New beginnings

So it’s been a very long time since I have written on my blog…..and there are so many reasons for that that it’s hard to even start to explain.  The biggest reason though is probably the most important to explain and is the hardest.  After our daughter’s death, we felt such an outpouring of love and support.  It was truly incredible.  Looking back at my blog entries, I can still feel the emotions and the heaviness that was in my heart.  I remember the awful emptiness but also that I never felt alone.  In those weeks after, I always felt the loving presence of my friends.  I felt their prayers, and most of all I felt close to Jesus with his spirit and strength flowing through me.

But a few months later, around when I stopped writing, I started to feel empty. Those connections were gone.   It was a kind of emptiness that I didn’t want to talk about with anyone.   It was an emptiness that couldn’t be filled by friends, by activity, by love and… much to my fear….even couldn’t be filled by prayer.  It wasn’t that I didn’t try all those things.  I pushed myself to be with others, to join in, and to talk about her even when I didn’t really want to.  It wasn’t that I even felt bad.  I could do everything that I had ever done before that terrible tragedy befell us, but I was like a robot.  I was going through the motions.  The only way that I could describe it to my husband, who is the only person I really discussed it with, was that I felt someone had turned down the volume on my life.   Everything was still there, but the joy was so muted that to me, I was unrecognizable.  It scared me.  The only thing that helped was that my husband felt it too.  He described it as being in a desert.   Just feeling nothing.

And to my horror, that muted, nothing feeling extended to my relationship with God.  I would pray,  I went to church,  I read scripture, but it was like the words bypassed all emotions and when straight into that black empty pit.  I tried so hard to focus but it was like sand through my hands and at times I felt almost desperate.  I never felt like God turned his back on me though.  There was just a void that I couldn’t bridge and I still don’t know why.  I just know that I always tried to remember that God knows what is in my heart.  He knew that I was longing to be close to him and all I could do is pray that he would open up a new path for me.

And in June I found out that I was pregnant again.

It was something we had hoped for… had actively tried for, but the reality of it that morning staring at the test strip brought me to my knees.  I had no idea what I would face, how I would feel, and how…maybe even if…. I could ever manage.  I have the perspective now of hindsight, with my baby son sleeping peacefully in the next room as I write, but those early days were tough.  I didn’t tell anyone for sure because I was not ready for their reactions and I wanted to be ready, to have down exactly what I wanted and needed from them ready to say.  So, I just existed.  I didn’t do a lot of hoping or dreaming, I just made it through each day and counted down the day until each bloodwork result, until each ultrasound.  And with each test, came encouraging news.  I knew that nobody could tell me the end result.  There was no crystal ball that could show me what my life would be nine months from that point so I just clung onto each piece of evidence of a successful pregnancy and looked no further.

And each night, I asked for God to give me strength and I thanked him…literally thanked him each day for the emotional pain that I knew I would I have to endure because the alternative…of never having another chance to bring life into the world…. To expand my family…. To show my son that a baby coming into the world doesn’t always bring the awful pain that he endured… was much, much worse than any pain that this wonderful and awful period in my life could ever bring. 

So how have I been?  Well, I haven’t written anything in several weeks.  Daily life has picked back up so much, but the real reason is that I feel like I have nothing to say.  Well, maybe not nothing to say, but no way to describe the differences that have settled into my life.  Into my person.  Sure, there are still those moments of grief that take me by surprise.  Like the other day at my in-laws.  It was a family dinner for my husband, and to tell the truth I had forgotten most of the reason why I was reluctant to go, so when my husband suddenly changed his plans and decided to stop by, I was not any more hesitant than usual.  As soon as we walked in though, I saw my sister in law pulling her son out of his highchair, and as she turned around, her mother leaned in to tickle the baby’s feet.  And that was it.  All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe.  The room started spinning and I just got up and walked out the door.  I had not laid eyes on the baby since the day he was born…two weeks before my daughter…  The sudden realization that that should be me, holding my baby, hit me so hard, but what hit me even harder is that nobody in that room even remembers.

From what I understand, these types of sudden outbursts of grief will continue out of nowhere for forever.

In my everyday life I am okay.  I get up every day.  I go to work.  I go to church.  I see my pregnant friends.  I pick up people’s babies.  Well, I make myself do it.  It is a struggle.  It is a constant battle of forcing myself to do what I know I should do, but inside it doesn’t feel right or okay.  To be perfectly honest, I spend a lot of time dreaming of running away.  Moving to a new town where nobody knows me and never talking to any of my friends or family again.  Why does that sound like such a promising solution to me?  I truly have no idea.  These are the very people that have loved and supported me in such a time of need.  Maybe so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about wondering “why me?” a thousand times a day.  I mean, I had a perfectly healthy full term baby.  I had no medical conditions, engaged in no risky behaviors….nothing…but my baby died for no other reason than her movements somehow got her so tangled in her own umbilical cord that she had no chance to be born.  Sometimes I have this daydream where I imagine myself in a dim room with a bunch of other pregnant women and everyone is talking quietly and there is an uneasy feeling and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, this spotlight lands on me.  Me.  Out of all the hundreds of other women in the room, it’s me.  I know immediately what it means.   And I want to scream no.  I want it to move to someone else, but I can’t, I couldn’t…. I wouldn’t but…why me?  Really it mimics what my son said to me the other day.  He was asking about someone who was pregnant and said “will her baby die?”  I told him no.  That only sometimes do babies die and that it is very uncommon, so to reinforce this we named off fifteen or so people we know including him, and I reminded them that they were all babies once and that they all lived.  He thought for a moment and then tilted his head and looked at me.  “So pretty much only our baby died.”  With every ounce of my being I wanted to yell “Yes!  That’s right.  Just ours!  God knows why, but every single other person I know is busy holding their babies and ours will never ever be here with us.”  So, I guess I feel like a 3 year old that just can’t understand why, but with the guilt of an adult who knows that you can’t ask for it to be someone else.

Most of my days I can handle the fact that I had a daughter who was stillborn. I can say it, I can remember it and I can look forward to the fact that I will see her again. I can answer my son’s questions, and validate his thoughts when he brings her up. I can be strong for him. I can be strong for myself. The funny thing is that lately when I have told people that things are much better most are happy for me and glad for our healing and the strength that God has given. Often though, when I express that thought, someone will say to me or email me to remind me that “Grief is like that. One day you will feel better, but then you will feel worse again.” Or, my favorite, “It’s not over yet”. I just nod my head and smile, but inside my brain is screaming “Do you not think I know this?” Like I don’t know that there are and will always be days when the pain of losing her washes over me like a wave, ripping off any protection that I have built up against that hurt. And the reality is that for my whole life this will continue to happen. That is why there is no such thing as “getting over it”. There is only healing and moving forward, but never getting to a place where grief cannot reach out and grip your heart.

Last week was one of those good moments when I can hold it together. I was in the grocery store with my son and then for no reason at all, in the middle of the pasta, he looked up at me and said “I still miss my baby sister.” He told me of how he wished he could feed her baby food and push her stroller and then he showed me what he thought happened when she died by making a cartoonish last gasp and falling backwards onto the floor. So with people all walking past us, I bent down and talked to him. I didn’t want to whisper because I don’t want him to ever feel discomfort or shame talking about her, so in a normal voice I reassured him that she didn’t die like that and reminded him that he saw her and that she was peaceful and beautiful. He looked up at me from my makeshift lap squatting down in the aisle and said “I want to have another one that will come home and live with us”. I hugged him and we stood up and carried on to the checkout. That day I did it.

The next day was Ash Wednesday, and as our reverend spoke on his meditation about “storing your treasures in Heaven” I couldn’t help but think about my treasure, stored for me, so I just looked up at the ceiling and tried to delay the tears from coming, and as I walked up to receive my ashen cross I continued to stop them. I made it until I picked my son up in the nursery and he kept demanding to know what the cross was for and wanted me to make one for him so I did and while buckling him into his car seat I said that the cross reminds us all that we will someday die and go to Jesus. He nodded in agreement and then opened his arms wide saying with all the enthusiasm in the world “And I will say ‘Baby Sister, I am SO HAPPY to see you’”! It was then that I did lose it. The covering that builds up each day as I focus on life and living and on loving and on the good parts of what I shared with my daughter was ripped off. I laid my head on his lap and cried.

It’s like most of the time; the true reality of what we have lost doesn’t always sink in. I feel like my son sometimes when he thinks she might just show up anyway…. Sometimes I feel like this loss will soften, like there is some end to it, but these times bring the reality quickly. I will live my whole with this. I can look at babies and play with them. I can see baby clothes and be okay, but one day I heard a baby cry and I had to excuse myself from the room. The stark contrast between that living child and the silence that filled the room when my own daughter was born with no movement…no sound, was too much for me.

And this will be my life. Some days I know I can handle it. Some days I think I’ll never make it down this path put before me carrying that burden. I know, though, that I have no choice and that all my life I will have times where grief overcomes me. It’s a reality I can’t escape and I truly no one should worry that I will forget it. I won’t.

If you haven’t met me, let me introduce myself. I am a type A personality. At least I think so. I don’t know a lot about personalities, but from what I hear, that’s probably me although over the years I have softened….a lot. I was talking to my counselor about it the other day during my visit. We were talking about the appointment my husband and I had with the high risk maternal fetal doctor. My regular OB had sent us for a consult to see what steps, if any, needed to be taken in the future, and if there were any tests they could think of to run. We had to wait for about 2 weeks to get in, and when we got there he told us what we figured he would – that after looking over 40 pages of paperwork in my chart, he found our series of unfortunate incidences and tragedy to be “bad luck” – no testing or further visits needed. It was no surprise to us at all – we were told at the hospital that the cause of our baby’s death was very clearly a cord accident that had no cause other than accidental. We were told the same by our doctor also. And now, we were being told by another doctor, but for some reason I couldn’t help feeling let down. I was really downright sad for a few days and I couldn’t figure out why. I mean, in all reality he had given us the best possible news – that we were not high risk in any way and that our chances of a healthy baby in the future was the same as any other couple trying to have a baby. Sounds good. The best news possible after what we have been through, but I realized that the best wasn’t good enough. I realized that nothing short of “everything will be fine” would make me feel any better and less afraid and that being a doctor he couldn’t say that. He told us the truth meaning that like everyone we have to face a 20 percent chance of miscarriage….a 1 percent chance of stillbirth. Those numbers might be acceptable to some – they were to us once too - but now, having been on the astronomically losing side of odds, statistics are no comfort. I guess it was just another reality check that there are no, and will be no guarantees which is just what I was discussing with my doctor, commenting on the fact that people with anxiety usually face control issues of some sort. I am no exception, but I do recognize it and have actively tried to change it. For many years, I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. Everything from how the towels were folded to peace in Israel, I was sure would fall apart if I didn’t do it, and I am so grateful that I am not like that today. My counselor asked how that happened and as I read off a list of extraordinarily difficult situations from my college years, to my divorce, to the last four years, all of which were out of my control, she just looked at me. Then she asked “And your response to all that was to let go of control a little more each time”? It didn’t occur to me before then, but it’s true. Instead of holding on tighter, I let go. It wasn’t an innate response, but you can either allow struggle to strengthen you or defeat you, and pretending to have control when it was becoming increasingly clear that I didn’t have all that much, sure seemed like a fraud and a denial and a failure. I do have hope in the future, and my hope is in my ability to continue to trust God with the outcome.

Grief is a very hard concept to explain. It is different for all people and different for all situations. It is a process, and while it does have a definite start, it probably has no real end. The shift from unbearable, to tolerable, to…well….. to something that is just a part of you which is indiscernible from your other parts is impossible to pinpoint. I don’t know where I am on that continuum. I did realize just the other day that when I respond “good” when people ask how I am doing, I actually mean it. I have been responding “okay” or “good” to that question since the beginning because there is nothing else really to say. Even though the response is the same, the feelings behind it have shifted dramatically. When I was asked that question, the words from my mouth were forced and the pain in my heart welled up at even having to say them. Because I wasn’t good. I was consumed by grief and I realize that while it’s still there, it is no longer consuming me. My response now is focused on life and hope and thoughts of now. I think that’s a good thing. It sure feels better. It made me start thinking about how it is that that happens. I remember all too well the second by second wavering between grief and hope in the days and weeks after my daughter’s death. It is a horrible, gut wrenching existence… barely an existence at all. For a few seconds alone, you can start to put your life into some sort of perspective, but before you can get a clear image, a feeling of hope at all, that chocking wave of grief passes over your body and lands on your chest crushing you back into despair. It’s like trying to claw your way out of a hole, and getting your fingers dug into the steep sides enough to barely life your feet of the ground and then losing your grasp….over and over….tens of thousands of times a day. It seems that after even a short time of that, we would give up. The grief would win, choking the hope out of us completely, but it doesn’t.

1 Thessalonians 4:13

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.

Psalms 34:18

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

These two verses came to me many times in cards and in prayers, but I didn’t really have a place for them in my understanding. I do now. Grief would win, if we look at the situation with human eyes, but it is because of a power greater than ourselves that that seed of hope can grow. The seconds between grief and despair become minutes. Each time, we climb out of that hole just a tiny bit more before falling back. And then somehow, miraculously, you find yourself with more hope than grief, more life than defeat, and that my friends, is by the grace of God.

“In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened” Harold S. Kushner When bad Things Happen to Good People

I guess the last few weeks this has been on my mind more than anything else. I have not been feeling too articulate as of late, so I haven’t written much, but what has been on my mind the most is what I intend to do now.

First, when people use the term “getting over it” when talking about a tragedy or loss I just try to pretend in my head that they have misspoke. There is no “getting over it”. I think it is more like putting the loss into perspective. In this same book, Rabbi Kushner compares a tragedy or loss to a giant bolder. When you are standing right in front of it, all you can see is the boulder, but if you can step back, the world around it comes into view, putting the boulder in perspective and allowing that person to see the joy that world holds. I hope that is what I have been doing.

Through all of the ups and downs of this loss, I have tried to hard each day not to lose sight of my son, my family, my friends or our faith. I don’t want that boulder to eclipse these things because they are not only what have sustained me, but I feel like losing sight of them would not be honoring the memory of my daughter. It would be like making her an obstruction of the life I have and I know she was not put on this earth to be any such thing. She was and is, part my life – a life which I give thanks for every day – so I can’t make her loss the only thing in that life. I know I have so much to be thankful for, and I have truly felt that with my whole heart each day even when my grief has been at the worst. What I have struggled with is incorporating the idea of this loss into that gratefulness. Can you be grateful for such a tragedy? I’m not sure but I know I am grateful to have a daughter that is in heaven. I know I am grateful for the opportunity to be her mother. And, I think I can be grateful for that boulder that is now part of the landscape of my life. I am just happy that I can finally start to see the joyful world around it.

Watching TV last night, my son saw a commercial for the new movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I didn’t even realize he was watching it until he looked up at me and said “Mommy, that boy’s dad died.” I could feel that tightness in my chest… not even my chest really. It’s like a knot in my heart. I reminded him that people usually die when they are old. That children’s’ daddies don’t usually die. That babies don’t usually die. That it is very unusual.

That knot in my heart has come up a lot with my son lately. Saying prayers about a week ago, my husband told him that he could pray for another baby brother or baby sister someday, if he wanted to. I wondered what he would say and expected some of his earlier responses about “fixing it” or maybe that he already had a baby sister. Instead, he stood up on the bed and looking at us both said that he would pray for another baby and that he would pray that this baby would be very powerful. Then he threw his little hands down and said “And this baby will not die”. We were a little stunned that he had come to understand some of the permanence about her death…at least that she wasn’t coming back…. but it let us inside his head a little bit more. We realized that since he didn’t understand the details of the cord accident, he was putting his own ideas together. As a three year old, he thinks that if you die, you must not be strong so if another baby is powerful it won’t die. A few days later he talked about the idea again. He told us that someday he wants a sister, but not a brother. Then he looked at me and said emphatically that he did not want the baby in my tummy, that he just wanted it to be at our house. It took me a second to get it, but since we told him “there was an accident in mommy’s tummy” he had decided that, again, if it’s not in my tummy that an accident can be prevented.

Although we talk about his sister openly and we always will, I’m glad that we brought up this idea of another baby with him. It opened up a door for us to what he thinking about death and made us realize it has been on his mind. He is starting to think in concrete terms and reason in his own way through this problem. Sharing these things with my mother she was so happy that he is expressing his feelings to which I agreed but added that it is breaking my heart to talk about these things with a three year old. But, we didn’t really have a choice and I know that it is better for him to verbalize these thoughts, rather to try to figure them out in his own head when he doesn’t have the knowledge to do it. Trust me, if I had a choice, I would rather be having these questions come up later….about a goldfish…. but that option was taken away from all of us.

I wonder a lot how this experience will influence him. It scares me and I pray to God that he will help us to have the right words, to do the right things that will have a positive effect on my poor son. It is just so hard to tell. I am still seeing ways that this has affected me, both positively and negatively and I know I will continue to see them. The most hurtful and shocking to me though came the other night. My son was saying how much he loved us and he looked so cute that I asked my husband to take a video of him talking about it and while he was taping I was looking at my darling son and I thought “we will want this when he is gone.” It was so shocking to me that I shut the thought out immediately, and it was so upsetting that I can hardly write the words now. That I could even think such a thing was so hurtful and scary, but the next night when I finally told my husband about it with tears in my eyes, he shook his head and told me that he had had the exact same thought. We have both experienced loss before and wouldn’t consider ourselves too green in that area. We are both strong and I know I have suffered through several trials before this….. but this…. this has ripped the rug out from under me so hard that I can’t even see straight sometimes. It has changed my perspective so that nothing seems permanent…. and not in a good healthy way… in a scary hard to live in fear way. Knowing that my husband had the same unimaginable thought too made me feel less alone and more normal, but then I thought of my son…. what will he feel about the permanence of the world? I just pray that he isn’t shaken to his little core like his mommy and daddy have been.