Live and learn

The naked brutal truth is that what brings us together here is death. Our particular kind of death is disorienting by its very nature, by the timing of its essential untimeliness. But the other truth, one that can be no less brutal, one that seems particularly cruel in those first disorienting days and weeks, is that we are still alive. And so we have to keep going, we have to keep living. The pain with which every breath cuts? That's being alive, that's living after. But so is the eventual realization that it is no longer so, that breathing, and other things, are getting easier.

If you are not there yet, I am so sorry, and I know it's no comfort, this long view.

But this long view is where I am, four years and one day after the birth of my son, four years and two days after his death. I remember clearly that from the very beginning I bristled at anyone suggesting that this--A's death, our grief, the time then-- that this was something we just needed to get through or "live through," as an Old Country idiom goes. You don't get through this, was my retort, you learn to live with it. And so far, at least for myself, it seems that I was right.

Our one year anniversary fell on the first day of class at my then-new job. I wasn't running the course then, and I didn't even need to teach that day. But I found myself so distracted and wiped out in the days leading up to it and on the day itself, that I eventually felt the need to explain what all of that was about to my then-new boss. (Thankfully, that went well, and whatever I may think of my now-former boss, I will always remember his kindness about A.)

Yesterday, three years later, on my drive to the now-new job, I felt the familiar heaviness, familiar tightness-- the sadness, the longing. But then I parked, and I went to work. I talked about atoms, electrons, orbitals, bonds. My computer froze, and while I waited for it to reboot, I picked up the chalk and went on. I emphasized key points, and held the pauses I needed to hold to get the class to engage, to get someone to risk volunteering an answer. I read confusion on their faces and picked up my chalk again, and I drew and talked them to clarity. I explained the changes in schedule due to the past and future snow days and I joked with the class. It was, as far as they knew, just another day in the classroom. That was probably mostly time, mostly the learning to live with that time affords us as days pack into weeks and weeks pack into months. But it felt like a victory, this ability to do my job well even on this day, and it felt hard-won.

And when the class was over, I had something else to look forward to. A task, it occurred to me as I was walking back to my car, something concrete to do, not unlike that day four years before. Then the task was birthing, now-- shoveling.

You see, our cemetery only has the flat to the ground markers (and the vases that you could flip up, but obviously those are down for the season), so when a snowfall covers a section, all you see above the layer of snow are the wooden poles-- markers that the groundskeepers put in to delineate the rows through the winter months. So two years ago, at the two year mark, the winter had been snowy. It's not like we didn't notice, but for some reason, we didn't connect. It occurred to neither of us that if we went to the cemetery on the anniversary, what we'd likely see would be a blanket of snow. Which is, of course, exactly what we saw when we arrived-- snow about knee high and a few poles sticking out to mark the rows.

At first, we thought we'd just let Monkey go and put the flowers over where we estimated the grave should be. We thought she stood the best chance of not sinking into the snow. But she lost her bearings among the white, stopping a good distance from where I thought the grave actually was. And suddenly JD was following her, and then so was I. I wanted to steer them to what I thought would be the right spot. JD wanted Monkey to not feel like she'd gotten it "wrong," and so there was tension, and it felt right to no-one, and we left the flowers where I was sure he was not. Except for the one flower I walked over to the spot I thought was right, and stuck into the snow, all by its lonesome.

I felt like shit. The primal in me said I should know where my child is, I should be able to get to him. Not, you know, to him, but to his grave at least. To make matters worse, that year the anniversary of his death fell on a Friday, and of his birth-- on Saturday. Jewish cemeteries are closed on Saturdays, of course, so we went on Friday afternoon, after Monkey's school let out. So what I was left with, going into the day that marked his birth, was that awful feeling of loss and separation. Compounded-- sure, why not, right?-- by a nice round of stomach bug that swept through the house starting that very evening.

What to do with that feeling? Where to put it? I had only one answer. The next morning, as I was leaving to run some necessary errands, I also packed a small snow shovel, and I drove to the cemetery. I parked by the side gate, and I walked. When I got to the section, I stepped carefully into the footprints we made the day before. I headed for the lone flower, and I dug, carefully, right next to it. You kinda have to know that if I am telling the story, I found the marker right where I dug. If I didn't, the story probably wouldn't mean the same thing to me, and it probably wouldn't be needing telling today. But I did, and I felt that all was now right with the world. Not you know, regular people's world, but the world where one visits their child's grave in the cemetery, that world was now put right. So I sat there for a bit, and moved the flowers to the right spot, picked myself up, walked out, and drove to run those errands.

Fast forward two years, to this January. In the last three weeks we've had three snow days. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out there would be thick layer in the cemetery. This is where I decided that what I wanted to do was shovel ahead of our planned visit. But with minor snowfalls threatened every other day or so, I didn't want to shovel too early. And this brings us back to me getting in the car after my class yesterday. I had a job to do. I and my trusted shovel were going to make it so we could put the flowers right on the marker this year. An hour, I figured, 90 minutes at the outside.

I know I am not alone in feeling that the day he was born was the best of the worst days. I was thinking about just that after my class on the way to my car. From there I went on to contemplate why, if he wasn't born until well into the evening, the whole of that day doesn't seem so bad. The answer, it seemed, was that I had a job to do that day. I had to birth him, and there was work in that, and single-minded concentration, and anticipation. Not entirely unlike what lay in front of me, I realized. A task, physical and defined, requiring concentration and likely not a small amount of determination. A is buried almost at the far edge of the section, so getting to him is not a matter of swinging the shovel a few times. But an hour, I figured, 90 minutes at the outside.

I began to reconsider that estimate as I drove through the cemetery, snowbanks higher than my car in places. Three snowdays in three weeks. Pulling up to the baby section, it looked grim. But as I got out of the car, I noticed a dip in the snowbank a bit in front of me, where the new addition to the baby section was recently cleared. As far as I know, that whole section, about the same size as the original, only has one occupant for now, at least that was the case when last I looked, in late November or so. The dip in the snowbank wasn't just a dip-- from there led a trail of footsteps, human or animal I couldn't really tell, although if I had to bet my life, I would probably go with a deer. The footsteps, as my incredible luck would have it, went right where I needed to go-- toward the back part of the sections, right to where the old and the new meet. From there, I knew, I could dig my way to A's grave.

To understand why I felt so lucky you should probably know that my worst fear as I planned my digging expedition in my head was that I would accidentally dig a path that would have me walking on other graves. The dead, I know, don't care. But I do. The serendipitous footsteps literally showed me another way. I could dig through the new section without worrying where I dug-- I knew about where the new boy is, and the steps steered way clear of that spot, and in the back of the old section I know the locations of the few graves that are there pretty well-- it should be easy for me to avoid them, I reasoned.

Part way through the project I stopped to take a picture. The wider part is me digging to follow the narrow-- what I found there.

It took two hours and fifteen minutes to get all the way to the grave, and to dig around it wide enough for JD, Monkey and me to stand there together. There is a certain dead baby pride in finding that your aim is still true, that even when the snow lies higher than the tops of the marker sticks, you still know exactly where to dig for your son's grave. When it was over I took off my gloves to find that my hands have been stained black-- apparently the lining transfers. And I quickly realized that my feet were soaked through. Neither of these things registered until I was done. Singleminded much? Just a bit, I guess. Though I did stumble upon a few not entirely useless thoughts.

First, by the time I was damn near done, it occurred to me that it was a shame I did all the digging by myself. I've long maintained that the first few days were harder on JD than they were on me. He'd waited through that whole pregnancy to meet his son, and then his son died, and there still was nothing for him to do except bring me water. I, on the other hand, had things to do--give birth, tend to engorged boobs, tend to other parts. Purpose. All he had to do was sit around and breathe the sharp air. And here I was, four years on, occupied with another purposeful endeavor, again by myself. There is clarity in the snow field in front and a shoveled path behind. There is satisfaction in doing what little can be done on a day such as this. And so I felt bad for having that all to myself, and should we encounter another winter generous in snow, I've already suggested to JD that we go shoveling together.

The second not entirely useless thought is really a rather obvious metaphor. But I am going to say it anyway. Driving up to the cemetery I expected to have to lay my own path. It turned out that I didn't have to, at least not all the way. I found a trail to follow, though I still had to put in considerable work to get to where I needed to go. And that reminded me that though it may feel like it, we are never the first to walk the path of baby loss, and, sadly, we will not be the last. We each have a unique trajectory, but others have passed nearby. Sometimes their presence or their footsteps are obvious, and we find comfort in that obviousness. Other times, the presence of others is but a shadow, a divergent trail going off into the woods, an echo of voices carried on the wind.

And at the risk of clubbing this metaphor into complete unusability, we may not know when or how, but we each make it slightly easier, slightly more bearable for someone else at some point. Whether it is because our words, typed in anger or sadness, or joy, or longing and released to the wilds of the internets hit the spot with someone somewhere, or because we once said something to someone that caused them to be more considerate of others. Or even because if we are so lucky as to become pregnant again one day, we tend to walk tenderly with it, mindful of both the fragility of what we carry in us and of the potential hurt that seeing another's happiness may bring. And so, as we've said many a time to each other, I am so sorry you have a reason to be here, but I am so glad you found us. 

How long has it been for you? What traditions have you developed so far? Have there been others who've helped you along the way? 

A Father's Day Visit

Please welcome Eric, father of lost twins Zoey and Gus and husband of M., to our Glow company of writers. We've spent the last several weeks poring through submissions, and we're so grateful for all the new voices and friends we've met in the process. Eric and the other new writers, both full-time and occasional, bring new stories, reflections, and energy to our community, and we're grateful for it.

This is Eric's first blog post ever, anywhere -- so be gentle. Or don't. Either way, feel free to call him what we do: Blogless Eric. It lends an air of mystery. He's like a pirate. He might have an eyepatch. I can't be sure. But we're glad he's with us.

~ Kate

photo by digitalalan

For Father’s Day, there are two things M. has decided she wants to do.  She wants to buy me dinner, and she wants to visit Gus and Zoey. 

Zoey and Gus were born on the first full day of spring in 2009.  They died that day, too.  A week earlier, M.’s pregnancy suffered “a sudden, severe complication,” as I called it in message after message sent from our hospital room.  We buried them in a section of the cemetery near my friend, Harold.  He had been like a grandfather to me, and his widow said she would like to believe he would be a good grandfather to them.  These days, when I picture his funeral, I have to adjust the image because the camera is facing the wrong way.  It is not trained on his grave, but on the empty spot up the hill that will be my son’s and my daughter’s—but not for another three years.  That’s memory for you, I suppose.

Getting to the cemetery takes about 35 minutes and four freeways: the 90 to the 405 to the 101 to the 134.  We exit at Forest Lawn Drive—named, I presume, after the cemetery of which our cemetery, Mount Sinai, used to be a part.  Since burying Gus and Zoey, we have come to the cemetery many times.  Just a few visits ago, M. suggested that by getting off one exit sooner (Buena Vista Street), we would actually get to the cemetery faster.  And M. is often right about these things.  Still, I have never gotten off at that exit.  Because this is how we go to the cemetery. 

Today, the drive from our house to the exit ramp takes its 35 minutes, but working our way down the exit ramp takes another fifteen.  Cars are backed up from the ramp onto the freeway.  “What the hell’s going on?” I mutter. 

“It’s Father’s Day.  Other people are probably thinking the same thing we are,” M. says. 

The ‘80s station plays some Billy Joel.  Through the staccato-heartbeat rhythm of the intro, and even through “Whatsamatter with the clothes I’m wear-in,’” I don’t realize the song is “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.”   For another few beats, I still think it’s “Only the Good Die Young.”

Then I realize something else: M. meant children are visiting the graves of their fathers.  I thought she meant fathers are visiting the graves of their sons and daughters.  Because isn’t that what fathers do on Father’s Day?

At Zoey and Gus’s graves, I do not say anything.  I do not pray.  I do not talk to them.  I do not tell them that we will always be their parents but that we also want to be parents to children in this world.  I had planned on saying this, on explaining ourselves, as M. is now very pregnant with their brother and sister and it might be awhile before our next visit.  But I have told Gus and Zoey this already—from this same spot.  On their due date, in fact, when M. and I came to the cemetery straight from our first consultation with the perinatologist about trying again. 

Instead, I sit down at Zoey’s grave, with M. sitting at Gus’s, and we clean.  I wipe the dirt off Zoey’s gravestone.  I scrub the grit out of the engraved letters of her name.  It is Father’s Day, and this is how I talk to my children: in solvent and cotton swabs.

After our visit and throughout the day, I talk with some of the fathers in my life.  I wish them a happy Father’s Day.  Few, if any, wish me one.  I’m sure it’s innocuous.  I’m sure they don’t see the greeting as a badge they are withholding from me.  I do, but at the same time, I understand.  After all, my weeks are not structured around play dates and check ups.  My days are not punctuated by fevers and falls and scraped elbows and bruised feelings.  I do not live with worry for Gus and Zoey’s futures or under the shadow of losing them a second time.  And unlike some of the bereaved parents I have come to know, I do not have other, living children for whom I had to be brave today.  And the day before that.  And the one before that…

On any random day—no, on every single day—I don’t do the work.  So should I really be seen as part of the club? 

Those friends who are where M. and I are (the enlisted, as opposed to the civilians) say so.  So when I email them about this facet of Father’s Day, it brings them to a boil even though I can only manage a simmer. 

But our friends may be right.  What fathering I can give, that club cannot.   Other parents clean their children’s rooms and wounds, not their graves.  Other parents have children whom they trumpet, not ones to whom every reference must be measured: firm enough to give their memory substance and to add to its length, airy enough to signal that it’s alright, that their presence in our lives is an everyday thing—just like that of everyone else’s children.  That can be the trickiest part.  While other parents manage their children’s experiences of the world (or want to, or try to, or try to when they shouldn’t), we have to manage the world’s experience of our children. 

So we mention their names.  We put pinwheels in the earth where they are buried.  We protect their place in the world.   We do what fathers do.  We give them what home we can.

How have you been recognized (or not) on Father’s Day or Mother’s Day?  How would you want to be?  What rituals do you have to mark the day?

not the enemy

Tash's post reminded me of how easy it is to get caught up in the bullshit of everyday life and how difficult it is for couples in our situations to communicate well.  Taxes, taxing situations, too many to-dos and no desire to do them can turn a simple afternoon sour.  Suddenly we're sniping and sneering.

Slamming doors.  Seething rage.  Eventually I realize that I'm not mad at her at all.  Well, maybe a little, but the quiver and clench, they are not her doing.

That tension and anger, it's a force that fills me when I realize how impotent I am to change the past I hate, or alter the immovable fact I cannot stand.

All I can control is my perspective and my response.

 

I attempt to embrace calmness despite adrenaline and energy.  Over and over, every day of my life now, it is an exercise in calmness.  There are too many triggers that click and spark the gunpowder in my soul.  There are too many holes that should be filled with moments with my son.  I fall into those voids suddenly so I've tried to learn how to fly.

Most of the time I fall.

That's the pit in my stomach.  It is the sensation of endlessly falling into another day that is filled with the absence of what I want most.

I fill those voids with anything I can think of and I try to stay calm even when I'm falling and all I can do is yell for help.  Luckily Lu is strong enough to pull me back when I start to shout because she knows all I'm really doing is looking for Silas.  Even when I'm yelling at her.

Inside I'm panicking because I can't find him and then I remember that I have to try and stay calm.  Lu helps me like I help her when it's the other way around because quietly, silently, and straight out loud shouting we both know that Death is the enemy.

Worst of all:  it is nothing we can fight or do anything about.  This immovable fact.  This hole that is a wall that is our son that is impossible.

That impenetrable barrier silences me when I get too pissed off about the daily bullshit that's easy to fight about.  We'll argue about some dumb thing, some mis-communication and then that spirals deeper, past our petty disagreement to the true source of our sadness and anger.

Suddenly I see that we are sharing that space and my anger is gone.  I'm not mad at her.  She's my rock and my partner.  Lu is my biggest fan and best friend.  Whatever fight we're having it has nothing to do with what is really going on.

The problem is that what is really going on is nothing we can fight, not even together.  There is us, here.  There is Silas beyond reach.  And there is his death between us all.

I fight against that every day, even without realizing it.  By getting up and going out.  By facing the day and whatever it brings.  By attempting to excel at whatever is before me, in each action and step I am battling the enemy that could all too easily consume me.  The Void, his absence.  Death.  I feel it in my stomach, in my heart, in my skin.  But I brush it off, again and again, determined to live bright and true.

Still, sometimes I have to shout.  I need to shout to get it out of my throat and still it sticks there, his death lodged in my soul like a vein coal.  I trace it like a labyrinth, round and round, all the way down, calmer by the moment as I see that it spells his name and that I will never be without him, even though I will always be without him.

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

What calms you?  Are you able to pull back from the anger and sadness of your loss when you turn that on the people around you?  What do you do to fight against Death, against the absence of your lost child?

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?

reflections on baby photos: three voices

1 :::

Several weeks after Sadie died my sister-in-law had the first picture we took of her painted on canvas for us. It is a beautiful shot taken as I held her for the first time, all chubby cheeks and serene newness.

It has been a focal point sitting on our bedroom mantle ever since. Most mornings I send a quick I love you, Munchie towards it before heading off to work. There have been times that I’ve sat on my bed in front of it, sobbing under the weight of how much I miss her.

My brother took my second favorite photo. In it Sadie is sleeping in her father’s arms. The pose of her tiny little fist curled up under her chin like a miniature, tired old man makes me smile. I’d probably have a wall-sized mural of it instead if I didn’t think it’d have every guest running for the hills, calling me a whacko over their shoulder as they went.

The honest truth is that I struggle between that sentiment and a lingering guilt over not having enough of them up.

The strength of our love for her merits having her image splayed across every surface we own. So why the hell should I worry about whether or not it makes our dinner guests fidget in their seats?

We probably took several hundred photos of Sadie over the course of her six weeks with us. At any point I can open those files and look back for as long or as little that I care to. They allow me to remember every curve of her perfect face. The video clips remind me of how hilarious we found it when she grunted her way through a poop. They allow me to grieve as and when I choose.

These images we keep tell our heartbreaking truth: that along with our memories, they are all we have left.

~ Jen

2 :::

Our only pictures of Silas are from when he was still in Lu's womb, and after he had passed away. His presence was too brief and traumatic to capture while he was alive. 

It is almost impossible for me to look at photos of Lu while pregnant, but I need to see his beautiful and serene face in the collage Lu created in the months after he left us. In it he is newborn and perfect, a gorgeous little kid. The photo was taken by the hospital staff and given to us in a box along with imprints of his hands and feet in clay and in ink, a lock of his hair, the tiny hat he wore at the hospital and several other beautiful photographs of him.

There is absolutely no question that this collage or a photograph of Silas will always be displayed in our house. He was our child and although we did not get to have him long, the physical presence of his life and existence is vitally important to us. Frankly, I've never for a moment considered any other arrangement, or even if having his photo displayed would make guests feel uncomfortable.

Just the idea that someone would want for us to do this differently to make them feel better makes me extremely upset.

It is our choice to remember our son openly and honestly in our home. If any friend or family had any other opinion they would be well served to keep that entirely to themselves. It is up to them to deal with their own inability to face reality and not at all my problem.

In the framed collage Lu created is his photo, the ink imprints of his hands and feet, a haiku I wrote about missing him, a photograph of his name written in the sand on the beach at sunset, photographs of the tattoos Lu and I both have in his honor, and a small print of the constellation Orion, his middle name. It is not nearly enough or anywhere what we deserve but it is what we have, and somehow, it will have to do.

~ Chris

3 :::

What I think about displaying pictures of dead babies in one's house is that no-one but the parents gets to have an opinion on this. A picture, bazzillion pictures, where, how-- none of this is up for discussion. Anyone who doesn't like what the parents do is welcome, and is hereby courteously invited, to shut the fuck up. People's homes, coincidentally much like their grief, are theirs. Both are about them and their family, not about anyone else's idea of what's done or what's proper. Even when an anyone else in question is a close friend or relative. Particularly when it's a close friend or relative.

You'd think that with attitude like that I'd have at least a couple pictures of A up around here. But we have none. Back then my hospital didn't offer contact information for NILMDTS photographers. Even if they did, I don't think at the time we would've been comfortable letting a stranger into that room. Scratch that-- I know I wasn't. It bugs me now, because now I would be. And because what we ended up with are the few pictures my sister took with my blackberry. The quality isn't great. It's not awful either, but it's not great.

I've edited some of the pictures we have, cropped, played with effects. Over the years, I posted two of these edited photographs on my blog. I have all of them, original set and my edits, on my laptop. I can look whenever I want to.

There were stretches of time when I looked every day, sometimes several times a day. But there have also been stretches of months when I haven't looked at all. Not because I "moved on" or any such platitude. I think of A every day, I miss him all the time. But I don't need to see the pictures all the time.

All of these things are true, but none of them are the real reason we don't have the pictures up. The real reason is that parents is plural. There's two of us in this, and JD didn't want the images displayed. He doesn't usually look at them either. He doesn't need to. Not to remember, not to love, not to grieve, and not to miss. I think, truthfully, that in the photographs JD sees too much of his own pain, that the pain he sees clouds the beautiful baby whose pictures those are. I think he sees more clearly in his mind's eye.

And so we don't have any photographs up. What we do have are the two framed drawings of Monkey's, family portraits both. One she started while A was still alive, all of us lined up in front of our house, A with a hypothetical future dog. She had done the outlines in pencil and had started on coloring it in with markers before A died. In the days following our return from the hospital, cleaning her room with her, we stumbled upon the drawing. I asked if I could have it, and she said no-- she would finish it and we would hang it on the wall, for everyone. Finishing the drawing was hard on her. It took her weeks, and in the end some of the coloring is sloppy, too sloppy for what she was normally doing back then, and in darker colors than her usual palette.

The second is the portrait she did in art class last year. It's in paint and is fairly impressive artistically, for a seven year old. As in, for example, people have recognizable features. There are two small boys in that one. Nearly identical, with one slightly larger than the other. She proclaimed the larger one to be A, and the smaller (duh!) the Cub. The boys in the painting are holding hands.

So this is the idiosyncratic place our little family finds itself on the pictures thing.  But like much else in this whole babylost experience, it is not etched in stone. A's actual photograph might still end up on a wall in our home. For a while now I have been thinking about creating a collage type arrangement in one frame, floating or otherwise, with pictures of all three of my kids. I think I want to have something of all of them together, since, you know, I can't have all of them together. I am not sure when I'd do it, or how, yet. I was thinking of using the picture of A's hand in mine, but I am not sure what pictures of Monkey and the Cub to use with that. So it might end up being a picture where you can see A's beautiful little face, or maybe both. See how figured out I am?

And if I do manage to make something that I like, I don't know where I would want to put it. In my office, where most wouldn't see it, or somewhere more conspicuous? It depends. Depends on what it comes out looking like-- too tender and intimate to share with just anyone or something I am ok with people seeing? And depends, of course, on how JD will feel about it. I guess, again like so much in this strange world of ours, we will figure it out when (if) we get there.

~ Julia

How do you feel about displaying photos of your baby in your home or in other personal spaces? If you've chosen to feature them in your life, how have your photos been met by loved ones and friends? What do photographs of your child mean to you?

the land on which i stand

I am an Incognito Disaster.
You can't see the mayhem only millimeters out, but it's there, inside.

You can't see my toes curl as I cringe when I re-live the day Silas was born.
Cars swerve around my thoughts as I drive.

You can't hear the breath
the deep, deep breath
when you trundle in, laden with newborn and bags and Hope.

The Hope smells like crushed pine needles and jasmine covered in maple syrup, honey and soy.  It makes me sick to my soul because I can't swallow that anymore.

Today:
Pregnant lady holding the door for a n00b mom with n00born and they passed a look that gutted my heart.
From one:  "Oh how cute! (you don't know what you're in for.)"
The other, laden within: "I can't wait to be on that side of this  (bloated mess.)"

Wife sick of her pregnancy, Mother sick of her kids.  Father and To-Be on either side unaware of their peril.

From nowhere in their realm, from no vantage of their many views could they see me frozen nearby.  They cannot see the land on which I stand.  They cannot taste the ashes of my dreams despite their sudden sneeze.  To them, my flesh does not sag with endless despair.

I gasped and turned, gutted, I let them pass and flashed into everything each of them promised.
I burned with how bad everything can go, in an instant.
In a day.
In a night of pain and labor.
In a life or three or many, many more.
They should never know any of this and I hate how much we've had to learn.

I'm sick of learning.  I'm sick of fortitude and strength.  I'm sick of wisdom and grace and getting by.
I want to swallow the sunlight.  I want to consume Hope for breakfast and shit rainbows of beauty and joy.

Instead:
Creases in my cheeks from the tears & tears.

Instead:
Holes in my heart that I stare into thinking, sinking.

I lead a double life.  There's this one here alone with Lu and the impossible one with Silas, too.
Both are true, both are me.

I will never let either of them go.

I am a Disaster in Disguise.
I am a Master of the Lies I have to tell to get through the day.
I'm so good at it now, I sometimes even almost fool myself into being a little bit okay.

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

Can you describe an instant of recognition or insight that surprised you or caught you off-guard?  How many lives do you lead?  Do you ever feel okay?  And are you okay with feeling a little okay, sometimes?