Permanent Memories

Olivia

"Luke wake up!" I say, crying. "Luke wake up!" I scream again, sitting on top of him shaking him. For the last year and two months, once or twice a week he has this recurring nightmare from when I was in hospital after the car crash. He keeps dreaming that I died in the hospital and nobody could do anything about it.

I continue shaking him and once he finally wakes up, His pillow is saturated from his tears and his body temperature is through the roof. He wakes up in a cold sweat. He kicks the covers off when he has this dream. He actually screams, he talks.

He sits up, wrapping his arms around my waist, crying into my chest. My legs wrap around him as I hold him close and sit in his lap.

"Shh baby... it's okay. I'm right here." I whisper and kiss his head.

He mumbles into my chest about how vivid the dream was and that he swears it was real. He says that every time he wakes up. I hold him close and look at the time again; 3.47 am.

Next to the bed is the baby monitor. I try to wake Luke up as soon as I notice it's happening so he doesn't wake our three and a half month old daughter, Savannah. I rub his back and offer to get him a drink of water. He accepts and reluctantly let's me go.

I slowly walk out of the room, past the cot at the end of our bed and into the kitchen where I get a glass of water and head back to the room. I hand it to Luke and walk back out to check on Savannah in the next room, who is still sleeping peacefully in her own cot.

When I get into bed next to Luke, he has finished the glass of water and he cuddles up to me, wrapping his arms around me and laying his head on my chest.I lay still, wide awake. I play with his hair until he drifts off back to sleep.

He started seeing a psychologist about four months before Savannah was born,to see if he could stop the nightmares. So far, everything they have tried has only worked slightly. They have gone from him not being able to sleep at all but now he can sleep for most of the week except for those couple nights.

I had to sit with him during a few of the sessions just to calm him down.

***

When I next wake up, Luke is wrapped up in the blankets on his side of the bed. Savannah is screaming in the next room and I look at the time to see that it's 5.30 am. I get out of bed and pick my screaming child up. When she sees me she stops crying and just stares at me. Her eyes are as blue as Luke's and her hair is as dark as mine. I sit in the rocking chair in her room and feed her, knowing that at this time of morning she is starving. When Luke comes in about an hour later. His eyes are red and puffy, his hair is flattened to his head. I smile at him and he wipes his eyes again sitting in front of me on the floor.

He reaches over to grab the diaper bag next to her changing table. He lays a mat on the floor and I hand Savannah down to him and watch as he plays with her, before taking her onesie off of her, changing her and putting a clean jumpsuit on her. When he picks her up, my husbands perfect smile reappears, and he kisses our daughters nose, and then each of her hands that are wrapped around his thumbs.

We go down to the kitchen and have our breakfast. Luke puts Savannah in her highchair, strapping her in and mashes up some weet-bix and sweetens them with some sugar, and pours warm milk over it. He leaves it to soak for a while before sitting at the table with the tiny bowl and spoon. I sit next to the highchair placing a coffee and a plate of toast with Vegemite in front of Luke and take a sip from my coffee.

Luke feeds small amounts of food to Savannah and she loves every bit she can get.

Every day I am thankful for what God has done for me. He let me live through my mistake. He fully healed me, even though it scarred my husband. He gave me my life. He gave me my husband. He gave me my daughter. I will forever be grateful. Watching my husband and daughter here in the kitchen simply eating food and babbling on, I feel so happy that I got to experience this. The simplest things will always be my favourite. These moments with my husband and daughter, I will always treasure. I will never forget. They will always be stored in my mind, for me to access whenever and wherever.

They will always be permanent memories.