Change

Every day I make an effort to have a nice time out there in the World.  I'm not aiming for the stars, not trying to seize every single moment with fervor and gusto, I'm just gunning for good.  Good is enough if you can do it on a daily basis.

I sleep later now, every day.  I need an hour or so of semi-wakefulness to gear up and get ready for the chill and sunlight and this relentless, active life. I guess I still can't believe, every morning, that this is the Universe I live in.

I take a shower and I love it.  As hot as I can stand it.  Sometimes I reflect on how lucky I am to even have a hot shower that I can stand in as long as I like.  Sometimes when it looks like a tough one in my heart or my head, I stand there a little longer.  I shouldn't because of the coming Water Wars, but sometimes I can't help it.

Guilt is gone.  I've banished it.  I do what I need to get by and I don't worry about perfection.  Except in the coffee I roast.  And in the driving.  They both need to be perfect but for completely different reasons.  Coffee because it feels good to do it right and it's my job, driving because anything less is disaster.  I am not down with any more disasters.

The day Silas was born was supposed to be the best day of my life and instead it was by far the biggest disaster I have ever experienced.  Nothing like that should ever happen again.  But obviously, since we're all here together, Should is a word we all know doesn't mean a damn thing.

So Should is out now, too.  Expectations are a fool's game, and I choose not to play anymore.  I declare that as if it is something that can be de-selected.  Mostly I try to do exactly what is right in front of me and I avoid worrying about what I think should happen next.  Maybe it is the not-thinking that keeps me up at night.

3am has become my thinking hour.  I know it is going to be 3:11am when I open my eyes.  For a while that brief, nightly insomnia upset me, but now I look at it as a special time, just for me.  Lu asleep next to me.  The cat is tucked tight between us, not even purring anymore.

Usually it's a song that wakes me up.  Whatever I happened to enjoy the most that day is usually the one that's still running through my brain.  The same refrain, whatever it is.  The song-worm, it infects me.  I don't even think about who Should be waking me.

If you break these moth's wing feelings, powdery dust on your fingers or undecided undefined undeterred yet undermind and then it's the steady, static hum of my soul trying to reconcile another day without my son.

It doesn't stop, I'm sorry to say.  Not so far.  Not 2 years after he was conceived.  Not a day goes by that somehow isn't all about him.

The ultimate reason for that is because in a way, I have become him.  Silas doesn't get to do this Earth so I've got to do each day for him, too.  My everyday experience has been utterly transformed, and I do not at all feel like the person I was before Silas was here.  Two years since we started this journey and our lives look exactly the same, but everything has changed, inside and out.  And like Julia said, it is still happening.

I live my life the way I do as an expression of how my parents raised me, of how I have come to know the World, of how Lu's love and presence have become intertwined with mine.  Today is our 5 year wedding anniversary and despite the sadness of these past years it still always feels right that we are together.

Living extra for Silas--any way I can think of--feels right, too.

His brief life has transformed me in ways I am only beginning to understand.  I suppose all parents go through this, but it is especially difficult for people like us because we can never hug them and thank them for everything they help us become.

All I can do is hold on to every day, every little treat and happiness.  I do what's right in front of me and watch and listen for the beauty that appears.  I keep going forward for Silas, for myself, for Lu, and for whatever it is that happens next.  I know what that Should be, but I can't worry about that anymore.  I can only face what Is and somehow deal with everything that Isn't.

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How have you changed?  Do you have expectations of how things should turn out?  Do you get the ear-worm of music?  What are your refrains?  Do you manage to have nice days, despite your loss and sadness?

I'm So Happy For You

Babies are appearing everywhere, and the afternoon light is such that I expect for us to be expecting, too. The late-setting sun blasts through the windshield as I turn off the exit to my house. The angle of those rays are filled with meaning.

This is the season of my almost-fatherhood. This is the time last year when all I could think about was everything that I thought was to come.

There were so many plans and hopes in the works. Spring and summer were full of boundless potential and imminent adventures. The full bellies and multi-strollers all around foretold our amazing future, and I was thrilled to be on the cusp of fatherhood.

Fulfillment, success, perfection, they were within my grasp and now all I hold is dust and desolation.

Since it is impossible to grasp dust, and because desolation rots the soul, I have stopped trying to hold anything.

This has become my summer of the willing suspension of disbelief. I'm working hard at accepting the World as it is, and dealing with whatever is exactly in front of me.

I learned that from my parents. My mother has had MS since before I was born, and over the years they have shown me how to handle the impossible trials of their everyday life. Do the next thing first and then deal with whatever comes after that.

Do it right, do it with humor, don't stop until it's done. Don't rely on anyone else. Don't be surprised when it doesn't go at all the way you think it will. Don't give up and don't stop loving the people around you. Those are the lessons they taught me, and I'm working hard at most of them.

I'm stuck at Don't Give Up, though. I know there are people around me ready and willing to support me with their love, if only I would return an email or make a call. The ball is definitely in my court at this point. For phone-tag I am IT a thousand times over.

It is beyond me right now, though.

Reading through the interview below I was struck by how clearly I identified with all of those Phases, but I was surprised in that I seemed to be experiencing them completely out of order.

I feel like I've been through Confrontation and even a little Accomodation, but that Avoidance is where I stew these days.

It is a nuanced Avoidance. I don't stop thinking about Silas all day. I don't pretend that my life is anything that it is not. I know to the core of my being the depth of our loss. Or at least, I know how deep it seems to go from here. I have few illusions left at this point. I'm not avoiding his name, or the pain of losing him.

I am always ready to talk about Silas but I attempt to avoid all external reminders of what we should have.

That list includes: newborns, babies, people that just had babies or are pregnant, talk of the trials of having kids, strollers, carseats, first birthdays, the Internet, driving, walking and being awake. As long as I keep all of that out of mind & sight, I should be just fine. Ha!

Another part of the problem is that I'm starting to feel bad about how bad I still feel. I don't want to talk to friends because it's the same goddam fucking sob story every fucking time. I'm sick of hearing myself sometimes. I'm sick of hearing my soul's lament, sick of my mind devising strategies to fix our broken lives, sick of my heart oozing despair and ichor whenever another scar is peeled back, or a new, surprising wound pierces my defenses.

July was brutal. Three of my closest friends had babies this month and essentially all I could do was ignore them. Didn't stay in bed moping. Didn't drive off to the wilderness and leave everyone behind. Didn't stop working or playing or living. But when it came to those three, they were mostly out of my life.

I kept in contact until the day of birth, but after they each went perfectly, I had to cut them off for the moment. I feel like an asshole of the highest order, but I had to do it in order to save myself.

The idea of even talking to them on the phone to congratulate them, knowing they were holding their perfect new child in their arms, it took the push out of my fingers for every digit of their phone number. These are people I love and care about and all I can do is nothing.

I'm active and alert and fully engaged in most of my life, but the new babies are impossible right now. Once I start thinking about my friends, I think about everything they are doing with their new child and those thoughts completely immobilize me.

I know babies. I love babies. I don't mind the cheesy puke or the weird, wide alien eyes or the tears of hunger or confusion. I used to love babies.

But there is a period of time between birth and 'baby' that I really don't know anything about. By the time I've met most children they were at least a few weeks old, if not months, and I've never had that true newborn experience. I thought it was going to be a special, beautiful time with my son and first-born, but that was not the way it happened. So now, when I hear about a new child in the World, it fills me with a mix of hope and dread and joy and fear that is impossible to parse.

I'm thrilled for the parents. I'm thrilled the child is alive and healthy. I'm jealous beyond words that they have that child to cherish and nuture. I'm terrified by how close they came to living in my World without ever considering how bad it can get, and I'm enraged at myself for my inablity to do anything but look away.

All I can do is say how HAPPY I AM FOR YOU and look away, look away. I look away and try to feel Silas and hate how much his name sounds like Silence.

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What is your collateral damage? Where do you feel stuck? Are there certain aspects or phases of grief that you find particularly daunting? What do you avoid? What do you seek out?

warrior mama

When I was pregnant with Dahlia, I was absolutely, undeniably, nothing’s gonna get in my way going to birth my child at home, and naturally. I was even, I admit, judgmental about anyone’s choice to do otherwise – I just couldn’t understand why anyone would actually want to have their baby, on drugs, in a hospital. Without being aware of it, I took for granted that a healthy baby would be the guaranteed reward of my empowered choices – an exceptionally healthy baby who would thrive even more than expected because s/he would come out of me naturally and go directly to my breast, uninterrupted, in the comfort of our home.

Dahlia had other plans. After 32 hours of hard back labor at home and several of those hours stalled at eight centimeters, I made a very clear choice to go to the hospital for an epidural. Six hours later, she was born easily and safely and immediately put on my chest. Four hours after that, having signed a dozen liability waivers to be allowed to leave the hospital early, we were back home in our bed with our new daughter.

I had my healthy child, in spite of her hospital birth. Even then I took for granted the incredible miracle of her health and her life. I spent a good part of the next year working through my guilt around having chosen to go to the hospital and have an epidural. A part of me felt inferior for the choice, and I felt, in some way, that I had failed.

I did it with Tikva too. Even with this child whose life – of any length – I knew would be a miracle, I fretted for a while during her short life about having chosen the epidural. The epidural I told Dave I wanted because I didn’t feel relaxed, and I wanted – needed – to feel relaxed as I delivered my child whom I knew would be unable to breathe on her own, who might not even make it past her birth. Maybe it was my brain’s need to fret over something that really didn’t matter in order to distract myself just a little bit from what was so constantly at the forefront of my consciousness: That my daughter’s life was fragile and unsure, her future – and mine – unknown. That she very well might die, and that I would be forever changed no matter how the story unfolded.

My thoughts have rambled before around the question of how to birth a child and what my choices mean. But it’s not this that is on my mind right now. Though related, it’s something different.

I have read my share of birth announcement emails and birth stories since Tikva came through my life. All are different. All but one have announced the birth of a healthy living baby (or babies). Some were born in the hospital, some at home, some vaginally and others by scheduled C-section for various reasons. Regardless of location, those that told the stories of vaginal deliveries have shared one quality:

Praise of the superior mother who births her child naturally, vaginally, and without drugs.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a progressive place, a liberal place, a funky place, full of New Age and yoga studios and locally grown organic produce and raw food vegan restaurants and Michael Franti concerts in small venues. I love it here, it has been my home for 30 years. And I recognize that I am immersed in just a tiny sliver of the way most people in the U.S. – let alone the world – approach life. Before he met me, my husband didn’t even know babies could be born at home in the western world.

Yet there is a certain holier-than-though message being communicated here without being spoken outright, and I don’t think it is just here in California. As the day of Tikva’s birth approaches a year later, I have become extremely sensitive to it. The message tells me:

You are a powerful goddess, a mighty warrior when you have birthed your child naturally, trusting your inner wisdom and strength to guide you.

Because you are a warrior, you will be rewarded with the undeniable manifestation of your choices – a healthy child.

So what am I? What am I if I birth my child in another way? Am I less mighty, less empowered for choosing to have an epidural? Am I less of a warrior because I birthed my children in the hospital? Do I trust my inner wisdom less?

And what is Tikva, my child who died, whose body was too fragile to live for very long? Any less a gift? Any less a manifestation of the most incredible grace and magic life has to offer?

And what of Dahlia, my precious light who was born healthy, in the hospital, with an epidural?

See what I’m getting at here?

How about this for warrior:

I birthed two babies, and carried three. I said goodbye to one too soon at just 10 weeks of pregnancy. I carried Tikva for 20 of her 40+ weeks knowing that she might not live. I moved halfway around the world to give her every fighting chance. My relationship with my husband grew deeper and more solid throughout her life and since. Together, we cared for Dahlia while she, too, loved and lost her sister.

I loved my daughter fiercely for every day of her short life. I lived with grace, connected to her and to God in every moment. I loved her so completely, so unconditionally, that I knew when it was time to let her go. I held her as she breathed her final breaths. I felt the moment when her spirit left the beautiful body that I held in my arms for the last time. I stroked her soft cheek. I held my daughter as she died.

Am I less of a warrior because of how and where I birthed her? Am I any less her mother because she is not here in my arms?

So much of our collective identity as women is tied to being a mother. No wonder all of that comes into question – in our own eyes as we look at ourselves now, after loss – when our child dies. I can only imagine how much more so when that child dies before s/he is born, or during or shortly after birth.

But we are no less a warrior, no less empowered, no less mighty and powerful and connected to our inner strength without our children here to prove it. I never knew the depth of the warrior I could be until Tikva entered my life, until she departed. I never knew the grace I could live from was possible before her.

I think we are asked – in the moment of loss – to tap into a warrior in ourselves we might never have known was there. Because to mother a child who has died – to say goodbye over and over, to let go a little bit every day for the rest of our lives – is HARD. It is powerful, mighty, full of grace.

The work of a warrior like no other.

That’s what’s been on my mind lately when I think about birth.

That’s what I remember when I read another birth story, when I doubt for a moment the true warrior that I am.

Yes, I am a warrior too.

And so are you.

.::. .::. .::.

What makes you a warrior? Do you believe that you are? How did you approach birth before losing your child, and now?

Guilt

Grief is a tidy little word on the face of it -- it seems to suggest that we're just humming along, mourning our lost children.

Easy peasy.

But we all know too well that grief is a non-native, invasive species, wrapping itself around other parts of our life and suffocating them. It's a balloon that inflates, until it encompasses so much more than death itself. I often feel like I grieve multiple things: my old body, my old self, optimism, little-f faith, confidence in medical testing, unbridled joy, the unpleasant pruning of family and friends in this debacle, the family of four I envisioned. Oh, and my daughter. What I really want, I suppose, is the freedom to just miss my daughter.

Then there's the extraneous stuff that complicates grief. Multiplies and magnifies it. Doubt. Confusion. Uncertainty. Could be religion or parenting, could be infertility or relationships.

Could be guilt.

The first thing -- the absolute first thing -- I said to my husband after The Conversation with The Specialists where they told us Maddy was dying, and how did we want this to happen, and left the room so we could have a moment together was:  I'm Sorry.  

I'm not exactly sure what I was apologizing for -- marrying me? meeting me? falling in love with me? -- because when you get down to it, I had nothing to do with Maddy's death. Regardless of who's right in this mess and whether Maddy died of some never-before-seen genetic disorder or an infection circa 25w gone madly awry and then correcting itself, I float above rather free of blame. I had an extremely monitored pregnancy, and the umpteen ultrasounds through 32 weeks which never detected a problem. I never had a worrisome symptom. I never had contractions or leaking that needed medical attention. I had amnio because I was maternally geriatric and it was normal. I didn't miss signs, I didn't skimp on care. There was no date where I could have stepped in and said, "Something is wrong," and something could be done where everything would've turned out alright.

There is only the beginning. For me, what residual guilt I have over Maddy -- her awful little life and her death -- lies at the very onset of her conception when I said, "Let's try for a second." That's the only point I could've stopped the train from going off the rails, by not letting the train leave the station at all. But like someone who was broadsided by a car that missed a stop-sign, that's rather like saying, "I'm sorry I went to buy groceries." "I'm sorry I decided to go to work today like I always do." "I'm sorry I went to pick up our kid at school."

And so for the most part, I've let it go, and I swim this complicated sea of grief rather guilt free. I realize in that respect I'm sort of an anomaly in these parts, and that many of you feel guilt surrounding your baby's (babies') death(s) like a shoe on your throat. Missed signs. Care that at the time seemed plenty attentive but in hindsight seems sketchy. That 20-20 vision where you now know exactly when things started going poorly, and maybe if you had known, and could've gone somewhere, and convinced someone, and done something . . . .The feeling that if, if only, what if.

And I often read these posts and want desperately to step in and turn guilt off like a faucet.  It's moot! I scream at my screen. It's happened. And it's only complicating things. Let it go. It's not your fault.

But there's nothing I can say, because I know it's not for me to say it. It's for you to unravel and marvel and wonder as you stare at the pieces in your hands, wondering how you could've missed how they all fit together. It's for me to abide with you, and listen, and comfort, and take pain in your constant turning back of the clock. If there's anything I could do for a fellow parent grieving, it would be first and foremost, to erase the guilt. To separate it from your problems, set it on fire, and watch the smoke drift away. To eliminate that one feeling that makes grieving so, so much worse.

Do you feel guilt regarding your baby(-ies) death(s)? How do you deal with it? What if anything makes you feel better about it, and can you envision a time in your future where you let it go?

journey's end

My father and stepmother were in town, so they took me out to dinner at a restaurant a good deal more upscale than the ones I usually frequent.  The menu, printed in copperplate gothic bold, featured a smörgåsbord of resolutely non-kosher choices -- Curried Tasmanian Crabcakes, Ginger-Wrapped Skate, Pork Loin Dulce de Leche.  I asked the waiter what the soup of the day was, but he said he couldn't tell me because "The chef personally creates it based on what he finds freshest at the market that morning." 

We reviewed my nephews' soccer season, wondered why my sister never seems to be able to find a job or a boyfriend, critiqued the recent Supreme Court decisions on money laundering, and lamented the housing market in London.  

At the end of the evening, as we were saying goodbye, my stepmother reached out to hug me and said, "We were so worried about you, Niobe.  We didn't even know what to say."

"I'm fine,"  I said.  And I meant it.

After the twins died, I read a lot of articles about bereavement and mourning.  They said that the journey of grief goes on for a lifetime.  They said that you never truly get over the death of a child.  They said that the child who died will always have a special place in your heart. 

They didn't say what to do when you come, unexpectedly, to the journey's end; when your fingers fumble, searching for that familiar hole in your heart, only to find it's no longer there.