Leaning out?

For a long time, almost for as long as I can remember now, I have been “leaning into” my grief.

This was my plan on Day Zero – the day I lost John. The first day of the “new me.” The day I stepped over the invisible line and became this person I don’t recognize. I wasn’t going to be stoic. I decided that the best way to deal with my grief was to deal with it head-on and with my whole heart. To do otherwise would be to deny myself my true feelings and my sons their legacy.

So I went to therapy and I talked about it. And I stayed up and cried about it all night and every morning on the drive to work. And when I meet someone and they ask me “how many children do you have?” my answer is “Two living children.” And I wear my necklace with the charms of all four of my children and I let people ask me about each charm. I explain about Chromosome 22 and 1g to anyone who asks and some poor souls who don’t ask and get to hear about it anyway. I argue with people about genetic testing and early intervention. Once, in a fit of righteous indignation in a Wal-Mart parking lot, I approached someone with a particularly ardent Pro-Life bumper sticker and told them what I thought of people who limit the choices of grieving mothers. And I told them about John and Drew and 1g and mercy and choices and grief.

I “lean in” to my grief because it’s there and it’s real and it feels like something I can hold onto when the world is still spinning and I wish I could get off.

But at some point, the deep, soul-crunching grief became my default. Some people are just happy people, some people are usually sad or bitchy. It’s their point-of-start, and my point-of-start in everything I do is grief.

And I like it that way.

And it has to change.

Last week I experienced the kind of moment every Baby Loss Mama kind of knows (or fears) she is going to experience. It’s the moment you prepare yourself for: when someone says something about your lost child or children or your grief and they aren’t being clueless or simply misunderstanding the depth of the situation.

People – people who I thought understood my grief to at least some degree and people I thought cared about me and my feelings and my boys to at least some degree – said some pretty horrible things. They said things that I can’t imagine anyone saying to a stranger, let alone to a person in my family who I have watched slog through this grief journey.

So there it was, the moment I knew would eventually happen, just happening with the last people in the world I thought would put me in that situation. And what did I do? What was the big response of the girl who would verbally assault someone over a bumper sticker in a Wal-Mart parking lot to defend her choices as a mother and the legacy of her dead sons?

I ran.

I got myself out of there so fast I don’t even remember half of the details.

So my big response was my default: severe grief. I stopped eating. Completely. I had about 150 calories a day from milk and refused to eat any more. I did this for 11 days, hoping the hunger would restore me in my re-broken brokenness. I cried for two days and then every night after my husband fell asleep. I wrapped myself in blankets, hoping the blankets would shield me from the hurt. I reached out to other BLM’s hoping they could give some perspective to the situation. I went to the cemetery and cried because I couldn’t see the headstone because of the fresh snow.

I leaned in, because that is the plan. That is always, always the plan.

Then, somewhere in this starving, freezing, snotty, crying hole of my own creation, I realized that it can’t be my plan anymore. It can’t be my default. Leaning in is hurting me more than it is helping me.

I know I can’t ever let go of my grief. I would never want to. It’s as much a part of me now as my fingers and toes. I’m not looking to put down the heavy cinderblock of sadness. But now I’m starting to think that the next phase of the my grief journey is finding a new default – the new point-of-start for me. I know that, like so much of this journey, I won’t get it right for a really long time – maybe I’ll never get it right. That’s OK. And I’ll deal with my in-laws and their personal affront on my grief in my own way, in my own time. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t have to lean into everything.

In or out

You are either fucking in this grief journey with me or you are fucking out. In or out. That's how it goes. Suck it up or fucking leave.



I could care less.

Too much, too fast

My husband, who really is a very smart man, made a very smart observation yesterday.

As mentioned before, I am stuck in a deep rut of depression, overwhelmed by everything from  dirty dishes and laundry to birthday packages for my mother that I can’t seem to pull together.

There are reasons for this depression, or at least contributing factors. My dear aunt died in July, leaving a giant hole in my heart. My career, which once looked like a very promising path for a very promising writer, has stalled. I am too busy to properly dote on my children and too tired to work on my own projects that could potentially place me back in the realm of “promising writer.”

So instead of some things getting done, nothing gets done. I feel like a talentless failure and a self-loathing mother. I feel worthless and sad and ugly and scattered. I can’t pull it together.

Anyway, back to my husband’s observation.

“I think the reason for your feelings right now is because Clark is growing so fast and hitting so many milestones,” he said. “I think it’s because you are seeing him do these things and missing out on the things you aren’t able to see John and Drew do.”

He’s sort of right. We are planning Clark’s baptism, which is great for Clark, but it’s one of the millions of things planned for two little boys who aren’t here. In the middle of the baptism planning, we are also planning a funeral for Drew, who died nearly two years ago. Old wound, fresh hurt.

But Clark will have milestones every day for the rest of his life. He’ll walk and teethe and run and play baseball and go to school. He’ll go to prom and college and get his driver’s license. And John and Drew won’t. And nothing’s going to change that. So what do I do? How do I pull myself out of this? This pool of sadness is wide and deep and hard to navigate. And I don’t want my living son’s life to be such a source of the deep.

Baptism by Fire

Clark needs to be baptized. I know. I know.

Let me start off by saying that I’m not opposed to baptism. All my babies  - all of them – are blessed or baptized.  For Emily it was a ceremony of faith, a  mission of sorts that I fought my then-husband over. Infant baptism is important, I argued. It’s Lutheran. It’s faithful. I insisted. She was baptized.

John and Drew were both blessed by the hospital chaplain, their little bodies sprinkled with Holy water. It brought me some peace.

I think this is the part where I explain my faith as best I can. I’m not a person who looks at life and says, “Bad things have happened and I don’t believe in a God that would allow bad things to happen to me. “

My heart instead says: “Bad things have happened and I don’t believe God loves me.”

I am forsaken. I cannot forgive. I have lost my faith – not in the existence of God, but in the idea of his enduring love.

So brings about the problem: I believe in God. I believe in baptism. I believe that it’s important. I am forsaken.

So the decision was one of compromise. My husband’s very Catholic parents, in acknowledgement of my status as a non-Catholic and the reality that Clark can’t be baptized in their church, decided that any old baptism would do.

Get it done.

So we’re having a casual baptism on a riverbank, near the covered bridge where my husband and I were married. Fifteen minutes of religion and water and then three hours of wine and paired foods chosen by me and shared with just about anyone who wants to stop by and sip and talk and laugh.

My brother-in-law gets to be a godfather, my son gets to be baptized, and I don’t have to walk into a church and feel like a fraud.

Let’s do this.

Road Closed

Crumbling asphalt leads the way over a creek, up a hill, down a winding path just big enough for a car if you’re careful and to the back, back, back of the cemetery. In the back, all the way almost to the woods, is the tiny stone where John’s ashes are buried.

In recent months, I was not as devoted to my cemetery visits. We always go on death dates and due dates, we took a few sad looking garden items to “decorate,” but I would skip cemetery visits for weeks at a time.

Then the news came: the township had to close the bridge over the little creek for nearly a month. The entire bridge was threatening to fall into the water and replacement was the only answer.

Workers tore out the old bridge and set up supports and struts and beams for the new one. They dug and they poured asphalt and they packed it down. And through all this, they closed the road with a big ROAD CLOSED sign.

And suddenly I could not breathe. I could not see John’s stone. I could not make sure the weeds and grass were properly trimmed, could not sit next to the granite marker and watch the frogs hop around, could not watch the chubby groundhogs dart amongst the stones.

Every time I drove past the cemetery, the ROAD CLOSED sign gave me a panic attack, as if someone would steal John’s ashes or his stone or his tacky garden decorations. Silly, I know.

Two weeks ago I was driving by and the big sign was gone and the bridge was open! Relief. I drove into the cemetery and straight to the back. All was as it should have been – just as we had left it on John’s birthday in July.

For the last two weeks I have been at the cemetery at least six times. I drive through on my way to work or on my way home. Sometimes I take Clark, other times I go by myself. Sometimes I get out of the car, other times I just drive past the stone marker very slowly.

Oh, Baby Loss Mama logic. There’s no explaining it.

Grief by Calendar

The calendar on my wall has lulled me into a false sense of security, leaving me blindsided by an unexpected burst of grief.

In July, just after John’s expected due date, I looked at the calendar and thought “I don’t have another EDD/death date until October!”

In my mind, that meant that I had the rest of the summer and part of the fall before I had to pull myself through the anticipated Baby Loss Mama sludge again. If nothing else, I can at least take a personal day and wallow because I know when these feelings are inevitable.

Right?

Then somewhere in the end of July and through the beginning of August, it just hit me – that crushing feeling in my chest. That endless sorrow that I will never be able to shake – that I actually fear losing as if it means I’ll lose the little bit I have of my boys, too.

And it stayed. I wake up and drag myself out of bed and cry on the way to work. Sometimes I cry here in my already depressing oatmeal-colored cubicle that has to be about the worst creative environment for a writer ever. I cry at night. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to be kissed. I don’t want to hear any noise. I want to sit and cry. And that’s it.

So the summer is now mostly gone. I’ve bought my daughter’s school supplies and I go to work every day.  Clark is crawling – faster and faster every day. He’s smiling and happy and healthy. He’s pure joy.

I am blessed. I live a blessed life. But there just isn’t enough space in my heart for the joy and the grief – and I can’t let go of the grief. So there it lives.