4 years gone

Tomorrow is Silas's birthday.  He would be four years old.  Imagining our four year old son cavorting through this house, the yard, our lives, is painfully impossible.  I can imagine what that Universe would look like from the outside, but not how it would feel in there.

It would have the same hint of crimson in the leaves and the same gorgeous fall breeze alight on a brilliant blue day.  There would be the same cool and colder nights and suddenly hot September afternoons.  But maybe I would not notice the touch of decay creeping into the shadows.  Certainly the first falling, orange leaf I witnessed would not carry the weight of death and despair like it always does now.   With my amazing son's fourth birthday helping to usher in autumn, I probably would not hate this time of year.

September makes me cringe.  With the flip of the calendar I know what is coming, but I have no idea how to deal with it.  I doubt I ever will.

Taking a quick inventory it appears that this year's emotions are: helplessness, fear, anger, disbelief, confusion and a deep and abiding despair.  In other words, same as it ever was.  In detail: I can't change the past.  I'm afraid of anything happening to Zeph, ever.  I'm still quite upset with the midwives, and at my foolish, naive trust in them.  That this is my life and that my firstborn son is dead remains impossible.  Four years now I still don't know how to properly prepare for and honor his birth/death day.  And of course, still, always and forever, I am profoundly sad I don't get to share my life with him and see what kind of man he would have grown into, and how he would have changed me.

I always feel all of that on some level, but this month and week and final days compress and tighten in my veins like my blood is being replaced with liquid concrete as my memory unfolds the events of that long night and longer day.

Growing up my mother would always recount the events leading up to my birth.  I loved hearing her tell me our beautiful, shared history.  But Silas's day is made of silence.  No one wants to hear that story and I can barely stand my own mind as it ticks off each milestone and moment.

The outpouring of love and support from friends and family as Sept 25 approaches yet again has been... nonexistent.  I'm shocked that is the case, frankly.  Maybe they are planning a surprise grief party, but I doubt it.

Our families had been incredibly supportive and understanding as Lu and I thrashed in agony in the first years after he was gone, and then they continued to handle us gently and kindly as time passed.  But maybe four years is enough for them.  They did their best, and now that's pretty much it.  New son in our life and new babies all around means new beginnings and big happiness for everyone and it's time to move on and let Silas drift into our past, as if his life was just something that happened, instead of something that is.

There will be a few friends that are conscious enough to make a call or send a text or email.  And I almost wish I could steal all knowledge of Silas from my amazing mother debilitated from MS and my incredible father taking care of her, if only just to save them from any more hardship and sadness, but I know they are crippled with despair over the loss of their grandson, and I know they know what is about to happen once again.  I wish I felt that same conscious understanding from others, but the fact is people are mostly wrapped up in themselves, and if you want anything from them you need to tell them clearly and loudly exactly what you want.

But that's the problem.  I can't say, "Hey it's going to be Silas's birthday in a few days and it is still really really tough, so I need you all to just say his name to me and tell me you miss him and show me that you remember."  Because if you have to remind someone to remember something, they're not really remembering at all, are they?  They are just responding to your clearly spoken need without any of the actual remembering or forethought.  And that fucking hurts.  It's that same expectation game all over again, but I don't really give a shit.  They should remember.  They should tell me that.  They should reach out and grab me as the calendar winds up to Sept 25 and launches me to the edge of the Abyss once again.

Instead we'll do it ourselves, and take care of each other as we always have.  We are going to Silas's tree tomorrow. This will be the first year we have a living, breathing child in our lives and it definitely makes it far better than it has ever been before. Of course as we sit there around his older brother's memorial tree I am not going to be able to stop thinking about the fact that someday I will have to share this deep sadness with this gorgeous, innocent child.  And that, of course, is awful.  I don't have any idea how I'm going to handle that or how his understanding of this awful history will affect him as he grows up.  I already feel terrible that we will have to break his heart someday.

Me, Lu and Zeph are going to Silas's tree tomorrow, and we're going to plant tulips and have a little lunch picnic and cry our fucking eyes out and laugh at our amazing son who loves to play with sticks more than toys and enjoys eating rocks as much as fruit.  He loves both of us so vividly he almost can't handle it sometimes.  He's a wonderfully wild and alive little child and I wish with every cell of my being he had an older brother to torment and grab and run with and learn from and squeeze just as hard as he yanks on us.

I'm not working at all tomorrow.  I'm just spending the day with Zephyr, as I always do on Tuesdays.  It should be his older brother's birthday party.  Instead it is something else I wish no one would ever have to endure.  With silence all around and everyone consumed by their own lives, we will embrace each other hard and make this awful day slightly less unbearable just by doing it together.

The concrete fills my veins drop by drop as this day approaches, until I am immobilized by sadness, and my soul shatters with every step I take through his birthday, his deathday, his impossibly brief life.  I will settle into bed as dust tomorrow night and I will dream of his stars and wish his younger brother had Silas in his life.

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

How has the day of your child's birth and death changed over the years?  How many years have gone by since you lost them?  What has changed about how you deal with that day?  How have the people around your responded (or not) to that anniversary?

What They Say

Today's post isn't going to be lyrical or beautiful.  It's not going to uplift you or share a new perspective on the terrible tragedy of losing a baby.  And it also contains a fair bit of swearing so be forewarned.  

Today's post is about other people, the ones that have all their kids and don't know one single thing about how to talk to us, how to behave like a true friend, how to navigate in our dark depths and instead say incredibly stupid and insensitive things without using their heart or brain before opening their mouths.  So, let's start with my favorite:

"Well, everything happens for a reason."

What I want to say & do in reply:

Oh really?  It does?  So when I wind up my arm and clench it into a fist and punch that person directly in their disgusting, thoughtless mouth, I can just chalk it up to 'everything happening for a reason?'  What a relief!  I thought the Universe was just random, brutal and unforgiving, but here you are with your deep wisdom born of nothing, telling me I can do whatever the fuck I want because hey!  It all happens for a reason!  And the reason you are flat on your back from my knuckle sandwich is because you're an unthinking, insensitive ass.

What I say instead:

I disagree.  There could never be a good reason for my son dying.  What you are saying is very offensive to me, and I would appreciate it if you would keep those sentiments to yourself.  I know you're just trying to help, but it's not and you aren't and please, please stop. (or else, see above, I say with my eyes)

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

What I want to say:

Hmmm, let's see, no.  Not true.  Some things that don't kill you make you weak and fragile and bitter and sad.  Some things, like losing your child before they had a chance to make a breath or live a day, make you hollow and desolate and open your eyes to how bad life can get.  The strength I relied upon to live through that terrible experience came from who I was before he died.  His death did nothing but rip the naivety and innocence from my soul and lay the world bare in all its brutal viciousness.

What I say instead:

My son dying didn't make me stronger.  It made me nearly dead myself, and I'm not stronger for his death. I would have been made stronger by getting to be his father. What you are saying is painfully insensitive.  Please stop.

"At least you're young, you can have another."

What I want to say:

Wonderful!  Thank you so much for being a fucking idiot.  Because as you know all kids are replaceable. One breaks or dies, just go out and pick up another one.  How about this?  How about I take one of your four kids and raise it as mine?  After all, you've got plenty!  Spare one for someone who misplaced theirs when they fucking died.  How about it?  Since you're such a dumbass you will probably raise awful children anyway.

What I say instead:

Nothing.  I say nothing to those people.  I just look at them for a moment, shake my head and walk away.

"God works in mysterious ways."

What I want to say:

Fuck you.  Get out of my house.

What I say instead:

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  If this is God's mysterious way of teaching me some kind of lesson, He/She/It can go fuck themselves.

"Is he your first?"

What I want to say:

Why do you want to know?  Or are you just asking things without thinking about it?  Do you really want to know about my first, about how he died?  About how we are still devastated by his absence?  About all our hopes for him and us dashed against the black shards of death?  Or are you just some blissfully ignorant stranger who can't keep their mouth shut and don't really give one fuck about us at all?  Ah, I thought so.

What I say instead:

No, our first son died due to complications during birth.  Then I just look at them while they crumble into despair and I think to myself be careful what you ask people, they just might tell you the truth.

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

What insane, awful and horrific things have people said to you when they learn that your child died?  Let's rage on this together with the only people that know the truth and feel a little better by getting it all out for once.

To The Pain

I don't have a picture of Silas handy.  I know I can go to my blog and look at the photo we have posted there, and we have a framed memorial with his image and footprint and handprint and a photo of his name in the sand.  In the drawer next to my bed, I keep his ashes in a small orange jar with a cork in the top.  Lu got it for me for other reasons years ago, but when we needed to transport a portion of his remaining physical form to the memorial site in the park up the street, that's what I had and that's what I used, and that's where I keep that part of him.

I have a tattoo on my arm that is the most present aspect of Silas in my life.  Like him it is part of me, forever.

The ink in my skin has become the perfect metaphor of my mental picture of him.  Long ago he ceased to be a person and transformed into a force.  His energy blows at my soul and turns in me in ways I never expected.  All these years later and I can feel his brief life exerting its pressure on my heart, my consciousness, my view of the world.

The exact same white EMT truck just blew past my window as loud and terrifying as the day he was born. I dread where it is going.  That is Silas as real and true as anything I can conjure.

When I hear of a new pregnancy, when I see women round with life, when someone unknowing tells me about plans for the perfect birth experience I feel Silas in my nervous system.  My thoughts and memories and ideas of "him" are transcribed into the way I feel the world in a terrible, tangible, painful way.  And I love it.

Those sensations: the feel of the tattoo under my skin, my terror for those beautiful mothers-to-hopefully-be, the raw reality of a toddler boy exactly his age, I need them.

Silas can't be anything for me himself.  He doesn't have the voice to speak to me about his needs and wants, doesn't have the face to draw my gaze and steal my heart.  I don't know anything about who he would have been, but I can feel in those grievous sensations all the hopes and expectations I had for both of us, and I love them.  After all, those brutal sensations are all I have to keep my connection to the son I never knew.  Funny huh?  No, not really but no one else gets how fucked up this all gets besides us, the ones that are in the midst of this furnace that never stops burning.

We aim to have a Glow here in the Woods, for people to find when they are lost.  The part we don't often mention is that we don't just use this fire for light and warmth.  We use it to sear our souls over and over again, to touch the pain and drink it deep.  When I saw his ashes in my drawer only moments ago while looking for some random object it generated a sensation in my body that few people know.

This, this is what I have.  This is the most and all that I have.  This is more than what I have because his ashes are years older than he ever was.  That little jar.  That little life.  The wrongness of a life snapped off so short is gut-wrenching and violently wrong, and that's my life, his life.  So the sound that came out of my face wasn't a laugh or a grunt or a groan, but something all the way in between.  It was a guttural acknowledgement of how fucking awful life can be, and how much I miss his life never-to-be, and how little I can do about any of it.

I don't have him or a picture of him handy, but I have so much more of him in and with and around me than anyone would ever know.  My grief for his lost life burns bright in my soul and I love hating how much it hurts.  I step right up to the moments when it hurts the most because that's how I can feel him in the most visceral, literal way.  His absence burns me to a crisp, and I relish in the charred memories and the hopes made of smoke and tears.

How do deal with the pain when your lost child or children is suddenly present in your life?  Do you seek out experiences that will hurt, in order to feel them close?  Do you grieve in secret, special, private ways?  How has your view of grief and pain changed?

slow

I move slowly through the world now.  I used to rush all the time.  Always on the go ready for next next next.  Busy at work, busy with friends, I was always looking forward to whatever it was that was happening tomorrow or next week or next month.  Throughout Lu's pregnancy I had my gaze focused on the end result, on having our child in our arms and the whole rest of our lives to get started, finally.

Her water broke, the mid-wives arrived, the longest night of my life started, and all I wanted was for it to be over and our child to arrive.

What I would give to go back to that night and tell the me that no longer exists what was going to happen, and what I had to do to fix it.

To the hospital, now, I would tell me.  Fuck the supposed knowledge and experience of those terrible mid-wives.  Fuck their surety, how certain they were that it would all be fine.  Fuck the protestations of my wife who would not have wanted to go at first.  Fuck all of that.  To the hospital where we should have been the whole time I would have insisted and none would have stood in our way.  The me-then that was terrified and the me-now that is shattered, Lu too, together we might have had a chance. Silas might have had a chance.  Instead dawn broke and he still hadn't arrived until finally in the afternoon they had to drag him out of her, bloody, blue and not breathing at all.

Suddenly we couldn't go fast enough.  The ambulance couldn't arrive quickly enough.  We couldn't get to the hospital in time.  We raced and raced but it was far too late, he was gone gone gone. Everything I wanted and waited for smashed to pieces in a single afternoon, as though the Universe itself had just dropped an infinitely dense and heavy brick directly on my soul.

Now, I go slow.  The stress and pressure I used to thrive on now makes me incredibly anxious and uncomfortable.  It started right away.  As we lay splayed out and shattered by grief and loss, all I could do was take it moment my moment.  After a few days I began to be able to think an hour or two into the future.  As in, maybe I'll eat something... later.  Eventually, after many months of paralyzing sadness, I re-learned how to last a day and take the next as it came.  Tomorrow I'll shower, I'd think, and then fell an immense sense of accomplishment when I achieved that lofty goal.

When I finally started working again I quickly realized that the way I used to do things was no longer appropriate.  I used to finish things just-in-time, but when I tried to do that again I found myself shaking with stress, palms sweaty, and my mind in turmoil as I tried to prioritize and execute what needed to be done.  After several near-panic attacks, I learned I no longer functioned that way.  So I stopped trying.  Silas's death taught me that time will not wait, and if you don't have enough of it to get something done right, you're not going to get any more.

So it's slow how I go, now.  Slow to rise from bed, slow to eat, slow steps through another day without Silas at my side.  He's inside me only, now.  Transferred in death from inside Lu only, beautifully, to inside both of us, terribly.  Inside me are the memories of my hopes for him;  the expectations of what being his father would be like;  the shape and feel of the world that I would have lived in, if he lived in it, too.

I take my time because I experience time differently than I did before Silas died.  Because now I know all to well that we only get one chance to experience each moment in time, and if you miss it or do it wrong or forget what you're about, it is gone gone gone, never to return.

I've come to hate rushing.  Whenever I have to rush to do anything, I feel an echo of that day when we couldn't rush enough, couldn't stop time, couldn't turn things back, couldn't hold on to what was vanishing before our eyes.  We rushed after our hope, our love, our son, and we couldn't catch up to him no matter how fast we went.

So now I go slow and try to get it right.  I couldn't survive another terrible, monumental mistake like losing Silas.  Better to tread carefully, watch closely, savor what I have right in front of me and never for a second expect the Universe to take up the slack when I fuck things up.  But no matter how slow I go, I can never go slow enough to turn it back, to save Silas, to change that terrible day.  

Time pushes me forward away from him, forcing me to face every new day with a shadow across my heart cast by the absence of my son, his tiny features etched in my mind: perfect, beautiful and timeless.

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

How did the death of your child or children transform your sense of time?  Do you think about time differently now?  If years have passed since you child died, has time changed in the intervening years?  If you could go back in time would you be able to change what happened? Would you want to?

The Most

When do you miss him the most? Lu asked me last night.

"Alone in the car," I replied.

When I can't listen to the radio for another second and I'm tired of all the music I have and I'm just driving along quietly and my mind starts to turn, I feel him not-there so powerfully it makes me choke.

In the first months and years after he died driving alone in the car was when I cried the most.  A new story about pregnancy, or that perfectly placed Modest Mouse tune, it would annihilate me and the car was the perfect capsule to scream as loud as I needed.

It is also why I will never, ever put up one of those fucking Baby On Board signs.  I wasn't planning on running you off the road, but since you're rubbing it in my face maybe I should!?  Strange that they don't make a dead baby sticker to add to those insanely annoying sticker families, either.  Also, get out of the fast lane and learn how to drive!  My typical rant makes Lu laugh.

What about you? I asked her, serious again.

"When we're around other kids, friend's kids, that would have been the same age as him.  I always miss him, but that's when it's the worst."

Yeah, I agreed.  Absolutely.

Three year old boys just becoming little guys with their dads running around the yard or walking down the street as alive and independent as only three year olds can be.  I remember pieces of what it was like to be that age, but I will have no memories of Silas at this age.  He vanishes to shadow every time I glance toward him.

In the evening, alone, I feel more alone for missing him, for never knowing him.  The constructs and inventions to heal a day are insufficient to make sense of why we can't share the world with him.

His death added a bone in my body lengthwise through my heart, sliced my liver in two, blew my innocent vision to smithereens, twisted my ankles unwalkable, trapped my breath in poisoned lungs.  I'm not the same person I was before Silas and that kinda sucks 'cause I kinda liked who I was.

More importantly, I was very much looking forward to who Silas was going to transform me into. (insert bitter laughter)

I am transformed absolutely but not at all how I wanted.

To be so wrong about how I thought things were going to go is profoundly undermining. What else will I get wrong?  What other traumas await down the road?  How can I trust myself to make any choices, to have any expectations about the future when his absence is devastating proof of how utterly foolish I could be?

Even worse is Silas's transformation from life to death.  From potential to memory with barely a stop in between.  From ours here to love and cherish and hold, to dust we cannot hug.

A thin, young, sliver of tree quivers in the evening breeze, under the stars of his name and they remind me silently of the never-ending-quiet blasting from his vanished lungs.

When do we miss him the most?  

Always we reply in unison.  Always.

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

Are there certain instances or particular experiences that most remind you of your lost child or children?  Has that changed over time?  Are there new moments that catch you by surprise?

tattered and faint

The plastic hospital fork felt slippery in my latex-covered hand as I fed my mother unpleasant mashed potatoes.  She hated the taste and that she had to be fed and I hated having to do it, but neither of us had a choice in the matter.  MS is a brutal disease and this most recent trip to the hospital was as enraging and scary for her as it was brutally sad and awful for me.  But my presence made her feel better, and I would do anything I could to help her heal enough to get back home.

I ate alone that afternoon before I went in to see her and I could feel my sadness as a physical presence in my body.  Silas's death was not an inoculation from grief.  I learned many things from that experience but one of the most important was that the only way through it is straight ahead.  I also learned that silence and aloneness and grief are utterly tied together for me.

Sitting in that restaurant yesterday it felt like an old familiar poison coursing through my veins. I felt more than just alone.  I felt a complete Otherness, like an alien in my own skin, totally cut off and unlike anyone else in the establishment.  I also knew I appeared absolutely normal and that no one there would ever suspect my blood had turned sluggish and thick, that my guts had a hole in them bored straight to Hell, that my heart was clenched like an angry, angry fist and that my soul was tattered and faint once again.

Silas's death was sudden and impossible.  That perfect pregnancy shattered in an instant and I felt cut to pieces.  My mother's sickness is a slow grind of failings and infections but the shock of a loved one in the hospital and in mortal peril is equally devastating in much the same way.  I guess that is what happens when hope is revealed to be nothing more than a wish, and that health and life are revealed as fleeting and delicate.

My mother may yet heal enough to go back home, but she won't walk out of the hospital.  She has not been able to walk in years.  She may battle off this latest infection and be granted a few more years but it is impossible to know.  It is terrible, but I cannot help but look at her and know that someday, someday sooner rather than later, she won't be here anymore.  It turns out that despite the years of crying after losing Silas, that I have not used up my life's allotment of tears.

Sometimes my grief is all-encompassing, transforming the world around me into a pale, featureless void that echoes the endless blackness within.  Sometimes it compresses into that angry knot gripping my heart so that I can breath and eat and live but only with great effort.  Every now and then when things are particularly good, that sadness is reduced to a tiny, dense speck that I can almost overlook except that it is so small and compacted and ridiculously heavy that nothing can move it from the core of my being.

I can't make it be anything else than what it is, though, and the only way to endure is to breath as deeply as I can, let the pain wash through me as tears and shit and rage, and try to force another tasteless bite of food into my body before I go and help my mother do the same.  Her incredible strength and will to live has kept her going for thirty-eight long years with MS.  Her example was what gave me the strength to battle through the worst of my pain when Silas died, and now I have to be strong for her, too.  I know I can do it because I've already done it, because she showed me how.  I just hope I have enough for all of us.

How has the loss of your child or children altered your sense of sadness and grief?  Have you had to deal with losing other people in your life since you lost your child?  How was that grief different or similar?  What does your grief feel like in your body?