after the transformation

Oh, ppphhhhhh… 

What do I do now?

She’s been gone longer than she was here, even counting the time she was inside me.

I’ve passed all of the first anniversaries: her ultrasound, the day she was born, the day she died on both the Jewish and Gregorian calendars.

We’ve anticipated her arrival.

Hoped deeply.

Said hello, welcomed our second child to the big world.

Loved unconditionally.

Taken her outside to breathe fresh real air.

Said goodbye.

Buried her fragile little body in a tiny coffin in the ground.

Her box of memories is full, her photo album is made. Her special soft things in jars, still smelling a little bit like her. Everything put away in the trunk that sits next to me in the sunroom, keeping me company.

Her quilt is coming along, something I am not in a hurry to finish… When I work on it, I feel close to her.

I still haven’t framed and hung her photos, but I will… soon.

Her headstone has been made, set and unveiled. Flowers planted with her placenta. Her DNA and ours stored at the hospital for research. Her birth and death certificate are in a safe place with other family documents, confirming that she really did exist, always a part of our family.

We’ve moved away and settled into our new home across the country.

Our new chapter has begun.

Now what?

*****

Today I watched as two cicadas completely left their exoskeletons and began a new chapter in their new skins, so bright green they were almost turquoise. They hung there from the branches of a tree, clinging still to their old shells, transparent wings spread, contemplating new destinations, new purpose.

It was stunning… I’ve never seen anything like it. For three weeks now I’ve been listening to them singing their songs outside, surrounding me with constant tropical melodies. I’ve just never seen a cicada before, not even in a photo.

Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

Impermanence... I see it when I look in the mirror. I look different than I did last summer. I look different than I did two summers ago. I think I look different than I did a few months ago. I’ve reluctantly left my exoskeleton, sometimes hesitating to leave it completely behind. Longing for it, for simpler times.

My old shell consists of all the mes I’ve left behind, said goodbye to, willingly or not.

It’s this next place I’m not so sure about. This after the transformation place. I can so easily tell you how changed I am from the person I was before I knew Tikva. I can describe in vivid detail how she transformed me, and for the better. But I’m not exactly sure what that means for me now… now that I’ve been transformed by knowing, loving and losing my child. Now that I’ve undergone a change I never in a million years would have chosen. Now that I’ve gotten kind of used to this new person that I am.

*****

How many children did you bring with you to Cincinnati? he asks my husband.

We have two children, but only one living. We’re here after a year off, since we lost our second child last summer, my husband answers.

I say nothing, look away even, let my husband tell him. Then I look at this new acquaintance and see the sadness and searching in his eyes as he looks at me then quickly looks down. I know what he wants to say. After a year, I am so aware of the sadness I’ve held in other people when they look at me after learning about Tikva. Some days I can take it better than others. This time I just notice it, allow the compassion to flow in silence. Nothing needs to be said.

*****

I hoped to be carrying another child by now, but I’m not yet. Still, I can feel that child’s spirit close, waiting. Sometimes I can’t distinguish it from Tikva’s spirit. I don’t think that matters. Baby spirit energy is one and the same. I think it comes from one big well.

I watch my older daughter and feel how powerful is her desire to be a big sister to a living sibling.

I wish I had a sister to play with who wasn’t a spirit, she says.

Me too, I answer. Me too.

She would have a sibling who would be almost two right now, if I hadn’t miscarried in between her and Tikva. Then there would never have been a Tikva… Strange.

Tikva would be 14 months now, would probably be walking. She would be so beautiful, that I just know for sure.

For two and a half years we have wanted to give Dahlia a sibling… One who can play with her.

We still do.

*****

It’s almost the new year on the Jewish calendar. The biggest time of the year. This is supposed to be a time of reflection, of going inwards, of making amends, making peace. I always find this time tumultuous inside, unsettling, unsettled. I guess that’s the point. I don’t know if I’m ready for a big time right now. I’m feeling especially un-Jewish right now, which is ironic as the wife of a future rabbi. Really, I just feel like climbing under the covers and not coming out until October. Until the new year, a new season.

Last year at High Holy Day services, less than two months after Tikva died, I alternated between sitting next to Dave in the sanctuary, crying, and running outside to cry alone. I resented everyone dancing in the aisles all around me. I felt no joy, no peace, no serenity. I felt isolated, empty, lost. Dave wrote angry messages to God in his journal. I did not fast on Yom Kippur. Dave and I got into a fight about something, I can’t even remember what. Afterwards I went with a friend to a candlelight vigil for babies who had died. It was one of the saddest days of those first few months after losing my Baby Girl.

I don’t feel especially compelled to fast this year either. I don’t feel especially inspired to do much that is Jewish, to be honest. Keeping kosher – in the limited way we’ve been doing so for several years – feels kind of trivial after what I’ve lived the past almost two years. That is not how I connect to something bigger, by eating my meat and my dairy separately… by fasting on Yom Kippur.

*****

There is a new layer of sadness churning deeply in me right now, a layer I’m not quite ready to shed. A space I just need to exist in for a while. I’m not entirely sure what it’s all about, but I do know that it’s less tidy, more raw than I’ve felt in many months.

It’s not the part of me that wondered how I would ever survive losing my child, terrified at the thought of forever having to hold that experience. I’ve survived, relatively intact. But I’m not settled. In fact, I’m feeling rather unsettled right now. In a new kind of limbo, an in between place.

Now what?

Now life goes on. Now life continues.

That’s it? It just continues? Just goes on, business as usual, except that I’m completely transformed in the middle of a world that hasn’t really changed much at all?

Yup.

How come I have to adjust to the same old world around me, and no one has to adjust to me?

Because you’re not the majority.

I’m not? I know and know of so many parents who have lost babies, our numbers grow every day, and we’re still just a minority? But this is all I know. What am I supposed to do with the transformation I just went through? With this new self I am sort of used to and still getting acquainted with?

*****

Tikva? Are you there? Are you still close? Is that you in the giant yellow and black butterfly I saw yesterday? In the turquoise under the transparent wings of the cicada? In the tiny bird eating an Oreo cookie outside the ice cream store yesterday?

What do I do now… still without you?

I will let myself cry for as long as I need. There are no rules around how long is enough before being done with the sorrow. You are never really done, are you? Here in this place, we know better than to create those kinds of boundaries. Here we feel what we need, when we need, how we need to.

I miss you, Tikva. I miss you differently now. But oh how I miss you still, my Tiny Love.

.::.

Where do you find yourself now? Are you comfortable here? Is it still new for you? Unsettling? Do you feel like an old hat? Transformed, for better or worse? What do things look like now, here, for you?

Handling the shattered nutcase

I'm not there yet. Still got a ways to go before the World can pass through me without pain.

Julia talked of toes mashed and unreasonable expectations of accommodating thoughtless acquaintances. Tash spoke of awful, awkward silences and evasions within her own family. It broke my heart to read their words. I've experienced shades of each in various circumstances. Facebook is a series of landmines of super-happy-family-ness I can barely handle. Farmer's markets bombard me with babies and moms and dads with kids on shoulders.

There is no way for them to know what it does when they tell me that he's ten months old, and he's keeping her up every night. I look the toddler in the eye and shatter, but you'd never know it by looking at me.

I'm shattered all the time. I don't have to hide it here.

Thankfully, family and friends have been extremely supportive and understanding. I don't feel rushed in my grief. I don't feel like a total nutcase that must be gently handled. They take us face front and let us tell them--as well as we can-- exactly how we feel and what we need.

Often what we need is space and compassion. But not too much space. If I don't get enough attention I start to freak out. Sometimes I feel the disappearing act I'm trying to pull on my grief is working too well.

And not too much compassion, cause seriously, what the fuck? I can handle it, whatever it is. Obviously I can handle anything because otherwise I'd be long gone by now.

Of course, I'm terrified of what else is out there that needs to be Handled, so be careful with me, okay?

Email, instant messages, txts, posts on messages boards, comments to our blogs, they give me strength. They give me a web of words and understanding that transcends time and space.

We Skyped into a birthday party for our friend out in SF. It was mesmerizing to see the faces of our friends that I can usually only hear in my mind as I read their various written missives or enjoy as their disembodied voices over the phone. This was their presence in a powerful, almost magical way.

Through the digital transformations and subtle human cues I was able to pick up that they loved us so much, and missed us a million times over. We toasted beers through the cameras, but the hugs didn't quite connect. Too many square edges on the MacBook.

It was amazing to be with our friends clear across the country, for even a few minutes. And to know how much they wanted us to be well and happy, it was heartfelt and true.

Should I feel lucky for that? There must be a better word. There should be a word for good-feelings-in-the-middle-of-disaster. Because it is that, still, every day in one way or another. The wrenching wrongness of everything we are not doing with Silas is a brutal and confusing burden to bear. We aim for grace, but like Kate said, sometimes fuck grace.

I just want to get by without breaking anything else.

My heart breaks easily. I feel it as a slice from my breastbone to the deep reaches of my gut where everything falls into nothing.

Baby carriage. Pregnant belly. Offhand baby-talk.

Slice, slip, drop.

I attempt to fall through the vacuum of his absence into a calm acceptance of whatever comes next.

The everyday awful, the sliced gut and bottomless stomach, sometimes it makes the good parts feel especially rare and fragile. When I feel happy I'm often doubly amazed. What's the word for that one? The knowing-it's-good-because-you've-had-it-so-bad?

I also know this post doesn't make much sense. But how am I supposed to make sense of the fact that it has been almost a year and... and... everything? All of this. Every word from here to a year before. Every day we've half-lived wondering what the fuck just happened to us?

But I'm not trying to understand why. What I am trying to understand is what his life and death means to me and to Lu, and how I will navigate the rest of my life with his absence in my heart.

So far, this year, all of the World has passed through that hole. There is no other way into me anymore. He is the lens through which my everything is sharpened and transformed.

I wonder if that will ever change. I wonder if there is a way to ever feel whole and true. I wonder if I want to.

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

Do you?

the pressure

You've read those stories. Those people who had near-death experiences and how they became changed people: gave up smoking, went overseas to volunteer, building houses for the poor, holding sick children. They finally find a job and get sober, go to church, become a shining member of the community.

When you've expereienced a life-altering experience, usually you come out stronger, and become a much more positive contribution to your family, society, the world, the Universe.

For me, Ferdinand's death was a near-death experience as well. (Actually, I died.) It is without a doubt life-altering. But I did not emerge a better person with a lot to give to this world. I will say though I feel more awake in some sense.

I will admit that I almost felt the pressure to become better. To start serving food at the soup kitchen, run marathons to raise funds for various causes, perhaps donate a kidney, half a lung, maybe an eyeball even.

Do you think this? -- Something's good gotta come out of this.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It depends on the day I am having. Some days it makes me more compassionate and I can actually reach out and be genuinely nice to (grouchy) strangers. Some days I spit on the dirt, slam my door and slither under a rock, wrapping my rattling tail around my neck.

I have not done anything major after my son died. Sure, I made a few donations and I made great efforts in being an even more present mother. I worked harder at being compassionate, calm and patient. Other than that, I have just been trying to live, trying to figure out how to live the life of a bereaved without making a laughing-stock of myself. (And all the while fending off insensitive remarks and some clueless people who makes the already-bad life-after even worse.)

Now, two years out less a day (tomorrow is Ferdinand's birth/death day. I don't know what is a good word to call it. Anniversary? Birth and death day? Usually we call it birthday in our house...), I feel I am slowly coming out from the shadow.

I am not ready to do big things yet. (Though sometimes I wish I do. I wish I am announcing here a new foundation I am setting up, a baby-related research that I am throwing money into, a charity that I will be sponsoring for life, the name of the soup kitchen where you are going to be seeing me... but NO. Not today.) Just small tiny steps. Like trying to walk again with new feet.

Just trying to live better. For myself, my children, my family. Doing things I can for the community, when I can. Living more eco-consciously. Listening better to strangers. Not curse so much when driving on the highway, sending compassion the way of errant drivers (of course I am a perfect driver. Don't you ever doubt that).

A part of that entails stepping away from the internet and spending more time and attention on making our house more like a home, not the war-zone it has been the past two years. More time with the children I have earthside, creating memories that will buoy them and strengthen and empower them and make them better citizens of the world (hopefully). More time thinking about what am I here to do, what potential is within me that needs nurturing, perhaps?

So, this is a farewell post on this wonderful website. I am sad to go (and honestly, even afraid... but I will still have my blog), but I also think it's time for new blood. I feel I have said a lot and it is time to listen instead. I also just wanted to explore this issue of the pressure to be "better" and to do grand things after our babies died, wondering if I am the only moron who thinks that way. Will you share your thoughts?

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?

thinking back, looking forward

It was a year ago this week that we began what would end up being a weeklong stay on the cardiac and then ICU wards at the children's hospital. In my mind's eye the memory is seen from a point of view over my shoulder, blurry as though through a filtered lens, all mottled edges and underwater sounds.

The brunette receptionist.

Being buzzed in.

The nurse I ignored as she greeted me, thinking she couldn't be old enough to know a thing.

Me holding tight, one hand held protectively against the back of Sadie's head, the other under her tiny padded bum.

My utter disbelief that we were there to begin with.

Why did they know who we were? Why were they expecting us?

Of course, the emergency room doctor at our local hospital had called ahead. She had already sent me home to pack a bag and call my husband before arranging for an ambulance to bring us across the city. She understood long before we left that the size of her heart made Sadie a very sick little girl.

There was a bed waiting for us. I distinctly remember feeling panic rise in my chest over not understanding what anyone was saying. I didn't want to take her out of her sling to hand her over to anyone. The strongest bond she and I formed over her six short weeks on earth was when I held her, cheek nuzzled to my neck. She was soothed instantly by it. It made me understand what it meant to be willing to give your life for another’s. I don’t have to explain to any of you the depth of devotion one feels toward their child. The strongest love that exists, full stop.

The walls were painted a vivid yellow; the enormous privacy curtains around each bed pumpkin orange. They were such happy colours to use as the backdrop to a thousand layers and personal brands of fear, doubt, and confusion. By mid afternoon they cast a warm glow on one’s skin when the sun shone through the wall of windows at the end of the ward. As though the fiery determination of all of those terrified parents was burning from their insides out as they learned to administer meds and monitor heart rates.

Shortly after arriving we met the specialists who would diagnose her Cardiomyopathy and tell us how rare and difficult it typically proved for infants. I was knocked out of my daze into the present, struggling to comprehend his intricate explanation of how a healthy heart works versus how our daughter’s did. I slowly understood that I needed to think of her as a ‘Heart Baby’ and what that meant to our future. I began to write stories in my head to her. All of which included how to explain her special circumstances, in which her special heart needed extra special care, because she was different from other people in a very special way.

One morning, for the first time, she looked right at me as I leaned over her hospital bed and smiled the most beautiful smile in history. Machines beeped and children cried and she sealed her spot as the love of my life.

A week later we would watch a team of intensive care doctors try in vain to save her life.

Neither of us has been the same since, in too many ways to mention. But together we're so much stronger than apart.

.::.

I told my husband months ago that I wanted very much to escape from our lives on March 31st. I didn’t want to have to face anyone else but the one who understands what is happening in my heart. He understands that if anything, a year is but a minute when it comes to grief.

The difference between today and a year ago is not that the pain of our lost girl has diminished. It has only changed. Morphing from a life size mask to become an inky black fragment of my shadow. Always there and forever a part of me, but not the first thing you’ll see when you meet me. Sadie would have wanted me to take the mask off. I am still her mother. I am still me.

Next Tuesday, on the morning that will mark a year since we lost her, I will wake up early beside the man I love and watch the sunrise. We’ll have breakfast on the roof of our riad in the heart of Marrakech. Then we will travel to the Atlas Mountains with the solitary goal of drinking in the natural beauty of the exotic Moroccan landscape. I want to spend our time walking by his side, exploring the medina together. Breathing in the scents of spice and soaking up the turquoise sky. Losing ourselves in the city described as one that time has forgotten. All that matters is that I will be far away with him, remembering her.

.:.

How did you spend the first anniversary of your child's death, or how do you intend to?