here (again)

Twice-bereaved mother Gretchen, of Lost: Boys and Bearings, is our guest writer today.  After her first son B.W. was stillborn in 2006, life was shattered and then slowly and arduously rebuilt.  In January of 2014, Gretchen's third son Zachary was born prematurely but almost fully expected to survive and thrive.  On Zachary's eighth day of life, he contracted a bacterial infection in the NICU environment.  At fourteen days old, after suffering tremendously and having graced his family with more love than they ever imagined, Zachary died. It is our distinct pleasure to have Gretchen writing at Glow today.

It is strange and surreal and brutal to be here again. Now, after having lost our son Zachary, on top of having lost our son B.W. more than seven years previous, here is at once eerily familiar and completely foreign.  

I remember this flavor of devastation so intimately. The raw, desperate longing for my son. The instantaneous shattering of all that was, of long-held, treasured beliefs, of an entire imagined future. The unmistakable reinforcement that the universe will dole out some horrific shit, with no regard for merit or implication. The deep, aching sorrow, the guilt, the anger, the inability to make sense of any of it. And over the course of several years, the clawing back, the attempt to create a new meaningful life despite the tremendous and permanent loss.      

At the same time, I don’t recognize at all where I am now. In the aftermath of watching Zachary unexpectedly suffer and die, the devastation on top of seven-year-old, scabbed-over devastation, the absurdity of what I’m living now, is a nearly indescribable low. Two of my three children are dead.  Just as I had learned to really embrace life again, Zachary died. I am doubled down with grief, mocked and shamed at having hoped again. The grief work I did to assimilate B.W.’s death into my life feels absolutely irrelevant. Wasted. The patches I created and tended to in those years after B.W.’s death don’t even begin to cover the newly broken and reinjured places. 

I don’t think I can (or dare to) muster the same resilience this time, after Zachary has died. What’s the point when I fully expect to be violently pummeled again? The loss of one child felt random, but I find that I can’t relate to the concept of randomness anymore. The loss of my two children, to two completely different set of circumstances, no longer feels random. I glance around in terror now, paranoid and panicked about a target on my back or on the backs of my husband or living son.   

I can’t fathom who I am, can’t imagine what my future looks like, anymore. What I used to think of as my after—the me who emerged in the years after B.W.’s death—now looks as unfamiliar as my before looked, just one year ago when Zachary was still alive.    

*****

Every Tuesday, my living son C.T., comes home from school to report who will be the next Top Banana in his first grade class. The name is drawn randomly out of a bowl and the selected student, the Top Banana, is to prepare a poster about himself, his family, and share it with the class the following week. This is not an unfamiliar exercise for us, having participated in a variation of the idea in both kindergarten and preschool. Preparing for it has never been the effortless, mostly fun activity that I assume it is for most other kids and parents. Nonetheless, we have always found a way to incorporate B.W. into C.T.’s poster and into his somewhat rehearsed comments about his family. 

Before Zachary died, C.T. would say that there was a brother he never knew who came before him. That B.W. was a loved and cherished brother and family member, even though he was dead. He would mention one of the special things we do in B.W.’s memory each year. He would share how we light a candle for him every night at dinner. It was never easy, never painless, and always a bit anxiety-inducing for the three of us. But, each year up until this one, we walked away from the experience with a bittersweet sigh of relief, satisfied that C.T. was able to share honestly about his family, and this one sad thing in his life.

I just cannot fathom how we will do it this year when C.T. is chosen as the Top Banana. As open and innocent and curious as children tend to be, there is no way we can feasibly pretty this up for presentation. Not anymore. How will C.T. get up in front of his classmates and explain that he is now flanked by dead brothers? Only dead brothers. After watching Zachary suffer and die this year, his two week-old brother, his only living sibling, yanked from his life so cruelly—really, HOW will we paint an acceptably positive picture of this, for C.T. to share with his class? 

After Zachary died, C.T. has said how sad and angry he feels to hear his classmates talk about their living siblings. He knows what a massive mockery it is to be here, to have lost Zachary too.

Is your grief reminiscent of, or compounded by, other devastating blows in your life?  Where do you find yourself in your grief journey?  How do your living children cope, when sharing about life/family is required?  

my grief baby

Our guest post today comes from Meghan of Expecting the Unexpected. She lost her daughter Mabel in March, 2014. She writes about her journey:

"'Your baby might die,' they said.  This wasn't the first unexpected news I received in pregnancy. I had thought her Down Syndrome diagnosis and the risk of stillbirth that came with it was my worst nightmare. Now kidney damage, low fluid and pulmonary hypoplasia gave my baby a very poor prognosis. I traveled the pregnancy path with fear, hope and uncertainty. At the end of the road, my daughter was born, alive but struggling. I was gifted six hours with her. Now six months later, I am re-assimilating. Learning to live life childless. Finding my way back to midwifery, to help others find joy in what has brought me grief."

We are honored to have Meghan writing for us today.

I startle in my sleep feeling her kick in my belly. Phantom kicks they call them.  But I know differently.  “Hi, baby,” I say.  As I gave away my newborn daughter, pale and lifeless, to the nurse, another baby started growing in my belly.  A seed that quickly grew into a moving, real creature.  She does not speak; she is only a baby.  She is my sorrow, my grief girl, the feeling left behind to fill the space that was meant for my child.  She kicks me in the belly to remind me that even in sleep I can not escape her.  She is mine, a part of me.

Sometime I carry her on my back.  I’m with friends and as I throw my head back in laughter, my head collides with hers, reminding me she is still there.  I suck my in breath, now critical of my easy mirth.  How can I laugh with the outline of a dead baby on my back?  My grief, she clings to me, the shadow of the child she should have been.

I let her lie on my chest, heavy and suffocating.  I recline on the couch, looking at photos of my daughter taken too soon, and remind myself it is only my grief baby, needy and crying out for me.  I embrace her for the moment and then tuck her under my arm, moving forward through the day.

Everyday I carry her around my neck.  I bring the necklace charms, a carrot and the letter M, up between my lips, speaking with my kisses. “I see you, grief.  You’re here. I won’t ever let you go.”

When do you feel grief the most? What kind of shape does it take? Is grief a comfort to you, a menace, or a monster?

a home for my sorrow

We are honored to have Aurelia of Losing Chiara as a guest writer today. Aurelia is a mother of 3 children, 2 living. Her daughter Chiara was born still in August 2012. She writes, "22 months into this grief I find myself still searching for ways to incorporate her into my life, to honor her memory."

A cemetery is a good place

to take your sorrow.

Even if the one you grieve is not buried there,

you are still in such good company.

Monuments to lives and loves all around.

Widowers walking the grounds for exercise,

and to be close to their wives.

I walk past the graves,

read the names, do the math.

I am looking for the children,

the babies.

Some are all grouped together in the baby garden.

Chimes and whirlygigs flying in the breeze.

Tiny stones,

most with just one date on them,

a birth and death day.

Some are within large family plots,

“to our sweet angel Silvio”

“our daughter Lizzie”

“our beloved baby”

now all cradled in the earth with grandparents, aunts, uncles.

Some are not named, an inscription on a bench for all

“children known only to God”.

And what of you, my darling girl?

Your ashes reside on a shelf in my house,

but I feel you in these places.

I carry you, my love for you, my sorrow for you,

everywhere.

Here in the cemetery where I learned to ride my bicycle as a child,

where my grandparents and great-grandparents are buried,

my sorrow feels at home.

Do you visit cemeteries? Do you find any comfort there, whether or not your baby is buried in one? Are there other places where your sorrow feels at home, places outside your home where you can be at present with your grief?

too busy

I'm too busy raising my son to acknowledge how sad it makes me to see him alone in the yard.  He's playing in the sandbox solo, his cars and trucks pushing the grit around wrapped by his tiny perfect fingers.

 I hide behind the glare of the summer sun in the door, hide behind the glare of the book on my tablet. He's alone, no older brother tormenting or teaching him how to be a maniac.  Luckily he's figured that out all on his own, mostly.  I do have my moments.

Laconic and prone to naps I don't have the energy a 6 year old would have.  That relentless running; that sturdy, focused dash at top speed yet three year old slow would be beaten by the speed of his older brother across the yard, which would now be too small for the four of us.

But here there's three.  Us and him.  Her and us.  Them and me.  Whatever the daily configuration happens to be, it always comes back to us three.

He doesn't know yet.  He has no inkling.

There was a moment about a year ago that I have told no one about when Zeph happened to see a framed memorial to his lost brother.  It was a photo of Silas, his footprint, our tattoos, and his name in the sand at the beach during sunset.  It was on the floor near my dresser where Lu and I can always see it.

"Baby is sleeping," he said when he glanced at it and my heart was knifed.  I nearly fell over.

"Yes, baby is sleeping," I replied and we continued on our daily adventures with my heart pounding and my skin prickly and flushed all over my body.

I rolled on calm because there was no one else to play with, just him and me.  I couldn't collapse like I wanted to.  I couldn't freak out and howl at the unfairness of the world.  I couldn't sit down and tell him everything, that he had an older brother Silas but that Silas was dead and none of us ever knew him at all.

He's two point five.  I'm forty.  Silas should be here with us but he's not, so I have to make sure Zeph has all the fun he would have had with the older brother he will never have.

I am totally distracted by the growth of this being.  I tell him every day that he's my best friend, my squishy boy, my Zephyr.  I am so busy loving him I don't have time to be destroyed by how sad I am he's alone.

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

What excuses do you make for yourself to get by?

hard hearted

I am grown hard hearted you might say.

Grief - which might have softened me and uncovered my humanity - turned my core to stone, you might say.

If you did not know.

Sometimes I do not know.

I think of him, wait for grief to rise up and bubble to the surface, tears to come, grief to reassemble, manifest in the centre of my soul - but nothing comes. I wait to be strangled by the loss of him, for my arms to lift themselves up, shocked and empty from the lack of the weight of him. Nothing comes.

I try to write, show the world that still I miss him, that my whole self is changed and nothing will ever be the same without him but the words seem bland and empty now.

I miss that pain. I hanker for it. I ache, in a way I never thought I would for a bottle of grief to take out and tip up on my sleeve to sniff the scent of loss and feel it fill my nostrils, freeze my brain. I want to huddle, struck to stone by the loss of him, the utter total disappearance of my boy. I want to stare at photos and feel tears stream down my face, flicking away from them as child or husband strays to my side. I want to remember when there was no way to make it through a day without saying his name. I want to be back in the supermarket, telling a horror struck assistant over frozen peas that my baby died and so I can't cook a proper meal just now. I want to be folding baby clothes and finding places to hide them, cramming crates into a cupboard and forcing coats and blankets over them, tears of rage and hollow pain pouring down my face. I want to be in sunlight, the world dark around me, furious the world is spinning, wind is blowing, sea crashes and days continue. I want to hear his loss in every song on the radio, pick up every book to read and find a Freddie in the pages. I want to flinch away from baby aisle and pushchair, avert my eyes from bump and newborn, shut the computer in despair as another pregnancy is announced, another baby born.

But time has moved on. The days that sparkled with over bright reality, harsh and glaring and scraping the surface of my skin till I was raw and broken are gone. I felt everything then - and I hated it. Longed for it to end.

My life has grown to hold this pain, pushed it small, forced the grief and disbelief to a tiny molten core inside me, encased and covered by a crust I cooled and grew to cover it.

I can ignore the core. I exist around it, function, smile, talk of my children and skip a beat as I describe them, choose to keep him private. I have learned to slide my tectonic plates over the places where the fault lines are, pushing the broken, ragged places beneath a smoother surface. What was once a brutal landscape has softened, moulded, eroded away, grassed over, become old and gentle.

And if you saw me, you might think me heart hearted.

You might think I do not care. You might think I learned to live without him. You might think I had recovered.

***

I watched one night a story of savannah; the dusty landscape, parched and bare and half dead itself with bare branched trees, empty river, devoid of food or greenery. The smallest elephant in the pack gave up, lay down, stayed down. His bewildered mother, on her knees, tugging at him, lifting at him, trying to pull him back to life and her desperate moan, her grief, her utter helpless disbelief to lose him broke through all the defences I had built.

It was her moan that broke me. It could hardly have been more human. I do not think there could have been an ounce more pain contained in it, not if she had had words to say to us.

I cried for her. Gasping, wrenching, sobbing tears.

That's how recovered I am.

In the early days I had a million triggers; it seemed as if the world was determined to bring me down at every turn. The triggers are more subtle now and often unexpected and in a strange way I welcome them at times. What triggers your grief? Do you have ways to manage them, have you learned to accommodate them in your life or have you had to change to avoid them? Do you, like me, ever welcome them?