howl. It took all my energy just to speak.

I also developed a headache, which, as I write, is still with me. (Yes, I've taken drugs...they haven't worked.) I don't know whether it's an APS headache, a sugar headache (I got through a lot of comfort food yesterday!) or stress headache, but my money is on the fact that it was brought on by my unexpected grief.

I love that my heart is that unguarded - that I don't have the defences I used to have. I love that the plight of one unnamed, anonymous child and its mother can affect me so deeply. I love that, in this area at least, I am becoming more like Jesus - seeing with my heart, weeping with those who weep, mourning with those who mourn.

I hate that my heart is unguarded. I hate that a simple photograph has the power to bring to the surface the grief that I know will never leave me. I hate that, at the drop of a hat, I can be weeping so deeply in front of a bunch of relative strangers. I hate that my child is dead and that nothing will bring her back.

A family member asked me, the other day, whether or when I'm going to stop talking about Zoe. Her question rather took me by surprise. I wasn't sure how to respond. I know she spoke out of concern, because she thinks it's unhealthy to keep talking about Zoe. Part of me wanted to tell her to get lost, part of me wanted to thank her for her concern, and the rest of me wanted to spend the next however long to help her understand why I will never, ever, stop talking about Zoe. I eventually responded by saying that I don't think I will ever get to the point where I stop talking about Zoe, and then changing the subject. All round, I think it was the safest response. I hope it was the right one.