Layers

I don't remember what I was wearing that day. I remember my long black winter coat because before I left I asked Monkey for a hug. But I don't remember what I was wearing under it, what I must've seen all day as I caught sight of myself-- my sleeves as I typed, my pants as I sat down, my belly as I balanced the laptop on my lap while I waited for Monkey at gymnastics that afternoon or as I waited for the kicks that never came that night. I remember the dinner I ate as I tried to coax those kicks, but I don't remember what the shirt was that covered the belly on which I balanced the plate. I remember that the radio was on as I drove to the hospital, and I remember that I thought the program was interesting, but I can no longer remember what it was about. Now that I know that the full moon was in fact supposed to be there, I can verify that the memory that started knocking on my brain's door recently, of the full disc as I drove, wasn't a figment of my imaginataion fabricated later on-- I really did see it. But I don't remember what I was wearing. Not as far as anyone else could see, at least.

I remember what I was wearing under my shirt. A bellybra, that wonderful contraption that distributes the weight of the belly over the whole back, making it much easier to function. Even if I didn't rememeber, this detail I could reconstruct, as I never went a day without it the last couple of months of A's pregnancy. But I do actually rememeber. I remember because the nurse asked me about it as she was preparing the probe to look for the heart beat. I gave her a glowing review, and she said she needs to remember it for next time because her back was killing her the last couple of months with her first-- what with being on her feet all day. I wonder, given what happened in the next 5 minutes, does she remember it now?

When I first discovered that I couldn't remember what I was wearing I thought of it as a good thing-- next time around, I reasoned, I wouldn't have bad associations with any of my maternity clothes, I could wear all of them again. Except for that bellybra, of course.

I am 28 weeks 4 days along today. If you come to my house, I doubt you can miss the belly. And yet, when I am out and about, I still wear a shawl. Unless it's over 90 degrees outside, and then I put on this net-like thing that goes over my head, is long, and a bit shiny, but is far less of a  disguise, though it still makes me feel a little covered, a little protected.  I waddle, by the way. Thanks to the pelvic pain that makes it hard to walk straight. So I waddle, and the belly sticks out farther then the boobs, and has for a couple of weeks now. And still I insist on having something that gives me some illusion of maybe fooling someone out there.

At first I thought that the shawls were my protection against the stupid that is out there, against the untouched who think a pregnant belly equals a live healthy baby 40-X  weeks from now. I didn't want to talk to them. I didn't want to deal with their "congratulations" and their "is this your first?"s. I didn't want to give them an opportunity to tell me all about their utterly normal life where assumptions of invincibility hold. A bit later I understood that I was also avoiding having to tell people that I am not jumpy and comfy because the baby before this one died. I didn't want to have to tell the story, anew.

It's a weird thing, really. I want people to know about A. How few people know that he existed used to be one of the biggest crazy-makers in my head. It's better now, the crazy is, but this particular thought is still sad to me. It seems, though, that I need to control the context in which I want people to learn. I don't know that it is even possible, but I seem to want to introduce him in some way that isn't all about pain. I want people to see that the pain is there because of how much we love him, how much we wanted him, how much we miss him now.

I remember, so very vividly, being pregnant with A, out and about with Monkey, and conscious of how lucky we were and of how much our luck can hurt to look at. I was thinking of infertiles at the time, but boy can a sight like this hurt a dead baby mama's heart.  I remember, too, last spring seeing pregnant bellies and babies wherever I turned my head. A veritable sea of happy that had no room for me. I started coping by making up sad stories for these happy people I saw on the street-- this one had five miscarriages before this baby, that one needed an IVF or three. I knew, even as I was making up these stories that they can't all be true. But that was what I needed to do to be able to navigate the world around me.

Recently some of the dead baby bloggers have been confessing to having a hard time with other people's pregnancies.  Is it any wonder? And what I realized, reading these bloggers, is that my shawls are a little about all of you too. If I can help it, if I can help it at all, I don't want to add to your hurt. I don't want to, as Bon so aptly put it, stab you with my roundness.

My sister is getting married this weekend. My parents arrived a few days ago and other family is about to descend on us in mere hours. To some degree, I have been measuring this pregnancy in intervals of and between significant events. For the last few weeks I have been terrified that this baby would die before the wedding, adding new layers of terrible to what would be horrific any day all on its own.  Before that I was similarly scared he would not make it through the week Monkey and JD spent in the Old City. 

That Monday, Memorial Day in fact, I wan't feeling as much movement as I had been used to. I tried the water, and the couch, I tried this, that, and the other. And finally I couldn't handle it anymore, and I went in to triage. A friend of mine is a high risk OB in my practice, although he didn't start there until last summer. When I first heard that he was joining the practice, I thought I didn't want him to ever have anything to do with my care-- I didn't want him to have to feel bad if shit hit the fan again. But as I pressed the intercom button outside of triage that Monday, I saw my friend walking down the corridor. And suddenly I very much wanted him to be there. I was alone and scared, and not until that moment did I know how much I wanted to at least not be alone.

It is good to be a friend of the attending, let me tell you.  He brought the shiny new ultrasound machine, not the old clunker that told the doctor all those months ago that A was dead. He was gentle, and kind, and attentive, and exactly what I needed. He didn't just do the one peak to make sure the heart was beating-- he sat there for ten or fifteen minutes carefully studying everything, watching my son wiggle behind my anterior placenta that with its movement-cushioning ways was the likely culprit behind that day's freakout. Twenty more minutes on the monitor and one fine-looking strip later I walked out of the triage room next door to the one in which they told me A was dead. I was light-headed, shaken a little.  But I managed to only be ten minutes late for dinner with a friend. And the next morning I took a deep breath and pulled that bellybra out of the drawer.

When A died, six months seemed like a ridiculously long way off, like it should be enough time to close the gaping wound, to let my heart scar over.  And now, nearly a year and five months out, what I am wondering is whether there is ever an end to the layers left to uncover. I suspect not so much.

glowing in the woods: june 2008

It is a little hard to believe that yet another month had gone by, and it is time again to annouce our monthly "Glowing in the Woods" award! It was head-breaking to decide who gets the award--all these pieces are beautiful, poignant and touching. Each is a treasure you pick up and fondle and admire and have a hard time putting down. It is amazing how some find the words to those feelings we have been struggling to put our finger on.

This month we honour C. at My Resurfacing for Linus carries one, too -- an eloquent metaphor to the grief that bereaved parents feel. Wrap your heart around this post that is hard to tear away from.

Remember to nominate your favourites every month: posts that move you, resonate with you--posts we all need to share.

As mentioned last month, we are listing the nominees so you can all see how hard it is to choose who to give the award to. So much thanks to all who handed in nominations!

June's nominees:

Angie at Bring the Rain for Clay

Aite via Glow in the Woods for How to be there for your friend

Alice at An Empty Chair at our Table for Leagues of grief

Antigone at Antigone Lost for Hopeless

Hallmark Holidays

The male perspective in this particular flavor of grief is so often overlooked by what I'll call "society at large."  Husbands are often asked how their wives are doing, but the question is seldom posed to them directly.  Men walk a fine line between what is acceptable in grief, and what is acceptable emotionally to display as a man.  Today CDE, of Once in a Lifetime, contributes his thoughts on a difficult holiday.  CDE and his wife, STE of So Dear and Yet So Far, lost their twin sons  in December/January '07-08.

 
In the past, I'd never given Father's Day that much thought. It was a Hallmark holiday, like Valentine's Day, like Mother's Day. It was a day to call my father and shoot the breeze with him for a little bit. But not much else. I remember one especially amusing one, during a period when my life had sort of gone to shit, when some cable channel thought it'd be good to show Death of a Salesman for Father's Day. Nothing says "I love you, Dad" like infidelity, suicide, and the shabby, slow death of the American Dream. But Father's Day? No big deal. I spent most of my early adult life being spectacularly unsuited for fatherhood.

Eventually, I got to the point where I probably wasn't any less qualified for the job than most people. I'd matured, developed prospects, and most importantly, found someone who wanted to bear my children. When our lives reached the point that we could actually consider trying to have kids, the thought of being a father filled me with something resembling terror. That terror subsided once we realized that it wasn't going to be as simple as having unprotected sex at the right time of the month. It was hard to lose sleep over the impending upheaval of my life and identity as a person when repeated IUIs yielded nothing more than a lot of crushed hopes. Eventually, the fear of being a parent subsided, replaced by the fear of never being a parent. And in the process, I'd spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of fathers. What it means to be a man, and to be a father. What is expected of us, what isn't expected. The roles men do and don't play. I resolved to be a good father. To stand beside my wife and raise our children right, to be strong, smart, brave and kind.

Eventually, we got pregnant. And immediately, the terror came back, but shot through with elation. We found out that we were having twin boys. I was going to be a father to two boys, and immediately I began thinking about how I would talk to them, how I would explain the birds and the bees, how you shouldn't start fights, but should finish them, how being smart was nothing of which you should be ashamed. How I would tell a son who came out to me that he was loved just the way he was. I added the Dangerous Book for Boys to my Amazon wish list. Boys. Twin boys. I think it was at that point that it stopped being fatherhood and started being Fatherhood. And then we lost the boys, and it stopped being fatherhood, Fatherhood, or anything else.

And it's at this point, in the middle of my grief, my loss, my sadness and rage, that Father's Day finally means something. It is yet another reminder of who I could have been, but am not, and may never be. It is my empty arms, my days not spent shopping for onesies and strollers,  my evenings not spent cooking dinner for the family, my nights not spent with a baby asleep on my chest. I am mourning the absence of something I never actually had. No child grew inside me, nobody expected me to have the same connection to my boys that my wife did. But even though all I had was the idea, the potential, the love for what could have been, that emptiness, that lack of possibility, hurts so much that some days it drains me, empties me, robs me of the desire to do anything but sit on the couch and retreat into the shelter of fiction. I've been told that I'm not like the average man, and I strongly suspect that I wouldn't have been like the average father. But the role of father is one I had learned to take seriously, to respect, and one to which I aspired over the last two years. Father's Day would be a new chance for celebration, for recognition. Hallmark holiday? Sure. But "hallmark" has multiple meanings, and I'm spending this particular holiday acutely aware of falling short of one. 

turn and face the strange

you haven't changed a bit, she effuses, intuiting this wisdom from a superficial eight-second conversation in the grocery aisle amidst the turnips.

i swallow a flippant reply.  i haven't seen her in, like, nineteen years, maybe since high school graduation.  i recall the picture of she and i at prom, casual friends: in said photo, i am wearing a pastel floral puff-sleeved dress in which i resemble a large Laura Ashley sofa, and my hair is braided on top of my head like Heidi of the Swiss Alps.  my shoes have bows on them and my eyebrows are as fluffy and thick as a caterpillar.   haven't changed?  haven't changed?  oh god, old girl...shut your mouth, that's crazy talk.

i understand that my once-upon-an-acquaintance was merely being polite.  she wasn't trying to suggest that i haven't grown, or grown up, or that i look like a refugee from 1989.  but her comment still spawned in me a bizarre and powerful urge to strip my clothes off right there amongst the root vegetables and the happy shoppers and force her to see my scars, acknowledge them...all the years and the wrinkles and the sorrows, all that life has wrought on me and me on myself.   i wanted to shake those raw, scabbed beauties in her placid face, shock her with them, own them.  at least, erm, figuratively.

it's been a couple of months since i had that conversation.  in the interim, i've wondered at the vehemence of my reaction.  it most definitely stemmed from my grief, however far along the healing path i may think i am.  and it reflects, i think, a process of integrating grief into my own identity.  in the early months after Finn died, all i longed for - on those rare occasions that i subjected myself to random interactions at all - was to "pass" as normal.  had some aged cheerleader told me then that i hadn't changed, i would have preened, i think, at a performance gone right...and then darted back to the sanctuary of home to nurse the raw wound that was my reality.  later still, i just longed not to be reminded publicly of said wound at all; hated to be exposed in my grief in any circumstances not under my control (ie, any circumstances outside my own blog, basically).

but then i guess i internalized it.  i accepted it, and came to terms with it, and became able to speak it, and became accustomed to it as a part of me.  and that has been good.  bringing my grief out into the light has, for the most part, shrivelled its power to wound me, and allowed me to become some version of whole again.

but i'm not the same as i was before.  as i was not the same after any of the other great upheavals/sorrows/betrayals of fate that have sporadically marked me since that hideous prom picture was taken.  as i was not the same after i fell in love for the first time, not the same after i brought home my living son and discovered the strange half-life joy of sleep deprivation.  life changes us, the best and worst things the most deeply.  i think that needs to be honoured, though not necessarily in grocery store aisles.  and yet i wonder if i've integrated grief too much into my sense of self?  if it's normal to react so fiercely to someone's passing comment that i haven't changed?  if it's healthy to have integrated grief and scarring so much into my identity that i'm offended when someone - even innocently - tries to pretend it's not there?

i don't want to go back to the person i was before Finn.  i'm not sure i ever did, even in the worst of it:  hell, i was not so carefree even before, and in his short life he taught me and brought me things i will keep close to me all of my days.  but as i've healed, i've become more attached to that not wanting to go back, more invested in my self-identity as this tempered vessel, this patch-ridden human being.  i have become disdainful of attempts to present life as sunny and perfect, dismissive of easily-won happiness as naive, even banal.  i have also become inclined to assume that things will go wrong, particularly around pregnancy and childbirth, because my experience has repeatedly borne this out in one way or another.  i have succumbed to the hubris of believing that i am special, unlucky, marked...even though in this online world i have come to realize that i haven't lived the half of it.

i think part of this identification with loss has been a reaction designed to assert my right to space and existence in a world that often seeks to dismiss the sorrowing, bury them with their dead.  but i wonder about going too far, holding so tightly to the fact of loss that the rest of me gets subordinated to that tragedy?  is the fierce, fey compulsion to inflict my stretch marks on a bygone acquaintance at the Shop & Save an, erm, bad sign? 

do you want to be told you haven't changed a bit?

How I Knew

For the record, I was never a Tom Cruise enthusiast, but I never in my life thought taking antidepressants would be for me.

For starts, I never suffered from depression.  Sure, I had the teenage angst years where I boo hoo'd over the boyfriend who dumped me, and the "what do I really want to do with my life" mindfuck when my graduate department admitted they had erred when they let in too many students ahead of me and there was to be no financial or professional assistance in the form of grants or jobs in my future.  Sure, I wrote overly-emotive poetry and listened to Pink Floyd's "The Wall."  I had a solid six-hour cry 18 months into my trying-to-conceive misadventure which was odd enough that my husband came home from work early to sit with me.  But I always felt a solid foundation going through these moments -- a sense that there was more to me than that.  I watched a friend crumble after failing her pre-lims, and realized she had wrapped her entire life -- her entire identity -- into this potential profession.  It hit me (as I passed the kleenex) that I was rather lucky:  I liked  this profession enough, but I had other stuff too.  I liked to cook, I liked to run, I liked to travel.  I had super friends, a fabulous boyfriend (who became my husband) and I figured if I had my wits about me, I could probably make money somehow.  Oh, and someday, I wanted a family.

Furthermore, and this is rather embarrassing, but I was never into mind-altering substances.  I  thought smoking was gross, and never even had the experimental attempt -- of either flavor.  Wouldn't know what drugs to take or where to get them, and I was not remotely interested, anyway.  I didn't realize beer tasted good until I moved to the midwest for grad school, and didn't like wine until I could afford something that didn't come in a box or with a black and white generic "Wine" label on it.

Finally, I liked having ultimate control of my body.  From very early on my life, I was a violinist and a soccer player.  So at a young age I figured out that if I practiced something for literally months on end, suddenly one day my fingers would click and lo, I could play the fingered octaves at the start of the Winiawski Violin Concerto.  I liked that if I did wind sprints around my block (two driveways on, two driveways rest) that come game time, I could throw my internal gear shift and move around someone.   I liked the way I could make my body do things, and there was no interest (no way, really) in allowing something to alter my mind that would mess this up.  I liked the control, not the fuzz.  I had no interest in being numb.  

What I failed to perceive, probably because of my immaturity, was that on some level my brain actually wanted to do these things.  That I liked doing these things.  It just seemed too easy that if I set my mind to a marathon, I could eventually make my legs follow.  And I did.  It all worked perfectly.

****

My husband and I joked (in the macabre way that you do, what with the terminal child in your arms) with each other during Maddy's brief week that we were going to need therapy.  But I think it really hit us, a week later without her, that we did indeed need something.  So we dutifully marched in, sat on the couch, and ground our way through the first awful few weeks of having so much to say and not wanting to say a word.

But I still didn't think I needed antidepressants.  Sure, I was depressed all right, my baby died!  Who wouldn't be?  This is just grief.  Everyone probably wants to crawl in a cave and stay there for 20 years.  I wasn't suicidal, I wasn't in denial.  I wasn't showering or eating much out of the coffee food group, but I was getting out of bed.

And there was Bella.  Two and half, still in diapers.  Not in daycare, because, you know, I was going to be home with the baby anyway.  She was my job, my responsibility.  She was my safety net, my bullet proof vest, and I strongly believe the candle which kept me from wanting to stay in my cave for eternity.  And for a good month or so, I could limp from my bed to her room, change a diaper, find her clean clothes, and start a day.  Probably one spent indoors, or sequestered in the yard, close to the door.  If we were lucky, a weepy trip to the grocery store.  Never the playground.  Never a playdate.  We let her activities lapse.

And one afternoon, Friday, about four weeks after Maddy died, she decided not to nap.

This was a completely unremarkable occurrence for a child who had never really napped in her lifetime, no different than any other day circa 1 p.m. where my tone of voice edges on exasperation.  But she would not acquiesce to quiet time, she would not stay in her room, she would not sit still and have me read to her.  And I was exhausted.  Of it all.  Of the grief, the loss, the aching, the trying, the getting up, changing diapers, putting my feet on the floor every morning with the realization that this was my life -- not some nightmare.  I collapsed on my bed, and could not get up.  I could not open my eyes.  I could not deal with my life.  I lay there glued to my sheets, with a toddler ambling about my house, and I could not call anyone on the phone, sequester her in the room with me.  Immobile.  Tired.  Comatose.

What stunned me was not so much that I couldn't get up, but that my mind ceased to ask for it.  My brain -- instead of screaming at me to lift my eyelids already -- shut down and concluded that this semi-conscious state was acceptable, regardless of the toddler who could possibly tumble down the stairs, walk out the front door, or figure out the safety latch under the kitchen sink.  My husband was at work, but I couldn't lift the phone.  Two neighbors had offered to come at a moment's notice if I needed a "time out," but I somehow forgot.  I could no longer rely on my mental faculties to prod me in the right direction and encourage the rest of me to move.  The part of my mind that once compelled me to run 26 miles now couldn't force me to lift my head.  It was . . . . frightening. Sorry Tom, if your brain doesn't send the signal to take vitamins or go for a jog, you ain't gonna.

First thing Monday morning, with resignation, I called my doctor for antidepressants.

A few of my friends had tidy little metaphors for exactly how ADs made them feel:  a tufted cushion to stand on; a buoy to keep their head above water.  I'm not really sure what my reigning metaphor was, but I can tell you this:  it slowed my brain way the hell down.  I went from racing from one deadbaby thought to another to actually being able to catch my breath between sobs.  It allowed me to sleep without tossing for two hours.  It allowed me to drive without breaking down in a (hazardous) blinding torrent of tears and shudders. It also diverted my attention from sticking on one ugly thought for too long:  going through the life support removal replay?  Mind quietly segues to lunch.

It allowed me to function.  I dare say, it helped me grieve.  I had a job to do, and it helped me do my job.  Although my brain never went to the place of endangering myself or Bella with weapons or whatnot, by having my body do nothing, it was in fact endangering us both.  The antidepressant did not make me numb, it did not make me miss Maddy any less.  It by no means made me happy.  It made me get up, it made me move when I needed to, it helped me pay attention.

After a few months, it became readily apparent to me that I had lost my short-term memory --  most likely from the shock of Maddy's death, but possibly abetted by the ADs.  I also noticed when I went to play the ABC -game ("Your name?  Gah.  Lessee:  A, Alice, Allison, Angie, B, Barbara, Betty . . . ") that my mind would not stay on task and focus long enough to get through the C's.  I'm guessing the ADs saw this as anxious fretting and tried to shut my brain down and think about puppies or daisies or something, but it became increasingly frustrating to the point that it made me overwhelmingly anxious.  Heart-racing, short-of-breath anxious.  Given that I felt a bit better all around anyway, I quit taking them at six months.  I haven't felt like I needed them since.

It probably bears repeating that I didn't feel I needed them until a good 4-5 weeks after Maddy died.  If I were to search around in med journals, I bet I might find some reason for this.  I don't think it's unreasonable to think that our body produces hormones and adrenaline after childbirth in order to get us through the first grueling sleepless weeks of our babies' lives.  I know the act of breastfeeding produces oxytocin, and I'm willing to bet letting down does a bit too.  All this conspires to both give us an amount of energy and simultaneously relax and think, perhaps, that we can do this just fine, thanks.  The first month or so many of us are also gently supported by the onslaught of cards, flowers, donations, email, phone calls, meals, and friends and family.  They too dry up about 4-6 weeks later.  I've seen a number of women here on the 'net crash weeks to months after the event.  It's not unusual.  And don't think if you haven't sought help by that point that somehow it's embarrassing if you do now.  It's not sliding backward, it's just what's happening now.

ADs are not to be taken lightly, in either direction:  you may not need them, but grow to rely on them.  Conversely, you may need them, but fear or not understand them.  Either scenario is dangerous in my estimation.  I can't tell you exactly when and if you need them, or when or if you should go off.  In my mind, it was crystal clear:  the day not only my body, but my mind stopped responding was the day I felt I needed them.  The day my mind began to rebel against their function I got off.  To quote every big-pharm commercial:  see a doctor, but please see one, if you think you might need additional help, or need a different dosage or flavor with less side effects, or or if you're ready to leave them behind.

I never, ever thought I'd need ADs.  I had seen them work for others, so I wasn't opposed to them as a rule, but just didn't think I was the type.  I had a foundation!  I was more than this death!  I had a life to live!  I've run a marathon, for Pete's sake!  But all that meant nothing when I realized I -- my mind -- had neglected Bella for an afternoon.  And not cared.  And there was no way I was going to let it do that to either of us again.

journey's end

My father and stepmother were in town, so they took me out to dinner at a restaurant a good deal more upscale than the ones I usually frequent.  The menu, printed in copperplate gothic bold, featured a smörgåsbord of resolutely non-kosher choices -- Curried Tasmanian Crabcakes, Ginger-Wrapped Skate, Pork Loin Dulce de Leche.  I asked the waiter what the soup of the day was, but he said he couldn't tell me because "The chef personally creates it based on what he finds freshest at the market that morning." 

We reviewed my nephews' soccer season, wondered why my sister never seems to be able to find a job or a boyfriend, critiqued the recent Supreme Court decisions on money laundering, and lamented the housing market in London.  

At the end of the evening, as we were saying goodbye, my stepmother reached out to hug me and said, "We were so worried about you, Niobe.  We didn't even know what to say."

"I'm fine,"  I said.  And I meant it.

After the twins died, I read a lot of articles about bereavement and mourning.  They said that the journey of grief goes on for a lifetime.  They said that you never truly get over the death of a child.  They said that the child who died will always have a special place in your heart. 

They didn't say what to do when you come, unexpectedly, to the journey's end; when your fingers fumble, searching for that familiar hole in your heart, only to find it's no longer there.