Not Gonna Panic (Part 1)

Something happened to me, physically, in the wake of holding my dead daughter, Roxy. I felt it happen that day, walking from the room where she was born back to our private hospital room where our family waited, wailing. See, one of the perks of having your baby die is that you get your own private room for a few days. They mark the door with a purple flower, which I assume is to warn nurses not to be cheery and congratulatory. I have wanted to stomp the life out of every purple flower since.

Where was I? Oh yes, the hallway walk. It may have been 20 feet, but in my memory it’s 3 football fields. I remember every zombie step, knowing that there was more horror fighting to get into me than could fit, so my veins felt crowded and noisy with electric, terrible blood. A time-release panic valve was installing itself, and I could feel it. A panic payment plan was set up inside of me. I think I know now, 5 plus years later, that I will not live long enough to pay the debt.

I fell through that day without completely dying of it, but I was different. Not just emotionally. Not just psychologically. I was different, physically. I started having panic attacks within the week. I assumed I was having heart attacks. I was certain I was dying. I went to the ER. I went to the clinic. I went through a battery of tests, wore a heart monitor for a month, etc. “No,” the doctor said, “your heart is fine. It may be post traumatic stress.” I’ve been on anti-anxiety meds for half a decade now. The panic attacks are fewer, but they still come. They can be triggered by adrenaline of any kind (roller coasters, sick kids, playing basketball, etc.) I’m a lifer, most likely. This song is about having one of these attacks. It is the self-talk. It is the darting, random thoughts as I try to keep it together long enough to escape my place of work before I collapse.

Whatever is wrong with you goes all the way
Through your awful last name in the dark
I wonder where that dog will run to?
I wonder how long that dog will run?
You can keep your hand to your chest
You can worship by the elevator, leaving
Calm down
Beating beating beating beating
A mannequin in a dress, an overpass
I hope I never get used to losing you
The sound of a car on a bridge
And the things you can’t take back
No matter how long you live
Calm down
Beating beating beating beating
I’m not gonna panic
I’m not gonna panic
I’m not gonna panic

Since your loss, does anxiety overwhelm you? How do you handle it?

perspective

I am so honored to be welcoming Erica from I Lost a World as a guest writer today. Erica's son Teddy was diagnosed with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia in utero. He was born August 15, 2008, and gone the next day. Erica has shared her beautiful writing and perspective at Glow before, and we are so glad she is back. --Angie

Perspective.

I hate it, I really do.

Something bad happens, something that would rock another person to their foundations, and my response, so often now, is the trite-sounding, “Well, at least no one is dead.” What a cliché.

And I mean it. I really do look at the world this way, and I think that the common perception is that this is a gift, to have your life events bar set so low, to be able to find comfort in a baseline of the people you love being alive. People, the people I think about as regular people, watch sad movies in order to glimpse this perspective for a few minutes, a couple of hours. They talk about remembering and recognizing their priorities.

I am jealous because I used to do that, too. Before I met this tiny little person, so alive and vital and perfect except for a small hole in his diaphragm that meant his lungs couldn’t develop. Before we tried everything we could think of to save him and before we saw that it hadn’t been enough. Before I held him in my arms and watched him try and fail to breathe.

And now, for the rest of my life, I have been cursed with this perspective.

photo by kalyan02.

My favorite Terry Pratchett quote, from his book The Truth, is this:

“There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half-full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half-empty. The world BELONGS, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: EXCUSE ME? THIS is my glass? I don't THINK so. MY glass was full! AND it was a bigger glass!”

I often wish I were better at living that way, at demanding more from others and from myself, at being the fearlessly squeaky wheel. Sometimes I fantasize about being braver and insisting on getting my share. But one of the things that can happen when your baby dies – your baby, that entire world’s worth of love and possibility – is that you go quiet. You try to fly under the radar of luck or fate or God or the devil or the Universe. You hold what you love extra tightly and wish you could borrow Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak as you worry about the next disaster, that other shoe, the next “character building” experience, that next test of faith or fortitude. I find it hard to squeak, even when I should.

A curse, I tell you.

And yet, not entirely. I wouldn’t have given up any of my time with Teddy, not even if it meant I could get rid of this perspective. Ever since Teddy’s death, I’ve been longing for my old stories – stories of home and safety and knowing my place in the world. I enjoyed living those stories, and my new stories are still uncomfortable and frightening. But I know that when I am afraid to look through the lenses of my new perspective, my stories are stale and trite and unsatisfying. Which is worse, somehow, than uncomfortable or frightening.

My perspective has changed and this has changed me. I see death around corners and feel ghosts in summer breezes and when bad things happen, I say, “At least we’re alive,” and mean it even though I will never be able to say “things work out for the best” again. I can say “I’ll miss you forever, Teddy,” instead, and “I’ll want you back forever,” too.  I can craft different stories from that place – a bleak place but an honest and sometimes strangely beautiful one.

How have your perspective and stories changed? Do you think that your life is different because you are afraid to draw attention to yourself by demanding more? Do you see your changed perspective as a gift or a curse, or both? How so?

quietly forward

I don't want to share her anymore.

Initials traced on sidewalks, birth date carved into wood.

MARGOT WAS HERE, inked on my forehead.

Dropping her name like rain, sprinkled over the city, in grocery stores and preschool and dinners with acquaintances.

Neighbors. Bartender. Old friends.

I have another daughter, I'd lament, with downward eyes, searching for a remedy.

It was like this in the beginning. Shouting, screaming, knees in the mud, heart on my sleeve, anything to feel some sort of connection to her.

For months and a year and more months, I wore her story around me like a cloak, heavy and tattered from the daily grind, dark material, drenched in sadness and anxiety. I didn't care how messy it all appeared. There was no choice to put on the cloak, or to share her, to sprinkle her around the city. Grief doesn't give you a choice. I woke up to life without her every day and that reality felt like all there was.

Somewhere along the ticker I’ve gone quiet. The pulse of my sorrow still beats, steadily, methodically, but sharing her so freely feels uncomfortable now, like it’s a violation of our intimacy.  

Shhhhhhh Daddy, I imagine her whispering, they don't need to know.

Suddenly I’m overcome with this urge for privacy, for things left unsaid, for the cloak to whither and fall, for the sidewalks to wash away, for the wood to rot. I want her all to myself. I want the ways she has changed me to be something that I alone know the extent of. I want my thoughts about her kept only for us, sacred secrets between a father and daughter. I want her ashes, the rocks from her river, the remnants from her brief existence to be tucked away, hidden from bystanders, hallowed ground reserved only for a few.

It’s now in the quiet where I find closeness with her, in the whisper of her name, in the privacy of my own thoughts, in the ways in which she has changed me.

Do you ever feel quiet? Do you feel like not sharing your children so much? If so, what brought that on for you? I wonder if some of you might feel somewhat off by the idea of being quiet, of not sharing your chlldren so freely?