No News

It seems as though whenever I start to feel like things just might be a little bit okay the other shoe drops and I'm back to being an utter disaster.

The other shoe is always dropping.  The rug is forever being pulled out from beneath my feet.

The surprising thing is how surprised I am every time it happens.  I should know better.  And I do, in my head.  But it's my heart I have to worry about, it just doesn't seem to learn.

More bad news, you're thinking.  Someone's hurt or sick or dead or in trouble and the meager footing I've found isn't enough to keep me balanced in the face of more tragedy.

If only.

Just another baby on the way.  There are so many, always on the way, always fine, often unplanned or unintentional but a wonderful surprise every time.  Right?

But that's where I fall apart.  This good news not ours cuts me to pieces and then I crumple at how awful that feels.  

These days, I can handle bad news much better than good.  I'm like the welcome committee to Disaster-Land. I hear bad news and I'm like oh let me help.  A friend lost her father suddenly and it was the easiest thing in the world to ring her right away and share tears with her and hold her close and make sure she knew I was there for her if she ever needed anything.

I'm good at bad news now.  I can be sensitive and strong, caring yet practical, forthright and easy with the most difficult and painful of subjects.  But throw a little happiness at the people I'm close to and all I want to do is crawl away and hide.

We don't get to do that happiness thing anymore and that empty space where it should be swallows me whole.  It swallows my dignity.  It swallows my hope.

Everyone else but us.  Here we stand, frozen in the long, sad moment of our son's death, unable to achieve the only thing we want as everyone just zips on by, their lives moving forward with new children and new hope. 

It's the heart/mind divide all over again.  I'm thrilled for them in my mind, but inside my chest my heart cracks open and falls to pieces and I almost follow suit.

I want to be happy.  I want to be happy for them totally and completely.  I want to be psyched and loving and everything correct, but I'm not.  I'm twisted and shriveled.  I'm bitter and disgusted with myself and once again way beyond the edge of tolerable limits.

I thought the worst was behind me, literally.  I thought that the worst possible thing had happened to me and that from there it could only get better.  But instead it has been an endless slog through deep, smelly shit.  Obviously nothing is more painful than losing Silas but the problem is that we lose him over and over again in a million little ways.

The ripples of our loss continue to radiate outward from us, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  Our tragedy causes pain in the people we love the most and prevents us from sharing in the happiness of those around us.  That is so ugly and revolting I can barely stand to be in this skin.  But there is no where else I can go and nothing else I can feel sometimes, besides sadness and anger and loss and grief, especially when the phone rings and it's good news at the other end of the line.

If this is a test then we are failing.  We are not excited when we get the wonderful news that someone is pregnant, and that just sucks.  The ring of that call is always a little shrill in our house.  So here's the deal, all of you that are currently pregnant now, you're all good, but after that it has to stop.  The rest of you, no more hanky-panky until we give you the okay.  We're up next.  We've been up next for so long.

***************

So what are your tips to help us get pregnant?  Tinctures?  Chants?  Meditations?  Roofies? And don't even think about telling us to just relax and let it happen because that's just not going to work.  Unless there's wine involved.  Should there be wine involved?

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?

Duty

People have stepped on my toes before. Many have done so and walked on by. Whatever-- people are self-absorbed, I know, and I try not to take it hard. I am OK at it, I like to think. You forget how much work I did on this one project last year? Harrumph, of course, but I'll deal. An extra latte, perhaps. Oh, yes-- just the thing. In fact, I discovered, that extra latte is a cure for great many things, people being inconsiderate prominent among them.

Except. Except when they are being inconsiderate about my dead baby. Scratch that. Not all people-- most people, people who don't know, who are just randomly passing by, who know me, but not well,-- from them it will sting, sometimes a lot, but it won't sear. They, I reason, do not owe me consideration. Not any more than any random person. And though I, myself, may aim for considerate at all times, I know that not to be everyone's standard. And so I don't hold most people to mine.

I watched the pilot of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency this spring purely on the strength of the previews. I stayed for the series because I liked the pilot. And because the main character, Mma Ramotswe, is a dead baby mom. They might've laid it on a bit thick in the first episode with a violent flashback (not that there aren't things to have violent flashbacks about in her particular dead baby story-- more like that the one they picked for a flashback isn't entirely believable), but from then on I really liked how they handled that part of her story. It's in every episode, and only occasionally overtly.

Most of the time it's something that I bet many a viewer won't even pick up on. It's subtly written, and subtly played. But if you know, if you've heard these things yourself, you can see it, plain as day. Like the time when a client of her detective agency, not thinking much of her suggestion that perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to hire a detective to spy on his 16 year old daughter, tells her that she, as a childless woman, must take his word for what's the right thing to do there. Mma Ramotswe doesn't say a thing, but-- and this one goes to how good an actress Jill Scott is,-- you can see just where that hits her. 

In the show, as in life, the context is everything. Mma Ramotswe tells another client, a woman looking for a son she believes probably died in Africa many years ago. But not this man, because, and we all know it, it wouldn't make a difference to him where his daughter and the need to spy on her is concerned. Besides, perhaps this is not the type of man you want to trust with that most sensitive of personal information, and likely not something you want him to know in a professional context anyway.

So context. Context is what I've been thinking about. When it's a friend who steps on my dead baby toes, or, as I tried to explain to a group of friends recently, when it's friend who hits my open compound fracture, the existence of which fracture is something the friend in question is most certainly aware of, that's not something I can just latte away. But it is, for me, something that can be reasonably turned into the proverbial water under the proverbial bridge with a simple and direct "I am sorry."

What has me bewildered even now, more than two weeks after that conversation, is the statment by another in our group of friends, that she thinks we must consider other's feelings in how we react to what people say. As in, don't make a scene. You know, don't you, that people don't mean to be hurtful, and therefore, even if you did point at your compound fracture and wince in a way that should've suggested to the person continuing to hit that very spot, that perhaps it would be best to stop now, you shoudn't, before hightailing it outta there, finally raise your voice to suggest that the person stop-bleeping-hitting already.

I guess a more accurate description is that I am by turn bewildered and infuriated, and working hard to stay with the bewildered (because infuriated may end up fracturing the group). Because you know what? I don't think we have a duty to be nice to people hitting us where it hurts. We might, as Mma Ramotswe does, not want to say anything, either in a particular situation or at all. We might not want to be party poopers, or we might not feel up to talking just then, or, indeed, ever. For our own reasons we might choose not to speak up. But what gets me is the suggestion that we ought not to, or that if we do, we be super extra tripple nice about it.

I do not believe we owe it to anyone to keep quiet. (I'll go further-- some of the shit people say, they really should feel bad about.) I don't think the one in pain should also be responsible for gracefully articulating where and exactly how much it hurts. Luckily for me, most of my friends don't think that either.

And what do you think? What do we owe those who are hurting us with their words? Does it matter if they are friends or random passers by? What, if anything, do you think people owe us?

social quotient

Reaching Out by jmtimages

If there is such a thing as social quotient, I score rather low on that. I am probably in the 5th percentile or something like that.

Back in school, on the last day of the final examinations, hordes of students would surge to town, pouring into theatres to watch a movie, or combing the malls for retail therapy after weeks of study (and performance) stress.

I went to the second-hand bookstore, lugged home a pile of novels, curled up and read. I have always been the rather (in)famous anti-social bird.

After Ferdinand died, my social quotient plunged. Crashed. Failed to register on the scale, because I totally dug a tunnel southwards and went into hiding.

The only way to know that I had not wiped my neck with a sharp blade was that I was writing, spewing all thoughts and emotions out into cyberspace, emptying my grief unbridled.

And, it took me a long time to crawl out of my little dark hole.

At one point, I felt I better be out. My girls need the sunlight, they need a social life, in some form of guise.

But being social was so hard. Talking to other people, I keep making mental footnotes like--

I can't believe I am standing here talking, my son died.

I can't believe I had a stillbirth.

But, you know, my son died.

How can babies die?!

I am not normal, even if I can stand and talk, do you understand?

::

I've never ever been the life of any party, even though for years my horoscope kept insisting that if you would just invite me to your party, I'm gonna kick it up a few notches at least.

Still, I do not consider myself a difficult person to be with. I am usually civil and pleasant, and don't bite too often. (Really!) I do enjoy being social, and (dare I say it) can be fun to be with.

I know for some, keeping with the social life they once had helps with the grieving/healing. It allows the support network to be available, it makes one feel alive and still be part of the fabric of society.

For me, I just want to rip the thread that is me right out of that fabric that is society and announce, with a wave of a black lacy handkerchief, "Forget I ever exist." I feel like I wanna turn my back upon society, upon life, and just be a vagabond, traveling to the farthest corners of the world, dragging my tattered heart in a quaint and worn leather bag. I no longer wished to participate in life.

But, how is that possible?!

It just is not, unless I check myself into some remote mental institute and spend the rest of my days forgetting my name, drooling strained spinach out of the corners of my mouth, rubbing dirt into my hair, and basically just waste away until my body decides it is time.

So, slowly, somehow I became "social" again. And I will admit, sometimes it helps. To just participate in life, be useful from time to time (when I first held a door for someone, I felt... alive), interact with strangers. Instead of just mumbling to the cashiers or pretending to be busy and not want to talk, I reached into the space that contains my heart and give it a squeeze and focus on being attentive to people I talk to. I mean, I really wanted to know about their day. And if they went beyond the usual "Great!" or "Wonderful!" and complain about a leaky toilet or having to be on their feet all day, I listened, I empathized and that made me feel more alive. Even though none of that had direct relation to my grief, it made me feel less disconnected and my heart became enlivened, even if only for a little bit.

I am curious about how others are doing and what excites and bothers them. I like to be able to interact and share my thoughts. But being a bereaved sometimes handicaps that. I still keep making mental foodnotes of My son died, I had a stillbirth and sometimes the mental footnote keeps ringing in my head as I proceed with my social life. There seems to be always this tension between wanting a sense of normalcy and desiring an acknowledgement that one is not exactly normal.

I know my social quotient will slowly go up, by virtue of the primal need to be social, by virtue of my children's needs, and I hope, that this scar in my heart that had made me raw in social situations will one day become a glowing light that shines compassion and deep empathy when I one day become a more normal social animal again.

In our deepest moments of struggle, frustration, fear, and confusion, we are being called upon to reach in and touch our hearts. Then, we will know what to do, what to say, how to be. What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts. It is from the deepest part of our hearts that we are capable of reaching out and touching another human being. It is, after all, one heart touching another heart.
~ Roberta Sage Hamilton ~

And you? How do you do? What's your social quotent, were you a social maniac before, or were you more of a hermit? How did babylosthood affect your social life? What was hard about being social again? How did being social help? What was the first social event you chose to participate in, and why, and how did it go?

from our side

Late for work, late to bed, dishes in the sink, beer bottles strewn through the house like a breadcrumb trail to my evening flameout is how I roll. How about you?

I was ready to start complaining about how tough it was to work after being up all night with that little bugger screaming my sleep away. I was ready to become a machine calibrated only for the mom/baby show to shine.

Instead, now, I'm part therapist, part rock, part disaster, part ogre.

But in the end I can only do so much. No matter what, I'm still something of a spectator to the deep well of grief that my wife inhabits. She can't help but feel this more profoundly because of the specific physicality of her experience. Our emotional trauma is roughly equivalent, but my physical self is essentially unchanged. Sure, my shit is liquid on those mornings when I wake up devastated and insane. Yes, my neck and shoulders are crimped and twisted by this invisible, relentless weight of sadness. There is no question that I have grown fat and lazy on a diet of avoidance and lassitude.

Frankly, I'm psyched when I can get up and do anything at all. The laze comes easy to me. Stayed in bed until noon the other day. Noon. By the time I had breakfast and finished coffee it was time to start thinking about dinner. Lunch didn't even make it into the rotation. Poised on the brink of parenthood, I've been tossed back into a life where sleeping until noon is actually an option. And I choose that option only because facing the day is more difficult than feeling bad about wasting it.

For those of you that already had children, this all must be completely different. I'm sure it is easier to focus on the living children than the one that didn't survive. But for those of us whom our lost offspring is our first, the wrenching denial of everything that was to come is nearly overpowering. I've never been one to descend to the depths of "Fuck Everything" that I now sometimes swim through. Sure I touched on it here and there. Perhaps dipped a toe into that boggy morass of nihilism and disregard during a rough patch, but I never submerged into that particular muck. Wasn't my style at all.

Now, somehow, I have to make this muck into a home. Losing your child is a lesson in how to make Shit Houses. Here's a pile of crap, live in it.

And not only live in it, but you have to share this Feces Condominium with someone else who is probably in many ways even worse off than you.

Are you a patient person? Can you listen well and respond without anger? How do you fare when you see someone that has everything you want, but complains about how tough it is? Are you capable of letting go of expectations and accepting the World at face value? If so, a career in having your child die just might be for you. Everyone else need not apply.

There is no one set of rules and instructions to help us deal with the loss of our child. For each person, this path through grief and despair is utterly solitary and painfully unique. And even though we get it more than anyone else our wives know, we still don't get it like they do. And that pisses me off, too.

I am the necessary, vital partner, but secondary to the vessel that carried my son. Without me she would crumble, but I am a hot breeze away from disintegration myself. She wants me to be there, to help her, to discuss the steaming pile of shit that is our shared life, but all I have been doing all day is fighting back the relentless demons that plague my every thought. By the time I get home I've finally won, and there suddenly is a new battle for me to fight. It's not me against her, it's us against her own horde of demons, but sometimes I've got nothing left.

There is no easy way to say "I've spent the last 10 waking hours thinking about our dead son and I simply cannot hear any words pertaining to said awfulness. Everything you say I have already thought, and I've chosen to keep silent. When you speak these words, they rip me open doubly, once because I know, I know I know, and another time because I know how destroyed you are too."

Can't we just watch TV? Can't we just sigh together and let that be enough? Can't you see how I move slow through the world and lash out at every obstacle? Would it be easier if I showed my true emotions and dismantled this entire reality with my own bare hands? I can destroy everything, you know. I can do it. There's nothing left anyway, so it would be easy to take that next step and show everyone how nothing everything has become by destroying everything in sight.

It wouldn't even be a rage thing. I wouldn't hurt anyone at all. I'd just start with this keyboard, move to the desk and then piece by piece sledgehammer this house into rubble. Sidewalk and street would be next but it would be the car that would really take some time. Those things are built to last. It wouldn't though. Not in the path of my focused pain. Helpless to help my son be alive, I could demonstrate to everyone the futile emptiness of this life. At least it would be action with an end result.

Look, I could say. Look what I've done for us. Now everyone knows what the World looks like from our side. Our desolation is now obvious and clear and we don't have to talk about any of it anymore.

I don't do that, though, and by not I am showing you how much I love you and want this World to work out somehow. The containment of my rage is an act of love. The daily denial of vomit and insanity is proof of my commitment. I can keep standing up and moving forward with you, but every millimeter of motion and attention takes the entire focus of my will.

The big picture of this pain is impossible to comprehend all at once. All I can manage to figure out is the very next thing in front of me. So each next thing that comes my way, I try to make it as good as I can. I know what makes me happy. Simple things I can control like sleeping until noon or steak grilled to perfection gives me pleasure in a world where joy is rare and fleeting.

I don't aim for joy anymore. I aim for contentment, I aim for an absence of pain. The problem is, to get there I sometimes have to shut down so many systems and thoughts that I can barely speak. If I am quiet and distant it is because I have spent the day raging against my pain. When I am brusque and bitter it is because of how much I hate what we have been denied. I know she is not my enemy, but there is no one to battle against to right this terrible wrong. Caresses and communication are sometimes collateral damage to the trauma of this experience.

I cannot take away her pain, so it feels like I can't do anything worthwhile at all. I couldn't stop what happened to our son. I could not fix him before he was gone. I cannot go back and get him and bring him to her, and I cannot alter the awful truth of every single day.

But excuses suck and I can always do better. I can share the simple pleasures with her, and listen even when the words shred me to pieces. I've been shredded so thoroughly by now, another tear doesn't hurt much at all. I can hold her and touch her skin and say nothing at all and be certain it was exactly what she wanted and needed right then and there.

We are not enemies here. One or the other is never to blame. All the tools and methods we had for working together have been tested to the limit or thrown out the window along with our hopes and dreams, everything except for one thing. That One Thing is that there is no one in the world except for her, my wife, and I would do anything and everything to take away all the pain of these last nine months.

I'll do the dishes. I'll sweep this Shit House. I'll drive to the store and buy organic strawberries and fair trade dark chocolate and I'll feed it to her piece by piece and listen quietly while she rages with tears against her internal, implacable demons. I know she'll hold me when I can't fight them either, and she won't make a racket cleaning up my detritus when I'm sleeping till noon.

She knows that in my dreams I just might find our son. It's one of the only place left I have to look. The other place is in her eyes, and I always find Silas there. Sometimes, though I cannot handle that either. The pain I see inside her breaks me to pieces, too.

~~~~~~~~~~

What do you and your partner fight about? How do you each handle stress and pain? What do you need most? What is the worst part of your every day? How do you help each other deal with grief? What could both of you do better? What are you awesome at together?

I will not follow you into the dark

Anonymity allows us to explore the monologue that we can sometimes barely acknowledge to ourselves. This can open doors, help us knock down what's blocking better days. One way to do this is the exercise of namelessness. Please welcome Anonymous 1—for the sake of response, let's call her Ann.

There's a gulf in my living room, a black hole that houses me, and it's been this way since my daughter died.

You'll have to hold your hands out in front of you at first, feel around for the edges, but then light will seep in and you'll see: I have almost everything I need down here. Sustenance. Diversions, books, songs, writing. Places to curl up and rest, accustomed now to the fitfulness.

Far above me my husband sits on the couch. He watches basketball, draws breath in through teeth and groans at every missed pass. His hand digs in a bowl of chips. I stare at his oblivious chewing. How can he just sit there, eating chips? How can he not know that we are failing?

I know what you're thinking. You cannot expect him to be psychic. You need to tell him what you need.

A reasonable response. As I've heard said before: be the love that you want. A bomb of a sentiment that forces all of us to quit assessing the hits or misses of our spouses and consider what we offer. And what do I offer? I sit at the bottom of this hole. I have made it comfortable and liveable, this inner solitude. This place is not one of pure misery, or consant depression. It is just differentness. Since our daughter, I am compelled to embrace it. In contrast, my husband is compelled to insist that he is unchanged.

Still, the hole is self-imposed exile. I no longer expect accompaniment. What feels to me like acceptance must appear to anyone else as giving up on him, on us.

But you know what else makes sense?

I shouldn't have to tell my husband how to love me.

+++

For the first months after our daughter's death my grief was a spectacle. I needed those around me to acknowledge my loss, dammit, and so for a while I made it impossible to ignore. I needed to confront friends and family with it, to make them hear. They asked me how are you and I answered them entirely without sugar.

She needs to get it together.

My husband almost instantly crossed the line that divided Us and Them. This left Me and Them, of which my husband was a part. He stared back from the other side, arms folded across his chest with a crowd at his back.

I don't think of it anymore. You shouldn't either.

+++

Some time passed: weeks, months. I took steps towards him holding abbreviated memories at arm's length, thinking that calm, measured attempts at sharing her memory were necessary to keep us connected.

Over toast I'd say casually I dreamed about her last night. I was composed, outwardly fine. His cereal would hit the bowl with a clatter, his back to me, and he would say Oh. Then it was Pass the jam and Is there any more coffee in the pot and I can't find my keys.

In my head it was different. Oh, what did you see? and I like that and It's okay to dream or maybe just I love you.

But he was closed, gone elsewhere. It was an inescapable heaviness as heartbreaking as the loss of our daughter. It was the loss of us.

+++

We are still unfound. We are roommates. We tend to life together, me from down here.

That's not to say I'm continually depressed. Our lives are full and blessed. My husband is a good man, ethical and straightforward. But the death of our daughter served to highlight that perhaps the unit of he and I were not strong enough to sustain this. His crossing of that line prolonged the spectacle by way of isolation. I am forever changed, and not for the worse, now that time has passed. He is unaffected, or rather, his facade of unaffectedness is more important to him than bearing a crack in it through which to talk to me.

We speak of very little beyond shared bills and shared space. I see continued silence as failure. He sees it as relief. Is this the rest of my life? A life with someone who will only care for the parts of me that are tidy, presentable? This is not marriage. This is claustrophobia, for both of us.

I see others mention here It made us stronger and I couldn't have gone through this without my husband and I stare at the screen, mystified and envious.

The death of our baby caused us to fail one another completely. I failed him by being a spectacle, as he and his family defined me. He failed me by refusing to remember our daughter. I made it impossible for him to forget her, as was his instinct. He didn't come for me, to either sit with me or yank me from that place, to demand that I be with him because he needs me, these days the definition of passionate love. I no longer share my occasional dark with him, these days the definition of inauthenticity. He shakes his head at me, as he always has, and I retreat. He digs through chips, chewing, drawing breath in through teeth at a flickering screen.

Some people reference high divorce rates among babylost parents. Others insist that's a myth. Most agree that men and women tend to grieve differently. How do we cross that gulf to one another? How did your marriage sustain the loss of your baby/babies?

Remember that you're welcome to post here either anonymously, under another identity or as yourself. If you've commented as yourself before and would like to comment anonymously, simply click 'remove stored information' in the comment box, clear your blog URL and email address, and use 'anonymous' as your name.