Warrior Position

Angie, a writer, poet, and painter, joins us today at Glow in the Woods as a regular contributor. With the stillbirth of her second daughter Lucia, Angie began writing at Still Life with Circles. She shares a piece of art, music or writing from a bereaved parent or family member every day at the year-long creative project still life 365. Angie resides near Philadelphia.

Angie is kind, thinky, and an occasional firecracker. And so here, among us, she just makes sense. Please join us in welcoming her as yet another glowy cabin host.

~ Kate

I don't want her to notice me, but I keep staring at her. I will myself to simply ignore her, but then I look back to make sure she is not looking. My attempt to avoid her gaze wrenches her towards me.

"I know you. Where do I know you from?" My eyes fall on the eighteen month old girl staring at me from her shopping cart.
"Prenatal yoga."
"That's right! How are you?" And her eyes fall on the car seat propped in the front of my basket.
"How old is he?"
"Twelve weeks."

She bends down to see in the front of the car. Math is happening. Confusion is settling in. She stares at me, unsure what to say. I have a three year old and a three month old. Nothing is calculating. Awkwardness has just split again and again like some kind of quickly reproducing virus, filling the air around us, suddenly and oppressively.
 
"My daughter, from that class, died. She was stillborn at 38 weeks."
We drink in the conversation suddenly diseased by death.
"Oh my God. I have chills."
"Well, to be honest, I have chills too. I haven't talked to anyone from that class, or the instructors, and some of the most loving memories of my daughter is prenatal yoga. I have been afraid to see people, or even go back to a yoga studio."

I said it. Out loud. I am afraid of you. I am afraid of yoga.

:::

With Lucy in me, I felt more beautiful than I ever have in my life. I wore long flowing dresses and walked in the grass barefooted. I reveled in being rounded and beautiful. I was able to grow beautiful baby girls, and it made me feel like magic. I took yoga to connect with Lucy, my second daughter, after chasing my one year old all day. Prenatal yoga was the time of the week that was solely ours. As I practiced, I would think how incredibly happy I was on a deep fundamental level. Every cell of my body was contented. I wanted this exact life at this exact moment.

photo by virginia zuluaga

The  prenatal yoga instructor made each of us promise to email or call within 72 hours of our births. So she could tell the others. So she could know about our beautiful babies. She said the same thing every class for the new people and to remind all of us. She. Was. Serious.

I did, you know, tell her in the 72 hour window after Lucy died. I sent an email to every person in my address book with our impossibly sad news. It was the worst thing I could imagine at the time--having to tell someone in the supermarket that my daughter died.

We received many condolences. The ones that were most surprising to me were the ones that weren’t there. There was nothing from the prenatal yoga instructor. I wish I could say that I didn't keep score of such things. But I did. I remember every "I'm sorry," no matter how awkward. Every. Single. One. Weeks passed and I sent her another email about continuing yoga. And then a few more weeks, I sent another. Written delicately between the lines in invisible sanskrit, I wrote, "Please help me, Yogini. Certainly, you of all people have sat with a grieving mother. Certainly, you of all people can help me trust this body again. Certainly, you  of all people can shed a beautiful light on this darkest of occurrences. Certainly, you of all people have wisdom about death."

Two months and another email later, I received an email from the yoga instructor with many excuses about why she didn’t say she was sorry earlier. “I wanted to give you space to grieve,” she said. Because emails with a simple “I’m sorry” are always so disruptive, I snarked in my head. She gave me ten free sessions and wished me well.

To be frank, I forgot she ran a business. I considered her part of my holistic maternity care. We talked long after class about birthing. I thought she loved and cared for each little baby growing in each lumbering body that came to her studio. I thought she was a healer, some kind of secular shaman and a person comfortable with life as well as death. How do you soothe people, help them find a center, when you ignore a huge part of this human experience—death, grief, mourning and chaos? Can you sit with life if you cannot sit with death?

:::

To the beautiful pregnant hippy mother I once was with Lucy in my belly, I am now the ugly punk rock girl with pins through her face and a mess of fried green hair. I feel scabby and damaged. I reject yoga. The mind/body connection feels like bullshit to me now.
 
It is acute in this market, talking to this mother. The refrain in my head is, "The fucking yoga instructor said nothing."  But this yoga mother is different. She speaks with sincere compassion about my daughter. If she had only known, she said. She wears her health and happiness, her spirit and her graciousness, like war paint. I wear my grief and sadness like a Kevlar vest. I protect myself against who I once was, maybe who I want to be. But she made it easy for me to talk to her simply by dint of her not making excuses to get away. She listened. There is no magic formula to being a good support in my grief. Listen. Be brave. I want you to work out. I am rooting for you.

Sometimes I think my subconscious is a neodymium magnet. I didn't want to talk to her. I felt nauseous and unnerved when I saw her. But maybe I did want to talk to her. Maybe I want to invoke Lucy's name. Maybe I wanted one of the yoga women to know my baby died, while theirs lived. Or maybe it is this little girl staring at me. I don't usually imagine what Lucy would be doing, or where she would be in her life. I am not that imaginative. But maybe I just wanted this specific experience--Little Girl: Aged Same As Dead Daughter.

I thanked her for standing and talking to me a bit. Maybe, I muse, talking to you might help break that fear I have of going back in a studio and practicing yoga again. But deep down, I know it won't. I don't measure my growth in long speeches, but perhaps a sigh here or there. One day, perhaps, my warrior position will be different. Perhaps it will hold both life and death.

:::

I believe in the mind-body connection sometimes. Other times, I think it paints the world with a broad magical brush, especially when it comes to pregnancy. 'Just buy into the organic / yoga / no lunch meat / no alcohol / left-side sleeping / meditating / positive thinking thing and your baby will be fine.' And I think that is bullshit, even if I think all those things are good to practice in pregnancy. And I think it's okay to call bullshit.

What about you? What large part of who you once were have you rejected after your child's death? What schools of thought, or spiritual and mind/body practices have you retained since the loss of your baby? What have you discarded, and why? What have you found that's given you some comfort?

chance encounter

“We’re 30 minutes early – we didn’t realise how quickly we’d get here. We’re happy to go sit in a café if that’s easier?”

I’m put on hold for a minute and a half while he makes a call from another line.

“Mrs. M no, its fine, the vendor is more than happy to show you the house herself. She just wanted me to let you know that it’s her son’s feeding time so you may be on your own if he’s fussy.”

.::.

Another Victorian row house, another new and unfamiliar neighbourhood. Another reminder of just how big that ocean is between us and the nearest family member.

Three years ago I would have been in a tailspin at the thought of making this decision on our own. Now, having proven what we can survive together it’s almost… exhilarating, to be experiencing a major life change that does not involve major heartbreak.

.::.

A lovely and very English woman in her mid thirties shows us the front room before we hear a gurgle and the thwack of a sippy cup hit the floor. 

“That’s Alex, I should just check on him quickly. He might be hungry, he might not.”

I’m closest to the door and find myself heading towards the next room uninvited.  In the bright white kitchen a blonde haired cherub looks up at me from his high chair. His instant toothless grin is like a tractor beam. I’m at his side before I realise I had moved. Six months old, chubby folds in all the right places, barefoot and happier than anything. His entire face is a wet smile and eyes full of joy.

“Well hello, Little Man!”

An even bigger smile from both of us and our eyes are locked.

“Why don’t I just take him with us – it’ll be easier. I think he likes you! He’s such a little ladies man already!”

And then it happened. I gave his fat little leg a pat and held out my index finger to welcome his super grip. He bounced in his mother’s arms and waved my hand back and forth, back and forth.

I would have bought the house right there and then had she agreed to throw him in with the deal.

.::.

I haven’t even been near a baby in just over two years and two months. The last time I held Sadie she wasn’t my baby anymore. I wish so many of us here didn’t how firsthand how life changing that is.  I certainly didn’t expect that little Alex would make me laugh so purely with his unadulterated exuberance at the sight of my smile. Wee little hand, huge flood of… what? Relief? Happiness? Hope? Maybe all of the above.

.::.

What was your first experience with another child after your loss? How soon was it? How did it make you feel?



Hearing Voices

Last year I befriended a woman who moved to my city to give birth at Children's with the knowledge that her baby girl would need surgery. (To cut to the chase: Her daughter, though she came close to brink -- dangling her feet off the ledge even -- survived and is now a beautiful fat one year old.) I packed up some cookies and fresh fruit and went down to the hospital one spring day to see how the parents were doing. I had no intention of "helping" really, but simply listening, which I did.

There is, as many of you know, a certain language that comes with a stay in the NICU. It's full of medical jargon and loaded with fear. But for many, it's also dripping with sarcasm, and dotted with macabre humor: responses to doctors, observations on treatments, acknowledgment of fears. It's also a kind of humor that I could see someone with no reference point not understanding, being made uncomfortable by, or even being offended by. I of course smiled and giggled (while passing out kleenex and adding my own one liners when appropriate).

The respirator machine that shakes like a hotel bed hopped up on quarters. The doctors that are so young you watch that you don't slip and call them Doogie. The lines from doctors that they have no idea will stay in your consciousness for months or years to come: "The sickest baby in the hospital." "We're not out of the woods." How many times did you discuss your child with a man in a suit while you were topless and hooked up to your double-pump?

Here at home, we had our own humor after death, too. While trying to cease lactation, Bella asked, in full voice in front of a kitchen full of people, "Mommy why are wearing Salad on your boobs?" To my husband, through tears, telling him that the receptionist at my six-week post-partum visit asked if I brought the baby: "Why yes, here she is!" whipping a box out of my purse.

Riffing off the bad lines that people fed us; musing on the irony of a relative who gifted us with alleged daily prayers at the Vatican for our unbaptized daughter whom we pulled off life-support.

"I made the therapist cry today." High five.

One reason I love my husband as much as I do is his sense of humor, and the way we can banter back and forth. We deal through a lot of adversity through humor -- it's who we are. And a week after Maddy died I realized this was a place where humor didn't work. I didn't know how to communicate with him for any length of time seriously. I dragged us into therapy.

Eventually we found the funny and the means to talk again, and when I started blogging six months later I used this voice. My voice. The only one I've ever known, the one that got me through everything from infertility to my doctorate to watching my team lose in the championship game. I needed to fall back on it, to rest on it, to rely on it, and allow it to guide me through this passage, too. I only knew how to communicate effectively with cynicism and profanity and funny. It would have to do.

In grad school, one of my advisors said a line to me regarding one of my drafts that went down as one of THOSE lines -- that get repeated and used in conversation by everyone, especially when drunk, and ultimately become quite funny:

"You don't read much poetry, do you."

No. I don't. I don't write that way either, obviously.

I was a bit surprised when I noticed that readers whom I'd describe as, let's say, "religious," began reading my blog. No more surprised than when I consistently started reading theirs in return. I think we all need to fall back on our voice, whether it's religious or spiritual, lyric or poetic, wry or fucking side-splitting. And when writers channel their grief through that voice, the one, the true one, I'm riveted. It's always raw and powerful and beautiful. It's as if this grief has introduced me to a world of different languages.

There are writers who question their voice -- question the appropriateness of humor, the need for positive thinking, or the bedrock of their religion. They swim in their voice, challenging the metaphors, pushing the limits of prose and sacredness and flat-out good taste. Others find a new voice -- a dollop of sarcasm or perhaps a streak of divinity. Even though I never questioned nor found God or the sonnet, I love these writers too.

About the only voice I can't bear to sit with is one that is obviously false, the one that hangs like a bad suit: It's glaring to me when the person brings up the Almighty in the first post and it's evident they haven't used the language in years if ever. It's painful when they drop an F-bomb and are awkwardly, overtly, uncomfortable about it. When they start in, very soon, too soon, with the happy-sunshine-y "I'm finding the positive in this," and "This has given me unbelievable perspective and strength." Or when they assume that speaking of a deceased child necessitates florid vocabulary and intricately constructed metaphors when it's evident to the reader they simply need to cough up the facts and state the obvious: My baby died. I'm fucking sad.

I know people adopt false voices for a variety of reasons -- convention, assumption, or because mom and dad are reading the blog. I feel for them. I think the only way through this mess is leaning on what you know, what is yours, what this can't take away. My voice, thankfully, did not die with my baby.

How would you describe your voice? Did it change after babyloss? Do you find yourself gravitating towards writing that uses a certain type of voice? Are there voices you appreciate even though they're not yours? Does your blog voice differ from your true voice, and if so, why?

Dear Friend,

I'm so sorry you thought of us when your friend's newborn died this week.  I'm sorry for your friends and their lost child most of all, but I'm sad for you, and for us, too, that we are now experts at this.  But fear not, you contacted the right people.  We can help you help them.

First of all, start cooking.  Do laundry, clean the house, take charge.  Keep it up for at least a month, with the help of other friends.  Right away, order her to bed and give him a beer or nine.  Yeah yeah yeah alcohol is dangerous and addictive and all that, but I swear to whatever god is out there, delicious malted barley and fermented hops probably saved my life in those first days.  Way better than the anti-depressants or valium they'll probably want.  But let them have them, too, for a little while.  Obviously, not together.  But a little bit of numb is fine.  They are in shock-panic-disaster-mode.  All their alarms are going off and nothing makes any sense at all right now.  Let them grieve, but help them be calm, too, if you can.

And frankly, yeah they are probably a little suicidal and a little crazy and definitely extremely lost.  Their souls have just been shredded by the Universe itself.  They are fucked up and they need help.  That is why you have to hold them tight and keep them close.  Do it in shifts.  Be with them, but don't overwhelm them with people.  If anyone manages to make either of them laugh no matter how dark and awful the humor, that is an extremely good sign.  Don't bring in clowns, but aim for a little bit of black humor if they are the type that needs that.  I did and my brothers did me right.  Those moments of dark levity were less-awful-spots in a terrible, incomprehensible time.

Don't make them have to make decisions.  In the first days after Silas's death I could only think a few minutes into the future and not all that successfully.  "Should I get up?  Should I eat?  Should I bother even thinking about any of that?"  I felt alien and awful in the outside world.  I'll never forget my first errand out to the bank and a Walgreens after he died.  I returned worn out from a ten minute ride up the street.  I was crazed with grief and overwhelmed by the fact that the world just kept on going even though mine had come to a complete stop.

Do anything you can to make them have less to think about.  Right now they are trying to figure out what the fuck they are supposed to do with their dead child, with their demolished hopes, with their annihilated lives.  Don't make them have to think about chores, too.

And yeah, she's worse off than him right now in a more immediate, physical way.  But then the other way around, that also makes it worse for him, too.  His disconnection from the physical bond mother and child shared is also a loss for him.  Mentally, emotionally, chemically, he was preparing to meet and bond with that child, just like the mother, but now he has even less than what she had, in a way.  Really all I'm saying is he's working hard to stay strong and upright for her, but don't mistake courage for strength.  I always felt like I was on the verge of a bottomless, endless void.  Stand there and face it with him if you can, and don't let that void consume either of them.

A death like this can be a poison to their souls.  It will take a great deal of patience and time for either of them to even begin to fake normalcy.  Shower them with love.  Talk about their child, use her name.  Look them in the face and the eyes when you discuss the absurd awfulness of their plight.  Tell them how much you miss her.  Do not be afraid to be direct and honest and clear with them.  The death of their child is like a blazing nova of utter blackness and its awful light reveals everything about their lives, their hopes, and about their friends and their families.  Do not be afraid to stand directly next to them and face directly into that palpable pain if you want to keep them alive and keep them protected and keep them as friends.  Those that cannot handle what they are going through won't stay around long, and they will know very quickly who they can count on.  Be someone they can always count on, because right now they can't count on anything at all.  The Universe itself has turned on them.

Never say that everything happens for a reason.  Never try to mollify them with talk of angels and meant-to-be's.  Never say that God works in mysterious ways.  Never compare a trivial loss in your own life with what they are going through.  Don't talk about babies.  Don't talk about hope and somedays and futures.  Help them deal with the immediate dilemmas of everyday life (ie what show to watch, what time to eat, that it is okay to not shower) and don't even consider trying to tell them anything about the true nature of reality and what good might someday come.  Any of that is just dressing up a shit sandwich with rotten tomatoes and wilted lettuce.

I'm sorry.  I love you.  I miss your child.  I'm here for you.  Let me do that for you.  Those are the only things you need to say right now and each and every one should be followed with a tight and true hug.  Cry with them.  Be silent with them.  Talk with them if they can find any words at all.

Lastly, don't forget to take care of yourself, as well.  Work with your friends to always keep someone close, but make sure to sustain your own life so that you are strong and ready when you are with them.  They will be strange and sad and difficult, but if you love them and are patient you just may keep a flicker of light alive in their souls.  But don't worry about sanity right now, that's a lost cause anyway.  Just leave breadcrumbs on the trail back and help them be a little bit okay for a little bit of one day, each day, every day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

They are on a whole new timescale now.  They are now counting the moments since they lost their child, and nothing will ever be even remotely the same again.  They need company in this new landscape, though, and that means you need to help them find their way step by step.  But don't call them baby-steps, they just might punch you in the face for that one.

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

What else everyone?  What advice can you give to the friends and family of someone that has just lost a child?  And what do you disagree with from what I said?  This path is completely different in so many ways for each and every person so I'm sure my advice is anything but exactly right for everyone.  What did I miss or get wrong?

not the enemy

Tash's post reminded me of how easy it is to get caught up in the bullshit of everyday life and how difficult it is for couples in our situations to communicate well.  Taxes, taxing situations, too many to-dos and no desire to do them can turn a simple afternoon sour.  Suddenly we're sniping and sneering.

Slamming doors.  Seething rage.  Eventually I realize that I'm not mad at her at all.  Well, maybe a little, but the quiver and clench, they are not her doing.

That tension and anger, it's a force that fills me when I realize how impotent I am to change the past I hate, or alter the immovable fact I cannot stand.

All I can control is my perspective and my response.

 

I attempt to embrace calmness despite adrenaline and energy.  Over and over, every day of my life now, it is an exercise in calmness.  There are too many triggers that click and spark the gunpowder in my soul.  There are too many holes that should be filled with moments with my son.  I fall into those voids suddenly so I've tried to learn how to fly.

Most of the time I fall.

That's the pit in my stomach.  It is the sensation of endlessly falling into another day that is filled with the absence of what I want most.

I fill those voids with anything I can think of and I try to stay calm even when I'm falling and all I can do is yell for help.  Luckily Lu is strong enough to pull me back when I start to shout because she knows all I'm really doing is looking for Silas.  Even when I'm yelling at her.

Inside I'm panicking because I can't find him and then I remember that I have to try and stay calm.  Lu helps me like I help her when it's the other way around because quietly, silently, and straight out loud shouting we both know that Death is the enemy.

Worst of all:  it is nothing we can fight or do anything about.  This immovable fact.  This hole that is a wall that is our son that is impossible.

That impenetrable barrier silences me when I get too pissed off about the daily bullshit that's easy to fight about.  We'll argue about some dumb thing, some mis-communication and then that spirals deeper, past our petty disagreement to the true source of our sadness and anger.

Suddenly I see that we are sharing that space and my anger is gone.  I'm not mad at her.  She's my rock and my partner.  Lu is my biggest fan and best friend.  Whatever fight we're having it has nothing to do with what is really going on.

The problem is that what is really going on is nothing we can fight, not even together.  There is us, here.  There is Silas beyond reach.  And there is his death between us all.

I fight against that every day, even without realizing it.  By getting up and going out.  By facing the day and whatever it brings.  By attempting to excel at whatever is before me, in each action and step I am battling the enemy that could all too easily consume me.  The Void, his absence.  Death.  I feel it in my stomach, in my heart, in my skin.  But I brush it off, again and again, determined to live bright and true.

Still, sometimes I have to shout.  I need to shout to get it out of my throat and still it sticks there, his death lodged in my soul like a vein coal.  I trace it like a labyrinth, round and round, all the way down, calmer by the moment as I see that it spells his name and that I will never be without him, even though I will always be without him.

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

What calms you?  Are you able to pull back from the anger and sadness of your loss when you turn that on the people around you?  What do you do to fight against Death, against the absence of your lost child?

Change

Every day I make an effort to have a nice time out there in the World.  I'm not aiming for the stars, not trying to seize every single moment with fervor and gusto, I'm just gunning for good.  Good is enough if you can do it on a daily basis.

I sleep later now, every day.  I need an hour or so of semi-wakefulness to gear up and get ready for the chill and sunlight and this relentless, active life. I guess I still can't believe, every morning, that this is the Universe I live in.

I take a shower and I love it.  As hot as I can stand it.  Sometimes I reflect on how lucky I am to even have a hot shower that I can stand in as long as I like.  Sometimes when it looks like a tough one in my heart or my head, I stand there a little longer.  I shouldn't because of the coming Water Wars, but sometimes I can't help it.

Guilt is gone.  I've banished it.  I do what I need to get by and I don't worry about perfection.  Except in the coffee I roast.  And in the driving.  They both need to be perfect but for completely different reasons.  Coffee because it feels good to do it right and it's my job, driving because anything less is disaster.  I am not down with any more disasters.

The day Silas was born was supposed to be the best day of my life and instead it was by far the biggest disaster I have ever experienced.  Nothing like that should ever happen again.  But obviously, since we're all here together, Should is a word we all know doesn't mean a damn thing.

So Should is out now, too.  Expectations are a fool's game, and I choose not to play anymore.  I declare that as if it is something that can be de-selected.  Mostly I try to do exactly what is right in front of me and I avoid worrying about what I think should happen next.  Maybe it is the not-thinking that keeps me up at night.

3am has become my thinking hour.  I know it is going to be 3:11am when I open my eyes.  For a while that brief, nightly insomnia upset me, but now I look at it as a special time, just for me.  Lu asleep next to me.  The cat is tucked tight between us, not even purring anymore.

Usually it's a song that wakes me up.  Whatever I happened to enjoy the most that day is usually the one that's still running through my brain.  The same refrain, whatever it is.  The song-worm, it infects me.  I don't even think about who Should be waking me.

If you break these moth's wing feelings, powdery dust on your fingers or undecided undefined undeterred yet undermind and then it's the steady, static hum of my soul trying to reconcile another day without my son.

It doesn't stop, I'm sorry to say.  Not so far.  Not 2 years after he was conceived.  Not a day goes by that somehow isn't all about him.

The ultimate reason for that is because in a way, I have become him.  Silas doesn't get to do this Earth so I've got to do each day for him, too.  My everyday experience has been utterly transformed, and I do not at all feel like the person I was before Silas was here.  Two years since we started this journey and our lives look exactly the same, but everything has changed, inside and out.  And like Julia said, it is still happening.

I live my life the way I do as an expression of how my parents raised me, of how I have come to know the World, of how Lu's love and presence have become intertwined with mine.  Today is our 5 year wedding anniversary and despite the sadness of these past years it still always feels right that we are together.

Living extra for Silas--any way I can think of--feels right, too.

His brief life has transformed me in ways I am only beginning to understand.  I suppose all parents go through this, but it is especially difficult for people like us because we can never hug them and thank them for everything they help us become.

All I can do is hold on to every day, every little treat and happiness.  I do what's right in front of me and watch and listen for the beauty that appears.  I keep going forward for Silas, for myself, for Lu, and for whatever it is that happens next.  I know what that Should be, but I can't worry about that anymore.  I can only face what Is and somehow deal with everything that Isn't.

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

How have you changed?  Do you have expectations of how things should turn out?  Do you get the ear-worm of music?  What are your refrains?  Do you manage to have nice days, despite your loss and sadness?