work in progress

This time of year is really good at hitting me while I’m down. 

There are a string of dates that, starting around Valentine’s Day, tend to make me feel as though I’m on the losing side of a boxing match.  Chronically blurry-eyed and a bit battered, I’m just dragging myself to an upright position as the next blow is dealt, reminding me precisely where my weakness still resides. 

I cower, hands shielding my head, praying for time to fly. 

My husband’s birthday,

Sadie’s birthday on the following day,

Three weeks of in-your-face marketing that culminate with the UK’s Mother’s Day, and

Pulling up the rear – last but not least – the anniversary of her death. 

Next week, two years will have passed.

I bought myself pink and yellow tulips last Sunday. A Mother’s Day present to myself. I still have my first and only card from my husband, telling me how great I was going to be.

I really need April to just get here already. 

.::. 

There are some things that have gotten a little easier for me, with time. 

Saying it out loud, for example.  In the first year after she died, saying the words was physically impossible to do without a full-on breakdown. To respond to the question of whether or not I had children with a no felt like a betrayal. Yet for the longest time to respond with, “We had a daughter, but she passed away,” was akin to reliving the day she died.

Living quietly with it has always been easier than actually forcing those words out into the universe.  Now, while the lump in my throat may not be any smaller, talking around it no longer renders me speechless, or awash in tears.

Hearing pregnancy news from friends has also grown easier, if not the source of excitement it once was. And who’s kidding whom - I doubt it ever will. I remember thinking many times that people were no better than we were. That they hardly deserved the joy that had been so cruelly and unexpectedly taken from us, over us. My anger knew no boundaries, from friends and family to, curiously and in particular, strangers on the street. 

Then out of nowhere came the realisation one day that one had nothing to do with the other. Absolutely nothing. Instantly and surprisingly, it became easier for me.

.::.

But whoa boy, there are some biggies that haven’t changed.

To me, and much to the chagrin of my husband, I still cannot be around newborns. As in truly INCAPABLE. I learned that lesson the hard way over and over again in the grocery store, at the office, and on the riverboat I occasionally ride to work.  The soft newness and the quietly opened-wide eyes do me in. What they do, when I really sit here to think about it, is send me back in time. I can feel them without touching them, and I can smell them without getting too close.

Every last fibre in my body tenses up with the physical equivalent to missing. I miss her. I miss miss miss MISS her. More than I could ever adequately describe and I know that in this space I don’t need to. Extended exposure to newborns = one really fucked up Jen.  

Working up the nerve to try again remains my biggest of biggies.

It’s on my radar. I know that people in my life who I love very dearly are waiting for it.  If I had to have eleven kids or none at all, I’d be signing up. If only someone could tell me that it wouldn’t happen all over again.

It’s a tough subject. It’s truly amazing what lengths I've gone to in order to distract myself from it. Or how many times I've nervously asked the universe to not write me off while I sort myself out.

I have learned to put one foot in front of the other and survive. There are even some areas of our life together that have thrived. Yet I have no way of knowing if that switch will ever be flipped with honest conviction. From all talk and no action to real life and taking the leap. 

Perhaps all I need is a shove? 

.::.

What my distracted mind can surmise with the modest reflection that I allow myself is that two years on, I remain a work in progress. 

I can live with that.

.::.

For those of you more than a year or two out from your loss, will you share what’s gotten easier for you, if anything? And what hasn’t?

Vices

They squeeze me.  Thousands of them.  Millions.  Billions.  Tiny, invisible, impossible little clamps on every molecule of my body compress my form making me dense and heavy.

The twists are powered by hopes halfway and memories the other.  The leverage of those screws cannot be denied. They press me into myself and I fall into bed leaden.

How often do you feel like the only person in the World that feels like you do?

How often do you cry?

My dreams are a mystery and a refuge.  Sometimes I wake up thinking I was just where I should be, not here.  Not this.  Not again.  Nonetheless, yes.

No, not none.  Me-the-less.  This World-the-less without Silas. I'm still not sure how it is possible, that I can still be missing him.  That he needs to be missed. That cognitive dissonance disorients me every day.  It fucks with my soul, it complicates friendships, it makes family distant and uncertain.

Silas didn't do that to me, but his absence has.  And there is absolutely no way to miss him more, but I've been missing him for so long now that it feels like more.

Deeper and deeper this longing has wormed its way into my being.  Each day without him and each day without another child compresses me, packs me tighter into myself.  This pressure of reproduction is devastating.  Staying positive and letting go and having faith in love and science and sex all sounds so easy and right, but all of that is almost impossible to contain in these tightly packed cells of mine.  I have room for so little beyond survival of my psyche sometimes, but sometimes my dreams take me deeper.

In one dream I am driving and it is pitch black.  Black so black the light of my headlights that I know are on are swallowed only inches from the paired glass at the front my speeding car.  I'm certain the wipers are working, but I can't see them because the windshield is obsidian except for the brief flecks of white that must be snow.

Downhill I drive, the car faster than I want it to be but I have places I need to go down the road, just beyond this hellish storm.

My hands are white and bloodless on the steering wheel.  A deathgrip.  I'm breathing only through my nose.

And then it happens as I knew it would.  The car just goes.  Out from under me it goes.  Wheels suddenly spinning, loose and free, sliding frictionless through the snow-flecked darkness I feel the whole machine lose purpose and coherence around me.

The steering wheel is jellied spaghetti.  There's no turning back because I'm pretty sure I'm airborne, spinning and spiraling into disaster and I remember something I heard from my brother I think: That if you're in a car accident that the reason the fucking drunks are always okay is because they are so trashed they don't tense up and so they don't get as fucked up when physics take over.  All that in an instant I remember and so I go loose.  I relax as the car spins through the air, through the endless darkness, through the blizzarding, blowing snow.

And then it's over.  The car catches back onto the road.  Not airborne.  Not crashed.  Torque and control return in an instant and as I clutch and slow I see the destination up ahead.  It's a road-house of some kind.  A way station and restaurant and hotel maybe out in the middle of no where, but it's where I was going.

I get out of the car and it's really snowing now.  I find some people that live or work or play there and I asked them about Lu and everyone I was supposed to meet.

Surprised and dismissive they tell me I'm wrong.  Not the place I'm looking for.  Not where everyone else is.  Not my destination at all.

Up that way, they tell me, and point back up the road I almost died on just now.  An hour, maybe two, someone says and I feel the clamps of inevitability twist another turn on every cell of my body.  I'm sputtering, distraught.

You can't stay here, man, he says to me.  You gotta go back up that way, back out of the storm up the road.  Back exactly the way you came.  I want to tell them that I can't.  That I almost died there.  That the path I just came from is impossible for me to traverse again.  I open my mouth to speak, but they're gone, there's no one for me to talk to, no one to argue this impossibility into nonexistence.

So I do what I must, as always.  The door shuts me into the car like the vices I feel in my skin.  My mind tightens to focus on the road ahead.  My hands clamp the wheel, I accelerate into the darkness, uphill and snowy.

Lu is that way, so I've got to go.  No point staying where I'm not supposed to be.  No point in being afraid of death.  After all, when I die someday far along down this dark, snowy road, maybe Silas will be there.  And if not, maybe someone will know which way he went.  And wherever that is, anywhere in the many brutal & beautiful Universes of this World, someday I'll find him no matter what the weather, no matter how long I must be without him.

Lu will be with me I'm sure, but I've got to go get her first.

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

What are your dreams?  Where are you going?  How do you describe the pressure of your loss and grief?

still here

The recent Kitchen Table klatch here on Glow revolved around being online. Occasionally the contributors also touch base and assess how we feel about our online presence, here and elsewhere. I thought I'd put mine out, long-hand.

After Maddy died, for what seemed like an eternity, the internet was my lifeline. For the longest time I felt no one in my real life (save for my husband and therapist, and even then I sometimes wondered) understood me, and the only people who got what I was saying and had meaningful things to contribute were the faceless, sometimes even nameless people in my computer. I couldn't wait to climb on in the morning and read and feel and bathe in the comfort of like-minded people. I found it hard to turn away, and to turn it off when it was like a soothing balm, a reminder that this sadness wasn't my own and wasn't unique. Other people felt it too, this desperation, this nausea, this hopelessness, this disgust and ugliness and outright sad. I clung to them like lifejackets, and swallowed it all, whole.

I remember reading in one of the timely little books I forced myself to read that "integrating" this event into my life (they never used the words "getting over") would take two to five years. Years. I remember two months out wondering what a year even looked like, I could barely close my hands around the shape of a day. It seemed an eternity, and I wanted nothing more than to Rip Van Winkle myself to the end, or failing that have a lobotomy. I couldn't possibly wait that long, that much time couldn't possibly roll under my feet -- certainly not smoothly, or uneventfully, or dare I say quickly.

But somewhere along the way, it happened. The months went by, the years ticked off, and I find myself here, three years later  -- oddly enough, like the book said, more or less with this grief "integrated" into my psyche and flesh. It's hard to describe this feeling, of feeling better (better is relative, after all, and who wouldn't feel better than that?) but not complete; of feeling content . . . with what I have. What I have is obviously less than what I had, or what I wanted, but I've somehow managed to make my peace with it. Wow, even that sounds off, who can make peace with something that ugly and still medically unknown? Who can make peace with the horrible video replay that still occasionally kicks into my consciousness? Maybe that's not the right phraseology, but somehow I've come to accept? acknowledge? that my daughter died, she could've never lived, and there's no getting her back. There's only the street ahead of me -- and not that it's lined with fruit trees and arced by rainbows, but it propels me forward.

It's somewhat easier to point at the symptoms, the outward ramifications of this grief transmutation than it is to describe exactly what happened: Primarily, I no longer have that gnawing hunger to be online. The daily sense that I had something to dump is gone. I used to feel as though I was tripping over words, I had so many thoughts and themes to express. Grief was my job, and I don't regret making it so or dealing with it as much as I did. But I no longer write nearly as frequently I'm assuming because over time I've had less to say. It's obviously (see para above) hard to put into words exactly what I'm feeling now, which I'm sure is a large part of it, but the incessant sadness and emptiness and loneliness has dissipated gradually, and greatly.  Grief is no longer my job, at least not my full time one -- maybe it's that volunteer thing I pop into now and again. My life which I never imagined could be full of anything but tears is now full of stuff to do, and that crowds out my online time for better or worse. There will, I have no doubt, always be something to write about this grief and missing, it just won't be daily, and it will be more ephemeral and slippery as time goes on.

But I find it hard to turn it all off and shut it down and walk away completely. Probably because I still find it meaningful, and I don't think I'm done.

I wish I could give credit to the person who made this analogy, but I've long forgotten where I read it so my apologies: I believe online grief support is somewhat like a group that meets for an addiction. That is to say, there will be people who find the stories too close, too nerve wracking. The constant reminder will, instead of help them, draw them back in -- back into sorrow, into shame, into fear, or god forbid, into guilt. Eventually, they will decide this type of group help is not for them, this sharing and listening on a frequent basis -- it is more harmful than good, and to them I say: I'm grateful you saw this about this particular type of support, and about yourself. Treat yourself kindly as you go, leave and be well, and know the door is always open if you want to return with no judgment.

Then there are those who revel in the group experience, who speak and listen, where the stories reaffirm and validate, and the trust bolsters and strengthens. It all seems lighter going back out the door than it did walking in. And sometimes, sometimes, after listening and speaking for a while, you feel you have the strength to be mentor of sorts, to take your experience and sit across the table from it, and hopefully offer someone else an ear or a shoulder or an arm. And that activity of turning the ugly thing into something that possibly helps other actually turns out to help you, too.

I feel I'm at that point, where I can see the inseams and lining and do so without completely breaking down. I can stand outside myself in a way, and turn it around in examination in order to make a point with someone else. So I keep writing here, and keep commenting where I'm able in order to let others know simply, they're not alone in this. Not at all. That at the very least, I am here. And I will help in any way I possibly can.

And I keep writing on my blog, even though it's often sparse and in-between because that's how the grief is now, sporadic and hard to predict. Sometimes it's gentle moving through, a light breeze that raises goose bumps; and other times it's an unforeseen storm that suddenly turns and changes direction and finds itself right over me, dumping buckets and howling winds. The thing is, it may be an integrated part of me now, but it's not gone. Maddy's anniversary dates can still make me tense and sad. A throwaway thought from Bella can sometimes make me giggle at the macabre, or drop me to the floor. Sometimes just glancing at her picture can bring it all flooding back -- the sleepless nights, the dark hospitals, the unbelievability of it all.

Which is why I read, and why three years later I still write.

How do you feel about online support? Does it -- so far -- seem helpful or are you a bit skeptical? Do you think your view might change as time goes on? How far away are you from your grief and have you come to a place where it feels "integrated" rather than like some foreign appendage you need to try and come to terms with? How long do you envision yourself online -- reading, blogging, commenting, writing, sharing, listening?

Dates and time

I've been thinking about dates lately. And time.

This past weekend it occurred to me that, give or take a few days, the Cub is now as old as how much time had passed between A’s birth and his. That length of time, which while lived through seemed torturously, treacherously long, personified. In such a small person.

Looking at him, I know it wasn’t that much time. Eighteen and a half months, that’s all. The Cub’s needs are no longer entirely physical, and no longer dependent on me almost exclusively to satisfy, but they are still a hell of a lot physical, and still a hell of a lot dependent on me. Which is to say, since this weekend, I have been thinking on and off about the time in between, about my grief in that in between time.

I’d had a baby, but I no longer had A, that baby, with me. I’d had a baby, but I didn’t have him. But I think looking back, that the grief then was surprisingly a lot like having a baby (only with booze allowed). All consuming, physical, exhausting at first. Ever so slightly less demanding as time went on. But oh boy, it could demand attention at oddest of moments with the best of them. In my imperfect analogy, a cold perhaps, a stomach bug, teething.

And then, separately, there was the terror of the new pregnancy, the complications, the bed rest, monitoring, pre-term labor. Through all that I didn’t physically have a baby, a toddler to take care of. But, looking at how small the Cub is now, damn it, grief that young still needed, and deserved a whole lot of attention.

When A first died, six months out seemed like a lot of time, time enough that I’d expected myself to at least reach some sort of a plateau by then, to have my shit together. When six months actually came, it whacked me good and strong. In a comment on my blog someone told me that my grief was still so very fresh—a revelation and a relief. By the time a year rolled around, I got enough of a clue to have realized myself that it wasn’t so much time either. And now, looking at eighteen and a half months in the flesh, I am relearning that lesson.

Holy shit. I’d had two babies in eighteen and a half months. Looking back, a feat not made significantly easier by the fact that the older of them wasn’t around to demand a diaper change. And wow—A has now been gone for two of the Cub’s lifetimes. Only two now.

My brain does that—sees numbers and patterns, and patterns in the numbers. And it makes it not so very easy to forget a date, to miss one. Monday is Monkey’s birthday. Coincidentally also her former due date. Tuesday is A’s due date. Because Monkey was born on hers, it’s been tough for me to relieve the date of its import in my head. This will be the fourth time it has rolled around since he died. The first three were tough, each in a slightly different way. I wonder how this one will play. I wonder who else will remember.

How have you percieved time since your baby's death? Have there been periods when it felt different than most? What are your significant dates? Have they changed over time? Do you think they might?