Dead babies from the time before

Baby Cosmo

Died

When I was

Fourteen

They made

A documentary

About him

We saw his image

On the screen

Of a 30 pound TV

But of course

He never breathed

And we just saw

His ghost on our

Machine.

He wasn’t the

First dead baby

I had been

Aware of, grieved

My cousin William

Died

Inside

The womb of my

Uncle’s wife

While they were

Far away

Unseen by me

But missed

And wondered over.

I imagined

Her hurt

Felt something

Approaching empathy

Although I was

Still young enough

To find the whole

Birth thing

Faintly obscene

And then another loss

Not mentioned

To me personally

And so I will not speak it here

It is not mine

To share

But I was aware

And felt keenly

The broken dream

Of another family

And then some weeks before

My baby died

I spoke to my friend

About her infant brother

Lost just days after

He was born

And we mourned

For him a little

In the car

On the way to work

I remember as we turned

Onto the road

With the lovely violin shop

On the corner

That I felt a sudden

Premonition

I just knew

That one day I would know

That feeling too

I didn’t realise it would be

So soon,

That I would come to

Speak with such

Authority

About small corpses

And their consequences

But those four came before

When dead babies were a rarity

What was your experience of babyloss before your baby or babies died? When you heard their stories did you ever imagine that it might happen to you?

Sounds

In a departure from my usual style for Glow in the Woods I have written and recorded a poem. You can hear me read it here:

Do I sound sad?

Can you hear it in me?

When I utter banalities

Or common courtesies

About inclement weather

Or paying bills, or other

Everyday utilities

Is that all I’m saying to you?

Or do your ears twitch at

A catch, a crack

A different quality

So “Tea or Coffee?”

Comes with neither milk nor sugar

But rather a side of

“Your choice doesn’t matter to me because neither will bring my dead baby back to life”

Or when I ask

For someone to email me some

VERY IMPORTANT THING

Does my reply seem to be

In some kind

Of dolorous code

Thanking them for

Distracting me

From my melancholy?

Or when I say

“A return ticket to the city please”

Perhaps you’d be aware of the silent addendum

“Not that she’ll ever return to me… because she’s DEAD”

(These are all thoughts I’ve had by the way

So please laugh at me and

My ability to

Dramatise

Catastrophise

And generally

Over-egg

The grief-pudding-of-my-eternal-sense-of loss

Some things deserve derision

Occasionally. Maybe.)

Perhaps

Now

Four years out

My subtext

Has truly

Become

Subliminal

I no longer

Shout my pain

In every word

I even talk about

Sad things

With an air of

Warm reassurance

Then I eavesdrop on myself

Hear

A fragment

Of my voice

On someone else’s

Answer phone

Or notice something

Alien in my

Sister’s tone

That used to be so

Similar to my own

But now seems

Less familiar.

And I hear it plainly.

The sound

Of ancient

Agony

Rasped across

My vocal chords

And I wonder

How it’s possible

That people can

Hear me speak

And not weep?

How anyone can

Ever answer me

Without their own

Remembered grief

Bursting out

Until we are all wailing

At the sky

Sorrow’s choir

Swelling loud

Out out up

Wildly shaking the world

Hurling us about

So we’ll never

Forget her or anyone!

Lost names thunder

Against the horizon

And burst the

Eardrums of the lucky ones

Windows shatter

The plates of the earth

Shift and grate

Teeth rattle

Trees are wrenched

From the soil

Violent noises

Siren voices

All around

Surrounded

Until it seems

The ground would yield up

Her dead.

Is that how I sound?

Is that how I sound?

Or am I only sad in silence now.

Do you have a grief radar? Can you hear it or see it in other people? Do you think they feel it in you?

Despite Silence

I cannot stop missing Silas
despite everything. 

Despite time broken into before and after.
Despite new life in our lives.
Despite a distance beyond comprehension.
Despite the black, despicable wall of death.  

I feel his absence in my brothers and parents.  

I see them not seeing him
where I don't see him either.  

To this very moment years from his grave,
I cannot believe this is part of us:
that my parents have a life where their grandson died.  

Awful.  Outlandish.  Ridiculous to the point of unbearable pain.

How brutal this world,
where this is something that can happen in life,
where Death takes children and shatters lives to pieces.

That mocking Sun that goes on shining.
The blithe lives that go on living
while our little one is gone.  

All of us in my family feel it together
and that shared grief eases the burden enough
to make another day doable,
with Silas only in our hearts.

I find that sometimes it is easier to access and understand these brutal emotions via poetry.  To that end, I invite you to write a poem about your lost child or children and the living family around you.

"swapping little pieces..."

"Jackie wants a black eye,
some proof that she's been hit
John wants the answers
but the questions just don't quit..."

Music may have saved my life, my marriage, my soul.  Even in the darkest, bleakest hours of those first days with Silas suddenly gone, music pierced my impenetrable grief and keep something alive within.  Beck's albums Sea Change and Mutations managed to capture my attention even when I could barely think.

"And we're sitting in the rain
and we're feeling like the weather.
You could say that we're alone
but we're lonely together..."

When the endless flow of tears finally drained me to dessication, music filled me up again, if only to help me cry some more.  When I couldn't speak to anyone, couldn't listen to another word, couldn't feel anything but the black gaping chasm that used to be my heart, notes and chords and lyrics all-too-true wandered softly and impervious through that terrible void.  Music was an inevitable truth, something completely outside of me that connected specifically to my pain.  The music was a True Form that kept me tethered to reality.

"We're all in it together now
as we all fall apart
and we're swapping little pieces
Of our broken little hearts..."

Songs I had heard a million times suddenly became fraught with meanings I never suspected but were now powerfully, unbearably obvious.  Give 3rd Planet by Modest Mouse a try and listen for the line "and baby come angels fly around you, reminding you we used to be three and not two..." and just try not to sob.  Their other songs The View and One Chance are equally correct attempts to describe what we are all going through.  I had no idea, not until Silas died.  Then all of a sudden it was a like a code had been broken in my mind and all the secrets hidden in these songs were laid bare for me to soak up.

"Jackie's jumping in the quicksand
But it isn't what you think
she's safe cause she knows
the more fight the more you sink..."

It turns out that if anything has saved me from utter despair and pure insanity it has been music.  Love & friends & food all play a big part in keeping me upright and pushing me forward, but music gets inside my soul in a way that is extremely personal and completely my own.  I feel my brain speeding up as I speed down the highway with tunes blasting through the car.  Music far too loud had their been a child with me, but just right for someone trying to learn how to be alive and broken all at the same time. Songs stitch me back together again.  Songs take my holes and make me whole again.

"And we've been hurting so long
that our pleasure is our pain.
Are we madly in love?
Or madly insane?.."

Best of all are the live shows, though.  Blasting music in the car or in the house is great, but nothing compares to a completely spectacular live performance.  Lu and I found each other through music.  Our first real kiss was at Madison Square Garden on New Years Eve during a Phish show in 2003.  This year they played there again, and again we attended.  The brutal and beautiful history we have shared between those two nights is hard to fathom, but it was perfectly clear to me that I am with the exactly right person.  We had so much fun.  How that's even possible when I think about how much pain we both still feel is a complexity of the human spirit that completely baffles me.  But it is true.  We had an incredible time.  And they played just for us, as they always do.  The song The Story of the Ghost is always about Silas.  The first line:  "I feel I've, never told you, the story of the ghost, that I once knew and spoke to, of whom I'd never boast, for this was my big secret..."  And then the jam.  The pure music portions of that song where there are no lyrics, just notes, it always takes me on a journey into the heart of my pain, and I always, always need it and love it and want it.

"Yesterday's love defines you
and today that love is gone.
Tomorrow keeps you guessing,
the roller coaster's rolling on..."

There must be multiple, endless Universes out there, each with a slightly different path, each with their own cosmic tune.  The only way I stay sane is by entertaining the insane idea that there's another version of our family, one that is complete with a bright and beautiful little boy named Silas.  Maybe a sister or brother on the way.  Different numbers in our bank account.  A home up the street or around the corner with a little more room, a little more light.  And even crazier, since I know this to be true, is that the other version of me, he knows how close he came to all of this.

That helps me, somehow.  It is as though I'm taking on all the pain and loss for all the other possibilities, sparing them this terrible ordeal.  And those other possibilities, they are giving back to me a little bit of light and a little bit of hope that I have no reason to feel.

My reality cracked open the day Silas died and I have been diverging from my expected truths ever since.  Music, though is a truth I can always hold on to.  The notes and chords have become a scaffold I can hang my tattered soul on.  Their rhythm replaces the beat of my heart when the pain is too great for it to pump another drop of blood.  The lyrics tell me about my unbearable pain, but then trick me into moving, into action, into thoughts that maybe, just maybe I can bear his loss for one more day, if I just turn it up real fucking loud and belt out the words I don't yet quite believe.

"And we're all in this together now
as we all fall apart
and we're swapping little pieces
of our broken little hearts."

--Dr. Dog, Jackie Wants a Black Eye

What are your songs?  How do they help you?  What band or song or music has transformed for you since you lost your child?