collateral damage

I know that Mother's Day is, for many of us, a difficult day, a day on which we think about our lost children, mourning the fact that we don't seem to count as mothers in the eyes of the world or, perhaps, in our own eyes, mourning the fact that all our children aren't with us. For me, though, Mother's Day has never been about me or my children. Instead, it's a day on which I think about my own mother and mourn the fact that, for reasons I can't quite understand, I'm not with her.

My brother and I always said that no occasion was truly complete until our mother turned to me and said, more in sorrow than in anger, "Niobe, you've ruined my [insert name of holiday]." I ruined so many Mother's Days and birthdays and Fourth of Julys and Thanksgivings and Christmases, that I imagine my mother, as she has brunch today with her other children and step-children, taking a certain grim satisfaction at the idea that, on this Mother's Day, I'm sad because I'm thinking of her.

I've never been able to explain what made things so difficult between me and my mother. Different temperaments, perhaps. Or because my childhood coincided with a long run of turbulent years for her. Or because she disliked and resented her own mother. But, for whatever reason, it seemed that I could never be what my mother wanted me to be, could never do what my mother wanted me to do. We were always fighting and I always lost. No matter how angry I got, my mother could always get angrier and she held the trump card. I loved her and I couldn't be sure if she really loved me.

When I was thirteen, during the chaos that followed my mother's second divorce, I decided to go live with my father and his family, and left, taking my little brother with me. My mother didn't speak to me for six months. She remarried right away and had a child with her new husband. "Niobe," I remember her saying, "you have to remember that I have another daughter now. I don't need you anymore."

Eventually, I grew up and we came to a truce. We weren't exactly close, but we didn't fight and I called my mother almost every week and, once in a while, spent a weekend at her house. When I was pregnant with the twins, my mother was thrilled. She was going to take a month off from work to stay with me. She called all the time to see how I was doing. I know she was buying baby presents, though I told her not to give me anything until -- until I was sure everything was going to be all right.

When it turned out that everything was not going to be all right, my mother came and visited me in the hospital, talked to me, encouraged me to eat. But even then, I could feel her anger building and, by the time I came home, everything I did made her furious.

I was, she told me as I cried and refused to go outside, wallowing in my sorrow. I spoiled my oldest niece's first birthday party, held a few weeks after the twins' deaths, because I hid in an upstairs bedroom, unable to bear seeing the sister-in-law who was eight months' pregnant. I put too many restrictions on what she said, because I asked her not to talk about my stepbrothers' babies. I wasn't grateful enough for all she'd done for me. Now, a year and a half after the twins' deaths, my mother has refused to see me or speak to me for months.

Now, I'm sure I'm making my mother sound like a monster. But she isn't. Really, she isn't. And I'm sure that if she ever read this post, the story I'm telling would be incomprehensible to her. "That's not the way I remember it," I can hear her saying. But, as I see it, the loss of my mother is, in many ways, the saddest part of the twins' deaths. A stone, dropped into a lake, disappears almost immediately. But the ripples -- oh, the ripples. They etch widening circles until they collide with a distant shore.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you and miss you and wish I could fix whatever's wrong between us. I hope that by next Mother's Day I'll be able to say that to you.

Please use the comments to let us know where you are -- literally and figuratively -- and what you're thinking about this Mother's Day.

To the core

You know what annoys me, like, a lot? People around us who manage, effortlessly it seems, to make their interactions with us in our grief, yes, say it with me... all about them. People who make a production, often somewhat publicly, out of agonizing over whether to call their grieving friends, and of what to say. The sort of backdoor self-compliment highlighted on last night's 30 Rock-- "It's hard for me to watch American Idol because I have perfect pitch,"-- the "It's  hard for me to talk to grieving people because of how sensitive and considerate I am" sort of thing.

Luckily, we didn't get many of these directed at us. This past winter, though, I got to witness a public (in as far as an open post on the wilds of the internets is public) display of woe-is-me-I-want-to-be-the-bestest-friend-ever-but-
-it's-so-hard-how-do-I-make-everything-better bit. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was so distasteful to me in that piece of writing and the follow up comments from the author, but then I got it-- it was all about her, about her desire to fix things so she can be seen as the savior, the one who did the right thing, the rightest thing.

Now, I get that humans are self-centered animals, and I am certainly not blameless on that front myself. But dude,  if there is one area, one effing area of human interaction where it behooves you to check your shit at the door, this might be it. Don't you think? I get, too, that doing something, anything, makes people feel less powerless in the face of the big bad random universe. But see above re: checking shit. Because making yourself feel better at the expense of the person already in pain is.. how do I say it... oh, yes-- a pretty shitty thing to do.

This concludes the rant portion of today's post, and brings us to the part where I contemplate, much more calmly, I hope, thoughts this brought up.  

In that post, a few commenters tried, very gently, to tell the author that in grief there is no fixing things, that basically all you can do is be there for your friend, but she wasn't listening. But, but, but was all she had to answer. Finally, Aite, a good friend I've mentioned before, basically gave it to her straight-- it's not about you. Entering the grieving person's space should not be about worrying about how you will look doing the entering. You can't fix anything. Grief is what happens when there is nothing to do. Don't try to fix it, and you won't look dumb. You can't "remind" someone of their grief-- they remember all the time. Whether they want you to bring it up or wait for them to do so is individual, and you should follow your friend's lead in that, but assuming that people forget and you can remind them is pure wishful thinking.

My friend is mighty skilled in this art of abiding, being there for your friend, selflessly, at whatever distance and with whatever in hand your friend needs. I hope, too, that what we are doing here, in this space, is also very much abiding. Talking, listening, not trying to fix the unfixable. Now, if only laptops could dispense booze too... I'd send you all a drink or five.

So who is this grieving person now? If you are the one doing the abiding, who do you assume is in front of you? Is the grieving person changed, forever altered by the grief? Or is this the same person you have known all this time, only in pain and grieving? Are we changed or are we, at the core, the same?

My first impulse was to say that of course we have changed.  A deadbaby blogger who has since gone private was told by one of her friends to not let this change her. What a shitty thing to say, was my immediate response. Would you tell that to a mom who has birthed a living baby? Hell, no. It's a foundational value of our society that parenthood changes people. In the classical mythology of the media and entertainment as well as the assumed playground wisdom, there are things only a parent can understand. Condescending? Of course. But also pervasive and commonly accepted. So why would people not allow it as the same level of truth that having a dead baby should change you? Change you as profoundly and as deeply as having a live one is assumed to change you? And also, don't we all change just by living? Would you want to still be your high school self?

But isn't it also true that we are the same basic people, only now with extra crunchy shitty experiences included? Extra sad.  With extra tender feelings. Extra sensitive to things people say without thinking. Maybe even wiser and more compassionate. But with the same chewy center?  

What defines us as people? Are we changed abruptly, or are we in the process of integrating our grief into the fabric of our selves? Are we defined by grief, or are we living towards defining our grief as a part of our selves? Are we changed, or are we ever-changing?

my son may be in your vacuum cleaner

Seriously. You may wanna go check.

Ferdinand was cremated. There is a possibility that some of his ashes, minute particles of them, escaped the plastic bag that it was supposed to be loaded into and tied firmly and then placed in a plastic box and then a velvet bag and then handed over to us with sympathies.

Some of the ashes may have flown undetected onto the floor of the crematorium and carried about by the shoes of the good guy who helped us cremate our son. Maybe some tiny particles of my son’s ashes got onto the good guy’s shoes and it got thumped off at the post office when he went in to get his mail and some of the dirt was sucked up by the ventilator which re-circulated it into the mailroom and got shuffled into the mail and then got stuck onto a part of an envelope and maybe that envelope is somewhere in your house.

When his ashes arrived in Singapore, at the temple, and they were emptied, from plastic bag to urn, and the breeze, almost ever-present, might have swept up a whiff of the ashes, and they got mixed into the food being prepared for the temple lunch. Or, it got stuck onto somebody’s sweaty arms (it is very humid there) and got carried all over the small island-state, or that somebody got onto an airplane headed for the Swiss Alps and so a part of Ferdinand ended up in a different continent. Have you had a guest recently? Check their shoes, you may find my son.

Before he was cremated, I held him, hugged him tight, and kissed him. Tried to make an imprint on him and tried to engrave his body onto mine. Maybe some of his skin cells were brushed off and stuck on to me, for a few seconds. Then, they may have fallen onto the floor, and got swept out of the funeral home as we exited. The wind from the hills may have swept those cells up, carried them across the country, and dumped them somewhere on the East coast.

The dust may have fallen into your house when you opened your door or your window. You decided to vacuum the house. And there he goes, into your vacuum cleaner.

Or, a few molecules of my son’s ashes may be fertilizing your tomatoes right this very second.

I do sound like I am spinning a tall tale, aint’t I?

Except, we know that everyday the world is on the move, in every sense, whether you take the macro- or micro-view. Foods are transported over long distances, and with them, dust. Air circulates, moves over distances, taking sounds and smells and small tiny particles, including human ashes, with them.

Dust is very tiny. Anything smaller then one-sixteenth of a millimeter in diameter can be defined as dust. They come from everywhere and from anything- dirt, pollen grains, tire rubber, salt sprays from the ocean, skin flakes, fire ashes, volcanic eruptions, desert sands, animal fur, and, let’s not forget about cosmic dust. You may have star dust in your vacuum cleaner too.

When a supernova explodes, it sends small particles of dust far out into space, and some of this dust falls on Earth. You may find some of these cosmic dust particles inside your nostrils.

What is more fascinating is that you cannot destroy dust. You dust, vacuum and sweep, and pour everything into your garbage can and think it is good riddance when the garbage truck rolls around on Monday morning. Well, some of that dust is still on your driveway because when the garbage gets dumped, air gets moved and the air moved the dust too. Rumor is, dust from the dinosaurs still remains, because there is no way you can destroy dust. They move around, get mixed into things of all sorts; things break down, and the dust re-surfaces again.

Come to think of it, dust is a beautiful thing. And so indestructible. So durable, it is forever. Forever swirling around. Here, in my house; there, in your house; on earth, over earth; in the vast Universe, and probably beyond too. Ferdinand, my baby, in my current system of belief, is part ashes, part dust, part soul and part spirit. And so he may well be everywhere right now.

Perhaps in your vacuum cleaner, too.

I will never look at the world the same way again. I will never see dust the same way ever again.

the crack in everything

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack, a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

- Leonard Cohen

I heard the lines above last night, a melodic crescendo, and was stunned into reverie. Down to the sour smell of smoke and sawdust that were in the air that night, I was, for a moment, transported viscerally to the time and place they'd last crossed my consciousness.  Three summers ago, almost.  With old friends, gathered from our scattered points around the globe, for a weekend of talk and wine and beer.  It was nine weeks after he died.  I was supposed to be thirty-five weeks pregnant for that visit: instead, I was raw, raging, humbled...unmoored.  but with those friends I felt comparatively safe and we talked about him, a little, and they talked about him, a little, and there was no sweeping under the carpet and I felt freed by that, grateful...even welcomed the strangely soothing balm of the eight month old boy one couple had in tow.  The group of them were some touchstone of normal - of the me I had been before - in a time when there was none, elsewhere in my life. 

But then Leonard's voice broke in through light chatter and mild drunkenness on the second night of our gathering. ring the bells that still can ring, he intoned, gravelly and sage.  and suddenly I was choking on smoke and tears, and I bolted from my chair and went stumbling across the yard in the darkness, almost blind.  What fucking bells?   Seriously, what bells were left?  I was broken.

I'd lost my job along with my child.  I was struggling to find a place in a community we'd moved to only months before, struggling to find other work, struggling to get up the courage to leave the sanctuary of the house on a daily basis.   I was a parentless child and a jobless professional...and we'd left our old life behind on another continent to come home and have a baby.  Without that baby, I could not figure out how to go forward.

I'd been, I think, in the denial stage of my grief.  I looked back to my friends in the circle of light on the deck, and realized, there really is no going back to normal.  fuck me gently.  And then I went inside and mixed myself a Southern Comfort Janis Joplin would've been proud of, and sat, numb, staring, bewildered.
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The thing about grief - and in particular, the keening loss that was deadbaby grief for me - that blew my mind was how it robbed me of any clue about how to continue to live my life in a meaningful way.  I understood, factually, that I still had a reasonable semblance of a life, if one in a bit of a shambles at the time - but I could not connect to it.  I groped for the bells left to me to ring and came up clutching air.  It wasn't the overabundance of a sheltered life in my previous incarnation, either, that left me so bereft even of my self, of my survival instinct, my resilience: I'd been violated before, just by living...betrayed, divorced, disappointed, grieved.   But I'd never been stopped up short.

I wonder, sometimes, what it must have been like to grieve a child back in the days of our great-grandmothers, when infant death and pregnancy loss were common and maternal death a fairly regular outcome of childbearing.  I imagine it was still a lonely, isolated thing for many, particularly given the stiff upper lip with which loss would've been expected to be met in many communities and circumstances.   And yet...other than the fact that fewer of us would be present in this company of mourners, lost as we would have been along with our babies...there would have been one key difference between then and now: we would not, could not, have gone into pregnancy without realizing that a loss of this scale was very possible.

I realize, finally, three years on, that that has been the crack in everything, for me.

That pregnancy was fraught with bleeding from the early days.  At six weeks, I was told I was probably miscarrying, and sent home on bedrest.  It felt surreal, but not shocking.  I knew women miscarried.  I knew a number of women who had miscarried.  My partner had already lost two, with his first wife, so I understood full well that the risk of that loss was part of the bargain I'd gotten myself into.  But when the bleeding resolved and the docs said all clear and I sailed past fourteen weeks with no further complications and a perfectly normal ultrasound, I was naive enough to believe that I was pretty much going to be bringing a baby home.  I wasn't sure that baby might not have some minor health issues or delays...I worked in special ed, I knew not every child fits every norm, but to even consider seriously that my baby might die seemed beyond dramatic, frivolous, macabre. 

Such are the miracle assumptions modern science has taught us to espouse.  All other truths and possibilities - especially those that involve dead babies, unsavable, for no apparent reason - are silenced in the mainstream discourse surrounding pregnancy and birth, these days.  There is no norm left to us, and so we are unwelcome and awkward and exposed in the societal conversation surrounding how babies are made, marginalized because we can be, because medicine has made us anachronisms, relics.  

In retrospect, I see now that I've dealt with every other sorrow that's come my way in life by telling myself I expected it.  Each time, it was at least somewhat true.  Nature and experience shaped me as a cynic of sorts, a Cassandra, attuned to the emotional and relational roadbumps that littered most of the paths I ever chose.  I got wounded along the way, but seldomly truly surprised.  And that helped.  It didn't assuage the pain, not necessarily in the moment, but it left me semi-intact, with bells held in reserve still to be rung.  Until I was blindsided by the death of a child who had at least a 75% chance of survival even at the moment of his untimely birth, I had never had all the bells torn from me at once...even the small, cold, brass one marked i saw it all coming.   Without it, and without the baby in whose basket I'd piled all my hopes, I was - for the first time - bereft.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Last night, listening to Cohen and time-travelling, I wondered about what seems to me now like the naive and sheltered discourse that surrounds pregnancy in our day and age and culture.  And I sang along, frog-voiced but loud, proud, forget your perfect offering.  there is a crack, a crack in everything.

We embody the crack in the perfect offering of modern pregnancy sold to us by Parenting Magazine and BabyCenter and What to Expect When You're Expecting.  We embody it because our children are not here to.

The logical conclusion, of course, to my stretched analogy is, then, that we are how the light gets in.  A part of me likes that.

Half a Mom

There comes a point in a pregnancy where one usually starts pondering how things will get balanced after the child is born, in terms of of time and psyche:  how will I manage to be both a wife and a mother? (Jeebus, is it really 5:30 already?!)  How will the time get allocated between my obligations to these distinct places of grocery store and nursery, not to mention work, my friends, my family?  A cold wave of early bedtime, schedule-crushed weekends, sick days, babysitters, daycare, and netflix subscriptions suddenly washes over one as she realizes things will change, radically.  There are only so many hours in a day, and while I multitask with the best of them (lifts fingers from keypad ever so slightly in order to blow toddler’s nose, take turn at Candyland, throw ball to dog, click over to respond to chat message, and realize chicken needs defrosting) sometimes things need undivided attention and take priority.  Babies are one of those things.

I remember in the weeks before Maddy was born, wondering how on earth I was going to juggle two children.   And I mean that somewhat in the literal sense of throwing them both in the air, perhaps with a banana some yogurt and a cell phone, and seeing if I could make a five-minute lunch plan out of it for all of us.  But I also mean that in the more figurative sense of balancing my time with them, and the more existential sense of how I would carry them around in my heart and my head, equally, and yet individually and appropriately.  With liberty and justice for all.  And a bit of down time for mom, who needs a good bubble bath now and again.

And so it started, pulling away from the house on a Monday morning, weeping, leaving my toddler behind for 48 hours while I went to birth her sister.  The split opened fresh and wide: guilty for leaving one behind, anxious to meet the other.

Before I could secure on my helmet, my brain began careening from one wall to the other, not only between Bella and Maddy, House and Hospital, but Well and Sick.  It became clear to us by late Tuesday that Maddy was severely impaired, and would likely require exclusive hospitalization or institutional care.   How on earth would I ever manage parenting, loving, holding two extremely different individuals under two roofs separated by distance, time, and most likely money and visiting hours?  This was not what I envisioned when I imagined pointing out to Bella that her sister had just spit up some god-awful substance on my couch that demanded immediate attention, sorry if I couldn't help her find other maraca right this second.  It somehow seemed justified, explainable, easy when both were right there, in front of me.

As the week dragged on I couldn't settle in either place.  When I was at the hospital, I simply longed to be home, snuggled with the well, knowing what sweet life could be.  While I was home, I was racked with guilt for not being at the bedside of an infant -- a tiny babe who couldn't possibly understand, but needed nothing more than her mother next to her side and I yearned to return and touch her small hands.  I was restless in both places, both in spirit and in body.  My eyes cried, my breasts leaked, my head screamed for silence and sleep, my legs found themselves heading to the door, my hands constantly picking up the phone to check on the other, my mouth always speaking of the other daughter:  "Bella, your sister is very sick.  But she is so beautiful."  "Maddy, your big sister Bella wants to meet you so much.  She used precious Dora stickers on your valentine, she must love you immensely."  There was no way to bring these worlds together -- Bella was on month three of a post-nasal drip hack.  One NICU deemed her too young, the other I didn't dare bring her into.  Maddy, with her sea of tubes and wires and machines that go "ping" was in no shape to leave the hospital.  Both children demanded my attention.  Both children deserved it.  I couldn't reconcile my obligations.

The last 24 hours of Maddy's life were spent exclusively at the hospital; I left my home Saturday a mother of two, but two split by location and health.  I came home Sunday night, the mother of two, divided by living and dead.

I wish I could announce that at that point the pendulum finally quit its manic swing, and I settled back into my one-dimensional life.  But it actually became worse.   To this day, I fly back and forth between earth and the underworld, my family room and Hades, with a surprise and suddenness that brings whiplash.  My mind smashes against one wall and is suddenly spinning pel-mel towards the other until it crashes again.  The duties I feel toward my two disparate daughters have left me concussed.

I'm still always guilty of where I am, feeling that I'm snubbing one daughter for the other, unable to spend quality time with one and pay attention to the other’s needs.  I often feel like half a mom.

I discovered early on that Bella, only two-and-a-half at the time of Maddy’s death, began associating my frequent and random griefbursts with whatever activity we happened to be involved in at the time.  Music Class, for example, quickly got scuttled when I cried roundtrip the first week back.  The following week Bella blew up and refused to leave the car, pronouncing “music makes me sad.” (Maddy 1, Bella 0) The tears, apparently, would have to stop during daylight hours lest she begin associating them with trips to the grocery or walking the dog.  I had to manage my grief, no matter how badly I simply wanted to curl in a ball and cry and remember Maddy, and hold it off.  (Bella 1, Maddy 1).

My Maddy-time is right here, right now, on the keypad, typing her name, sharing my memories and feelings.  I try desperately to limit this to when Bella is killing gray matter in front of the television, or when she’s off at school or in bed, but sometimes I need to “check my mail” – see her name, send my love, receive support.  It kills me that when Bella picked up her dad’s camera she turned it and caught me, as I must always seem to her, hunched over the keyboard.  Bella can’t you see that she needs me right now?  That she’s crying?  That she reeks a bit of stale vomit?  That her hands are outstretched?  That mommy needs a few minutes with her?  No, of course you can’t.   Truth be known, I can’t either honey.  But I just need to be with her a moment, m’kay? (Bella 2,346, Maddy 4, 578)

And then there are the times I stifle my memories, my feelings, my grief, and mentally block out the picture of my other daughter and what she would look like today stumbling across the lawn so that I may enjoy Bella attempting to blow bubbles and then eat them, or hanging upside down out of the hammock or delivering Little Miss Bossy Boss her Milk!  Now!  “Oh and some crackers too, Mom!”  So that I can pay attention and avoid a trip to the emergency room, and not get too impatient and testy and be in the moment and breathe and enjoy.  Shit Maddy, your sister’s doing that thing where she’s hangs upside down by one arm on the tree branch and tries to drop four feet, and I can’t right now!.  But the otherworld baby can’t possibly know when it’s a good time to slap me upside the head and demand attention. (Bella, 1.67x10⁷, Maddy 1.24x10⁷)

Sweetie, I’m in an important meeting and everyone’s looking at me, I can’t, I just can’t, can it wait?

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but rush hour tonight is a bitch without taking that detour over the River Styx.  Maybe tomorrow night?  Ok?

I’m right in the middle of dinner, I have raw chicken yuk on my hands, the stove is on, the dog is barking, Bella is crying in front of the fridge, the phone is ringing, the cat just coughed up a hairball perilously close to the salad, can’t you see?  Can’t you see that I just need a few minutes here and then I’ll deal with you?  I’ll be there in just a second.

I know a day will come when the head-banging oscillation will cease, and that I’ll find myself firmly planted here, with only an occasional, slightly depressing venture to visit Maddy.  But I almost dread that day; it will mean we all have grown:  neither of my daughters will need me as much, and I’ll come to realize that the voices in my head aren’t really, it’s just my need to grieve finally waning.  One will no longer be a baby, and I’ll come to realize that the other never was, on this plane.  At which point I’ll only be able to look back and hope I did the best I could, by both of them.

Mother’s Day looms large right there around the corner and I can’t bring myself to celebrate and feel rather guilty accepting anything from the live daughter.  I feel I haven’t been there in full.  For either of them.  I’m constantly distracted by the other, and have yet to figure out how to hold each of them against my still poochy stomach and tell them both simultaneously, “I love you both, equally, fully, with all of my might and ability.  Recognizing that you both are quite different, of course.  You know, in case you hadn’t noticed.”