am I okay?

Please help me in welcoming Gretchen to Glow in the Woods. Gretchen writes at Lost Boys and Bearings about the loss of her infant son Zachary, as well as the earlier stillbirth of her son B.W., and the compound grief these two losses have brought her, her husband B, and her living son, C.T. Her writing is raw and honest, and speaks to the stark emotional landscape we wander through in our grief. When I read her writing, I find myself nodding, yes, yes, yes, recognizing some aspect of my own grieving self in each piece. It is this ability to see ourselves in each other--no matter how hard the story may be to read--that helps us stumble through this dark woods to find refuge among the other medusas. Here, we do not feel so alone. We are honored to include Gretchen's voice now among Glow's regular contributors. —Burning Eye

It has been almost fifteen months since Zachary died…, and somehow, eight and a half years since B.W. died.  

My desperate, irrational pleadings for Zachary, for anything but this again, have softened ever so slightly in the last month or so.  My inability to cope with the horrific details of how his health deteriorated so violently and unexpectedly has lulled to quiet missing and mourning and the occasional outburst of anger.  Which is not to be confused with acceptance.  I seem to function pretty well with the very basic, daily tedium of life, especially when I am careful to protect myself from obviously triggering situations.  I allow myself to grieve, often.  I try to keep busy.  I hide or avoid when I need to.  I try not to let the insensitivity and ignorance of others lead me down a path of fury and resentment.   Still, I sometimes fall apart with the reality of his death.

I wonder if I’m doing okay.      

Now, well into this second year after Zachary’s death, the undercurrent of my grief seems to have morphed into a dull, aching feeling of wrongness.  It’s a heaviness that I drag around with me all day, every day.  I hold it up against anything good, anything perceived as important or worthwhile, and then I inspect the combination to see if the net effect is still negative, still meaningless.  As of now, it usually is.  Someone will say something very casual, something like gosh, it’s such a beautiful day today.   I nod and agree, because it’s just not worth it to disagree with such benign small talk, but the words, the sentiments built into the phrase, mean nothing to me.  I still can’t comprehend why or how nice weather should feel good when Zachary is dead. 

Sometimes the unrelenting heaviness feels worse than the initial shock, disbelief and horror - I suppose because it now feels more real and permanent.  Zachary really suffered.  He is really dead and not coming back.  I know it in my bones now and it feels oh so wrong.  I have to live with the flashbacks, the regret and the anger.  He will never again learn and grow and experience the love we have for him.  I will never again have the privilege of witnessing and nurturing his development, of delighting in who he becomes.   People really aren’t going to say his name regularly.  They don’t feel the heaviness; they aren’t tormented by the wrongness.   Their day to day lives were not affected, not permanently damaged, because my son suffered and died. 

I wonder if I will ever learn to really live again, despite his death.    

I don’t know what I need from my support network of family and friends anymore.  It’s apparent that many are tiring of my grief and my need for solitude. They are frustrated that I don’t have the heart to care very much about, or participate in, what’s going on in their lives.  I can feel it.  They rarely ask how I’m doing anymore.  When they do ask, I find that, for a variety of reasons, it’s not usually an ideal time to respond in a way that honors my grief.  I end up having a lot of surface interactions and I’m left wondering if people even still recognize how much I am hurting and just how much we have lost.  On the rare occasion that time and space are intentionally dedicated, and I am able talk about Zachary and my grief, I am well aware that most listeners are going to have a hard time understanding and relating.  When I open up, I see that my words aren’t hitting home, that something, the thing itself most often, is almost completely lost in translation.  They try, and I try, and it continues to be difficult. 

I wonder if I will always feel so alone. 

I’ve been trying to occupy some of my free time with a few new pursuits.  I left my long-time corporate job just before Zachary was born, and now here I am with no real desire to go back to the stressful job I had and no Zachary to take care of during the hours that C.T. is in school.  My mother-in-law and I worked together on a few sewing projects over the course of the last eight weeks, one of which was a valance for my corner kitchen window.  When we installed them, she affirmed over and over again how pretty they looked, what a difference they made in the room.  I was proud of myself for fighting the apathy I feel and following through, but even with her prompting, I had trouble drumming up any real enthusiasm for the final product.  There was a letdown, some strange sadness, about finishing a project for the house that Zachary never came home to. 

I wonder if I will ever be truly passionate about something again.    

I still fantasize about running away from my life, away from the good schools and thriving downtown and family fun and recreation of my Midwestern suburb.  I know it would be impossible to escape my grief, but my new reality just doesn’t fit here anymore.  While other families were dressing in pastels for family photos on Easter, I was despondent, thinking how cruel it would be to ask C.T. to pose for a photo with our two memorial lily plants, his makeshift brothers.  My instinct to “include” B.W. in this kind of holiday photo-op came more easily when it was just one dead brother, but it is just too awful, too much, now that Zachary is dead too.  I don’t know how to tell Zachary’s story, on top of B.W.’s story, amidst the happy-go-lucky who call this place home.  I find that I’m drawn to imagining myself living in a place that is less idyllic, where life is not so nauseatingly easy and wonderful.  If it weren’t for my living son, C.T., by now I probably would have convinced my husband that we need to give up everything we’ve worked for to become aid workers in a third world country. 

I wonder if this sounds crazy.   

*****

I do the best I can to cope with my grief.  At times I’m discouraged, maybe even a little ashamed, at the lack of hope, optimism and enthusiasm I am able to muster, when I compare myself to other bereaved parents I know or read about.   I remember when their narratives, the ones I perceive at least - of rising from the ashes, with some adjusted or renewed form of hope - was more closely aligned with my own.  Now I have lost a whole other son and I’m not finding I am as agile or eager to adapt to a new life again. 

At this point, I just want to know I wouldn’t be characterized as totally beyond repair.

Are you okay? What grief undercurrents exist for you, now? What do you question or wonder about your grief?  

it's okay

We are honored to have Christine's mom as our guest writer today. She writes, "My daughter Christine was stillborn almost two years ago, in March 2013. For me, a big part of this journey has been learning to let myself feel whatever it is I am feeling in connection with her stillbirth and my life without her - the anger, the sadness, and, when I can find it, the quiet calm. It has taken me a long time to do this, to let go of timetables or expectations for my grief, and simply experience it for what it is. This poem tries to capture part of this journey, as well as what I think I needed to hear in those early days of my grief."

Okay

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay.
It’s okay to feel this way.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel angry that this happened.
Angry that this happened to me, to us, to our little family.
Angry that we didn’t get to keep her.
Angry that we rode the bus home from the hospital that day
Carrying a box of mementos instead of a baby.
Angry that no one on that bus knew.
Angry that as our hearts shattered, the world kept right on turning.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel angry at others.
Angry at the people who said nothing.
Angry at the people who said the wrong things.
Angry at the people who forgot, or who just didn’t know,
How deeply it all hurt
And how long the pain lasted.
How it still lasts, and will never really go away.
Angry at pregnant women,
Blissfully ignorant that horrible things can happen,
So carefree and certain that all will be well.
Angry that for so many of them, it is.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to feel the pain.
It’s okay to wail, to cry,
To scream out in horror that it is now my lot
To live the rest of my life without my daughter;
To have to live with this hole in my heart instead.
It’s okay to repeat, silently and out loud,
That my baby died, that it’s not fair, that this shouldn’t have happened.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay to love her,
Okay to miss her.
It’s okay to be her mother, even in death.

I needed someone to tell me
It’s okay.
It’s okay to feel this way.

Did anyone tell you it was okay? What advice did you get after your loss(es) that was helpful to you? What unspoken gestures helped you cope?

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?