just time

On the anniversary of Sadie’s death I received an email from a woman I befriended through our antenatal class, whose boy would have been turning two around the same time.

I was surprised that she remembered until it occurred to me that she must on some level associate her son’s birthday with Sadie’s death, considering our children were born only a week or so apart, and that we were fairly close at the time.  She expressed her sympathy and went on to vaguely mention that she had suffered three losses over the past year herself.

Three losses over the last year. Under normal circumstances my reaction would have been instantly and deeply empathetic. Instead, all I could think of was, “Wow. They probably started trying for baby number two when he was just twelve months old.”  My mind clicked through the math, calculating the age difference between her and I. 

I’ve turned into a bit of an age-obsessed person who can’t see past her own poorly-constructed maternal guessing game.  “How old do we think she is?” (Oh yes, it is the royal we inside my head.) “How old are her kids?”  Five points if she’s older with just one. Two if she’s younger with more than one. And, “You lady, you get me twenty points for being obviously over 40 with a toddler!”

I’ve been working flat out for the past six months, pulling hours that looking back, I’m not entirely sure how I pulled off. All toward an end goal that I’m now on the cusp of; a career opportunity I didn’t even know I had enough drive to want, let alone get.  Every week that passes seems to include blowing off the gym, missing a deadline here at Glow, or bailing on a night out with the girls.  And of course, procreating. Instead of re-jigging my priorities or adding “Try Again” to my strategic objectives list, I cower, digging my head into the sands of avoidance even deeper.

I’m 33 next month. There’s nothing dire about that.  Women have long been fed the notion that 35 should be considered our Best Before date. Yet everywhere around me I watch as others are laughing in the face of that idea as they start their families in their late thirties and early forties. So why have I been punishing myself all this time, calling myself weak (and much worse) when no one else could hear it?

Does time tick by in the same way for the babylost as it does for the rest of the world? After wreaking so much internal havoc on myself, pressure where perhaps pressure wasn’t due, I can’t help but wonder if I haven’t taken exactly the right path in my healing. Lately I feel myself paying attention to things that I haven’t in the past. Realising strengths exist in me that I wouldn’t ever have believed a year ago. Perhaps this indirect route back to Me will be the best one in the end, I still don’t know.

.::.

What personal checks do you go through when you know you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to grieve in the right way, or in the right timeframe?

What part did time and your age play in making the decision (if you have) to try again?

still here

The recent Kitchen Table klatch here on Glow revolved around being online. Occasionally the contributors also touch base and assess how we feel about our online presence, here and elsewhere. I thought I'd put mine out, long-hand.

After Maddy died, for what seemed like an eternity, the internet was my lifeline. For the longest time I felt no one in my real life (save for my husband and therapist, and even then I sometimes wondered) understood me, and the only people who got what I was saying and had meaningful things to contribute were the faceless, sometimes even nameless people in my computer. I couldn't wait to climb on in the morning and read and feel and bathe in the comfort of like-minded people. I found it hard to turn away, and to turn it off when it was like a soothing balm, a reminder that this sadness wasn't my own and wasn't unique. Other people felt it too, this desperation, this nausea, this hopelessness, this disgust and ugliness and outright sad. I clung to them like lifejackets, and swallowed it all, whole.

I remember reading in one of the timely little books I forced myself to read that "integrating" this event into my life (they never used the words "getting over") would take two to five years. Years. I remember two months out wondering what a year even looked like, I could barely close my hands around the shape of a day. It seemed an eternity, and I wanted nothing more than to Rip Van Winkle myself to the end, or failing that have a lobotomy. I couldn't possibly wait that long, that much time couldn't possibly roll under my feet -- certainly not smoothly, or uneventfully, or dare I say quickly.

But somewhere along the way, it happened. The months went by, the years ticked off, and I find myself here, three years later  -- oddly enough, like the book said, more or less with this grief "integrated" into my psyche and flesh. It's hard to describe this feeling, of feeling better (better is relative, after all, and who wouldn't feel better than that?) but not complete; of feeling content . . . with what I have. What I have is obviously less than what I had, or what I wanted, but I've somehow managed to make my peace with it. Wow, even that sounds off, who can make peace with something that ugly and still medically unknown? Who can make peace with the horrible video replay that still occasionally kicks into my consciousness? Maybe that's not the right phraseology, but somehow I've come to accept? acknowledge? that my daughter died, she could've never lived, and there's no getting her back. There's only the street ahead of me -- and not that it's lined with fruit trees and arced by rainbows, but it propels me forward.

It's somewhat easier to point at the symptoms, the outward ramifications of this grief transmutation than it is to describe exactly what happened: Primarily, I no longer have that gnawing hunger to be online. The daily sense that I had something to dump is gone. I used to feel as though I was tripping over words, I had so many thoughts and themes to express. Grief was my job, and I don't regret making it so or dealing with it as much as I did. But I no longer write nearly as frequently I'm assuming because over time I've had less to say. It's obviously (see para above) hard to put into words exactly what I'm feeling now, which I'm sure is a large part of it, but the incessant sadness and emptiness and loneliness has dissipated gradually, and greatly.  Grief is no longer my job, at least not my full time one -- maybe it's that volunteer thing I pop into now and again. My life which I never imagined could be full of anything but tears is now full of stuff to do, and that crowds out my online time for better or worse. There will, I have no doubt, always be something to write about this grief and missing, it just won't be daily, and it will be more ephemeral and slippery as time goes on.

But I find it hard to turn it all off and shut it down and walk away completely. Probably because I still find it meaningful, and I don't think I'm done.

I wish I could give credit to the person who made this analogy, but I've long forgotten where I read it so my apologies: I believe online grief support is somewhat like a group that meets for an addiction. That is to say, there will be people who find the stories too close, too nerve wracking. The constant reminder will, instead of help them, draw them back in -- back into sorrow, into shame, into fear, or god forbid, into guilt. Eventually, they will decide this type of group help is not for them, this sharing and listening on a frequent basis -- it is more harmful than good, and to them I say: I'm grateful you saw this about this particular type of support, and about yourself. Treat yourself kindly as you go, leave and be well, and know the door is always open if you want to return with no judgment.

Then there are those who revel in the group experience, who speak and listen, where the stories reaffirm and validate, and the trust bolsters and strengthens. It all seems lighter going back out the door than it did walking in. And sometimes, sometimes, after listening and speaking for a while, you feel you have the strength to be mentor of sorts, to take your experience and sit across the table from it, and hopefully offer someone else an ear or a shoulder or an arm. And that activity of turning the ugly thing into something that possibly helps other actually turns out to help you, too.

I feel I'm at that point, where I can see the inseams and lining and do so without completely breaking down. I can stand outside myself in a way, and turn it around in examination in order to make a point with someone else. So I keep writing here, and keep commenting where I'm able in order to let others know simply, they're not alone in this. Not at all. That at the very least, I am here. And I will help in any way I possibly can.

And I keep writing on my blog, even though it's often sparse and in-between because that's how the grief is now, sporadic and hard to predict. Sometimes it's gentle moving through, a light breeze that raises goose bumps; and other times it's an unforeseen storm that suddenly turns and changes direction and finds itself right over me, dumping buckets and howling winds. The thing is, it may be an integrated part of me now, but it's not gone. Maddy's anniversary dates can still make me tense and sad. A throwaway thought from Bella can sometimes make me giggle at the macabre, or drop me to the floor. Sometimes just glancing at her picture can bring it all flooding back -- the sleepless nights, the dark hospitals, the unbelievability of it all.

Which is why I read, and why three years later I still write.

How do you feel about online support? Does it -- so far -- seem helpful or are you a bit skeptical? Do you think your view might change as time goes on? How far away are you from your grief and have you come to a place where it feels "integrated" rather than like some foreign appendage you need to try and come to terms with? How long do you envision yourself online -- reading, blogging, commenting, writing, sharing, listening?

notes from a veteran

Red Pen Mama's baby boy was stillborn more than six years ago. When she started blogging three years ago, her instinct was to follow the 'mommyblogging' path. "I wanted to talk about my kids," she says. "I wanted to be funny. I think sometimes I am (my kids give me great stories), but I was searching for my own voice."

In 2007, she discovered the online world of babylost parents for the first time. "I realized that I could talk about it—talk about him, my baby boy. That along with talking about my living daughters, my anxiety, my struggles, music and books, my thoughts on faith, and my city. But to see that I could share my thoughts and my feelings about Gabriel, and tell his story, and not have people turn away—that was literally breathtaking. I would have people who understood."

Even in the first, fresh few days, I knew that I would feel better some day.

But I didn't want to feel better some day.

The first time I didn't feel absolutely beaten down by the fact of my baby's death, I felt terrible. I was the mother of a dead child, and that was wholly my identity in those first days and months. I wasn't a daughter or sister or a writer. I was a wife—wife to the father of a dead baby.

That dead baby, my son Gabriel, was my whole world. I couldn't believe it. I could not wrap my head around it. I thought it was a dream. I would wake up at night with aching breasts, expecting to hear him cry. I simply could not fathom how this was my life.

I did not want to feel better. But eventually, I did.

photo by niko_si

I can't tell you if it was six weeks or six months later, but I started freelancing again; I went to a concert or two (which was extremely disorienting); I made love to my husband; we traveled to San Francisco with his family, including my pregnant sister-in-law.

I was still the mother of a dead baby. How could I be more than that? Despite my best efforts to not move forward, I was. It was not easy—it was terrifying. But it was forward.

+++

The kindest thing someone said to me in the days after Gabriel's loss came from my uncle, my father's brother, who had lost his 22-year-old son in a car accident years and years ago. You will never get over this. It was such a balm. I didn't have to try to get over my loss, put it behind me, pretend to "be okay". It was never going to be okay.

You will never feel as good as you did before you became the parent of a dead child. That woman, that man, is lost to innocence, lost to the pure joy and miracle that is making babies. Even sex will be fraught for some time. I suggest wine. Not too much.

Every pregnancy you hear about—even (I hope) your own—will be shadowed, sometimes so darkly you will wonder what you are doing in a world where people want to have babies. It's madness. Madness you may recognize someday as your own.

Though you may need help to heal from such devastation—therapy, medication, a vacation someplace far from everyone you know—you will never get over it.

But you will feel better.

Do you remember one of the first moments that it occurred to you that you might be feeling better? Where were you, and what were you doing? How did your heart react, and how are you now?

on breaking habits and freeing arms

Today's guest writer, Mrs. Spit, was amazed to find herself pregnant in June of 2007, and heartbroken in December, when her son Gabriel died.

Choosing to move a step forward in your grief is such a personal, such an individual thing. It comes on its own time line, with its own rules. When you chose to get out of the habit about blogging about, about talking of your grief, your dead child, its a hard thing to understand.

The story starts with a story teller - Stuart Mclean, host of CBC's Vinyl Cafe. I wrote to Stuart this past December, telling him that we would be at his Christmas Concert, and we weren't there two years ago because I was delivering a child that died. I didn't have any particular reason to write, I wasn't really writing to tell him I enjoyed his radio show, I wasn't really writing for anything, and yet, I still wrote.

He wrote me back the loveliest of emails. He talked a bit about perinatal death, but he talked more about the process of finding your spot in life again. He used a metaphor of a wood pile, they put wood in front of you, and eventually you get back to chopping and stacking wood.

For a long time, a terribly long time, I needed Gabe to stay with me. As I lost pregnancy after pregnancy, bleeding and bleeding, I needed Gabe. And if I did not have the warm living body of my son, I had his memory. As I sorted my way through the grief of his death, and then 4 more miscarriages, I needed to hold him close, for comfort, for peace and for hope.

I started a new job about the time I went to the Christmas Concert, and it was time to change my focus. To talk less about Gabe, to carry him in my heart, but give my arms a break. Some of this has been quite conscious - I pass up opportunities to talk about pregnancy, about childbirth, about perinatal loss. When people ask if I have kids, I answer quickly - "No". I am breaking habits. I blog less about Gabe as well, if only because I blog more about everything else. The now.

When I was in high school we turned a wooded area into a soccer field. We took the trees down the old fashioned way - with axes and buck saws. We chopped them down, and then we sawed them up. It took all of my junior year to chop those trees down, and all of my senior year to clear the brush.

photo by zach bonnell

Perinatal death is a forest, laid upon the ground. Trees that are no longer trees, but not yet useful wood. Ratty old lodge-pole pine, a bit of poplar, sticky spring sap still coming off. Torn up ground. Rents, when whole trees have been dragged away to chop. Underbrush and mud, with leaves ground in. Alberta wild roses, full of prickly thorns, winter-berry. The smell of decomposing green matter, cold fall days, freezing winter. Cold, bleeding hands, bruised shoulders, broken toes. Perinatal death and half chopped up forests are not places to linger. They are places of purpose, back-breaking, soul-wearing work.

Like everything, work ends. Four years after we started, grass in, the field level, bleachers and junior girls playing soccer, I stood on the sidelines. But for memory, I would not know field was forest. But for this story, you would not know.

Stuart wrote about the process of living, grieving, wanting, wishing. He made a point: there's wood in front of you. You give yourself over to it, testing the sore parts, not sure if you can trust your knees to carry. You start a bit slowly, then you are more able to carry on with the sore bits, and the truth is, it hurts less. One day, the work is done. Then, you find others, in their torn-down forests, and you tell them the dimensions of a cord of wood."Start there", you say. "That one is small. You can manage that."

Do not misunderstand, my classmates, we talk about that forest-field. Once in a while we get together and we reminisce. We share a secret, we know what you see in front of you was not always there. We know that memories fade. Oh, not the fact: the how, all those awful days or work. All that remains is field from forest andthat transformation is good and right to talk about. But only sometimes.

You understand the description I have given you, even if you have never, by the strength of your back, wrought field from forest. You who understand transformation, raw power, hefting, struggling and bleeding - you understand those dimensions that I gave you, you understand 50 cords of wood from forest.

I can talk about what was, what could have been -  but most people see what is. My stories of Gabriel here and gone make no sense, people who have not built field from forest cannot reconcile heartbreak to the composed woman in front of them. Of the power of transformation, they know not.

Most of the time people, they say "Oh, look a soccer field."

Perhaps one day they will realize that soccer fields don't make themselves, perhaps one day you will need to come along and show them how to make one. Or not. Most people live in the ever present now. And truly, now is not such a terrible place to be. Sometimes you wish your now was different, always you wish it included just one more person. Somedays, when you are tired, when you particularly remember, you remember neither the wood or the soccer field, but that horrible place in between.

Most days, you just nod. "Yep", you say, "that's a soccer field".

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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?