Parenting your dead child is like painting by numbers but there are no numbers to paint by. All the rules and directions have been lost. How does one know what color comes next? What is the image we are trying to complete when the baby we grew, died? We are left guessing. What would their favorite color be? Is purple supposed to fill in this space? What about green?
Read MoreHe sits with me in my stiflng pain, silently, faithfully, patiently. He makes himself comfortable on her changing pad beside the crib – the one he knew better than to even consider laying a toe on while she was alive, but immediately staked a claim to the very first day we were back in our home after her death – and settles in for as long as I need to mourn.
…we built and we built and we built
and the housatonic knocked them all down
and the boys got mad
and they yelled at the river
for acting like a river
The thing about skateboarding is, you can master almost any trick with a combination of repetition and fearlessness. Having nothing to lose is also a good substitute for fearlessness. Or maybe it’s the same thing.
Read MoreIt tapered off slowly, the writing. I’d find myself starting a new post with the bemused observation that it had been two months since I’d last written. Then it had been three months, then five, and now I might write twice a year. The last post was for her birthday. January. The only post this year. It’s been a crazy year, this one. But still, I wonder what happened to time when I passed it all writing. Where did I find it that time? What did I ignore or neglect or simply cease to notice while I was writing? How is grief so all-consuming and then one day… it’s not?
Read MoreI sat with it on my lap, my hands resting on the cover, my eyes closed. My throat closed up and I felt tears sting my eyes, all from touching it. This journal has become a visceral talisman of all those emotions that are too big for me to hold inside of myself. So they live here. Safely tucked away, but still with me.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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: parenting after loss
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