Boom

Jess at After Iris submitted a guest post not long ago, and her voice and words resonated with so many. She has a way of capturing a feeling perfectly in the fewest possible words. A gift we all wish we had. She combines cheekiness and deep insight harmoniously to give new wisdom into our own grief.  In May 2008, Jess' second daughter Iris died while she was in early labour. Though she writes infrequently on her blog, Jess is Glow in the Woods' newest regular contributor and fire-spitting medusa. We are so honored. - Angie

I’m a noisy beastie.

Ra-tat-tat-tat-ing. Clattering around.  Today I stood up and made a racket:

LISTEN TO ME WORLD! LISTEN TO ME OCCUPANTS OF MY OFFICE! I HAVE FEELINGS I MUST SHARE WITH YOU!  I AM UNHAPPY ABOUT THE DELAY WE ARE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING IN OUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS! WE NEED MORE STAFF!  IMMEDIATELY! I AM EXTREMELY PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS! AS EVIDENCED BY THE SHOUTING!  DO NOT SHUSH ME! DO! NOT! SHUSH! ME!

Noisy beastie with her noisy-loud-fist-on-the-table feelings.

I live out loud.

But I grieve in a whisper.

Or even quieter than that.

I grieve in the tap-tap of fingers on a keyboard. I grieve in the silent shudder-shake of waking with an aching face. I grieve in the hush of a turned cheek: turn away, turn away. They don’t know. They don’t know. I grieve by the light of a screen, a muted scream.

But in the quiet, my grief finds a voice. My grief can have a voice here, in this place.

If my tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yes, in these Woods.

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This is my first post for Glow as a regular contributor, and I want to hear your voices.  Do you speak your grief in a shout or a whisper? Have you written a post you wish everyone could read about your baby or babies? If you don’t write a blog, what’s the one thing you wish you could mutter in the world’s ear? I'm listening.

Pull up a chair

It's cold and rainy 60 degrees here. So far today I've had a big mug of homemade latte (long live my foam-making gadget) and two medium mugs of hot tea. I am planning to have at least one more of those.

I don't know whether it's because it's a rainy day, or because a fellow medusa and her family are staying with us for a couple of days, or because I'd nursed a general unease for half the day today before locating its source in it being a date of significance, the first of the "five years since..." ones, but whatever it is, I am suddenly feeling that it's been way too long since last we asked how you are doing.

So grab a mug of steaming with whatever you are in the mood for. Or, if you prefer, pretend it's actually nice and sunny outside and we are sitting in a sidewalk cafe, and umbrellas above us are reflecting in our drinks.

(Though if your drink is really reflecting an umbrella above you, I am jealous and I am not sure I want to know.)

Whichever way you go on the drink, though, do stay a bit and tell us how you are. What's been going on? What is on your mind? Let's talk.

Hug Thyself

The other day in the car my preset was broadcasting a program which I sometimes find interesting, but this week according to the  host was about "loving yourself."  And woah, for me that screams touchy feely and sounds as enticing as root canal.  So I found some angry music to hum to instead, but on the way home grew weary of heavy bass lines and forgot about the lurve fest and clicked back through just as the host was asking the guest to explain the difference between self-pity and self-compassion.  She paused, had to figure out which definition to chew through first, landed on self-compassion, and finally blurted out something to the effect of:

Look, everyone hurts.  Everyone experiences hurt.  Everyone suffers.

(I'm paraphrasing pretty heavily, but some of these catch phrases are not mine.)

The words flitted out while my fingers twitched on the dial.  Self compassion respects a common humanity, and the idea that life is difficult for everyone . . .  It's not self-focused, it assumes we're interconnected. . .  Suffering is part of the human experience, this IS normal, everyone experiences suffering.

Ultimately this should feel better than self pity because it means we're not alone.

Huh.

I don't toe that line very often anymore, the pity party one, with the self-absorbed balloons and memememe cupcakes (hey, I'll cry if I want to), but if I get close it usually doesn't take much to pull me back far away from the line with a sharp slap to the face.

It's all but impossible to stay wrapped in my bitter cocoon during a week like this, with a disaster of one sort, followed quickly by one of another, followed immediately by yet a third uncontemplated -- all upon one population.  It makes me realize how lowly and small my place is, and how contained my problems.  The losses there are so massive as to be unbelievable, unfathomable.  How the earth could move and then the sea could rise and make so many disappear within minutes is the stuff of fiction and space ships, not here, not on earth, where we watch television and twitter and eat chocolate and drive to the grocery store listening to the radio chatter about giving yourself hugs.

Sometimes it's hard to watch this hurt, to listen to people talk about how within minutes life changed forever.  I realize I told a similar story once, but now I feel nothing but sympathy:  that control I thought I lost?  I had both hands on the wheel compared to this, not to mention afterwards I got to retreat to my nice warm home while they're talking from a tent without water or food or family.  With the threat of nuclear meltdown to boot.  I wonder if what I felt was really pain at all.

When I hear of a new babyloss blog I try and find the time to go and leave a comment, and 99 times out of 100 I say, "You're not alone."  It's not much, but I hope the message conveys.  I remember feeling so bereft, so completely alone, as if I was the only person living on earth to ever undergo the freakiest of freakshows that ever freaked.  But here this lady is saying what I now know to be true:  not freaky at all, not remotely.  If Japan had a blog, this week I'd say, "You're not alone."  None of us are.  I just hope they hear me and know how sincerely I mean it.

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Writers use simile, it's a fact of life like taxes and death.  And when writers are trying to describe something that's happened to them, but not to many others -- like say, the death of an infant -- that hurt like a motherfucker and changed their universe in the blink of an eye, they grasp at any metaphor, any simile, any analogy to try and explain their pain.  I know I'm guilty, I've compared Maddy dying to a car wreck, I've discussed being stabbed in the heart, I've described the earth shifting under my feet, I'm sure I've even spoken of feeling flooded or even waves.  Tidal waves.

And this week I feel like an idiot because it's abundantly clear just looking at the headlines that I know nothing of feeling the earth move or the rush of a wave as high as a building crashing over my head.

Perhaps I shouldn't make comparisons to things I don't know about; losing Maddy was like hell I write, but I know nothing of that other than what I picked up in Inferno. (Although, if it does exist, I am headed there.  And will let you know as soon as I adjust to the lighting.  Call me!)  Am I doing a disservice to excrement saying I felt like shit?  I do know that I will pause before I speak of the auto accidents and volcanic ash and post traumatic stress disorder because maybe . . .  maybe it wasn't like that at all.  

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The other thing the guest lady on this radio program said before I moved on down the dial for something more uptempo was that in order to even begin to understand something like what happened in Japan, you need to be compassionate with yourself.  You need to acknowledge that it will hurt, that it's difficult to read about and adjust to, be kind to yourself as you abide with other's pain.  And I wondered, as I clicked away, about all the people who failed to even attempt to understand us:  who just moved on, and ignored it, and forgot it, and refused to talk about it.  The people who thought they were insulating themselves against our deadbaby juju by stepping a good ten feet away and using hand sanitizer.  The people who thought our lives were "too negative!" and they were doing them-positivity-selves a favor by not reaching out into the morass.  

But maybe this woman is right, and these people couldn't muster up enough kindness for themselves to open the door to someone else's hurt.  I'm not sure I have enough self-compassion to feel sorry for them, but it did make me think about them, even for just a few minutes.  I realized we aren't the pity parties, they are.  They're the self-absorbed ones, who blather on about wallowing and moving on.  We're not the one's who are alone, they are.  We're the normal, the ones with suffering, they're in denial.  The people who can sit and be with us and our pain?  Are truly good to themselves and understand compassion and its interconnectedness -- probably to such an extent that it's interwoven and unconscious.  I should probably strive to be one of these people.  I owe them so much.

It also means, if this radio chick is right, that by reaching out to others in our situation, by stepping outside of ourselves for even a few minutes online, that we've done this first step of being good to ourselves.    It's funny to think that I may actually be more gentle on myself after my baby died; here I gained a ton of weight I couldn't lose, and now swear uncontrollably and grew more cynical, and bleed bitter out of my eyeballs  . . . . but maybe I did.  Maybe we all did.  Our interconnectedness -- if this radio chick is right -- proves it.

Good for us.  /pats cyber self on back

Do you ever trip over the line into self-pity?  (It's ok, I'm sure I did.)  How do you pull yourself back?  Do you experience self-compassion -- that is, do you feel some connection with others in your suffering?  How about in their suffering? Are you good to yourself?  Or does the whole "be good to you!" conversation give you the heeby jeebies?

cyber love

My cell phone rings, and I see it is my friend calling. I don’t answer. I heed the voice in my head saying, she won’t say what you want her to say. I leave the phone alone.

It is February 28th, my baby’s birthday and death-day, and a stillness has descended on our house. Outside a cold rain falls from the sky and freezes as it hits the ground. Brian and I sit on the futon in his office with blankets, mugs of tea, and laptops. All day he stokes the fire in the woodstove. We listen to the crackle of burning bark without speaking.  We keep the lights low. Now and then I look out at the branches of our maple tree, steadily being encased in ice.

All day I sit, working a little, reading a little. Meanwhile, my laptop stays open to Fa.cebo.ok and email, and the cyber condolence flows in. A hug sent here, a love note there. All day, my baby is being remembered someplace on the globe.

I get only a few condolence calls. This is okay, because my heart is so full that I can barely speak. I let them go to voicemail. When the call comes from my friend, for a moment I consider answering.  Did she remember?

No, she did not. On my voicemail she leaves a sixty second rant about delayed flights and the price of gasoline. That’s all. Everything she didn’t say adds to the silence in my house.

* * * * *

The nature of my friendships has changed. Wasn’t there some celebrity in the 1980s who survived a plane crash, and then left her husband for a man who was in the same plane crash? I feel like her sometimes -  like you can only really get me if you were on the plane too.

But I haven’t cut anyone out of my life.  I have become an enigma to those “before” friends. They have unknowingly inflicted wounds, yet I still need them badly. Sometimes I need a time-out from grief, and a friend who’s never been to the dark side of the moon – plus a martini – can be just the ticket. My “before” friends link me to the “before” me— a self that I once knew and liked but can no longer access. I might need her someday, and they carry memories of her.

But this one friend – I can’t compartmentalize her. I’ve tried limiting our interaction to occasional social outings. But she is accustomed to our friendship running deeper than that. She probes and wants to know how I’m really doing. So I tell her, and she can’t change the subject, or clear the room, fast enough. I fall for it every time, because I believe that she is better than this. For two years I have been throwing my heart into her path, only to watch her casually step around it.

photo by youngthousands

If only she would say my baby’s name just once.

If only she would not complain to me about how hard it is to raise her daughter, born alive five weeks before mine.

If only she did not wonder how the holidays could be hard for me, since they are so fun for her.

If only she would tear up a little about my loss, the way she does at those TLC shows about moms who give their babies up for adoption.

If only she did not think of my loss as a health problem.

If only she believed my baby were real.

* * * * *

If only she were on Fa.cebo.ok.

Thinking of you.

(((hugs)))

remembering your baby

xoxo

So simple. So easy. That very tiny bit of love, sent regularly by keyboard, lets me know that my friends care, even if they don’t completely understand. It soothes my beastly bitterness at how the world slights this type of loss. Fa.cebo.ok, of all things, has saved some real friendships, by helping me let people off the hook for not being better at this. (Not you, Dad. If you are my parent, Fa.cebo.oking me on the baby’s birthday does not count.)

Maybe if this friend were on Fa.cebo.ok, she would say those needed little things on cue. Maybe she would see what other humans post to me, and a lightbulb would go on. Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to say!

But that’s a fantasy. Cyber love can’t save this friendship. I’ve gotten myself into a tug of war with someone who doesn’t even know she’s holding the other end of the rope. She can’t imagine the sacred stillness of a house on a dead baby’s birthday – she can’t feel what I’m feeling, even a little bit. The only thing left is for me to drop my end of the rope and walk away.

* * * * * *

How’s it going with your friends from before your loss? Is there anything you wish they would say that they haven’t? How do you handle friends who have hurt or abandoned you during this time? What role does the internet play in your friendships these days?

A time to talk

It has been unseasonably warm here. Freakishly warm, I would say. A week or two ago I walked to lunch and it was so warm and sunny that the only thing that seemed out of place was the bright red, orange, and yellow of all the gorgeous trees on campus. I mean, we're past half way point in November, and I have yet to wear a jacket this season.

This is completely and utterly disorienting. During the daylight hours it feels like we are stuck somewhere in early fall, but the early nightfall, the aforementioned crazy leaf colors and the unrelenting advance of the calendar, which insists on telling me that inexplicably Thanksgiving is but a week away, all of these are fairly adamant about it being rather much later into the year. And much later into the year happens to mean much closer to the holidays. So with Thanksgiving pretty much the gateway to and the official start of tree decorating season, the very same Thanksgiving I tell you that is but a week away, I am bewildered, but I bow to the weight of the evidence-- holidays are almost upon us. The holidays are tough for many of us, so today I wanted to do what we haven't done in too long-- ask you how you are.

So how are you? What is going on? How is the weather where you are? What does that feel like to you?