5/15/11 17 Month Marker

Seventeen months....time continues to be so surreal.   How can it have been seventeen months?  How can we not have her back yet, with all those minutes magically filled in behind us, restoring what has been lost all this time?  

Without planning it as such, we planted Anna’s tree next to her bench this morning with the help of some of Brad’s old friends.  It went smoothly and looks great (we think).   Some hitched breathing a few times as they were putting it in, no tears until I was alone for a few minutes with the weight of how much I love and hate this at the same time.  

The event was marred a bit by a woman who has lived here for years and very upset that we put a bench on “these sacred hills”.   “It’s not a cemetery, there’s always trash where there’s a bench, etc etc.”   She is apparently upset by all the memorial benches going in around the park altogether, but this one really set her off.   She actually asked us to take it out, “but you won’t, will you?”    Not if we don’t have to.   Sorry lady.   These hills are sacred to us too, now more than ever.   I appreciate her point, I really do,  but as Brad said, if it wasn’t us, it would be someone else at some point.   (He was really p.o.’d, and it takes alot for him to get angry.)  I’m glad he was there to offer the other side to me after she left, as it was hurtful and disconcerting.  We’d hoped the placement of the bench would offer a meaningful place to take in a beautiful spot, to enjoy it more, not less.   I guess we just have to hope that more people will see it our way, and not hers.   

We love you, we miss you sweet girl.   Every minute of seventeen months and counting...

5/8/11 Mother's Day Ruminations

(Photo taken just a week or so before she was born.)

Ohhhh, goodness.  I’m writing partly because I do have some stuff to say, partly because I know there are still some out there who are curious how today has gone.  Wonder no more.

Some weeks ago I didn’t even know when Mother’s Day was, and inadvertently signed up to work.  Turns out to my advantage, I think, as my mind was busy most of the weekend.  Only one patient and one colleague asked about my family (each promptly regretting it with the reply “my daughter died a year and 1/2 ago, so I’m sort of just plowing through the day”).  I received 2 texts and 2 phone calls from friends, a card from my parents.  (Brad was up at his brother’s cabin with my blessing, but home when I got home from work.)  Last night I even joined a group of 4 girls out on the town, 3 of whom I know only peripherally.  I got all emotional and jittery beforehand, realizing that this was the first time I’ve gotten together in such a way since Anna died.  You know, meeting new people, making friends, being engaging and witty and fun to be around.  (Okay, for as much as I was ever like that.)  The thing was I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.   Suddenly confronted with not being that person anymore.  I miss her.  Which makes me sad, and the reason I’m not her anymore makes me sad, and it’s all just sad. 

Interestingly enough our cat sat outside Anna’s room today, meowing and meowing to get in.  When I finally let her, she hopped up into the crib and has remained there since.  She hasn’t been in there in weeks, months even. 

Because I’m apparently a sadomasochist, I decided to watch Ricki Lake’s documentary “The Business of Being Born” this evening.   Which resulted in a new understanding of our country’s culture surrounding childbirth and maybe why in fact we have such high infant and maternal mortality rates for such a ‘highly developed country’, but moreover, spurred me to question for the first time if Anna would have lived had we not done anything.  If we hadn’t insisted the doctor check more thoroughly when my belly hadn’t grown for 3 weeks, if we hadn’t subsequently bumped up to twice weekly appointments, if we would have just left nature to its own devices and not jumped into the assumption she was in danger with such low fluid and gone off to be induced like so many beguiled idiots.  I wonder.  But at the end of the day, I need to believe she would have died anyway.  That she still would have suffered at 10:00 that night and died in my womb at home instead of the hospital.  

My friend sent me something today that I started to read at work but rapidly concluded could not finish there, or the rest of my day would have been finished as well.  I still haven’t read it all, but have complete trust that it is appropriate, for today.   

Oh, I love you baby girl.  

Mother's Day...Reflections of a Mother Denied

           By: Michelle Parrish

On this Mother's Day, I ask myself, "Do I have the right to celebrate Mother's Day?"

Have I truly been a mother this past year?  The answer is yes.  Each day I have cared for my child.  In every way possible I have mothered her, although

differently from other mothers.

I have mothered her with every tear shed, through the agony of longing to hold her.  I have rocked her in my heart, if not in my arms, kissed her little

cheeks in my mind, if not with my lips.  I have smelled her sweetness with my hopes, if not with my nose, and felt her softness with my memory, if not with my hands. 

I have tickled her with my wishes, if not my fingers. 

Am I a mother? I truly am.  My physical mothering has been limited to lovingly tending her ashes, but I am a mother all of the time. 

 

4/15/11 Sixteen Months

Mmmm, sixteen months today.   I sit in her room and think of all we’ve been denied, the millions of moments we couldn’t have imagined, the thousands we did.   I look at that picture of her in our arms and wonder for the umpteenth time what she’d look like now and know nothing I can conjure is close enough to even try.  For the life of me I can’t construct an entire face.  Just eyes surrounded by haze, or hair with a blurry features.  An entire face is just that of another child’s I already know.   Sippy cups and exploding language and mastering that ‘walking’ thing.  

I spoke at an Infant Loss Symposium for Caregivers on Wednesday.   Our NILMDTS photographer (and now friend) asked if I wanted to be a part of her presentation a couple months ago and I jumped at it.  Talk about how important her pictures are to us?   To a group of professionals who have the potential to make or break a couple’s experience in the loss of their child??  I’m SO there.  Not surprisingly, it was an intense day.   Upon seeing the agenda, I wanted to attend all the sessions, so we showed up at 8:00 with the participants and got to hear the parent panel (3 couples sharing their story, what they did and didn’t appreciate from the staff at the time, etc).   Keynote speech by a respected physician who has worked with more of us bereft parents than she’d like, videos, pictures, meaningful quotes.  It was so interesting to be there, having attended a hundred continuing education conferences myself as the professional and recipient, but to be the subject of the conference... educating caregivers on how to take care of us better.  I still don’t know how to put it in words.  

I haven’t told Anna’s story in that much detail in many, many months.  This time all the infertility and adoption stuff took a back seat to the night she died.  I recounted aloud (twice, we had both an AM and PM breakout session) that last week, last day, that night, and tidbits from the following days in the hospital.   I got to share what a miracle she was, how psychologically absent both Brad and I were and how that’s how all we shocked and grieving parents are, how we need those nurses and chaplains and doctors and doulas to be our advocate and do everything we can’t possibly know or think of to do in the critical hours we have with our kids.  How their words and behavior matter.  How as part of the blessed few on the planet that ever witnessed our child’s existence on this earth that letting us know they will not forget him or her is ultimately the greatest gift.   I shared with them how much our labor nurses mean to me still.  How I will have Anna’s ashes, a couple of her outfits, and the letter written by one of the labor nurses the week she died cremated with me when the time comes.   

I shared things I haven’t told anyone yet.  Like that part about what I plan to have cremated with me.  And how those pictures prove to me that in those 14 hours, I was a Mom.  I can see it in my face.  I got to be a Mom for 14 hours.  I didn’t even consciously know I felt that way until it came out during my talk.  It’s funny how even now I feel selfish about it, voraciously taking the opportunity to lay our story on a captive group of strangers.  Part of me wonders if they left that breakout session thinking that my part was not the best use of time, wishing I’d talked less and Wendy more.  But there is also a part of me that doesn’t care what they think, which is new.   I usually care too much!   And it comes from a defensive, protective, “My Daughter Is Important” place - I just got a total of 40 uninterrupted minutes to talk about her, and I’m taking it.  No apologies.  (Except to Wendy - her information is invaluable and I don’t think she got all the time needed or deserved around how to do bereavement photography if NILMDTS can’t be there.)  Wendy aside, I feel perversely proud of myself for staking space and time for my daughter.  Now there are roughly 50 more people who know She Was Here.  I wonder how many more people I will introduce her to (force her on?) over the next 40 years.   Because some time ago we officially landed in that space where you don’t talk about her anymore because everyone already knows.  You talk about the things that ARE occurring, not the ones that aren’t.  So there she lies, quietly, like a prized collector’s item only taken out of its case on the rare occasion you come across someone else with a similar passion, or an event featuring your particular penchant.   

But I am grateful for the chance to again say aloud how important she is to me.  How much I miss her.  How she changed Brad and I.  Not in those words but in the tears that fall and when I tell, really tell, her story.

3/24/11 Some Time For Me

I escaped to the ocean for a few days on my own.  The type of trip I’ve taken many times over the last decade to be contemplative, in nature, and alone.  Often some of my favorite times.  The last one I did was April 2010 when I went to Seattle.  A big mistake, at least as it related to meeting up with an old college friend.  I haven’t heard from him since.   Sobbing your way through coffee after 7 hours together and meeting his wife for the first time...not exactly a winning social move.   Looking back, attempting such a demanding effort at 4 months out was just dumb.  Way too early for ‘new’ people or renewing friendships.  But oh how we push ourselves to be ‘back’.  

Anyway.  This trip was better, the incessant rain befitting of my mood, and I got an afternoon of sunshine just long enough to appreciate what a blue sky can do for an ocean and to capture the above sunset.  Mmmm.   (On my iPhone, by the way.  I hate to admit how much I love that thing.)

That morning I stood above the crashing waves a few miles away and realized that the essence of me isn’t, hasn’t really been around.  For those familiar with the phrase, I’ve not been “in my body.”  Not grounded.   (It’s an energy work thing.  Just trust me.  I know when I’m in, how far I’m in, the difference between fully in and out, and it is profound.  When ‘in’ I’m suddenly wearing a lead suit.  Heavy and so weird!)  But they say it’s better to be fully present, so I spend many minutes pulling myself back in.  It only took about 3 minutes to begin crying once I’d landed.   Ahh...when you’re in, you feel.  No small wonder I’m outta here. 

The second thing I realized is that somewhere along the way I made a decision not to re-engage in my life until there is a child in it.  I will not enjoy it, I will not seek anything that makes me happy, I will not consider participating in any activity for the sake of simple pleasure.   Productive, huh?  Mature too.  Since then I’ve been noticing all the ways I’m choosing to be a child.  Maybe not all the ways - I’m sure there are more than I’m acknowledging.   So I’m a 42 year old woman having a 3 year old’s tantrum.  “I want this I want this I want this I want this and anything else is NOT good enough!!!!”  Cue stamping feet and pounding fists and the crumpled wailing face to the heavens.   Trouble is, being aware is not the same as changing, for you have to be willing to change.  And I don’t know if I am yet.  (Yet another mature decision.)  Brad told me I don’t have to give up tantrum-ing altogether, but maybe I don’t have to do it all the time.  

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  So I admit I’m being a child.   We’ll see where it leads....but don’t get your hopes up just yet.  I’m a slow learner. 

2/26/11 Grief In Review

So I pulled a couple of the many grief and infant loss books off the shelves.   I haven’t really looked at any of them for nearly a year.  They were all I wanted to read in those first several weeks, then all I wanted was memoir about loss.  Infant or child loss all the better, but any loss would do.   Eventually I began to pick up fiction again...but it still feels like I’m choosier about books in general.   They must not be too light-hearted, no chicklit.  

Anyway.  The books also started a little bender on the internet about grief, through which I found a blog entitled “Legacy Matters”.   It seems to be all about subjects around death and dying, on both global, personal, objective and even scientific levels.  Here are a few excerpts that struck me.

Let’s begin with grief. There is a kind of shattering that happens with, say, the death of a child, or any death, but perhaps most of all violent death. Not only is your heart shattered; you lose your sense of who you are and what your life is about. So reconstruction is needed. But first we need to accept that we are broken. This initiates the “emotional alchemy.” If we can hang in there with grief, it changes from a feeling of being “hemmed in” by life to a feeling of expansion and opening.

We will never get back to the way we were, but eventually we reach a new state of “normal.” I’m not talking about the mundane kind of “getting back to normal,” in which we find ourselves doing the laundry again (although that is important too), but the deeper kind, which is a process of remaking ourselves and how we live.

Grief is a teacher. It tells us that we are not alone; that we are interconnected; that what connects us also breaks our hearts — which is as it should be. Most people who allow themselves to grieve fully develop an increased sense of gratitude for their own lives. That’s the alchemy: from grief to gratitude. None of us wants to go through these experiences, but they do bring us these gifts.  - Miriam Greenspan

I hope she’s right about that.  If I resonate with what she says about being broken, losing your sense of who you are, what your life is about, etc...than maybe I can trust her on the rest as well.

There  is an increasing recognition in medical circles that miscarriage or stillbirth can be an extremely traumatic experience for mothers and fathers alike, who may have developed a profound emotional connection with their unborn child. "The mourning process can be long and lonely," says the Helping After Neonatal Death (HAND) website. "After the death of a baby, it generally takes twelve to twenty-four months simply to find your new base." 

Uh-oh.  That means I only have what, 9 more months to get my sh** together?!   I like better the timelines that say ‘there is no timeline’.  Then I don’t have to also take on being a bad griever or more of a dark cloud than the next lady who lost her baby.   Which I don’t have to take on, it’s a choice.  But let’s face it.   You know I’ll take it on as pressure to be a better person than I am.

One thing I learned is that researchers believe there are two kinds of grief: "normal grief" and "complicated grief" (which is also called "prolonged grief"). Normal grief is a term for the feeling most bereaved people experience, which peaks within the first six months and then begins to dissipate.  "Complicated grief" does not—and evidence suggests that many parents who lose children are experiencing something more like complicated grief.   Calling grief "normal" makes it sound mundane, but, as one researcher underscored to me, its symptoms are extreme. They include insomnia or other sleep disorders, difficulty breathing, auditory or visual hallucinations, appetite problems, and dryness of mouth....    

One to take heart from when I’m feeling less courageous and sane than other people who are seemingly able to pick up and move on with some sunshine on their face after tragedy and losses.   I only have a couple of those symptoms, and only some of the time.  (I AM having some pretty weird and disconcerting dreams on a rather consistent basis of late...but, what can you do about that?) 

There’s a whole lot more, but who really wants to read about it?  Probably only those few of you who are traveling this path too and need some validation.   So, hope you’ve found some too.  Be well, my friends.