of water and wolf: we are altered.

(This post mentions living children and family life).

Four years, almost five means the normalcy of life slips around us like a comfortable coat again. An average day, the rumble of life and bounce of activity and I fool myself successfully that we are always as we were once.

Bags packed. Lunch made. Car filled. Drop offs accomplished. Teacher alerted to latest mini-drama in the life of the children.

The internal dialogue: "five bags, not six, five lunches, five seats, 4 schools, no reception aged child" is a whisper.

I have it in place, checked, muffled, restrained.

Biding time.

***

He died and a day would pass and tears would come at night, pent up exhausted emotion, hidden until the little ears and eyes were sleeping. Flood gates opened willingly, a barely contained tide of sorrow. Roaring sobs. Anguish. Despair.

All the words and all the agony that each of us here knows.

He died and a week would pass and a grief tsunami would blindside me, the choking horror flinging itself above the dam walls and tearing my feet from under me. Swollen eyes. Wracking wails. A darkness that swallowed and drowned and took the light, the oxygen, the hope.

He died and a month slid by; numb, disbelieving, functioning, robotic. Smile politely, say the words, a film across my eyes and the world seen through a rain streaked window pane. The constant fall of droplets, the hammering storm and an eye that saw sun but could not believe in it.

And no rainbows. Not one.

He died and a year passed by; some ill constructed raft, knotted from driftwood branch and stray half-rotten vine kept me afloat. And somehow, somehow, I began to float along the current.

And one day, I found that I had a paddle in my hands. And somewhere... somewhere... I must have begun to row.

***

The day - this almost 5 years on day - clatters to a close; the hallway strewn with bags and my outraged berating voice as I trip across a boot and shout for chores to be completed. Those muted, bleary grief days seem so far away when the children slid to bed - often found curled together, sleeping in comfort pairs - and we huddled beneath a blanket and stared blankly at TV trash, all resources spent and the grief storm raging all around us.

We rarely mention him. We rarely speak of grief. Less and less do we need to poke gently at the wounds that grief left across the children  - or ourselves - and consider what balm we need to offer. My husband is not one for pulling up the past and I could be forgiven for thinking that all of it - Freddie, grief, loss and all the rest - is long gone from his mind.

But we are changed. In all the murk and carnage that came after, we seemed to reach for mindful rest, to be together in some other way than vacant entertainment. And so we sit, companionable, entertained by our own pursuits but together. Reading, making, doing, gaming, writing, learning. And sometimes I tentatively pull the threads of grief to see if he still has some and mostly, he stitches firmly at the ragged edge and neatens down the the damaged patch without a reciprocating comment. Polite, gentle, closed.

He read Wolf Hall 5 times. I couldn't imagine why, having shied away from it myself. But lately, we've listened to it together, sharing spoken word and taking our own meaning from it. From time to time, he reaches out, touches my hand or arm and each time I know what is coming: a loss, a grief, some pain or hurt written inside, and his care to let me know that he is there. That he notices these parts, I think. I hope.

I keep my face unflinching, afraid to break and stop him offering the comfort, lest it is too much to risk again. But I do notice.

“It is not the stars that make us, it is circumstance and necessita...." (Hilary Mantle, Wolf Hall).

How has grief affected your relationship? Are you different? Better? Worse? Are you raging at difference or can you offer a path or way or hope to those seeking acceptance and understanding of each other and themselves?

it's okay

We are honored to have Christine's mom as our guest writer today. She writes, "My daughter Christine was stillborn almost two years ago, in March 2013. For me, a big part of this journey has been learning to let myself feel whatever it is I am feeling in connection with her stillbirth and my life without her - the anger, the sadness, and, when I can find it, the quiet calm. It has taken me a long time to do this, to let go of timetables or expectations for my grief, and simply experience it for what it is. This poem tries to capture part of this journey, as well as what I think I needed to hear in those early days of my grief."

Okay

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay.
It’s okay to feel this way.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel angry that this happened.
Angry that this happened to me, to us, to our little family.
Angry that we didn’t get to keep her.
Angry that we rode the bus home from the hospital that day
Carrying a box of mementos instead of a baby.
Angry that no one on that bus knew.
Angry that as our hearts shattered, the world kept right on turning.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel angry at others.
Angry at the people who said nothing.
Angry at the people who said the wrong things.
Angry at the people who forgot, or who just didn’t know,
How deeply it all hurt
And how long the pain lasted.
How it still lasts, and will never really go away.
Angry at pregnant women,
Blissfully ignorant that horrible things can happen,
So carefree and certain that all will be well.
Angry that for so many of them, it is.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel the pain.
It’s okay to wail, to cry,
To scream out in horror that it is now my lot
To live the rest of my life without my daughter;
To have to live with this hole in my heart instead.
It’s okay to repeat, silently and out loud,
That my baby died, that it’s not fair, that this shouldn’t have happened.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to love her,
Okay to miss her.
It’s okay to be her mother, even in death.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay.
It’s okay to feel this way.

Did anyone tell you it was okay? What advice did you get after your loss(es) that was helpful to you? What unspoken gestures helped you cope?

the binding thread

I stumbled into this place heartsick and with a broken spirit.  I had never felt more alone than I did in the aftermath of my son’s death.  It was the warmth of Glow in the Woods that thawed the ice in my heart and illuminated the many other faces in the dark.  This is the last piece I will be making as a contributor to this sacred space.  Thank you to everyone for allowing me to walk with you.  It is a sad path to travel but I am grateful for the beautiful souls with whom I have found myself walking alongside.  I wish you all peace as you journey on.

.

.

.

He’s not here. 

He hasn’t been for one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven days. 

He’s not here and yet somehow he is everywhere: intertwined in the fabric of life’s tapestry.  He’s a changing colored thread weaving itself through the scenery of my past, present, and future.  He is completely dynamic despite his condition of being most sincerely and decisively not alive. 

His newest sister was born and I saw him in her sleeping face.  He was threaded throughout the white fuzz on her head, rose on her fat cheeks, and sea-blue in her eyes.  From a distance they looked so much alike.  Less so now as over these last weeks she has changed, grown, and become more herself and less a reflection of him. 

My oldest asks me why her brother’s heart was broken.  Why did he die?  How does one explain to a three year old the complexity of life and death and the ambiguity of what comes after?  He is the black that fills the void between question and answer.  

In his grandparents’ garden –the one they have given his name and cultivated in his memory- the color of his thread turns from gold in the fall to the pale cornflower blue of hydrangeas in the spring.  In summer it is the ruby red of tiny wild strawberries stolen from their beds by little fingers.

He is the pearlescence of an obscured and faded scar that yawns its way across my abdomen.  The shadows of my face and the outline of subtle longing that lingers around my eyes are threaded with his grey.  He colors the tiny flash of pink from my tongue where his name invariably rests, waiting to steal away from parted lips at first chance.  George.

And he is the firework of fiery reds angry at the unjustness of his death and muted blues of acceptance and regret.  I wait to discover what color he will be when peace and self-forgiveness are found.  Green and brown, I hope: the color of the giant ancient trees with deep and stretching roots.

His thread, an ever-evolving color of love, has become that which binds my life together.  Nearly five years of his death and he is as vibrant and suffused into my entirety as either of his living sisters.   His color has made my tapestry fuller, sadder, more enduring and most undeniably more beautiful. 

He’s not here. 

Oh, but he is.

Tell me where you see your child(ren).  Despite their obvious absence tell me about their presence in your life.  How do you keep them present in ways that are meaningful to you?