Searching

When I first became acquainted with Josh's writing at his blog Jack at Random, I became immediately enchanted with the beauty and honesty in which he articulated his deep heartbreak. I grieved with him for his daughter Margot, who died March 24, 2011, after his wife fell and suffered a full placental abruption. In a blink, he lost his second daughter, almost lost his wife. The raw love, jagged and stunning, expressed in each sentence resonated so deeply with me. I found myself crying before I knew I was grieving for another. We are just so honored that Josh has agreed to join us here, as a regular contributor, sharing his journey as father and husband with us. Please help me welcome Josh to this space. --Angie

She was there for a time, in my arms, her cool cheek against my wet cheek, her pale forehead touching my forehead, her limp body held tightly against my chest.

Then she was off, in the care of impassive strangers, having open heart surgery to remove her valves for donation, taking little joyrides around Los Angeles between the hospital and coroner and crematorium.

She arrived back to me in a little white canister, her name neatly typed in courier font on a small strip of paper: Margot June Jackson. Number 4-2389.  Cremated 03/31/2011.

And then she was in my sock drawer. She was partly there to protect us all from the possible awkwardness of others seeing her, and partly to protect us from the harsh reality that our daughter was suddenly reduced to ashes. For those few days before the memorial, I saw nothing in my house but the canister. I’d walk past mourning grandparents, step over my two year olds toys, eat dinner around a table and it was all just a blur. My daughter was in my house, in a canister, and I saw nothing else.

And then we took her into the woods and poured her into the river.

And then I couldn’t find her.

For if we find the deceased in our collective memories, where they still live on, cemented in photos and stories, how can we possibly find our babies? When memories barely exist, a few hours here, a few days there, how can they remain present? And when there are so few collective stories, passed on by those who knew and loved and touched the deceased, how will anyone else remember or find our babies?

Heaven would be nice, if I believed in such a possibility. It’s a comforting thought to think I could meet her one day again. Reincarnation would be nice too, the thought that she might resurface somewhere in the world, another chance at the tricky elusiveness of life.  But instead, my mind only allows what I can know without doubt. She died. We had her cremated. And we placed her ashes into the river.

Even still, I search and search, looking around every river bend, under every mountain rock and desert plant, on the metro and freeway, in the few pictures we have, in my fleeting memories, in my letters to her. But she is rarely there, always just out of my grasp, always still dead.

And yet.

As the months trudge on without her, as my search turns up empty, as the solitary moments I had with her slowly scatter to the far reaches of my memory, I’m starting to notice that as my grief evolves, I can find her from time to time.

Sometimes I find her in this new life that has suddenly emerged, one filled with desperate sorrow over her loss and sadness over a life that has become different than I always imagined. And in carrying these losses from day to day, I carry my daughter along with them. 

Sometimes I find her in the water, in the river where we said goodbye, in the ocean where she eventually ended up.

Sometimes I find her in this new company I’m now apart of, the society of the suffering. We have joined those who know and experience loss, whether close to home or far away. I find intimacy with them, with you, and in those moments, I feel close to her.

Sometimes I find her in new friendships, which have only formed because of her absence.

Sometimes I find her in my broken heart, the fragmented pieces that drip with sadness but also hold her very existence. Since I can never have her back, what’s better - a whole heart without her ever existing, or a broken heart with her dead? No matter how short her life, no matter how little time we had together, she is my second child. And I choose her.



Where do you find your kids? Do you find them in different places as your grief has evolved over the months and years? Do you find them at the grave, in your home or the spot where the ashes were scattered? Do you find your baby in a symbol?






mute

Today we welcome a guest writer who is familiar to most of us in this community. If there is such a thing as an champion commenter and support person, Australian writer Sally from Tuesday's Hope would win the gold. She is often the first other babylost mama women meet when they begin blogging, and she offers equal support to people years out from their loss. Sally's first child, Hope Angel, was stillborn in August of 2008 after 41 weeks of pregnancy. In the almost three years since Hope's death, Sally has gone on to birth Angus, her twenty-one month old son, and is about to give birth to her third child. We are so honored to have Sally share her words and insight here at Glow in the Woods. -Angie

What to say, what to say? What on earth to say? What, in fact, is left to say?

Each time I’ve gone to put fingers to laptop, I’ve drawn blank. Mute. The loss of my baby, the safe arrival of my next one 15 months later and the pending arrival of number three has left me in a stunned silence. I feel I’m simply all out of words.

photo by garrettc.

When life chewed me up and spat me out one chilly August day three years ago, on the other side of the equator, where August equals cold, the first place I found myself in the land of dead babies was here, at Glow. A dear friend sent me a link about how to dry up your milk and I read the post, then every single other post on the site, given Glow was still relatively new then.

I didn’t have a space of my own to write. For the time being, all I wanted to do was listen, and observe. So that’s what I did. And this was the first place I found solace, the first place I felt less alone.

A few weeks later, finally realising there was no way out of this heinous club, I found the courage to comment. Then start a blog of my own. And the words spilled forth, each and every day for months on end. They would keep me up at night, whirring around in my head like a washing machine on spin cycle, and the only way I felt better about things the next day was if I got them out, coherently or otherwise, on to my blog. And the love and support I got back in those early days via comments, literally saved me. They kept me going.

Through the first six months of my grief, and the next nine months of my next pregnancy, I was a slave to the laptop. But since that pregnancy ended happily in November 2009, then raising my son and now growing the baby I carry within on this very day, I’ve struggled to know what to say or how to say it.

So it may come as a surprise to some that I’m a journalist by trade. I studied journalism at university and got a job in the field where I worked for the next 10 years or so before trying my hand at the baby making game. Initially, that was pretty unsuccessful, which is why I ended up here. Stillbirth, you bitch.

During my journalism training, my shorthand told me I was perfect for the profession because I was a “compulsive communicator”. I loved to talk, write, meet people, learn things and expand myself. I was a people person, through and through and making connections was what I did best.

But throughout my career, I never felt fully satisfied with anything I was doing. Or writing about. My journalism job ended due to the limited opportunity and abysmal financial reward and I moved in to the world of corporate communications, writing crap for big companies I cared little about. It sapped me of my drive and left me feeling empty about the career I had built and hoped to fall back on once baby making and child rearing was complete. I wanted to be able to write but about something I was passionate about, and make money at the same time. A pipedream, perhaps, but that’s ultimately what I was striving for. I just hadn’t quite figured out how to make it happen.

Enter the stillbirth of my first child at 40 weeks and five days after a perfectly boring pregnancy and bam, I finally had something I was passionate about and wanted to write about. And write I did.

My Hope was born on August 19, 2008 and I hadn’t yet turned the calendar over to September when I realised I’d spewed out, like hot lava, nearly 40,000 words of her story.

My house was buzzing with family, flowers kept arriving on my door step, but I sat on my couch, laptop at the ready and just poured it all out. People would bring me food and drinks and I just kept on typing.

I also began connecting. Commenting more. Reading more. Writing on my own blog more. Participating in this community more. And my inbox was full because of it. I made friends. Real life friends I’d never met, but we shared a common pain, and we bonded none the less.

The words, both written, spoken and read were what kept me afloat. I also purchased every single babyloss/stillbirth book I could get my hands on to sooth my soul with the more tangible style of words and filled journal after journal with the darker thoughts not really suitable for blog or email fodder. I threw myself in to the language of babyloss wholeheartedly. I was living and breathing it. Your words in, my words out, like a calming yoga breath. And that’s the main way I survived. I honestly don’t know how the women of generations before ours did it.

But now, three years on and just weeks (days?) away from the birth of my third child, my second pregnancy post loss, and I feel I’ve run out. My milk quickly dried up after my daughter died and my words have dried up now.

I’m sad. I miss her. I want her back. I still get angry. I still sometimes play the why me game, when I know I shouldn’t. I get jealous, but not as much. I feel tired. I hate that this is my life, but I do make the best of the life I have now. I still can’t believe this happened to me and I think part of me will always be in shock. But that’s really it. Round and round. Rinse and repeat. What really is there left to say?

Is it simply healing? Time? The birth of a subsequent live child, reinstating my role as an active parent? The due date of another, just 10 days after the third birthday of the big sister he or she will never meet? A combination of all of those things, or something else?

Even when talking about her to those in my real life, I struggle to get her name out. I get so choked up just thinking about her, thinking about what we went through that I worry if I let those tears out again, I might simply never stop crying. I have been referring to her birthday this week as “Friday” and not as “Hope’s birthday”, which is the more accurate description of what the day actually is. On “Friday” I don’t know what I’m doing. On “Friday” I think we’ll visit the cemetery. On “Friday” I’m not sure I’ll feel like catching up with you. It is no wonder people don’t know what to say or how to act around me anymore, when I struggle to get those simple words out myself, even to my nearest and dearest who know how much I still hurt from the inside out and who wouldn’t care if I cried an ocean of tears at their feet.

I update my own blog when I can, but I feel it is mostly out of obligation now, to let my readers know where I’m at. But the words don’t flow as freely now, and none of the thoughts seem as organic and pure as they once did.

I still read and comment every day but that’s about it. I’ve posted just six times this year. Yet I still have that desire to write and write about what I’m most passionate about. And that still is my daughter. But really, what else is there to say? She died and at least for now, my words might just have died with her.

Do you sometimes feel mute when it comes to talking or writing about the death of your baby? Did you reach a point where you felt there was simply nothing left to say? If you have a blog, how often do you post and how long do you think you’ll be able to keep it up for? Do you find it easier to talk than write, or vice versa?

the smallest jar

About ten months after Lucy died, Sam's uncle visited our home. I never met this particular uncle, but I had heard many stories about him from many different perspectives. He is the wrestling uncle, the basketball uncle, the chummy kid-at-heart uncle. Sam was very fond of him.

I had just kicked off my shoes for nap time when the bell rang. It was an hour before they were due to arrive, but there they stood on our doorstep. Sam hadn't quite made it home from work in time for formal introductions. I welcomed them into our home. Offered them drinks and kept my voice low. "There is a sleeping child in the house," my demeanor whispered. And so we retired to the lounge with some sparkling water. We sat back for a moment in the uncomfortable silence of not knowing how to break the ice after questions of travel and traffic.

"So, Angie," the uncle looks at me very intensely, "how did you bounce back from your stillbirth?"

I breath in and think.

She fits into the smallest jar I have ever seen, Uncle. One that only three years ago I would wondered aloud what possible use it could have. When it arrived, filled with Lucia, I couldn't believe they fit all my baby into such a small container. I don't know if you ever bounce back from holding a baby one day and then fitting her into the smallest jar the next.

There is her jar, Uncle. It is silver and inlaid with turquoise and has a pattern of the dove. It was too much to think about the day before Christmas when the funeral director came to our home with a catalogue of urns. Big ones next to little ones. I didn't know which one seemed appropriate, or right for my daughter.  I asked the funeral director to put the catalogue in a manila folder, and leave it on my desk. He was very accommodating and gracious. He walked around our house blindly trying to find the office, the desk, the manila folders.

I hate the choice I made, but I also can't imagine transferring her ashes to earthenware or something more like us. People ash is so much more human than I ever thought it would be. It is lumpy and full of pieces of things that make your brain wander dark halls. I am content accepting her urn as part of her.

I don't want to leave her jar some days. I don't want her to be alone in a big house when we go on vacation, or run to the mall. It seems insane, I know, but I want to tuck the smallest jar into my pocket and pretend it has emotion or heart. Instead of treating the jar like a person, I used to speak her name to conjure her. Maybe I can feel her in that name.

Lucia Paz.

After a few months, Uncle, I stopped wanting to hear her name, even though her name is the most beautiful thing I could imagine. It is God whispering. It is the wind through chimes and trees when no one is listening. It is Nature crying. Her name is Light and Peace and all things too beautiful to hold. When it comes out of someone's mouth, it is like a sacred prayer mispronounced and cut short. She is mine. My moment of horror. My connection to the Divine. Only I know her. Only I whisper her. Only I miss her.

That is what not bouncing back is like for me, Uncle. I think it is only me who misses her, thinking her death was only about me. Lucia does not reside in a small jar. Lucia is not her name. She is our tears, and laughter. She is the trees and the flowers and the wind. She is kneeling and standing again. Lucia exists in the air between us that feels electric and powerful and alive, but it is just the weight and height of love.

In the end, Uncle, your question is refreshing and difficult. I am grateful that you have acknowledged my daughter's death. I am grateful you recognize my trip to Hell. But written in the lines of your question is the answer you want. That mothers come back after walking into the underworld, like Demeter. Persephone is restored, but I am not. I have not rescued my daughter from Hades. I have not been granted six months of her. She is gone. My crops have withered. And spring is no where in sight.

But, still, Uncle, I think I am bouncing somewhere, but not back to where I was. I am bouncing upwards, off-kilter. I am bouncing out of bounds, but still playable, if I get to me fast enough. I am bouncing to a place that resembles peace. I am bouncing with the smallest jar in my pocket. I am bouncing with new vigor and compassion. I am bouncing somewhere, but it is not anywhere close to back.

The question hangs there in the seconds I have took to breathe in, think all this and clear my throat.

"So, Angie, how did you bounce back from your stillbirth?"

"I haven't quite."

He nodded and asked me about the Embran and Woonan baskets from Panama displayed on a floating shelf six inches above my head.

+++

What difficult questions have you had to answer? Do you find it refreshing when someone is blunt about your loss or do you find it upsetting? In what ways do you like to be engaged about your loss and the time after?

wild is the wind

photo by KevinGrahame

On the west coast of New Zealand overlooking the fierceness of the Tasman Sea, the trees growing in the rocky crags of the shoreline jut sideways. The branches on the sea side are barren, twisted. The force of the wind changes their structure, the way their nature demands to grow beaten into submission. The limbs bend permanently off to the side pointing towards the land. "Go this way," they point. "Go away from the brutal sea." They morph from the relentlessness of the coastal wind. Their shape is the shape of the wind. It is the shape of abuse. Sometimes when I think back on how captivating those trees were, how haunting, how few pictures I took of them, yet how often I think of them, sometimes I think that shape is the shape of love.

Let the wind blow through your heart, for wild is the wind.

All the love songs are written about Lucia. All the heartbreak songs. All the songs about loss and want and ache. All of the songs. I want to write about her too, but I can't seem to find the words. I know nothing about Lucy except that she isn't here. And the cadence of her not being here is like the wind beating on me, changing me. I relent. My branches bend over, growing uncomfortably sideways, damaged, impossible. I bend from the love. The love disguised as sadness and grief. Sometimes I get confused by that, thinking that I am bending from the hurt, but it is love that bends me, that points me away from everything else. I look debilitated. I feel debilitated. Until, suddenly, I realize that it has become so much a part of who I am, I am not uncomfortable anymore. And until it became so much a part of who I am, the way I was, unbending and sure of the world, makes no sense anymore.

You're Spring to me, all things to me.

I never thought I’d survive the death of one of my children. That is what I used to say when I would hear a horror story about stillbirth, or infant death. "Oh, I would never survive," I would muse. I thought I would turn into dust and ash and be carried off, a bit of me left everywhere until I was nowhere at all. I'd close my eyes to banish the thought of it. Cross myself. Throw salt over my left shoulder.  Touch wood.  Hold my breath.  Make a wish. Knock on wood.  Throw salt over my shoulder. Whisper on the wind.

Let me fly away with you.

Maybe I really thought I would never survive it, or that is simply all the further I could think of such a scenario. It seemed so horrid, I wouldn't dignify imagining how it would really be. Maybe I said things like that because I thought I was not the kind of person that babies die inside of. I remember that feeling of talking myself out of the anxiety of the stillness. I felt silly for being afraid. I felt silly. I used to think I was a humble person. Confident, perhaps, but humble. Humility, in fact, was my religion. That seemed the key to a spiritual existence. Humility and compassion. Hand in hand. Then I thought I was humble because I lost so much. Before that, I thought I was humble because I didn't think I was the prettiest, smartest or most talented person and that realization didn't floor me. My philosophy of life was simple: "I am not anyone special. And neither are you."

I suppose now I see humility differently. Humility to me is accepting that I am not capable of transcending my humanness. My child died in me not because I am bad, or good, or humble, or arrogant, or I deserved it or didn't deserve it. She died because I am human. I am not a terrible person, just a person. And I am changed by the grief. My branches own the hurt perhaps further are the hurt of simply being human and loving so much.  

Wild is the wind. So wild.

Though I thought I'd never survive my child's death, I survived it. What did I think I would do? Kill myself? Expire from lack of wanting to survive? After living through the death of my child, I realized that surviving isn't the hard part. You can live despite yourself and in spite of yourself. You can punish, abuse, disengage with you, you can cut yourself off from everything. You can try to will life to stop, but it won't. You wake up everyday and remember what happened again. And your arms bend a little more.

It is the thriving that feels impossible. It is the hope that gets choked, the loneliness that settles onto your bones like an old wet wool coat, useless and bulky in its wetness, and uncomfortably heavy. It is the juxtaposition of the old, wet, wool coat, and the wind that blows through your heart. And the wind that blows through the holes in you. Your arms tire. Everything is tired. But you still live.

My love is like the wind.

There is a hole in me that seems bigger than any one person could have ever filled, especially someone so little and dead. The wind blows through her tree this morning, moving the tiny Buddhist bell and the flags that send a prayer off to the corner of the globe. That prayer can never be answered. And still I pray for the impossible--a moment with Lucia again. A moment. One tiny wisp of her. The grief that whirled in me after she died touched all the other grief in me. I can see that now. That is why I am defined by grief now, because we are all defined by grief. I am not special because of that. And neither are you.

I am more beautiful, though, because of Lucia. More beautiful because grief debilitated me until I grew into the shape of grief and into the shape of love. I am sideways and ugly and in that way, I suppose I am beautiful.

For we're creatures of the wind and wild is the wind.

What ways has grief shaped you? What parts of you feel leafless and empty? What parts of you are heartier? What ways have you grown more beautiful because of your grief? In what ways have you thrived? In what ways have you merely survived?

Glasses, clouds, sea monsters

I don't think I was ever an optimist, but looking back I was naive.  Young.  Inexperienced in the ways of bad things.

No, I was a chump.  

Looking back at those photos of me holding Maddy in the delivery room, before I knew anything was wrong, when I thought I had achieved Nirvana and arrived at heaven on earth, I realize now I was just a chump.  I was totally had.  I bought into the program and surrendered to the joy like a complete asshole.  If Ashton Kutcher jumped out from behind an isolette in the NICU and yelled, "Punk'd!" the week would have made much more sense.

You see, despite my rational half telling myself to remain a cautious optimist, I still banked happiness on the future.  I saw good future events ending in, well, goodness.  I looked forward to them because of the way they'd make me feel. I don't do that anymore. I decided after that never to get punk'd again.

After Maddy died, I was certain I would be a pessimist for the rest of my life.  Glass?  Half empty?  Shit, it's cracked and leaking, it'll be drained before I even lift it off the counter for a look.  Life clearly was suffering and death and destruction, and the Buddhists and Hobbes and Machiavelli were all right:  One big languishing, cynical wait for Leviathan to swallow our terrible selves whole.  Nothing ever turned out as it should, people are mean, and everything dies.  Not only wasn't I very happy, but I got stuck in the present.  Aren't there people who strive to live in the present?  Are they high?  I could've told them it's not all that, it's very limiting to only be able to plan three days in advance because you're trying not to set your expectations too far out ahead so you won't get hurt.  Not only did I not think my future would turn out, I quit thinking about my future altogether. I got stuck.  Mired.  Afraid of the future.

Like everything else gloom and doomy about grief, this too began to ebb with time.  But not entirely.  I could plan two weeks in advance, and then a month, and now even a few months.  But I still don't assume things will be fine.  I know this is a sore spot for the positive-thinker crowd:  if you think about that future event ending well, and think about it really really hard!  And all the time! and make sure not to let doubt creep in there! it will come true.  You will get the promotion, your bank account will fill, the cancer will evaporate, the kids will get into Harvard.  Really!  But come on, really?  And what happens when all those things don't come true, time after time after time?  I'm not saying you need to think the worst will happen, but maybe a dose of realism now that I know bad shit is real isn't such an unhealthy thing. 

For example:  We went on "vacation" recently, but I really made an attempt not to call it "vacation," which implies relaxation and sleep and ample time for reading and sunning and navel gazing.  I called it, "getting away with my family," which is exactly what it was.  So when the stomach virus swept through us in the waning hours, it didn't ruin the whole thing (in retrospect; at the time, I swore I'd never travel again), nor did I sit around and say, "See?  Bad shit ALWAYS HAPPENS!"  No, it was just one of those things, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first 5-6 days, and ergo nothing got ruined.  

It's a matter perhaps of semantics, and perspective.

I believe there are people who can find small elements of thanks in the bad things that happen to them.  I always thought these people were the sunshine-y always seeing rainbows when there's rain people, but surprisingly, I've become one of those people.  There are times when I hear another one of your stories, or read something in the paper that's just wildly awful, and I stop to reflect on how fortunate I was, with my solid medical community and my loving neighborhood.  Or even the amount of control I had in what at the time seemed to be a situation removed from the tracks and barreling over the cliff.  But I think this is different than being optimistic or even positive:  this is letting a lot of time go by, and being able to stop crying and sighing long enough to reflect.  It's ok if you're not there yet, believe me.  You may be someday, you may never be, and that's ok, too.

I've learned to be happy in retrospect, and even happy in my present.  That's pretty huge, given where I was four years ago:  I can look back on an event or even just a day and say, hey, that was wonderful.  That was really, really lovely.  I'm even able to have fun in my present self, or find joy here and there, ducking in the weeds.  But I still don't play that game of cashing in on a future that's not here yet.  No. Way.

When I was pregnant with my subsequent child, my now one-year old son, I did things much differently.  With Bella and Maddy, I thought the biggest surprise in life was finding out the sex of your child at their birth.  Boy, did Maddy ever prove THAT wrong, there are in fact bigger surprises I discovered.  I never wanted to be surprised again.  With Ale, I had CVS at eleven weeks, and found out the sex because I wanted the only surprise at birth to be whether he lived or not.  I had had it, no more punk'd.  And I live like that now:  I can look ahead, but no surprises.  No jumping out from around the corner, no unmarked flowers, no cakes without my choice of flavor.   I want to know, I want to know as much as possible about what will happen -- good or bad.  Maybe it's a control thing, and a false one at that; I know I can't possibly contain all the surprises in life.  But to the extent I can find out, I will.

I still don't think I'm an optimist, but I don't think I'm a pessimist, either.  As cynical as I am, I did not pour myself a large drink and eschew my child-chauffeuring responsibilities to watch the world implode at 6 p.m. last Saturday.  There's a ways until I meet the Leviathan, I realize now, and some people are actually pretty nice and considerate.   I'm certainly not a positive thinker, but I'm not necessarily a negative one.  The bathroom project we're about to undertake?  That will be an improvement, I'm fairly certain.  I think it's just that I now know exactly the kind of very real surprises life can dole out, whether it's a plumbing stack that needs replaced, or a child born with fatal birth defects.  It's made me older, more wary, informed.  I hate being a chump.

Where do you fall in terms of optimism and pessimism, positive and negative thinking?  Were you always this way, or did thing change with death of your child(ren)?  

Grief, suspended. Grief controlled?

My grandmother died two weeks ago. A few hours shy of two weeks actually.

The phone call from my sister broke time in a way we are all familiar with. It really shouldn't have, probably-- it had been a long time coming. She wasn't well, as a matter of fact she wasn't herself. She had Alzheimer's. But physically she was relatively strong. She'd had bouts of infection and a few other things, any one of which probably could've killed her if not for profound attention her daughters paid to every little change. Some weeks before she died a blood test revealed that she probably had some kind of cancer, but given her condition nobody wanted to put her through invasive tests to figure out exactly what kind it was. Her daughters signed her up with hospice. About six months was their prediction. Even that was hard on the daughters. In the end, her end was a lot gentler than her last several years.

The last several years were awful. Watching a strong person diminish is never easy. Watching a strong person lose themselves, lose their understanding of who surrounds them, lose all their bearings in the world is a particular pain, made worse when you are the caretaker. My mom and my aunt kept trying to relate to their mother, and their mother wasn't there. That made it worse.

My rabbi visited us in the hospital, when I was being induced. My son still in me, we talked about funeral arrangements. She explained the Jewish custom of quick burial by quoting from sacred text: "[y]ou can not be comforted while your dead lie before you." I've thought about this a lot during my grandmother's decline. Removed somewhat from the situation, I could accept a lot earlier than my mom could just how little of the woman we knew remained in the woman my mom was faithfully caring for.

My grandmother, in her time, took care of her own sick and dying mother for many more years than what her daughters ended up doing for her. But my great-grandmother had a stroke and lost her mobility. She was still herself, and so she died when she died. In contrast, I can tell you when my grandmother's body died. I can't tell you when she left, not really. It's been a long time since she recognized anyone. Yet mere weeks before she died, she had a good day when she seemed to know who everyone in the family was. One good hour, really.

So over the course of the last four years, my family had to slowly let go of my grandmother. Expectations, understandings. Memories. Things that bind us together. Bit by bit. Two weeks ago the definitive, indisputable end. Before that? Strange state of suspended grief. Her daughters didn't have their mother anymore. But I don't think they knew how to grieve that, and they didn't really have time for it anyway-- they were her dedicated caretakers, after all.

This story is the opposite of most perinatal death stories. We rarely get any warning, and even those of us who do are never prepared-- we're supposed to be raising them, not burying them. My grandmother had a hard life, full of pain and loss. But she also had a rich life, full of joy and love. She was in her late 70s before her mind started going. My daughter knew her, and even if she doesn't now remember most of their interactions before the onset of the bad part of the disease, she has a sense of her great grandmother. We chose her casket because that color and even the spare details on it was the kind of wood furniture she liked. We knew what she liked. The opposite, you know?

We now know that she realized things were going wrong, and to cope, while she still could, she wrote notes to herself. That makes perfect sense-- too proud to tell anyone, but determined to manage.

My grandmother came to visit us along with my parents and aunt and uncle for Monkey's fifth birthday. That was less than six weeks after A died. While here, she asked to see A's pictures. I now think of that as the very last thing I can confidently say she did as fully herself. After she'd seen them, it seems she let go. Even during that trip, she was not the same after the pictures that she was before. I think she must've written a note to herself about A, about asking for the pictures. Either that or she willed herself to stay fully with it until she did. Task completed, she could let go of the enormous work it took to hold on. (She did not disappear completely after that, but she was less present, and for less time. And for a while after, she remembered A-- she'd talk to my mom about how sad it was.) That's the kind of backbone that defined her. And it took one hell of a disease to be stronger than that.

We took Monkey with us to the funeral and the burial. We didn't take her, less than five years old at the time, with us to A's. She still tells us we were wrong in that decision. She probably always will. She's never been to a funeral, in fact. I think my grandmother's was a sort of a proxy for her. She got to see the casket put in the ground, the kaddish recited, she got to see and hear the dirt hitting the casket-- the hollow sound of finality, of indisputable end. From the safe distance of four plus years and her great-grandmother's eighty three and a half, she could imagine her brother's funeral. The rabbi and the funeral director were incredibly kind to her, and that helped too.

She's perceptive. She gets the difference. She knows great grandmothers die, and it's sad, but it is how life works (though she is not exactly happy about this). Little brothers shouldn't be dying, but hers did, and it's a different kind of pain and grief. And yet, she also gets that sometimes the differences matter very little. We were talking about the different kinds of sad, and that though it is how it is, it is still sad for me that my grandmother died. "It's [my grandma]'s mom" she said, as her eyes got bigger with recognition of the enormity of the loss for someone else. Yes, she was.

Have you encountered death since your child's? How has it been for you?