2/24/11 Perfect Girl, Crazy Girl

I wonder what’s going on lately, if it’s just the result of relentless anxiety and frustration about this future with a family we have such tremendous desire for but no control over whatsoever, or if it’s a factor of that second year.  The second year being harder in ways than the first because ‘you’ve gotten through all the firsts’ and the expectation is that those will always be the most difficult to live through.  I don’t know, but I find depression and my ache for her coming around more frequently again.   Like cycling through a washing machine...you can go around and around but the scenery never changes.   Staying awake thinking about that night again, those days in the hospital afterwards, coming home without her - realizing anew that THIS HAPPENED and she really isn’t here.  There is no do-over.  No time frame where you’ve paid your dues to hell and get your child, your life back.  We will not get to have this little girl made of him and me.  

With animalistic ferocity I want to go back and hold her.  The other day on the way home from work I was stopped at a train and made the mistake of looking at some of her pictures on my iPhone.  The one that stopped me this time was the one above.   I love toddler Flintstone feet.   They are made for kissing while you’re changing their diaper and bonding and making stupid high-pitched chatter designed to elicit smiles and coos.   What hit me again in looking at her little toes and wrinkly soles is that...she was perfect.  She was perfect.  Little pads of her toes, their flawless arch.  She had every teensy bone, every organ, every everything you could ever want expect or hope for in a newborn.  We know.  The autopsy said so.  

If we don’t get to raise her, I just want to hold her again.  Inspect her.  Feel her weight on my skin.  Take her in in 3-D.  Imagine how her face would change if she opened her eyes.  Hold her little bottom in the palm of my hand.   I want to wrap my hand around that tiny foot, kiss it, hold it to my cheek and know that I don’t have to say good-bye until I’m good and ready.  I want to feel her hair on my chin.  

The pictures we have prove she was real.   Oh, but it’s such a mind game to go there.  On one hand it almost feels like none of it ever happened.  It’s easy enough to forget something that isn’t present in your every day.  You have to look for it.  Her room, my scar.  Those people that were there have to take themselves back to the hospital and say “I. saw. her.”   Really remembering that we held her and she was real and she’s not here now...it’s still disorienting.  Confusing.  You want to remember what she felt like, everything about her, and yet that very thing also makes you want to implode.   That we actually came to a point where we asked a stranger to come and take her away speaks only to how discolored she was becoming.  To the idea that soon our mental vision of her would be not beautiful, but disturbing.   Most people can’t see a dead baby at all.  But she was our girl.   A bit of pallor or purpled skin could not mar her tiny perfection.   But it doesn’t stay ‘a bit’ forever.   I wish I were a time traveler.  I wish I could be a crazy girl who lives in her own time bubble and just stays in a room with her husband and holds her daughter forever, perfectly content.  Instead of just a crazy girl. 

2/7/11 And So It Goes...

I could feel it building last night, wanting to tell Brad as we were laying in bed that I was missing her - it has to be reaching a critical mass for me to say it out loud - but he was already starting to twitch, and I didn’t want to wake him and lay it on him on the eve of a work week.   So I told myself it might dissipate during the night, and I would be fine to take on the work day at school.   But I think even then I knew I wouldn’t.

In the same way you know you should call in sick when you have to lay down after your shower, I knew upon standing up out of bed that I was in trouble.  Brad hugged me ‘good morning’ and told me he was looking forward to seeing me tonight and I just held on.   Then I climbed back onto the bed while he was choosing his shirt for the day and told him the truth, in hopes that maybe letting the lid off the pressure cooker would be all I actually needed. It helped, in the way that true sharing opens doors and brings a couple closer - I learned some things about his journey lately too, but it didn’t stem the tide.  Instead, it was clear that there would be no going to work, no doing anything until I actually went over the cliff, and felt.  

No matter how many times you do it, no matter how familiar it is, it isn’t a place you go willingly. It’s akin to a mountain of solid garbage, too high to see the top and too wide to see the ends, slowly and steadily pressing you to the edge until there is no other choice but to go over. How do you so successfully ignore an impending force like that?! I swear, it’s like looking everywhere but at what is coming, building, growing - ‘Oh! Here’s a pretty flower.  Oh!  The sun is shining this way, I’ll just look over here.  Oh!  I should pick up some rocks.‘    Until you can’t distract yourself anymore or be productive anymore because there’s no room left, and it’s you and the canyon, baby. No where to go but down.  

So I stayed home and screamed and wailed and cried in her room and used up more Kleenex in one day than I’ve used in months.  Even more than in December.  I phoned a friend and asked her permission to not go into work, even though she has nothing to do with my school district or my professional life.  But she lost a son, and I knew that she would tell me what I would tell anyone else - ‘You have a right to grieve, you cannot control when it happens, work will not fall apart without you, this is your work, cry cry away.  If you don’t, it will come up some other way.’  But I felt guilty.  I only work two days a week for heaven’s sake, you’d think I could wait until tomorrow to fall apart.  I already did this once on a Monday, the week before Anna’s birthday.  What if my co-workers think I’m using the grief card to play hooky?  I tell myself that it doesn’t matter what they think, it is what it is, and I don’t need them to believe that it would not be good for anyone, especially me, to try to work today.  Or even possible to work, for that matter.  But I want them to believe.  Maybe I need them to believe.  Maybe I need to be validated that my sadness is real, that it deserves time and attention.  The timing may be less-than-optimal, but, so what.  Cry away.

With Brad away at work, this felt too big to do on my own, so I called a couple of people.  One person asked “Why today?”   And I thought, there doesn’t need to be a ‘why’, that’s what so many people don’t get.  That’s why you feel guilty in taking a sad day, because so many don’t understand.   There doesn’t have to be a specific event or two, no cause-effect for grief to overtake you.   Our sadness and our missing her is there every day, all the time, 24/7, no breaks, no vacation.   In just everyday living, there are jabs and arrows and wounds created all the time.   TV, conversations with friends, seeing other families at stores and restaurants, those countless moments where you let yourself think how different this moment would be if she were here.   

After I admitted to Brad that I wasn’t making it today, he shared that he had sat in the shower this morning himself, thinking how different this morning would be if Anna were alive.  Getting her ready for daycare.  How different our everyday would be.  How much contentedness in her simple existence, how much chaos and fun and exasperation, how much different coming home to her would be than coming home now to such quiet.  He shared that some of what has been going on for him in returning to work is realizing that it doesn’t have the luster that it once did.  While we are of course grateful he is again employed, he’s been thinking, “What’s the point of all the busyness?  It doesn’t matter.”   He said that for the first time since Anna died he’s had to think and feel about her on a schedule, if you will.  Can no longer do so as it comes up, and how hard that is.  I think it gives new meaning to some of the husbands we’ve heard from at support group, who have had to take the day off after a meeting.  You have to shove your grieving and wishing into a finite space and time, which is so unnatural.  It made me realize again that while we travel this road together, there’s a lot of the journey we’re making independent of each other, and how we tend not to share it on a regular basis.  For one you don’t want to drag the other down, and two, you just can’t talk about it as often as you think about it.  It would take up all the conversation.  So you push it to the side and talk about other stuff  (‘Oh, there’s a flower! Let’s pick up some rocks!’), the same way you walk through your life.

Until you can’t, anymore.

2/6/11 Out of the Mouths...

Yesterday my friend’s two little girls came over to pawn some Girl Scout Cookies (a fine endeavor resulting in the ultimate addictive fake food ever - The Thin Mint).   As darling as they are precocious, after about 20 minutes they inevitably began to get bored and wondered what every child assumes about people our age. 

7 year old:  “Where are your kids?”        I don’t have any kids.   

A few minutes later, the 5 year old:  “Where is your daughter?”    She’s in heaven.   There was an accident when she was born.

“Oh.   Oh yeah....because she wasn’t born at the right time.”   (Good job explaining, Laurie)

7 year old:  But you’re handling it pretty well.   (Again, good job Laurie.  Oh but aren’t they a lesson in how you never know when you’ll hear your own words come right out their mouth.  How careful, how important those tender discussions are.) 

5 year old: “I wish you could just have, like, two kids.  And they would be born at the right time.”   Five second pause as she fiddles with the kitchen chair -  “And then you could have a daughter.”

Yes.  Me too.   I wish that too.

1/19/11 Someone Else's Words

I can’t decide if it’s comforting to have another woman’s experience by my own as well, or disorienting.   It’s the worst kind of camaraderie.   But I can attest to the pure gratitude and bring-you-to-you-knees-ness of what happens when someone takes the time to let you know they’ve shown Anna’s picture recently, thought about her, or talked about her.   When they let you know how it came up, how they felt,  how or if anyone else was affected by her.   When someone recognizes that all this fluff of going about life is really just that, and Anna is still the core of our everyday.   When there’s evidence that she’s not forgotten.

Here's a portion of a post from another website I read that resonates, written by Molly Piper who lost her daughter at 39 weeks.

___________________________________________

We got an email a couple months ago from a friend in our church. We don’t see this guy very often; we’re not close friends. But one afternoon we got a message from him saying that as he was painting his bathroom that day, Felicity randomly popped into his thoughts and prompted him to pray for us.

The conclusion he drew from this experience was, “If I’m thinking about her three months later while I’m painting my bathroom, how much more is she still on your minds?”

All I could do was cry and think, “YES! He’s got it.”

Sometimes the Lord sends comfort from a three-year old, sometimes from a close friend, or sometimes, like in this case, from a 40-some-year-old single guy, who we don’t even know that well. 

So be mindful as the days and months march on for your grieving friend that their loss is in no way over for them.

I know only the title of this song pertains, but she’s always on my mind.      (A youtube video of Willie Nelsons’ song was then available for play on her site.)

-Molly Piper

1/11/11 Hallelujah!

“I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, sayin’ eh-oh, gotta le-t go.   I wanna celebrate and live my life, sayin’ ay-oh, baby let’s go....”    -Dynamite, Taio Cruz

Brad got a job.   A verifiable, undeniable, celebrate-able job.     

In all of the questioning about where God was on December 15 2009, we haven’t wanted to give up on Him altogether.   While “a good Christian” praises in all circumstances, we’ll be the first to ‘fess up that that’s been quite a challenge this last year, especially those first several months.   But oh, don’t we want to believe?  And when we believe, don’t we want to feel that God is right there, actively working in our life, paying attention?   Don’t we want to believe that our belief will be rewarded?   Brad and I have hung in there with God, but we’ve also never felt more boundary-less with Him.  Anna’s death broke all the rules, even when we know there are no rules we could hope to understand when it comes to the mystery of God.   Right or wrong, it always easier when there’s something tangible to hang your hat on.   It doesn’t for a second escape my attention that on Monday night I sent my first sincere prayer up to God since Anna died.  Nothing in the way, no caveat, no hesitation or questioning.  “We need help.”   Exactly one week later, employment was his.   

This isn’t just any job, either.  He’ll be a Senior Project Manager, close to home, equivalent salary to his previous position, stable company, summer hours (half-day Fridays or more!), and blessed benefits.  Everything we could reasonably ask for, with some things we didn’t even bother to ask for - like the proximity to home.  We will not have to pay full Cobra payments come March after all.   Or dip into savings anymore.   I will not have to seek more hours at work to pull benefits.   We do not have to move out of state.  He can come home for lunch!   Shoot, he could ride his bike to work come spring.

I don’t get God at all.   Then again, I’ve never heard or read that I’m supposed to.

So we’re giving God props, but I must also say how proud I am of Brad for keeping at the quest.   Every weekday that I know of he was online searching for positions, calling contacts, attending lunches, networking and following up, networking some more, sending out resumes and filling out applications.   As many of you know, things had been heating up in mid-December and we thought for sure he’d land one of the two positions between a couple companies.   But they both sort of slipped through our fingers.  “We love him” but somehow the fit wasn’t quite right or the targeted job hadn’t quite taken shape at the company for them to figure out if or where they needed him.   We felt deflated and defeated - and, for the first time for me, scared.

The sense of relief is greater than I expected.   The sense of accomplishment even greater!   I wonder if we’ll keep that with us over the years, remember what a gift a full-time job with decent pay really is.   I hope so.   And I get to say what I hoped I’d be able to say.   The year we had to grieve our daughter, to take care of each other and ourselves....it was a cherished gift in the wake of unimagined tragedy.   How we wish we didn’t need that gift.  But we did, and we got it, and we were ready for it to be over.   When one wonders if in fact God was not looking on December 15, it’s comforting to think that maybe He has paid extra attention since.   

Amen.