Half a Mom

There comes a point in a pregnancy where one usually starts pondering how things will get balanced after the child is born, in terms of of time and psyche:  how will I manage to be both a wife and a mother? (Jeebus, is it really 5:30 already?!)  How will the time get allocated between my obligations to these distinct places of grocery store and nursery, not to mention work, my friends, my family?  A cold wave of early bedtime, schedule-crushed weekends, sick days, babysitters, daycare, and netflix subscriptions suddenly washes over one as she realizes things will change, radically.  There are only so many hours in a day, and while I multitask with the best of them (lifts fingers from keypad ever so slightly in order to blow toddler’s nose, take turn at Candyland, throw ball to dog, click over to respond to chat message, and realize chicken needs defrosting) sometimes things need undivided attention and take priority.  Babies are one of those things.

I remember in the weeks before Maddy was born, wondering how on earth I was going to juggle two children.   And I mean that somewhat in the literal sense of throwing them both in the air, perhaps with a banana some yogurt and a cell phone, and seeing if I could make a five-minute lunch plan out of it for all of us.  But I also mean that in the more figurative sense of balancing my time with them, and the more existential sense of how I would carry them around in my heart and my head, equally, and yet individually and appropriately.  With liberty and justice for all.  And a bit of down time for mom, who needs a good bubble bath now and again.

And so it started, pulling away from the house on a Monday morning, weeping, leaving my toddler behind for 48 hours while I went to birth her sister.  The split opened fresh and wide: guilty for leaving one behind, anxious to meet the other.

Before I could secure on my helmet, my brain began careening from one wall to the other, not only between Bella and Maddy, House and Hospital, but Well and Sick.  It became clear to us by late Tuesday that Maddy was severely impaired, and would likely require exclusive hospitalization or institutional care.   How on earth would I ever manage parenting, loving, holding two extremely different individuals under two roofs separated by distance, time, and most likely money and visiting hours?  This was not what I envisioned when I imagined pointing out to Bella that her sister had just spit up some god-awful substance on my couch that demanded immediate attention, sorry if I couldn't help her find other maraca right this second.  It somehow seemed justified, explainable, easy when both were right there, in front of me.

As the week dragged on I couldn't settle in either place.  When I was at the hospital, I simply longed to be home, snuggled with the well, knowing what sweet life could be.  While I was home, I was racked with guilt for not being at the bedside of an infant -- a tiny babe who couldn't possibly understand, but needed nothing more than her mother next to her side and I yearned to return and touch her small hands.  I was restless in both places, both in spirit and in body.  My eyes cried, my breasts leaked, my head screamed for silence and sleep, my legs found themselves heading to the door, my hands constantly picking up the phone to check on the other, my mouth always speaking of the other daughter:  "Bella, your sister is very sick.  But she is so beautiful."  "Maddy, your big sister Bella wants to meet you so much.  She used precious Dora stickers on your valentine, she must love you immensely."  There was no way to bring these worlds together -- Bella was on month three of a post-nasal drip hack.  One NICU deemed her too young, the other I didn't dare bring her into.  Maddy, with her sea of tubes and wires and machines that go "ping" was in no shape to leave the hospital.  Both children demanded my attention.  Both children deserved it.  I couldn't reconcile my obligations.

The last 24 hours of Maddy's life were spent exclusively at the hospital; I left my home Saturday a mother of two, but two split by location and health.  I came home Sunday night, the mother of two, divided by living and dead.

I wish I could announce that at that point the pendulum finally quit its manic swing, and I settled back into my one-dimensional life.  But it actually became worse.   To this day, I fly back and forth between earth and the underworld, my family room and Hades, with a surprise and suddenness that brings whiplash.  My mind smashes against one wall and is suddenly spinning pel-mel towards the other until it crashes again.  The duties I feel toward my two disparate daughters have left me concussed.

I'm still always guilty of where I am, feeling that I'm snubbing one daughter for the other, unable to spend quality time with one and pay attention to the other’s needs.  I often feel like half a mom.

I discovered early on that Bella, only two-and-a-half at the time of Maddy’s death, began associating my frequent and random griefbursts with whatever activity we happened to be involved in at the time.  Music Class, for example, quickly got scuttled when I cried roundtrip the first week back.  The following week Bella blew up and refused to leave the car, pronouncing “music makes me sad.” (Maddy 1, Bella 0) The tears, apparently, would have to stop during daylight hours lest she begin associating them with trips to the grocery or walking the dog.  I had to manage my grief, no matter how badly I simply wanted to curl in a ball and cry and remember Maddy, and hold it off.  (Bella 1, Maddy 1).

My Maddy-time is right here, right now, on the keypad, typing her name, sharing my memories and feelings.  I try desperately to limit this to when Bella is killing gray matter in front of the television, or when she’s off at school or in bed, but sometimes I need to “check my mail” – see her name, send my love, receive support.  It kills me that when Bella picked up her dad’s camera she turned it and caught me, as I must always seem to her, hunched over the keyboard.  Bella can’t you see that she needs me right now?  That she’s crying?  That she reeks a bit of stale vomit?  That her hands are outstretched?  That mommy needs a few minutes with her?  No, of course you can’t.   Truth be known, I can’t either honey.  But I just need to be with her a moment, m’kay? (Bella 2,346, Maddy 4, 578)

And then there are the times I stifle my memories, my feelings, my grief, and mentally block out the picture of my other daughter and what she would look like today stumbling across the lawn so that I may enjoy Bella attempting to blow bubbles and then eat them, or hanging upside down out of the hammock or delivering Little Miss Bossy Boss her Milk!  Now!  “Oh and some crackers too, Mom!”  So that I can pay attention and avoid a trip to the emergency room, and not get too impatient and testy and be in the moment and breathe and enjoy.  Shit Maddy, your sister’s doing that thing where she’s hangs upside down by one arm on the tree branch and tries to drop four feet, and I can’t right now!.  But the otherworld baby can’t possibly know when it’s a good time to slap me upside the head and demand attention. (Bella, 1.67x10⁷, Maddy 1.24x10⁷)

Sweetie, I’m in an important meeting and everyone’s looking at me, I can’t, I just can’t, can it wait?

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but rush hour tonight is a bitch without taking that detour over the River Styx.  Maybe tomorrow night?  Ok?

I’m right in the middle of dinner, I have raw chicken yuk on my hands, the stove is on, the dog is barking, Bella is crying in front of the fridge, the phone is ringing, the cat just coughed up a hairball perilously close to the salad, can’t you see?  Can’t you see that I just need a few minutes here and then I’ll deal with you?  I’ll be there in just a second.

I know a day will come when the head-banging oscillation will cease, and that I’ll find myself firmly planted here, with only an occasional, slightly depressing venture to visit Maddy.  But I almost dread that day; it will mean we all have grown:  neither of my daughters will need me as much, and I’ll come to realize that the voices in my head aren’t really, it’s just my need to grieve finally waning.  One will no longer be a baby, and I’ll come to realize that the other never was, on this plane.  At which point I’ll only be able to look back and hope I did the best I could, by both of them.

Mother’s Day looms large right there around the corner and I can’t bring myself to celebrate and feel rather guilty accepting anything from the live daughter.  I feel I haven’t been there in full.  For either of them.  I’m constantly distracted by the other, and have yet to figure out how to hold each of them against my still poochy stomach and tell them both simultaneously, “I love you both, equally, fully, with all of my might and ability.  Recognizing that you both are quite different, of course.  You know, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

what they say

You'll hear these words again and again, sometimes as a reassurance, sometimes as an explanation, sometimes, it seems, simply as a mantra: "everyone grieves differently."

"Everyone grieves differently," they say, "Oh, yes, everyone grieves differently. You know, everyone grieves differently." They say it, but it isn't true.

Everyone seems to grieve in remarkably similar ways. There's the chasm, the stumble, the stagger, and the fall. There's the cold, the silence, and the dark. There's the shattering, the splintering, the grinding, the rending. There's the strange language in low whispers. There are tears that strangle and tears that scald. There's the chain of words around your wrists, the story worn out by the telling that always ends in exactly the same way.

There's the wearying round of repetition. The first month, the second month, the third month. There's the ever-recurring day as the weeks gain ground. There's the first Christmas, first Easter, first Mother's Day. Then the whole year has gone and the counting begins again, but more quietly this time.

Sometimes there's the stake and sometimes there's the stone, the garden, the poppied field far from the swing of the sea. There's the shadow and the apple blossoms, the thimble and the stitches, the cypress and the yew. Everyone grieves that way. Everyone, it seems, except for me.

"You can't compare pain," they say. But that's not true either.

I lift your grief in one hand, mine in the other. I balance them against each other, gauging their heft. I lay them side by side and measure carefully. Mine always comes up short.

Stirring the pot and singing Kumbaya

Last year, while I was still in the very thick of it, Virginia Tech happened. I didn't watch much TV then at all, and certainly not much in the way of news. I heard of it on the radio, I think. What I did do a lot was read blogs and chat online, mostly with my friend Aite. One day she told me she was watching the coverage of the tragedy, and there was this interview with a father of a student who got killed. One question he was asked was "was he your only child?"

Would it have been any better if he wasn't? Not really. But it would be worse if he was. Facing a life with no surviving children is a separate pain. She is very thoughtful, my friend Aite, isn't she? This is something that stuck with me over the last year, this idea of how some things can't possibly be better, but there are ways in which they can be even worse.

I have been troubled the last few days. Perturbed, bent out of shape, preoccupied.  A comment, a couple of lines and a signature, is what left me alternatively dumbfounded and steaming. A comment that seemed to imply that we here have not so much to talk about because we are, none of us, bereft of living children and at the end of that road.

I never claimed or wanted the mantle of the worst case. In fact, somewhat recently, I finally, after thinking about it for a long time, wrote about one of my coping mechanisms-- the it could've been worse. There are so many ways in which my experience with grief could've been a lot worse. For starters, every time I hear a bereaved parent talk about the guilt they carry, my heart breaks. I have none of it. And this still sucks. Adding guilt on top of the grief seems like it would just be too much. I also had the very best, most compassionate medical care. I have friends who didn't run away, who still remember and take care not to step on my toes. And I have a living daughter. Validating her in her grief, acknowledging that she is a separate part of this story, that her loss is her own and must be respected and honored, all of this has been a challenge. But not one I would ever trade.

Yes, it could've been worse. It is worse for many, I believe. For parents losing their first-borns, how can it not be worse-- wondering whether there will ever be a living child in their home, many times a home lovingly picked in preparation for the arrival of that first-born? For parents who years after losing their child and despite trying and trying, and trying some more have not brought another into the world, how can it not be worse? For parents for whom lightening has struck two or more times, how could it not be worse for them?

So see, I have no problem with anyone telling me I am not the worst off. In fact, I'd be the first to say that. What I do have a problem with, a big huge problem, is with conflating me, an individual who grieves, and my son, an individual I grieve. Or any other baby anyone else grieves. I don't think the value of a child, value of each child to the universe and to their family, can or should be relative to what the family does or doesn't have.

We all grieve our children. We may grieve different things about them. For some it may be as simple and all encompassing as the huge void, the absence, and for them there is no need or use in dividing that void into bite size pieces. Others have come to believe that we grieve the potential. We grieve not knowing. Not knowing so many things. It kills me that I don't know what color A's eyes would've been. What he would've looked like when he smiled. What his laugh would've sounded like.

What has been so upsetting to me in thinking about that comment is the implication that these things I grieve should somehow be less important because he wasn't my first or my only. That not getting to know my son is less of a tragedy because I have a daughter. Or because I may yet get to know another son. The implication that seems to me to be trending towards the hated "you can always have another" line that is the very definition, the very embodiment of the cluelessness of the world around us. The implication that, if extended as logic requires, would indicate that first babies who die lose their specialness, their importance, or the amount of grief allotted to them if or when their parents bring home a living sibling.

Had they lived, our children would be seen and counted as individuals, judged, hopefully, on their own merits. Do they not deserve the same in death? To be seen and mourned as individuals? To matter as individuals?  

So this is my point, a fine one perhaps, but one that has asserted itself as supremely important to me over the last couple of days. The experience of loss, the human interactions of it, the physicality, the treatment we get from medical professionals, from our families, from our friends, the ripples, all of that can be worse.  The situation any given mother or any given family may find themselves in can certainly be worse. Comparing is human nature, and it is ok.

But not when it comes to the babies. I believe that placing differential values on the children based on what else is going on with the family should never be on the menu. Denying me my grief does not speak to who I am or what I have, either in abstract terms or as compared to anyone else. What it does is minimizes my son, makes him less than a person in his own right. And that is just not something I can accept. 

What I believe about each of our lost babies, regardless of anything else, is that they were loved, they were wanted, they are missed, and they are grieved. Other things can be worse. But this, the place where we all started this journey, this place can't really be better.

In.vi.si.ble Boun.da.ries

Invisible, but I see them. Feel them intensely, almost as if they are branded lines on my very skin.

Is it because I created them, and thus only I can discern? Maybe.

I created these boundaries. I stepped over them to the other side.

When F died.

Most of the time, for the girls, I work hard to break down walls, remove boundaries and rip open the horizon further. Push the ceiling, destroy obstacles and burn down the limits. I want to show them, with a dramatic wave of my arm, “Look, girls, look! There are no limits, no lines. Skin color does not matter; what you eat for breakfast is of no significance. We are the human race, don’t let anyone convince you that you are anything less because you are different. Don’t ever let such boundaries trip you up. The world is yours, take it!”

Little did I know I only knew a small measly corner of the world. Before F died.

After F died, a trapdoor swung open and threw me into the world of bereaved parents. Totally unprepared for this unplanned trip, but a visa was granted. Swiftly. There were no guidebooks, no maps, and forget about a tour guide. Once you’re in, you’re in. Sink, swim, or float. Gulp some of that bitter water and swallow it; scream for help or yell for injustice. But once in, you’re citizen for life.

This world is right here, superimposed with the world of healthy, living babies, but not everyone knows of it. Sometimes a person will catch a glimpse of it, and will nod as if they understand. Only they do not realize that invisible boundaries separate us.

It is a world I sometimes have to slip out of, to conjure up some form of “normalcy” for the girls. Park days, play dates, library, shopping… … all those things we used to do. Only I know I do it with a different mind, and a different body. Often while on the other side of the boundary.

In the early months after F died, I built a brick wall up around me. In this little dark corner of the Republic of Grief I built my space, since it looked like we’re in for the long haul. And slowly, I started to probe around. I found other walls, and run my palms over them, tenderly, and gingerly. Yes, yes, some places feel so familiar! Yes, what you said! Exactly! That, that, you just fleshed out in your words. You speak my heart… … I found I was not alone.

The thing is, everyone in the Republic of Grief has dual citizenship, because they still need to be a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, employee, etc. Mouths need to be fed and bills need to be paid. Kids cannot survive on cereal for months on end and they need to be washed and their hair disentangled. You stay in the Republic for ever and ever but it is not a full-time hide-out. Sorry, but on top of the grieving you still need to go and scrub the dingy toilet and queue up to pay for your toilet rolls and/or frozen dinners. Some people require you to hurry up and get over it already so they can stop tiptoeing around you and just say what they want without worrying that you will be upset/hurt/sad/hysterical, etc.

So, like putting on a pair of very ill-fitting thong, with something always getting into the wrong space all the time, you try to fit back into the world where baby losses are a non-feature. You squirm and try to smile and valiantly act like a normal person would because really, you cannot freak out like a moron every other minute. But usually your awkwardness is overlooked in this grief-forgetting world. It is ok. Once you show your face all is assumed fine again.

Bu what can you do? You need that paycheck and your children need their friends and stuff. Moreover, can I really bury myself in this house until green mold grows all over me and my children outgrow all their clothing and have to wear dirty underwear three times over? Can I really wait till I am all-OK before venturing out? (And goodness knows if I’m ever going to be all-ok) So you go on, trudging and fumbling.

And you become acutely aware of these invisible boundaries that exist between you and the non-bereaved. In your mind, you make different lists and think different thoughts. Your heart beats different and flips over different things. Some words mean a different shade of meaning to you. Some dates are just h*ll to go through. Some hours of the day especially witchy. When you sit and eat together you are poignantly aware that you are swallowing something else together with that lopsided piece of quiche, and those half-decaying leaves of salad. And you wash down your foods with different thoughts in your head. You may go to the same stores, but a different memory is triggered in yours when you enter and exit (The last time I was here was to buy something to wrap his ashes in.)

You stand next to each other at the park, swinging your respective kids on the swings, observing the temperature trends and talking about diapers, but all the time this line is drawn between you and your friend. It seems you are standing in the same, physical space, but actually, that boundary puts you in a different dimension. You look at your friend and all of a sudden her words are just a jumble of mumbles, because her language is no longer yours.

Oh, you will never know, you will never understand. How I can still put hot food on the table and get out of the house looking decent, when every muscle in my body is aching for my baby. You have no idea. You have no idea how much strength, and how much courage I need to muster, with clenched fists and gnashed teeth, in order to get through every second of the day, until I finally collapse at the end of it. Behind every thought is the question, “Why is he not here? Why can’t he be here?” Every cell in my body writhes in pain with the memory of the loss, and the void. Every glance I take is in search of my baby. Every breath I take is caustic with reminders of what I have lost. My skin burns to feel the softness of my baby against me; my arms ache to hold and nourish and love. My fingers stretch out in an attempt to hold, but I do not even have memories, except of the pain and shock. My loss is the front-page of my brain every time it gets turned on, even if many pages are running at the same time. Oh, you have no idea what it is, how it is, to live life like this.

This invisible boundary exists. Sometimes attempts to erase this invisible boundary are made, like, “I know, my grandfather died five years ago. We were very very close.” Or, “Our pet toad died last week, it was really devastating.” But no, it is different to have a grandfather die than a baby die (and I do not even have the strength to think how devastated I will be when my beloved grandmother departs one day). Yes, any death is a big loss, including the death of a pet toad, and no accountant or mathematician will be able to put a value on our losses so we can compare.

But the loss of a child is way too different. Aches very different; hurts very unusually. The loss is a very intimate one, tied to our bodies. This child was once a part of you. His heartbeat was beating inside of you, with you. You fed him, nurtured him, curled up to sleep with him. You made promises to show him the world and to shelter and protect him.  And so a baby loss is very different. Unfortunately, the pain and insanity experienced by baby losses can only be known by going through it personally. And I would love to ban everyone from entering the Republic of Grief. Forever. That place should not exist.

Grieving is a full-time job. The intensity of it varies by day and moments and it is not necessarily always hands-on. But there is no leaving it, just getting to know it so well, wearing down its rough edges, so that you can carry it more comfortably in your heart, without having to bleed every second. Grieving is done not just in the Republic of Grief but also in the “normal” world. In the normal world our grief looks different, and our grieving is done differently.

And it creates invisible boundaries.