from our side
Late for work, late to bed, dishes in the sink, beer bottles strewn through the house like a breadcrumb trail to my evening flameout is how I roll. How about you?
I was ready to start complaining about how tough it was to work after being up all night with that little bugger screaming my sleep away. I was ready to become a machine calibrated only for the mom/baby show to shine.
Instead, now, I'm part therapist, part rock, part disaster, part ogre.
But in the end I can only do so much. No matter what, I'm still something of a spectator to the deep well of grief that my wife inhabits. She can't help but feel this more profoundly because of the specific physicality of her experience. Our emotional trauma is roughly equivalent, but my physical self is essentially unchanged. Sure, my shit is liquid on those mornings when I wake up devastated and insane. Yes, my neck and shoulders are crimped and twisted by this invisible, relentless weight of sadness. There is no question that I have grown fat and lazy on a diet of avoidance and lassitude.
Frankly, I'm psyched when I can get up and do anything at all. The laze comes easy to me. Stayed in bed until noon the other day. Noon. By the time I had breakfast and finished coffee it was time to start thinking about dinner. Lunch didn't even make it into the rotation. Poised on the brink of parenthood, I've been tossed back into a life where sleeping until noon is actually an option. And I choose that option only because facing the day is more difficult than feeling bad about wasting it.
For those of you that already had children, this all must be completely different. I'm sure it is easier to focus on the living children than the one that didn't survive. But for those of us whom our lost offspring is our first, the wrenching denial of everything that was to come is nearly overpowering. I've never been one to descend to the depths of "Fuck Everything" that I now sometimes swim through. Sure I touched on it here and there. Perhaps dipped a toe into that boggy morass of nihilism and disregard during a rough patch, but I never submerged into that particular muck. Wasn't my style at all.
Now, somehow, I have to make this muck into a home. Losing your child is a lesson in how to make Shit Houses. Here's a pile of crap, live in it.
And not only live in it, but you have to share this Feces Condominium with someone else who is probably in many ways even worse off than you.
Are you a patient person? Can you listen well and respond without anger? How do you fare when you see someone that has everything you want, but complains about how tough it is? Are you capable of letting go of expectations and accepting the World at face value? If so, a career in having your child die just might be for you. Everyone else need not apply.
There is no one set of rules and instructions to help us deal with the loss of our child. For each person, this path through grief and despair is utterly solitary and painfully unique. And even though we get it more than anyone else our wives know, we still don't get it like they do. And that pisses me off, too.
I am the necessary, vital partner, but secondary to the vessel that carried my son. Without me she would crumble, but I am a hot breeze away from disintegration myself. She wants me to be there, to help her, to discuss the steaming pile of shit that is our shared life, but all I have been doing all day is fighting back the relentless demons that plague my every thought. By the time I get home I've finally won, and there suddenly is a new battle for me to fight. It's not me against her, it's us against her own horde of demons, but sometimes I've got nothing left.
There is no easy way to say "I've spent the last 10 waking hours thinking about our dead son and I simply cannot hear any words pertaining to said awfulness. Everything you say I have already thought, and I've chosen to keep silent. When you speak these words, they rip me open doubly, once because I know, I know I know, and another time because I know how destroyed you are too."
Can't we just watch TV? Can't we just sigh together and let that be enough? Can't you see how I move slow through the world and lash out at every obstacle? Would it be easier if I showed my true emotions and dismantled this entire reality with my own bare hands? I can destroy everything, you know. I can do it. There's nothing left anyway, so it would be easy to take that next step and show everyone how nothing everything has become by destroying everything in sight.
It wouldn't even be a rage thing. I wouldn't hurt anyone at all. I'd just start with this keyboard, move to the desk and then piece by piece sledgehammer this house into rubble. Sidewalk and street would be next but it would be the car that would really take some time. Those things are built to last. It wouldn't though. Not in the path of my focused pain. Helpless to help my son be alive, I could demonstrate to everyone the futile emptiness of this life. At least it would be action with an end result.
Look, I could say. Look what I've done for us. Now everyone knows what the World looks like from our side. Our desolation is now obvious and clear and we don't have to talk about any of it anymore.
I don't do that, though, and by not I am showing you how much I love you and want this World to work out somehow. The containment of my rage is an act of love. The daily denial of vomit and insanity is proof of my commitment. I can keep standing up and moving forward with you, but every millimeter of motion and attention takes the entire focus of my will.
The big picture of this pain is impossible to comprehend all at once. All I can manage to figure out is the very next thing in front of me. So each next thing that comes my way, I try to make it as good as I can. I know what makes me happy. Simple things I can control like sleeping until noon or steak grilled to perfection gives me pleasure in a world where joy is rare and fleeting.
I don't aim for joy anymore. I aim for contentment, I aim for an absence of pain. The problem is, to get there I sometimes have to shut down so many systems and thoughts that I can barely speak. If I am quiet and distant it is because I have spent the day raging against my pain. When I am brusque and bitter it is because of how much I hate what we have been denied. I know she is not my enemy, but there is no one to battle against to right this terrible wrong. Caresses and communication are sometimes collateral damage to the trauma of this experience.
I cannot take away her pain, so it feels like I can't do anything worthwhile at all. I couldn't stop what happened to our son. I could not fix him before he was gone. I cannot go back and get him and bring him to her, and I cannot alter the awful truth of every single day.
But excuses suck and I can always do better. I can share the simple pleasures with her, and listen even when the words shred me to pieces. I've been shredded so thoroughly by now, another tear doesn't hurt much at all. I can hold her and touch her skin and say nothing at all and be certain it was exactly what she wanted and needed right then and there.
We are not enemies here. One or the other is never to blame. All the tools and methods we had for working together have been tested to the limit or thrown out the window along with our hopes and dreams, everything except for one thing. That One Thing is that there is no one in the world except for her, my wife, and I would do anything and everything to take away all the pain of these last nine months.
I'll do the dishes. I'll sweep this Shit House. I'll drive to the store and buy organic strawberries and fair trade dark chocolate and I'll feed it to her piece by piece and listen quietly while she rages with tears against her internal, implacable demons. I know she'll hold me when I can't fight them either, and she won't make a racket cleaning up my detritus when I'm sleeping till noon.
She knows that in my dreams I just might find our son. It's one of the only place left I have to look. The other place is in her eyes, and I always find Silas there. Sometimes, though I cannot handle that either. The pain I see inside her breaks me to pieces, too.
~~~~~~~~~~
What do you and your partner fight about? How do you each handle stress and pain? What do you need most? What is the worst part of your every day? How do you help each other deal with grief? What could both of you do better? What are you awesome at together?
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It's actually harder than you might think.
Gabriel was our first too. My husband ran to work; I stayed home and cried. I wonder if he felt the way you felt. He never said. We grieved a lot together, too.
We've come a very long way over the past six years (and two born live children). We squabble over the usual things: money, time at home, household duties. I am trying to learn to be gentler with him, but that has little to do with grief -- more like a personality flaw on my end. I'm learning to be less anxious. Not always well. We're only eight years into this marriage thing, and we've gone through the worst thing. So we're trying to figure the other stuff out to make it work.
ciao,
rpm
Inanna - I still find it terribly difficult to negotiate parenting my children. I want to *be* with all of my children. Sometimes it's difficult to stay *here*, when I want to be *there*....It wasn't fair to our first child that our attention was completely ripped away from him when his sister died...and it's not fair to our two subsequent children who have no frame of reference for their sister's death. But I am so grateful for him - if he weren't here when she died, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be now.
Dave and I handle stress and pain differently. I can't speak for how he experiences it, but I experience it differently each day. Today I exploded, melted down, and yelled. Not about Tikva, but about other things. Unaddressed sadness, perhaps. We take turns having our little erruptions, and sometimes they are bigger than others, and sometimes we can hold each other through them, and other times we just need to take and give each other space. I guess the thing that stands out a lot for me right now is just how much we are a surviving family of three, not a couple who lost their baby with another living daughter. Dave, Dahlia and I are going through this together - just like it is the three of us who knew Tikva and have to learn what it means to be a family without her here.
What an insightful post. Thanks Chris, as always for your thoughtful and honest views on grief from a man's perspective. Shane and I don't really fight about too much. In the earlier months of our grief, I became anxious when the feeling of "we're together in this, baby, no one understands like you do" started to slip away and Shane became quieter about his grief. At the time, I needed to feel him beside me as much as I had in the hours and days following Calvin's death. Somehow, that unity, that feeling of being bound by tragedy began to disappear as Shane turned his grief inward. I saw him laughing and talking with his friends and I resented him for it. How could anyone possibly laugh again after what we had just lived through? I confronted him about it. We fought, we cried, he withdrew into online gaming and into inappropriate conversations in chatrooms. I spent hours searching blogs, reading stories about other families who had lost their babies. We had a lightbulb moment when our marriage almost came crashing down. I needed him to acknowledge our son more, he needed me to not cry as much. We came to an understanding that has miraculously worked for us. I blog about Calvin and he leaves me the freedom to say what I want by not reading my blog. We talk less about him but do more to honour him. We work together to support Children's Hospital in his name. He needs to "do" to feel better, I need to "feel" to work out my grief. Acceptance of where each other is at on this lonely road has saved us. Through our son's death, we have refocused the love in our marriage on each other, on being tender and supportive when we need each other. Our sex life has become richer, more fulfilling, more love centred. We are also better with our remaining children, our two daughters. We spend more quality time with them, we are more openly affectionate and loving when we correct their behaviour. It's been a rough time for all of us, sometimes it's hard to remember that we have to keep living and that we can't lay in bed all day weeping. Sometimes I wish we could.
We don't necessarily fight, but I feel my husband looking in, as you do. I feel us trying to hold strong, for each other. Forcing a strength that we, or I, don't necessarily feel. In the early days we were like dominoes... as I started to feel a little stronger, my man would fall into a tearful heap, and vice versa. Now, perhaps it still happens but more is internalised for both of us. I still cry, but it's more often in private. He is probably the same.
The only things we fight about are inconsquential, for the most part. But somehow it all comes down to either the pulling in, or the pushing away, that one or the both of us have done since Ben died. The emotional closeness we once had is mostly gone--sometimes we get it back, ever so briefly.
We've both contained our rage, but I remember those early days of wanting to smash everything in sight. Keep talking to each other--that's really all you can do.
I have three children, and I am thankful for them every day, but I must say that keeping myself connected to them has gotten harder. And that sounds horrible but after losing a baby at 15 weeks pg, oh how the thought of losing one my precious children at age 3 or 5 just knocks the wind out of me, and I fight the urge to push them away becuz when something bad happens to me I push everything else away becuz I don't ever want to feel a hurt like that again. I am so grateful for my children, without them I don't think I would still be here, I would have faded away.
Thank you for writing so openly and honestly, does it sound horrible to say that I wish my husband felt that way.
I know what you mean about the desperation of losing your first - as obviously we are in that boat too - the only thing dragging us forward right now is the 16 week old baby growing inside me. Whether or not "easier" was the right word to use in your post, I get what you meant. We have less reason to go on. Less reason to get up in the morning. No other little people to fill our hearts and our days. Being a childless parent absolutely sucks. It is not necessarily worse, just very different. But then hey, all of our experiences are different. It all sucks.
Big hugs Chris - I know Father's Day is soon for you guys. Thankfully for Simon, he gets until September to prepare for his second one as a childess father.
We are awesome at making each other laugh, still. The more we can do that, I think, the better we'll be in the long run.
Your line about having other children making the grief easier struck me. Like a knife through the heart, actually. We have three sons, and lost our fourth at 19 weeks due to cord prolapse.
I can tell you that my grief has been ugly. There have been days that I wanted to be with Benjamin (the son I lost) more than here on earth. I had so many dreams about our family of six. We included the baby in all of our plans, looked forward to future events and constantly talked about "oh we'll have the baby here with us by then!"
My sons have watched me on the brink of darkness, wondering what they can do to help me, when will they get their old mom back? That old mom doesn't even exist any more, she died when the doctor said "I'm sorry but your baby has passed away". We all lost our innocence when Ben died. My 5 year old says to me almost on a daily basis, Momma when we have another baby, I hope it isn't dead. My favorite was when he asked me "Momma even though Ben is in heaven, I'm still his big brother, right?"
I believe that all of our grief is the same, it can not be measured, nor can it be made to go away, no matter how many other children we have or don't have. Losing a child hurts...period. I will love Benjamin until the day I die, just as you and your wife will love Silas. We are all parents.
With much love,
Christina
Ultimately, we are all on the same side here though. No way is better, worse, harder or easier. All options suck.
I do believe that the grief of first-time parents is different. Parents like Chris and Lani, and so many others here, come home to an empty house. No one would ever say one person's grief is 'easier' than another - but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's vastly different to come home to the hugs and ordinary needs of other children. Not better... but absolutely different. And many days, I would indeed say that there's a layer of tragedy to it that parents of living children don't have to cope with - that layer of "will we ever be able to have children?" when children are so longed for. That's grief and doubt piled upon grief and doubt.
Just wanted to acknowledge that. Living children do not cancel out the experience of losing a child - but for me, they softened the edges of it. They kept me moving.
You are right, I should not have assumed anything about anyone else's experience. I'm sorry my words hurt you. I was just trying to acknowledge that having children already would make this a very different experience and 'easier' was not at all the right word.
my apologies,
Chris
Hang in there. -Molly
It got worse for me after my wife started getting better - I put aside my grief and my pain to help her through hers, and now that she's turned a corner, it's all come crashing back down on me. It's hard to see other people with kids. I find out someone - even someone who struggled and lost as much as us - gave birth, and all I can say is "how very NICE for them." Three shrinks and a psychiatrist between us.
In spite of all of this, I can tell you that it will not be like this forever. It's a cheesy truism to say that the only way out of it is through it, but it's true. Silas will always be with you, whatever comes, but in time, you will be more at peace with it. I know you don't see it, and I know I don't sound like it, but take it from someone who hears himself in your words - brighter days are coming.
Our marriage, well at the moment we are house mates. Well that is what it feels like. I am so paranoid about losing one of my girls that I have to sleep in their room with them at night. I have not slept in the same room as Sam in over a year. He is patient. Me not so much. I am lucky to have him.
Just reading everything here has made me feel pretty crap. I hate to see bitterness between bereaved parents.
I will say that for me, if I could be thankful about anything in the experience of losing my son, it would be that I had my daughter there to drag me out of bed. My heart breaks for anyone who does not have a little person to come and hit them on the head in the morning because they want some breakfast. In saying that having my girls does make me want to hide my grief more as I feel that sometimes others believe I have it so much easier than them. You know I think they are right. I do have it easier but it still hurts when I can't kiss my little boy good night. I hug my girls and wonder where my son is - if he is warm - safe and if he is alone or not.
I find people are so defensive when it comes to the subject of losing a child and if it is was your first or not. None of us are the same. All our stories are unique but have one common thread. For me and I am not speaking for anyone else here - I believe it has been a softer blow.
Forgive me for my grammar. Its midnight - I'm tired and I can't find the energy to proof read this.
My love to all
x
As for the rest: Carly, I'm sorry you read bitterness between parents in this thread, because I really don't. This is a touchy subject, and I'm really impressed that people are able to put their finger on it and articulate their problems with verbage and assumptions, and that others are so sensitive to the response. I've said it before, but I think comparing yourself to others in the grief process is -- to some extent -- healthy. I think it puts parameters on your own grief, and eventually actually forces you to realize that in some ways you may be more grateful for your own experience than someone elses. But there is a point in the pain olympics where it crosses a line, and I think that place comes when we make assumptions about other people's pain. Julia's very first post on GITW was about this very topic:
http://glowinthewoods.squarespace.com/home/2008/5/3/stirring-the-pot-and-singing-kumbaya.html
In short, there's a dangerous piece of logic that says "If you have children and then lost a child, it must not hurt as much, ergo the dead child is not as important." Which posits a rather Sophie's Choice conundrum on a lot of us who really don't want to go there.
If this is a subject that pains you, I think you have every right to say how much it sucks and hurts. Just be careful not to tell others how *they* must be feeling (and I think Chris has made it abundantly clear that that was not his intent).
As others have described here so eloquently, my husband started to unravel when I started to climb out of the ten mile deep hole I'd dug myself to sit and wallow in.
And no, he didn't want to talk, read or write about it. Not often.
And yes, he did want to be left in peace with a beer, the football and some semi-naked lovelies on page3.com
We do it differently. Certainly the semi-naked lovelies don't help me any. We were very different people before life dealt us this stinking hand and losing our daughter only exacerbated that. So we don't grieve together as such. But we grieve in parallel, not touching but still in relation to one another. Just.
I think I already had my two pence (or cents) worth on the living children issue a while back. I'm still fretting over it. Like Kate, I also freely acknowledge that our surviving daughter kept us both moving and, perhaps more importantly, moving together. In an ungainly fashion but in the same general direction of travel, I like to think of us as a kind of pantomime horse. The early days in the NICU were unbearable but now?
We didn't go through that double blow described so beautifully by Sally, that loss of parenthood. Who knows if we would still be standing if we had? I honestly don't know if I would be. With him or without him. I can't imagine.
But, you're also so very right on another point Sally, in this particular sphere all options suck. They just suck.
Thank you for the apology, it was not necessary. Your writing was powerful and made me cry. It has been two months today that I lost my beautiful little baby boy and sometimes I feel so lost. I am getting better with time, I keep super busy, to keep from going crazy. I am not certain that has even helped.
Much love to you and your wife,
Christina
Also, big thanks to Tash for referring back to that post of mine. I think that's the key-- to make sure to not diminish the worth of our children. They have so little that it feels important to preserve this for them-- their worth as an individual regardless of where in life their parents happened to be before or after their deaths.
And, finally, I want to second what Gal said-- that helping our children as they deal with their own grief and find their way in this new reality (from convincing them that it's not their job to make us happy, and that it's ok for adults to be sad when really sad things happen to helping them through their own grief meltdowns and many many conversations about everything and nothing to so many other things) is a big part of life after. I've said before that it has been one of the hardest parts, but also perhaps my highest honor. It really is a family thing, just like Gal said.
"If this is a subject that pains you, I think you have every right to say how much it sucks and hurts. Just be careful not to tell others how *they* must be feeling (and I think Chris has made it abundantly clear that that was not his intent)."
Tash, I was not trying to tell others how to feel, I was just trying to explain that for me having my daughter already when I lost my son was a softer blow than I believe it would have been if she were not here. I really was not getting upset at Chris at all and if I came across that way - Chris I am sorry it was not my intention.
I am sorry if I upset people by saying that I saw bitterness here. I think people have been calm in their responses because everybody respects and loves this place, but I still feel that people may be feeling some bitterness towards each other. I am probably the only one who thinks this, so I should more than likely just keep quite. Instead of stirring the pot.
Just thought I would try and clear my thoughts up.
xxx
I know he fears for me. I know he has always feared for me. I know his fears when Freyja died. I know his fears when I became pregnant with Kees. I saw his fears when Kees was born. I saw those fears slowly disappear when Kees was alive and healthy. I saw that fear come back even greater when Kees died.
We buried our first child, a daughter. We buried our second child, a son. I am now pregnant with our third child.
My husband fears not so much the possible death and burial of our third child, but rather what that death might do to me. And whether he'll be able to continue to be my rock.
Thank you for your post and I'm sorry about Silas.
I don't want to pile on about the surviving children issue but, as the mother of a living twin and a dead twin I can't really experience the world differently anymore.
Here's my two cents. My husband and I have certainly dealt with Rosemary's death in different ways. I remember the early days when he seemed constantly poised to rush into battle, to beat back anyone who said anything to upset me. Helpless to bring our daughter back and hard-wired to solve problems, he really struggled to figure out what to do to help me. It must have been exhausting.
I would say that the answers to all of the questions at the end of your post, however, revolve around the choices that we make in parenting our surviving twin, Millie. Her existence lends a structure and a purpose to our days and has redefined our relationship. It is certainly easier to focus on our living child than our dead one because the focus has a clear purpose. Was my husband playing second fiddle in the early days of Millie's life? Absolutely--and I think he enjoyed watching the show.
I hope you get to spend a future Father's Day weekend reflecting upon the differences between mothers and fathers in parenting a living child. I don't pray but I'm sending positive energy to you and your wife and wishing you peace and strength as your work your way through this time.
I still think I have a good marriage. We are just in the thick of it. I am hoping we come out the other end closer.
'Context', in this case, being any pre-existing situations upon which the loss of a baby lands - infertility, first-parenthood, existing parenthood, previous losses, miscarriage... all these turn the fallout of babyloss into something unique for each of us.
And that's alright to talk about. I don't think anyone here is making declarations, or being prescriptive. You all make good sense, sleepy and latenight or not.
And one more thing: I always vowed I wouldn't cry as much in front of my child as my mom cried in front of me (or as much as I remember her crying, which may have not been that much, but it really stuck in my mind). I too didn't want to traumatize her, didn't want her to have to grow up too fast. Life had other plans for us, though, and I cry, a lot. I scream and dissolve and totally lose my sh*t. And she sees me being human, being vulnerable, feeling my emotions, all of them, and hopefully she learns that this is healthy, that it is okay to feel, to be real. I can't take away the reality that her sister died, so so much for her not growing up too fast.
We've all obviously agreed that *easier* was not the best choice in words, but Chris cleared that up already. I think what happens to all of us is what Tash said, we look at every angle and compare ourselves to each others situations. I think that it's obvious that neither situation is easier, they are all difficult and unique in their own way.
For those of us who have lost our first child, we got robbed of our baby and our parenthood, all in one fell swoop. We were teetering on the brink, and then it was taken away. It's a very difficult place to be in when it's something you want more then anything in the world. All I want right now is to be a parent. I don't have that choice, it was taken from me. And It is so damn frustrating.
But then, I think about the fact that if I already had a child/ren to parent how that would go. I can't imagine it right now. I can barely take care of myself on a daily basis, and so I think, god, how do you people do it who have to take care of a full family? From reading each of your comments and some of your blogs, I get a clear picture of how really difficult this feat is.
Which leads me to the fact that we are all losers. This babylost community is here, this blog is here for all of us, no matter what pov we are coming in with. That is why each post and each comment is so important and so helpful and necessary for all of us to figure this whole thing out.
I hope Carly and others realize how important their comments are to this community.
This post by Chris even helped me in so many ways to see where he was coming from. Why he did the things he did sometimes. You would assume I should know all this since Chris writes about it so eloquently, but no, I didn't know some of it and yeah, we do have some challenging communication breakdown moments between us. As unlucky as I feel most of the time for losing Silas, I can say I am sooo lucky to have Chris to go through this with, he is the only partner I would ever want and really the only reason I am able to get out of bed every morning.
Wow. You couldn't have chosen a more appropriate description.
Thank you for such a wonderful perspective--dad's don't get nearly the credit in this Shit house that they deserve.
I do feel like a voice in the wilderness, though. Looking through this it seems like only one other guy responded. (thanks CDE) And when I look through the comments and read how this is helping other women understand their husbands I can't help but wonder... really? Is this what those other guys are going through? This is how it is for me, but is this similar to how it is for them, too?
It is hard to hope to be an accurate representation of such a terrible loss, but I hope I'm doing us justice, guys. I wish we could all go get a beer or nine and talk about nothing and everything and just hang out.
I also wish it would stop raining.
It's a routine of denying the pain at work, indulging the pain at home. But there is a deep, missing piece here. She gets to talk with you - but who do you get to talk to? Where does it all go? I guess the beer bottles and the sleeping in. But that gets filled up eventually.
Sometimes, I can't sleep. I think it has something to do with needing space in my head, needing a few waking hours that aren't devoted to ignoring the pain or staring-the-pain-head-on. So I'm up late and I can't stop my mind thinking of something else: something not work, something not grief.
The next morning, I'm a mess and everything gets more difficult.
I can't offer a beer from where I am, nor a nine, but you can check out my searingly insightful posts (cough cough) at the klepsydra blog.
d