Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 7 - Max

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How do you describe your child to a stranger? Your child is everything. In truth they are not perfect by any degree, but to you your child is very special. Your child has quirks and qualities which are difficult to describe to others. It is difficult because your perceptions involve the interleaving of plain description with the years of love and time spent as a parent. The description is easy but does not truly convey your feelings. How do you describe your child if he has died? It is very difficult but I will try.

Max was Max long before he was born. When Sara knew she was pregnant, we, like many parents, agonised over the name of our unborn child. We decided that we both loved the name Max irrespective of the sex of the child. It would have been Maxine if it was a girl or Max for a boy. Max was an extremely active baby in the womb and the name Wrigglesworth was added one night by someone commenting on how much the foetus was moving. This name was dropped after he was born because we thought it cruel to burden him so.

Max William Buchanan was born on 11.08.88. Sara was disappointed that he was late because he was due on 08.08.88 and we both felt that such a run of numbers had to be significant. There was a strange twist of coincidence regarding these numbers many years later. A day before Max’s birthday and two and a half years after Max died I went down to Cornwall with Paula to watch the solar eclipse.

On the way the she commented on a con trail in the sky. A thin bank of cloud reached down from the skies in a graceful curve to the edge of the horizon. “Dad, can you see that path from Heaven? I think that it’s there for Max to come back and see us all.”

The following day, on what would have been Max’s eleventh birthday, at eleven minutes past eleven there was a solar eclipse. The eclipse was a strange and very moving moment, especially given its links to my dead son’s birthday.

I was not concerned about the sex of my child, only that it be born healthy and that Sara survived the birth. I did however have one reservation. I was blond and Sara had dark hair, and I did not want a child with red hair. We had friends with the same mix of hair colours as us and who’d had children with ginger hair.

It was a difficult birth and Sara’s labour lasted about eleven hours. At the end she was exhausted and Max had to be helped into the world with forceps. I stayed with Sara throughout the birth and was emotionally exhausted. There is a deep frustration in watching your wife go through so much pain and being able to do so little. I have an enormous respect for the toils which women undergo in during childbirth.

When Max was presented to Sara, she was almost unconscious with exhaustion. She initially smiled as she took him into her arms and then let out a weak shriek of laughter.

“He’s got red hair, he’s got red hair!”

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