So Glad You Were Mine

Every summer, as the days went from wet-warm to dry-hot, the anxiety would begin to bubble inside of me as we approached the August 1st anniversary of Roxy’s birth and death. I wouldn’t even recognize what was happening at first. I’d just be irritable and jumpy, mad at the sun. I compare it to a long-standing pain one might have in their spine… an injury that never left. You forget about the pain. In some ways, you get used to it, but it darkens your mind.

Terra and I established a tradition of escape beginning with the first anniversary of Roxy’s death. We would go to the tree that was planted in a park in her honor, tie our balloons,  lay down our flowers and then we’d swoop up Mason (and eventually, Lila) and run away from home for a couple of days. We’d avoid everyone and everything. We’d stay distracted. It was strategy. We’d survive our grief the best way we could.

As year 5 approached in the summer of 2012, the pattern remained. The heat triggered the slow, silent, terrible build inside me. A 2-month crescendo, ending in collapse with anger and terror tangling further into the fabric of my heart until there was no room for anything else.  The pattern was becoming exhausting. I wanted to change it. With Terra’s blessing, we planned something slightly different.

Our extended families met us in the park at Roxy’s tree. For the first time, we brought Roxy’s photos. I have been viciously protective of these pictures in the past. I was always concerned someone would see only a dead baby, and not the stunningly beautiful daughter that she was to us. Some days, I didn’t even trust myself to look at them for this reason. I was filled with fear heading to the park, but we desperately, finally wanted this day to be about remembering and honoring our daughter and not just surviving our own grief. Or, at least, we wanted to give it a shot.

I could not have foreseen the magic that was coming.

Mason (age 9) very sweetly asked to see Roxy’s pictures and very sincerely wanted to participate in what we were doing.

When we talked to Lila (age 3) about Roxy, she said “was she a girl or a boy? Oh I think she turned into a tree. I’m going to look for her."

We had found and brought several copies of her birth record with her hands and feet printed on them, which took everyone’s breath away. We gave copies to the grandparents and aunts, and it felt so good to be able to give them a piece of her.

We brought helium balloons. We wrote messages to her on them and let them go into the air. Right as we released them into the sunlight, a dragonfly swooped down in front of us. Dragonflies were the primary theme in which Terra had decorated Roxy’s bedroom. I don’t believe in angels or ghosts (well, maybe ghosts), but there was something of her that felt really, truly there with us.

For the first time, I felt grateful for it all. Grateful for having been Roxy’s father. For having gotten to hold her, meet her, even if she had already departed. I finally felt that there was more than just pain there, in my heart where she continued to live. She was more than just pain, and I was so glad she was mine. When I got home that evening, I wrote this song. (I apologize, it’s kind of a rough mix.)

SO GLAD YOU WERE MINE

There were no birds on their branches
And there was nothing in your eyes
I’m so glad you were mine
Your skin was cracked at the elbow
And your blood was the reddest wine
I’m so glad you were mine
I meditate with the spirit
And I’m sheltered in her vines
I’m so glad you were mine
The ritual that brings you comfort
Is the lion that eats you alive
I’m so glad you were mine
August never offers mercy
And September never comes on time
I’m so glad you were mine
The wincing has gone fishing
And now I miss the knife
I’m so glad you were mine
There are no waves upon this ocean
It’s unkind
And the stillness of the water
It is nothing compared to mine
There are so many ways to suffer
And so many ways to die
I’m so glad you were mine
There are so many ways to suffer
And so many ways to die
I’m so glad you were mine

What kinds of ritual(s) do you have in place to remember the child or children you've lost? Have those rituals changed over time? 

Not Gonna Panic (Part 1)

Something happened to me, physically, in the wake of holding my dead daughter, Roxy. I felt it happen that day, walking from the room where she was born back to our private hospital room where our family waited, wailing. See, one of the perks of having your baby die is that you get your own private room for a few days. They mark the door with a purple flower, which I assume is to warn nurses not to be cheery and congratulatory. I have wanted to stomp the life out of every purple flower since.

Where was I? Oh yes, the hallway walk. It may have been 20 feet, but in my memory it’s 3 football fields. I remember every zombie step, knowing that there was more horror fighting to get into me than could fit, so my veins felt crowded and noisy with electric, terrible blood. A time-release panic valve was installing itself, and I could feel it. A panic payment plan was set up inside of me. I think I know now, 5 plus years later, that I will not live long enough to pay the debt.

I fell through that day without completely dying of it, but I was different. Not just emotionally. Not just psychologically. I was different, physically. I started having panic attacks within the week. I assumed I was having heart attacks. I was certain I was dying. I went to the ER. I went to the clinic. I went through a battery of tests, wore a heart monitor for a month, etc. “No,” the doctor said, “your heart is fine. It may be post traumatic stress.” I’ve been on anti-anxiety meds for half a decade now. The panic attacks are fewer, but they still come. They can be triggered by adrenaline of any kind (roller coasters, sick kids, playing basketball, etc.) I’m a lifer, most likely. This song is about having one of these attacks. It is the self-talk. It is the darting, random thoughts as I try to keep it together long enough to escape my place of work before I collapse.

Whatever is wrong with you goes all the way
Through your awful last name in the dark
I wonder where that dog will run to?
I wonder how long that dog will run?
You can keep your hand to your chest
You can worship by the elevator, leaving
Calm down
Beating beating beating beating
A mannequin in a dress, an overpass
I hope I never get used to losing you
The sound of a car on a bridge
And the things you can’t take back
No matter how long you live
Calm down
Beating beating beating beating
I’m not gonna panic
I’m not gonna panic
I’m not gonna panic

Since your loss, does anxiety overwhelm you? How do you handle it?

Missing One

As strange as it may sound, I MISS the wincing sting I felt in the first couple of years after losing Roxy. A wincing that brought the end to so much of what I had been. It twisted my back and made me old. It made me permanently nervous. And yet, somehow, over 5 years out, I miss the immediacy of that pain.

Sometimes I search through my emails and my journals and my songs just to reunite with the horrifying disbelief of our loss. During those first couple of years, I couldn’t WAIT to escape it. I counted days away from Roxy’s death. Yet now, somehow, sometimes, I want to go back.

I recently went on an email spelunking mission, looking through my archives, searching “song” and “Roxy” and seeing what came up. I wanted to remember the songs that saved me or destroyed me in the aftermath of losing our daughter.  I came across this exchange I had with my good friend Faith about a song that hit me hard at the time, and it just washed me out to the Roxy Sea, an ocean of beautiful grief… and it is beautiful, my grief. It IS my Roxy. It’s all I got to keep.

I’m told “Missing One” by Bonnie Prince Billy was written about his father, but it sure hit home for me that night. Here is a portion of my exchange with Faith as well as the song itself.

KENNY: “…it’s been rough this month… just feeling the day come around the corner.  Last night I had practice in Indy and I was driving home and I was just flooded with it all… Roxy’s face and skin and the nightmare after they took her away from us and out of our room for good.  I was listening to the new Bonnie Prince Billy, but just lost in my own sadness, kind of allowing myself to go through it again (I rarely do that, but sometimes it just needs to be done)… suddenly this song comes on:  Missing One (god have you heard it?).

I know that missing you has just begun
There’s years to come
And trying to sleep tonight next to your kin
Is fully lovely as I’ve ever been
But I wouldn’t trade my life for someone’s millions
And I know you left for a reason
And the trees and flowers and creeks and rocks
Hold your face for every season
I know I will continue to try and please you
And even in some ways,
To try and be you
But also my fulfillment will be to do what I do
As you taught me to
I know that missing you has just begun
Love me family
And just sleep to all of us

I felt like it had sprung right from my sad heart right that moment, sung to Roxy.  The moon was a little more than half full but really lit up the whole sky.  I almost disappeared completely into it all.  I listened to the song over and over again.  I tried to invite the tears to come, but they wouldn’t.  I really wanted to feel that release.  still, it was magical, sad, and somehow important.”

FAITH: “Oh man. Those lyrics do seem sent straight to you… I haven’t heard the song, but being a Bonnie Prince Billy fan, I’m guessing it’s not up-tempo.

I can really imagine that scene – the highway, the song, the moon, the memories. It’s a beautiful image, heartbreaking as it is. I think Will Oldham should list his occupation on his tax form as “professional tearjerker.” The tears will return when they need to, my dear friend, preferably when you’re not driving.”

It seems, even under a year away that I felt too disconnected from my pain. It has been more than 5 years now, and the tears still haven’t fully come. Or maybe they spilled backwards into my brain and blood. Or maybe the missing has just begun.

Do you ever feel too far away from your grief? Do you try to keep it close? If so, how?

Youngest Kind of Pain

Since this is Valentine’s Day, I figured it would be appropriate to introduce a song I wrote about the most depressing date ever: the first one Terra and I went on after our first daughter, Roxy Jean, had died.

I honestly can’t even remember exactly what we did, except that we found ourselves walking along the same sycamore and maple-lined campus avenue where we’d first begun dating, some 16 years prior, as two gutter punks trying to find a way to get drunk outside of Spaceport Arcade (yes, we are that old). We’d fill our Styrofoam gas station cups up with such a strong ratio of vodka to red kool-aid (hey it was 1991, and we were broke) that we had to drink it quickly in order to keep the alcohol from disintegrating the cup from the inside out. We’d run wild through the night in a pack like wolves. Sometimes between the buildings, sometimes through the woods by the lake, and sometimes we’d lie around on the dirty floor of someone’s smoke-filled apartment, listening to The Misfits or The Violent Femmes. I smoked Winston cigarettes. She never did.

But I digress. This song is not exactly about those days.

It’s about the night that we walked like ghosts through a past that seemed to belong to other people now. We didn’t want to drink vodka out of Styrofoam cups while running through the night air looking for adventure. We wanted something stronger. We wanted to go home. It was too quiet without our 4-year-old son to distract us and especially without out the baby we should have been losing sleep caring for. We just walked, and the silence surrounded us. We were paralyzed by our shared pain and we did not want to be alone with it.

Oh my God, Oh my God, this is the place we used to walk
When the darkness had yet to leave it's darkest kind of mark
And we were strange
We were borderline deranged
And you had eyes that held the water like saucers full of rain

Through the lotus went the light and I saw something new revealed
I saw the scars from the fight
I saw the wounds that never heal
So strike the stage, I guess nothing can remain
All this running, fucking running, and we're no farther from this place
We're in the youngest kind of pain

We save the softest words for strangers
Because we don't know how to say it
And we don't know what the name is
No baby sleeping in the manger

And there's no one here to save us
There's no one here to save us
There's no one here to save us 

What was your first date like after the loss of your baby? What was it like to try to be romantic? 

The Answer

The intersection of grief, creativity, and writing remains a place of such deep beauty and personal horror, I stand in awe of people getting their hands and souls dirty in it, exploring it with art, music, and writing. Kenny is a songwriter and musician from Bloomington, IN, whose band Gentleman Caller, has just released their fourth record, Wake (Mariel Recording Company). This record meditates on the loss of his daughter, Roxy Jean, who was stillborn at thirty-eight weeks on August 1, 2007. His music breaks me wide open in such an important way. I learn more about my own grief. Kenny agreed to join us at Glow as a regular contributor where he will be exploring his grief with his wise insights, brutal honesty, and dark humor, and of course through his music and words.  —Angie

In the year following Roxy’s death, I was just hunched, squinting and holding on.  I tried to outrun my thoughts, but they were in every hiding place I ran to.  I self-medicated with booze for a few weeks.  Became an expert on panic attacks. Sometimes I just waited, counting days away from the day she died. There was more comfort in math than hugs. I held on and flailed, as quietly as possible, inside my hollowed-out flesh-cage. I went to therapy, took anxiety meds and tried to get to know and understand my new, messed up self. 

During that god-forsaken year, 3 friends also died early, tragic deaths.  One by house fire.  One by drowning.  One by aneurysm.  All three under the age of 40. It seemed unreal and impossible at first… then, inevitable.  Remember, in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo snaps “NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!” before successfully flying through an asteroid field?  My life, the lives of my friends and family… ours had become the exact opposite of that.  We weren’t beating the odds, but being destroyed by them, and those odds were giggling.  

Hollowed out by losing my beautiful, dark-haired daughter, and managing my anxiety with medication (prescription and other), I was sliding down and increasingly absent of hope. I started recognizing patterns in the memorial services I was attending. The hollow, crying eyes of the mother, the trembling, shaking hand of the father, all while speakers talked about what the deceased loved, how they loved and who they were… and there was always a song. I was so embittered by all the loss, and death just seemed right around the corner for everyone I loved. I was certain I would not live to be an old man. I felt that no one I knew would. 

So, I decided to write my own funeral song.

I wanted a song that would just tell the bleak truths of my life… a song that wouldn’t put a bow on the end of my life, but a thudding and appropriate period. Somehow, it felt like the bravest thing I could do.

It happened immediately upon returning home after the last memorial service I would attend that year. It took literally the amount of time to write that it does to sing it. It remains, easily, the quickest I’ve ever written a song. It also remains the most cathartic:

THE ANSWER

I did not find the answer in church
I did not find the answer in church
I did not want a god that would not spare the rod
I did not find the answer in church
I did not find the answer in my home
I did not find the answer in my home
I was a stranger to my kin
I was a stranger to them
I did not find the answer in my home
I did not find the answer in school
I did not find the answer in school
I was sucker-punched and thin
I was not like the other kids
I did not find the answer in school
I did not find the answer at the bar
I did not find the answer at the bar
Beneath the stale embrace
I was always out of place
I did not find the answer at the bar
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I took every pill they make
But I was still awake
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I did not find the answer in your eyes
I did not find the answer in your eyes
Not your hands and not your lips
We were always passing ships
I did not find the answer in your eyes

 What songs, if any, have been a comfort to you since your loss?  What songs can you no longer listen to? What would be your funeral song?

Dead babies from the time before

Baby Cosmo

Died

When I was

Fourteen

They made

A documentary

About him

We saw his image

On the screen

Of a 30 pound TV

But of course

He never breathed

And we just saw

His ghost on our

Machine.

He wasn’t the

First dead baby

I had been

Aware of, grieved

My cousin William

Died

Inside

The womb of my

Uncle’s wife

While they were

Far away

Unseen by me

But missed

And wondered over.

I imagined

Her hurt

Felt something

Approaching empathy

Although I was

Still young enough

To find the whole

Birth thing

Faintly obscene

And then another loss

Not mentioned

To me personally

And so I will not speak it here

It is not mine

To share

But I was aware

And felt keenly

The broken dream

Of another family

And then some weeks before

My baby died

I spoke to my friend

About her infant brother

Lost just days after

He was born

And we mourned

For him a little

In the car

On the way to work

I remember as we turned

Onto the road

With the lovely violin shop

On the corner

That I felt a sudden

Premonition

I just knew

That one day I would know

That feeling too

I didn’t realise it would be

So soon,

That I would come to

Speak with such

Authority

About small corpses

And their consequences

But those four came before

When dead babies were a rarity

What was your experience of babyloss before your baby or babies died? When you heard their stories did you ever imagine that it might happen to you?