the passing-through of necessary spaces
My wife is so amazing
My wife is so strong
My wife really knows and trusts her body
...and so for her, birth went beautifully.
At the bottom of my spine, where the fists of a soul grip gravity and root to the earth, something rumbles disagreement. I stare at it, this familiar but still unidentified thing. Is the rumble a fair truth disguised as hurt, or hurt disguised as a fair truth?
After a pause, I have decided. It doesn't matter what it's called. It simply is.
+++
How sad, some people have said. You think less of birth—this event that says so much about who we are—just because your baby died.
(...yes, because my baby died.)
How sad, that you turn away from this hugeness.
(...what's huge to you is no longer huge to me. The same goes for small.)
How sad, that you make this so 'Us and Them'.
(...this space is not for them. It is for us.)
+++
Baby A is such a fighter. Baby B—what a miracle! Baby C? Which Baby C? Oh, that one. He did not survive. He just wasn’t exceptional enough. When it was all done Don Cherry asked him what happened out there on the ice and he shrugged and said “I guess the other guys just wanted it more than I did.”
People anoint bodies in hospital beds with words like 'fighter' and 'miracle' and 'goddess' because of the cultural urge to wrap up formative life events with neat little bows. But in doing so, they silently demote everyone else who dies. Or who screams for an epidural, or who falls apart at the incubator of a one-pound child.
We do not exist or fail to exist—or birth and 'fail' to birth—because some are stamped with a rubber imprint of GOOD or STRONG or WORTHY and some are not.
This is why 'Shit Happens' is such a popular t-shirt.
+++
Stuck, I pause from this writing to vent 133 characters on twitter and a bewitching new friend asks for context. This is how she replies.
It seems to me that part of the need for a community like Glow is that parents don't have a safe place to share honestly about their grief without being judged by the standards of political correctness and good manners.
It's not a process that fits into people's definitions of 'compassion for others', but by refusing your community the opportunity to pass through those necessary spaces, and those dark emotions, we deny compassion to you.
Necessary spaces. Necessary spaces.
For a while, there is the hatred of one's own body. The inability to have sex without sobbing. The despair that throws you so violently that you vomit it or drink it or isolate it or punish it away. The jealousy of others we perceive to have been spared. The envy of women whose birthing complaints amount to pissing a little each time they sneeze. The tsk-tsking of family members who would prefer that we get over it already, and the uncontrollable urge to pull their lower lip up over their head and tell them to blow. The fleeing from pregnant women in supermarkets. The intolerance for chickenshits. The cremation jokes that leap unbidden out of our mouths, shocking us and cracking up our spouses for a change as if to say Jesus Christ, this year has sucked. If I don't laugh, though, I will explode.
None of it sticks around forever, all of it reverberations. For a while, it just is.
Fuck grace.
So says the anarchist in me, she who wants to protect the right of babylost mothers and fathers to be self-pitying, unnavigable motherfuckers as long as they need to be. Because nodding to the gracelessness, the ugly, the void—that's the only way to allow it to get on with its business, to scab over. It is a necessary space, a state of mind that is honourable and normal and not to be denied.
One day, you breathe. And you know that, despite not being fashionable or palatable, you are more compassionate now than you ever were before. You know how surreal it is to cradle an urn in rush hour traffic. You are all at once a giant and a meek, trembling, spitting thing. You know now to embrace both. You know that it's not your fault that some people can't bear the taste of black licorice.
One day you breathe, and it almost feels like oxygen.
+++
What words have been pinned to your back, and why? How do you feel about them? What words make you feel small when you hear them, either applied to you or to someone else? Tell me about the words you’ve reclaimed that make you feel like a giant. Help me redefine the ones that leave a sour taste in your mouth as well as mine.
Tell me about your necessary spaces. Tell me how you protect them.
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I'm afraid I too must contemplate where now reside in relation to four years and seven months ago.
But thank you.
Not that I feel lucky that I lost them. But, really, I sometimes kind of do. Like I said: this makes no sense at all.
This brought tears to my eyes. Except for us, it was a tiny coffin, and my six foot tall husband held it wrapped in his big, strong arms while I drove and tried desperately to keep the tears out of my eyes long enough to get us to the church for the funeral.
This was a lovely post, Kate. I, too, had all too often heard words like "fighter" or "warrior" used to describe tiny babies who clung to life despite the odds. After IG died, my husband confessed to me that he had thought she would be a "fighter," and part of his grief was that when she was born it was clear that her heart was so weak it couldn't keep beating for very long. I also experienced this "disappointment" (for lack of a better word). I wanted my baby to be special, to beat the odds. I wanted be able to laugh in the faces of the doctors who told us that her survival was a long shot. But in the end all we were given was the extreme privilege of holding her and loving her during her last moments on this earth. Over the past year and a half I have come to see that she needed no labels, no adjectives to describe what she was or wasn't. She was/is my daughter, and that has to be enough.
And hell yeah, fuck grace. Well said.
and now ... i find myself menopausal, too young for it and yet there it is and so i move forward onto a new life that doesn't include the smell of downy hair and toes splayed out in bathtub giggles and i watch my 15 year old son become a man and i am grateful for him and think that the next babies that i will happily hold in my heart will be my someday grandchildren and that feels right and real and beautiful. someday. in the meantime i navigate this new compassion and turn my head away from too much pain and stalk this place but rarely take the time to add my own words because i find it too painful somehow even now three years later ...
and yeah. i always did like black licorice and that says a lot about me.
Before Teddy's birth, I sat in a consultation room, talking to specialists. They couldn't give us survival odds before birth, but one doctor said that it varied wildly. Some babies they expected to have a hard time sailed through, some didn't. He said, "It's up to the baby."
I still haven't shaken that off. As if my son could have chosen to be healthy, as if he didn't try hard enough, didn't want to be with us enough, didn't have enough mental fortitude, wasn't special enough. And even though I know that's not what the doctor meant, and even though I know Teddy's death had nothing to do with his worth, I so very much hate that phrase. It makes me shrivel up inside when I remember it.
At the same time I like to think he had some choices, even if they weren't the ones he should have had. That he chose to hang on long enough for us to say goodbye and soak up some of the overwhelming supply of love we have for him, that he helped us let him go peacefully. Not the choices I wanted for him or us, and not a thing many people are comfortable talking about.
Anyway, the words that have actually been pinned to my back, quite literally? Well, a certain political staffer refused to see me and turned his back, saying that I was "that dead baby lady....".
Yeah.
I have his name engraved on my People to Take Down Someday list.
And as a woman who has undergone medical termination, I have had more than my fair share of judging and name calling, mostly calling me things like baby killer, or people who comment implying that I should have died instead of my son.
I used to get furiously angry at them and internally want to shrivel up and die, and then I discovered that if i just kept talking and refused to let them shut me up (which was their intent all along) that they either started conceding some of my points, or they went away completely because my voice was stronger than theirs.
Doesn't always work....and I could not have done it when I was newly bereaved, but almost 11 years on? I'm lot stronger, and I can ignore a lot more things, y'know?
There's one more thing I want to explore, though-- the very use of the word "ugly" here. Let me start by saying that I reject it. I refuse to concede that it's ugly to look honestly at one's experience and to state honestly that these experiences changed things about our priorities or our perceptions. For the upteenth time I am asking why the hell shouldn't our dead babies change us, when the whole damned societal ethos is that live ones are surely supposed to. What, think the impact of a dead one should be less? Should be none? Or that we should painstakingly fill in the crater, after? But only the dead baby crater? Live baby craters, those are ok? Celebrated even? Hm....
I refuse to call myself crazy or ugly because I am raw in some spots. I refuse to wear disguise so as to not perturb the unaffected. Normal does not equal unaffected. Normal means a real person, with real pain and real issues. What's not normal is to be expected to hide the blemishes in order to be considered normal. Or it shouldn't be. We are normal.
Oh, and one last thing. Do we really think that back in those wonderful olden days of astronomical maternal and perinatal mortality women congratulated each other on any part of a birth experience except making it out alive with a live baby? Or, you know, worried about whether they would get to have just the kind of experience they always wanted? The experience and validation and all that jazz part of this is rather a modern invention, isn't it? Daughter of privilege, I would posit, of expectation of and entitlement to a healthy outcome.
I feel weak for having asked for an epidural during her birth. I feel weak for being afraid to just push her body out into my own hands. I couldn't even look, just covered myself with a blanket and rang frantically for the nurse as my body started to push her out of its own accord. (I did hold her shortly after her birth and was glad I did, but right at first I was afraid of her and this bothers me, for some reason.) I feel guilty for being as sad as I am when much worse things happen to other people. These feelings come from general attitudes in society and from things individual people have said to me (Especially the whole "it can always be worse" thing - comforting, sometimes, when I think it, but just guilt-inducing when others say it.)
A word I like to own is strength. I commented on an earlier post that I hold onto the strength I found in myself through this experience - if I can birth a dead baby, I can do anything. More often now, though, I don't feel strong or courageous - I just want to hide in bed with the covers over my head. But, to me, it does feel good when others say I'm strong - validating the experience, I guess. Yes, this is hard.
It has only been five weeks. My necessary spaces are large and dark and maze-like, the walls keep moving and the spaces keep changing shape. I know people think I should have found my way out already but I think I just found my way in. I think I feel worse now than right after she died. Thanks for this post Kate, for the assurance that it's okay to explore all these spaces and that eventually I will find my way to the other side of the maze.
I also hate it when friends, and quite often friends who have just become mothers themselves say to me "you'll make a great mother some day" (as someone else already mentioned). And I want to scream - because even though as a childless mummy, having lost my first, and I question my motherhood everyday, I don't need others to dismiss it for me. How quickly people forget I carried her for nearly 41 weeks, and so many of them saw and felt her squirm around inside me. How quickly they forget I too pushed and grunted and moaned to get her 8 pound body out of mine. How quickly they forget they all gathered around her grave as we lowered that precious little 8 pound body in to the earth. People really like to bury their heads in the sand. They say "we can't imagine what you went through". I really wish some people would try harder to imagine.
I also hate seeing the acronym IUFD (in utero fetal death) on my paperwork. She was almost 41 weeks , and it just seemed to diminsh what we went through. Like she didn't count, because she died inside.
On the whole miracle babies and birth warrior thing - I posted on both of those recently:
http://tuesdayshope.blogspot.com/2009/07/all-babies-are-miracles-even-ones-who.html
http://tuesdayshope.blogspot.com/2009/08/fear.html
And I still trip on bravery and strength as well, because often to me it implies, "you're so strong, there is no way I could be as strong as you because I just love my baby so damn much, I would never suvive what you have".
http://tuesdayshope.blogspot.com/2009/08/bravery-strength.html
I could probably keep going, but I wont.
Thanks Kate, great post.
Liz... somewhere between bitter and livid.. of course. I've been there. Just nodding and sitting with you. I can't agree with you more on the point of anger being a sustaining kind of heat. There have been times I've needed it to protect myself. I'm glad you see that too, for yourself.
Darlene, I'm absolutely okay with occasional or even most-of-the-time hesitation in coming here. Staying away from this universe on the internet is just as valid as occupying it fully - and besides, you have some time on your side, in terms of feeling (hopefully) a little more functional. You're welcome here whenever you feel like you need a welcome. Thank you for adding your lovely voice.
Erica, that was such an ouch moment with the "it's up to the baby". That would haunt me too. I'm sorry you have that bouncing around in your head. Knowing it's nonsense cerebrally doesn't make the hurt any less.
Once a mother... I'm thinking long and hard on that word too, 'mother'. In that sustaining heat of hurt that Liz mentioned you reclaim it... maybe not out loud (although I sure as heck hope that you've found moments to do so) but for yourself. Because it belongs to you just as much as anyone else.
Aurelia, I love that you refused to be shut up. Persistence is sometimes all you need to make someone empathize.
Julia, my use of 'ugly' here is meant to apply from the outside-in - meaning, the people around us would deem straightforward occupation of this state of mind as 'ugly' (or unpalatable, or inappropriate, etc etc). I don't think it is, but they do. I see the feelings labelled 'ugly' as being simply more complex, as being more demanding of the people who witness them. There are all kinds of things and processes in the world that people might consider ugly, but powerful. Birth is one of them. Death can be another, as can be the unabashed emotions that stem from it.
Just so you know I don't literally call myself or anything I feel as being 'ugly'. When I use the word, I'm referring to how others see those aspects - and the intent in using it was to reject it, or expose it. I hope that's clear now, because I absolutely agree with you.
Five weeks, erika p.... I love so much how you put this: "My necessary spaces are large and dark and maze-like, the walls keep moving and the spaces keep changing shape..." Yes, exactly. That's just how it is. But know that there are others in there with you, feeling just the same way.
Sally, thanks for sharing those links... I'm off to have a look. I feel the same way about the phrase 'dead baby' as you do about 'stillborn' - my baby died, yes, and this is an event that happened to him. But he was so much more than his death. Also, I wish people would try harder to imagine too.
Thanks everyone.. fascinating to hear from all of you.
I *hated* hearing, "at least you have Joshua;" *despised* receiving the "Congrats on Your Baby Boy!" cards only after my surviving son came home from the hospital; *resented* keeping silent because talking about our birth/death/NICU/what-have-you experiences were "too upsetting" for others.
I can't stand the fact that my MIL parades my youngest son around as the 'healthy' one, the 'natural' one-- the one who "came out perfect"... the same woman who told me that "God knew I couldn't handle two at once."
My son's death has given me my voice, among other things.
I am nodding intensely at everything that' s been said. What a great post. I identify with everything... even the terrible cremation jokes. My husband and I couldn't stop ourselves.
"I'm praying for you." - I am not one to say that prayer does not work. I think positive energy in the form of prayer or meditation can lead to great things. I'm just extremely cynical when someone says it as a band-aid. I've heard it so often at the end of me giving the Readers' Digest Condensed Version of our story. I often wonder if they really mean it. Are they going to go home and pray for us? It feels no different than them saying, "I'm sorry." And I am even more bitter because my own father-in-law, upon hearing our daughter's diagnosis and not really understanding how severe it was, was convinced that prayer would make everything better. And made it seem like I obviously didn't believe that enough, therefore it was my fault that S was the way she was.
"Termination" - It sounds so purposeful. I am still trying to own that word. I still wince. It ignores the fact that my daughter had next to no brain matter. It ignores the fact that she would likely have been deaf, blind, had CP, severe and profound global developmental disabilities, had bowel and bladder incontinence and perhaps wouldn't have been able to breathe on her own. Where is the life in all of that? Where? So I would have been able to have a warm body to cradle amidst medical technology hellbent on keeping her alive? It did not compute. I sensed her spirit so clearly in the week after having the Level II u/s and I *knew* she was not meant for a life like that. And so we chose to let her go. And for a long time, that's how I've phrased it. "Let her go". Let her be. Released her from that fate. My mom claims that I always speak of her as if she had a perfect body...but I only ever saw her and sensed her in that way. She had an intact spirit. You know?
It wasn't until Dr. Tillman's murder that I started to really grasp the word "termination". Because, well, I was still within that 24 week window in my state and could have an induction in a hospital. Just two weeks later? I would have had no other choice but to contact his clinic. I am no different than the women he treated. My daughter faced no different fate than most of the babies who were "let go" there. Hell, "termination" is written all over my medical records. Why not own it? Because that sense of purpose...that choice...that is what is so very, very, very hard to recognize and confront. My husband and I were faced with the absolute worst decision I think (and hope) we will ever have to face in our lives. I felt my life was over with either option/choice/decision. And the word "termination" concentrates on the end. And makes it feel like it really is so. As in, how will I ever find happiness afterwards? It's taken a long time.
"At least you have B" - Referring to my older, living son. Our induction blew up in our faces in a big way. I cannot have any more children as a result. There's a lot of crapola. So not only am I grieving the loss of my sweetest S, but that is it. Finite. Yep, the echo of "termination". No more babies from my body. And while B is the sun and the moon and the stars for me, he cannot take the place of all I have lost...and I would never expect him to. I cannot place that on a such a small boy. Yes, I am incredibly fortunate to have my son. But I lost a shitload of hopes and dreams, too. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
Mainly a meek, trembling, spitting things these days but I do have an occasional glimpse of giantdom. Those moments when I remember her, not her death, not her painful life, not her twin sister, not her father, not her mother, not the medical details. Just her. That 'intact spirit' described so beautifully by Anna above. Freed from all that extraneous weight. Then I feel like a giant. Like I could knock anything down or build anything up.
Niobe - I think I may understand a little. Perhaps with emphasis on the 'this world' in my case. Sometimes I'm not sure which one of my daughters got away. Which one escaped.
Krysten - yes to every single word.
Erica - a nurse said something similar to me about my surviving daughter when I thanked her for taking care of her. She said, the babies decide, we just help them. I know she meant it kindly, she had obviously forgotten that J was a twin and that her sister had died. This was some months on. It made me shrivel up too. I was terribly upset that she had insinuated that my other daughter might have died because she didn't want to live, because she wasn't strong enough or special enough. She was strong. She was special. She just didn't live. But not living is not necessarily incompatible with being strong, with being special, with being a miracle.
The words on my back - miracle, ungrateful, lucky, unlucky,
I feel a bit uneasy with miracle. It is and it isn't. I want to own that word but it can hurt me to use it. Every life is a miracle. No matter how short. No matter how painful. Sometimes it is hard to see but I think it just might be the truth. I want to reclaim miracle and use it to refer to either of my daughters.
Ungrateful. Probably asking for that one. Probably deserve it too.
Lucky. Unlucky. Not mutually exclusive. By any means. That is me.
But the words on my back are just temporary things. As someone wiser than me said once, her name starts with N, she's posted here already and I hope that she doesn't mind me quoting. 'It's not over til it's over. And maybe not even then'. Perhaps those are the words on my back but I just don't see them. Not yet.
The necessary spaces might be few and far between but they are adequate, like little breathing spaces in an experience that I have found so very isolating. So lonely. I only wish that I knew some way to protect them.
I still get angry for my lost ones. Often people say things like, "This one was just meant to be," as if the others were just smoke and mirrors. Or "See, you just had to go throw THAT to get to THIS," as if my four lost babies were hurdles to get to my two healthy kids (and maybe a third). Roadblocks.
I was once told at a gathering of girlfriends that, when I teared up over a friend trying to decide whether or not she should try for another baby, I was not handling things with much Grace. I wish I had then the strength to say what you said. Fuck Grace.
Her('them'): Oh. There's no such thing as normal. (admonishing smile/frown)
Strangely these words always seem to come out of a woman who's conceived with minimal effort, completed a full-term pregnancy, and delivered a healthy baby following a complication-free labor. Just like they describe it during the tour of the maternity ward.
I don't want to offend 'them' by using words like death/morgue/funeral home/urn in reference to my dead twin. I don't want to offend 'us' by using words like luck/fighter/blessing in reference to my surviving twin. Quite frankly I think statistics are on my side here--'normal' means that you walk out of the hospital carrying the anticipated number of babies in the expected condition. But words are tricky, sticky things, no?
Whenever these conversations occur they leave me feeling diminished and mean. Then, through the transformative properties of this necessary space, Kate spins the ugly into the sublime and Julia reminds me that there are all kinds of normal and I feel like I can cope again.
Thanks for a great post and discussion.
One place I know my husband and I disagree on these spaces is dealing with when people ask how many children. I nearly always answer "Three, but only one living," while my husband just says "One." Again, I'm shoving it out there, he's hiding it.
The weird thing is, I still do in many ways get upset about the way my children were born. It's separate, though, a different anger at my body than the fact that it throws clots that it shouldn't or the bizarre random things it's begun doing to me. Yeah, I'd take a living baby no matter what the birth experience - heck, I've often had those long crying arguments with "powers that be" that I would have gladly died during the birth if it would have meant life for my daughter - but at the same time, since I'm still here, I'm ticked at the doctor who sliced me open so ineptly and didn't take care of the wound properly, I'm ticked at the fact that I will never be able to have a baby "the normal way" and that in fact should we ever decide to attempt another pregnancy it would be a good idea to first ultrasound the scar and make sure that it's not going to be a major issue.
The one space that's grown up between myself and my husband is the whole idea of more children. We just can't talk about it. The elephant in the room. Right now we kid ourselves that it's finances keeping us from even talking about it (just to give you an idea, we still owe $112 to the hospital from Aeryn's death almost a year and half ago and truly, I'm amazed how nicely they've handled it, no collections agencies yet) but that's not it. I end up talking to folks here about it instead of the man who has a definite interest just because he and I can't even poke at the edges of that wound yet.
Thank you Kate...
i know that's ungrateful. and i don't feel it all the time. sometimes i am weepingly, undyingly grateful when someone says her name to me. other times i am enraged - don't pretend to understand how i feel, you did not even know her! i don't know why i feel that way - i guess it's just where i am with the grief right now.
in any case, thank you for this post, kate. "fleeing from pregnant women in supermarkets" - that's me right now, and reading this line makes me like less of an a**hole for doing it. i am absolutely nodding to the ugly right now, trying to face the fact that i might be nodding to it for years to come. waiting for the scab and oxygen.
The words... 2 kids (it's 3), and all the words and surrounding mythology of salvation, fighting, triumph, defeat. Recently two stories have come into my life about mothers "saving" their babies. I didn't save mine, so I am a failure and an asshole.
The spaces... cradling the small box in which her remains are held. That's batshit crazy, so I do it mostly furtively, surreptitiously with guilt and relief in equal measures. And writing. I don't show it to anyone, but I write mostly about the wonder of her, the ache of her absence and the kind of survival that happens now.
That is me too, Catherine W. And you are so right that not living doesn't mean not special, not a wonder, not astonishingly special.
I am made to feel ugly by people's well-meaning comments about 'at least you have your daughter.' I feel like they think I'm overdoing the grief bit since I'm lucky enough to have a living child. I can't make some people understand that while I'm grateful as heck for her, she isn't the son I lost. I get so angry when people tell me to count my blessings because holy crap, what do you think I've been doing since tragedy struck? Between crying fits, I'm looking around with bleary eyes trying to find every single thing there is to be happy about. It's just hard to do through the veil of sadness. People who don't know this can't understand it.
I think my son did come here for a purpose but I hate it when people say everything ha[[ens for a reason because I really don't believe that. Its what you make of your circumstances. I used to think he was too beautiful for this world but then I feel guilty for thinking that when I look at my daughters who are here with me. They are just as beautiful as he is. For me we are all just separated from him for the time being.
My space is out doors. Outside in the sunshine where all I can see when I look up is blue. A bright blue sky. Hoping Winter finishes quickly. I feel claustrophobic at the moment having not seen the sky in so long.
This post was really amazing Kate. Thank you x
It says a lot about you that you came here in search of some answers. I'm glad you found some, or at least some hints. Best to you, and thanks so much for adding your perspective. It's important and valued.
Words: I hate hearing "You sure have your hands full." The thing is, I do. I have five living, breathing, active children. I am raising them largely alone. My hands are full. My life is full. But I hate it because they aren't as full as they should be. There should be six of them. There is one who isn't here. Who never took a breath. Who leaves the gaping empty place in my life. A place I try fervently to fill and I can't. Like a black whole it is endless and deep.
And the words 'you wouldn't have L if Indigo had lived.' L doesn't replace Indigo. She doesn't take away that Indigo died. I didn't choose one over the other. It is what it is. And the words sting deeply.
~
Space: I need space with new little ones when they join our circle of family and friends. I need space to come to them on my own. When I am ready to embrace the new little person, I will But please let me do it in my own time. In my own space. It isn't that I am not happy for you. I am. It is just such a tangible reminder of what I lost.
I need space at any family/friend group activity. I may not want to go to your baby shower. I may want to hide in the bathroom for a few minutes to recompose myself at a Christmas party. Please let me have this.
And please remember her.
Sometimes I need some space for me to just try to intergrate her and her loss. But sometimes I need someone in that space with me to just sit and know.
Words - God I hate 'sorry' - it's inadequate and meaningless right now, but I try and thank them anyway.
The word 'miscarriage' in the context of the latest loss is too much to bear and so very wrong. No, my son was born alive, I labored and delivered him (against my will, but so it still was), and he lived, even if briefly. He tried to draw breath and his heart continued beating and he moved in my husband's arms and we held him as he died. That is far more crushing than any of my miscarriages ever were. He lived, breathed, existed, was named. The rage comes from the doctor blathering about how he'd classify as a technical miscarriage, because I was two days shy of 21 weeks, which was the technical pre-term birth, all while I begged to be allowed to see and hold my son, pleading with a diety I'm no longer sure exists to let him still be alive when they brought him, so the whole of his life wouldn't have been spent alone on a triage tray. That is inextricably bound up with that word now.
There are a lot of labels I fear.
I want to email this post to some of my friends. In their grief for us and their fear for us, they are frustrated by being unable to help us and have decided we, I, need counseling or professional help. Because I'm not doing anything to move forward, I'm not trying or something.
I kept shouting that I am the one who gets to make that decision. Right now, nearly three weeks out, I am doing pretty goddamned well if I do say it myself. I didn't die. I didn't crumble into little pieces. I get out of bed, I shower frequently, I eat regularly, I didn't start sucking down booze (not that I object to others doing so, I just have a history that makes it unwise for me to do so), I called to find a new OB (which was one of the hardest things I've done, as I loathe most doctors), I am returning to work, I'm living and experiencing my grie instead of bottling it up, I'm expressing myself and what I'm experiencing . . . I'm existing.
One of my friends said I wasn't living though. I told her that that wasn't the point, and that DAYS after I've lost my son, it's a bit much to expect. Frankly, the fact I get out of bed at all amazes me, since I don't particularly care to do so.
My necessary space right now is the space to be sad, uncaring, 'unnavigable' as you put it. It's not easy for them. I acknowledge that. It's not easy for them, often stepping on my toes, often finding me silent or exploding because the pain is too much. It's not easy to be distant and unable to help, to see me curled into bitterness and pain and hear me say I can't be around pregnant women or babies, and I don't much like either. But . . . it's not about them right now. It's about me right now. I need that space and I need to be allowed that space to grieve, to be ugly, to shriek, to blame (whoever I need to blame that day), to be, to breathe.
Eventually, I will return to that compassion by degrees. I will care about other people's lives. I will reach out to make it easier for them. But right now, I am existing in a state of Fuck Grace and tending to myself. And I need this space. I need to be here for awhile because I need that scab, as you say in order to function out there with Them, those who do not and can not understand what I have lost and how I am changed.
Thank you x