Tick Tock
"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
--William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Babyloss parents often find themselves clinging to Auden's Stopped Clocks -- the sense that life has frozen for us, and we're stuck in a (hellatious) moment while just outside our window people scurry on with no idea what it is we're experiencing. I've known -- and sympathized with -- parents who say "there wasn't enough time," and I've known -- and sympathized with -- those who say "I just wanted it to stop." Perhaps "fast" and "slow" aren't quite applicable; time for that awful moment probably could be described as simply horrible.
Time as a concept undergoes some pretty serious shifting after a major loss; gone is the sense of linearity ("This pregnancy will just progress until a baby appears in nine months!"), or perhaps a past needing escape and a future worth running to. Time contracts, expands, flies, crawls, bewilders.
And like grief, time is experienced differently by individuals depending on their circumstances -- those surrounding the death itself as well as what preceded and followed.
Time as a subject seems to be coursing its way through the internet in our corner recently, so we thought it a good . . . well, er, time to examine it a bit closer. Join us for the new Kitchen Table discussion, read our responses, and please add your responses in the comments or link to your blogged comments.
1. How much time has passed since the death of your child(ren)? Do you mark grief in months, weeks or years? Does it seem to be going fast or slow?
Angie: Two years, seven months. I mark time in seasons. Time goes fast now, after the first year. I think that is why I stopped counting months, it seemed slow that way.
Catherine: Nearly three years. I mark the time as I would have for a living child. Initially I measured in days and weeks, as you might for a newborn baby. Now I measure in years, more appropriate for the toddler she might be now.
Cheryl: 3 years, 7 months. I mark time by passing events. Last night marked the third year that I have watched the exhbibition fireworks, without a baby upstairs in a nursery. Time was slow, then fast, and is now, in a very strange way, simply time.
Chris: 2 years, 10 months. Was in seconds, then in days, now in years. It seems like I have always been missing Silas now, but I can't believe it's been nearly 4 years. That seems impossible
Jess: Three years, 2 months. I think in years now. Time gallops, yet some days I feel like she was one hundred years ago.
Josh: Four months. The weeks have turned into months now, which means the extra dose of sadness that used to come every Thursday now comes on the 24th of each month instead. Time seems to keep moving as it always has, but the Before Margot time of my life seems like an eternity ago.
Julia: Two days shy of four and a half years. I think in years, but sometimes the dates in a month still bite.
Tash: Four years, five months. It's marked in years, although winter still gets condensed around months, weeks, and days. Most of the time I can't believe it happened, let alone to me. Surely it was something I read about.
2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?
Angie: I read something like eighteen months to two years was when acute/active grief stopped after a stillbirth, and I held that as a place to get to. In the beginning, that felt terribly far in the future. Now, I feel like my grieving isn't acute or debilitating.
Catherine: My inital end goal was to stop the awful pain. In those first few weeks I felt as though I had been caught in a bear trap, one of those big, toothy affairs that snaps around your leg? I think it took about six months before that started to ease, that absolutely desperate time. Now I don't think I have an end goal in sight. My grief has not progressed along the nice, neat timeline of about a year in duration that I had assumed it would. It meanders about, taking its own sweet time. I don't know how much longer I need but that doesn't trouble me any longer. Perhaps this is as close to resolution as I get?
Cheryl: A family memember commented a few months ago, that she noticed in April of 2010 that I had come back into the light. It took almost two and a half years. After Gabe died, I couldn't imagine ever being whole or sane or normal again. I just wanted my life back. I know that I will never have that life back, but that I have the rest of my years to forge a new life for myself. Strangely, this is less frightening that it used
Chris: Nope, no goal for my grief. I'll always miss him, I will always be sad for his absence in our life, and I'm perfectly fine with that. From the moment of his death I've known it would be like this.
Jess: I'm... I'm kind of mixed up about this question. I don't have an end goal. I find it unlikely that I will ever think "Yes! Success! Achievement!" in an Iris context. Today I am OK. It seems likely that tomorrow I will be OK. And next week. And next month. So perhaps I'm there already. I don't know.
Josh: In the very beginning, I thought maybe the horrific grief would take a year or so, or maybe when (if) we had another baby. Now, I have no clue. I'm in for the long haul, or however long it takes. Timelines (and expectations) freak me out now.
Julia: I think I always thought the goal was to incorporate it, so it is as normal part of me as something like this can be. Learn to live with it. I think, for the most part, I have. Though there are still moments that are sharp, most of the time it is just what it is.
Tash: Early on I read somewhere it took two-five years in order to "integrate" the experience and I about broke down -- it seemed like an eternity, it might as well have been twenty. When I spoke about hiding out in my cave, I wanted to be there for twenty years -- I thought that was enough time to be able to hold my head up and function. I think my goal became functioning without pain and I seem to have achieved that around the three year mark.
3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?
Angie: I really wanted to get to a place where I didn't care who acknowledged our loss or not. Where people could just be at a dinner party, and I wasn't anxious about whether or not they acknowledged her death or our grief. I am at that place now.
Catherine: When I could join in a discussion about children without the whole sorry story bubbling up in my throat. Now I can make a conscious decision as to whether I will speak about my daughter's death. Or not. It used to be a compulsion, to blurt it out. Sometimes that isn't appropriate. Sometimes that isn't kind. It took about two years to get here.
Cheryl: It was the moment that I realized I could carry Gabriel in my heart, but put him down from my arms. It was the moment that I realized that it was ok to carry on my life, without him.
Chris: Father's day destroys me every year, as does his birthday.
Jess: I don't seem to have obvious grief triggers to test myself against. It always takes me by surprise when the deep yearn strikes. Three days after I gave birth to Iris, I went to a child's birthday party in the certain knowledge that I would be seeing newborn babies and pregnant women. When I went back to work, 6 weeks after Iris died, my first meeting was with a group of midwives in a maternity hospital. I was fine. But just last week I met a sad-eyed man, and the fiction I created in my head about his imaginary baby, lost or dead, was enough to make me weep on the train home.
Josh: I hope one day I can hold my best friend's baby, who was born a week before Margot died, and feel okay about it. I think that would be some kind of milestone.
Julia: I don't think I sat out markers to begin with, except for having to meet and engage with a good friend's baby who was supposed to be A's best buddy. I did that the day after he was born, barely two months into my grief. But I do notice that I am better at certain things-- holding back the story if it doesn't come up naturally, not feeling overwhelmingly anxious that new people I am meeting and want to be friends with don't know this important thing about us. Not that I don't care if they do, I am just not tormented if they don't. And I still tighten up in a whole ton of situations.
Tash: I couldn't look at, hold, consider, comprehend, a baby. I avoided them like the plague. Then at two years, two months, I offered to hold a baby on a plane for the woman sitting next to me. It didn't produce a heavenly choral symphony, but I didn't fall apart, either. I think I realized then I'd be ok.
4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?
Angie: My daughter died at 38 weeks. It was a beautiful pregnancy, and I felt like I knew her spirit, even though I didn't. I would have loved to see her open her eyes, to breathe. The first time I laid eyes on her, I saw the marks of death on her face and body. I wish she died closer to birth, but really, I wish she hadn't died at all.
Catherine: I feel as though I knew my daughter or perhaps that is just what I want to believe, hers was a tiny flicker of a life. She died when she was 3 days old but she was born at 23 weeks. There is always the tantalising possibility that if she had remained in the womb for longer she would not have died. Her life outside the womb? Perhaps that was too long. I fear it was. But I can't bring myself to wish for any less of her.
Cheryl: I didn't have 9 months. I thought I did. And that was the most remarkable thing. Everything was ordinary, I had just enough time for everything, right up until I didn't have enough time. The pregnancy was ordinary time, the hospitalization was sped up time, and the time we had with him, that was almost nanosecond. It was almost a singularity.
Chris: I have another life, another future, another past that is beyond the veil of his death. That what-if, what-should world will never go away.
Jess: I was 41 weeks pregnant when I went into labour and learned that Iris had died. And I was sick of being pregnant, it was loathsome. It had been too long. And although my answer will always be of the too-short-not-enough variety, I still have her life in my head. I have all the time I need for that.
Josh: I held her for nearly nine hours straight after she was stillborn at 39 weeks. Since my wife was near dead for many of those hours, her presence, however dead she was, practically carried me through the worst day of my life.
Julia: I've had a subsequent pregnancy since A died, and it was frought with complications and hospitalizations, and was only slightly longer than A's. The anxieties (and I felt them for A a lot too) sort of blend in my head now, and I split. I would've wanted more time, but not more anxiety. The time we held on to his body after his birth? I thought that was enough, I thought we were ready. At the time it felt right, to let go after only a couple of hours. Now I am not sure.
Tash: I had six days with Maddy, and it was all at once so brief as to be a blink or an illusion, and so fucking long I found my (atheist) self praying for it to end. Maddy's pregnancy was so complicated I never really thought ahead much except to the birth which I assumed would be the happy release into the rest of it. The subsequent nine month pregnancy with my son was an eternity of denial; it's hard to tread water for the better part of a year.
5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?
Angie: Two years and seven months. Yes, absolutely. I feel like I am just starting to appreciate the ways I have integrated Lucy's life and death into our daily lives.
Catherine: Nearly three years. Grief is tentatively creeping in and settling down, making itself at home, reminding me that it is still here with the occasional murmur. It doesn't rage about outside as often as it used to.
Cheryl: 3.5 years or so. I understand that timeline. I see the goal of grief as to bring that grief into the light, to find the way back into the light.
Chris: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I feel like I have definitely incorporated this grief into my life, and I'm not the same person I used to be, in many ways.
Jess: Three years in, this feels true to me. Three years in, my husband would not find this to be true at all. I think it will be his life's struggle.
Josh: At four months out, I'm no where close. In the sense that it doesn't take four months for grief to be incorporated, I can say, hell yes it doesn't.
Julia: I think to dull the really sharp edges, it took more than two years. But I think I am feeling pretty incorporated now, and I think I've been here for a bit already, not exactly standing in one place-- it's still all dynamic and flowing, but the changes are more subtle these days.
Tash: I think I've woven Maddy's death into my life, and I think it happened around year three, but I couldn't put a day or experience on that. The experience has sort of melded into my being, so I can acknowledge it's existence and carry on. She was here, she wasn't meant to be, she died. I'm hungry, and really need to go get dinner ready.
6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?
Angie: I think time affords you the space to get used to suffering. And in that way, I don't suffer as much as I used to. If that makes sense.
Catherine: I think it is true that time does heal. What people don't always remember to tell you is that healing is not the same as restitution, time may not necessarily return you to your original form. Healing brings scars. But scars do not form on the dead, only on the living.
Cheryl: I struggled for a long time. I wanted to say it got better, or it got easier, or something. I wanted to mark how things could change, how things wouldn't always be the way they are. I now say that I don't know if it gets better or easier, it does get different. The difference is important. The difference is what makes me wake up, what makes me look for the next stage in my life.
Chris: Time passing has helped me heal, but only to a certain point. Beyond that it is all still the same and probably always will be.
Jess: This made me think of a line in Coriolanus: "For, if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them." I don't speak for my wounds as much as I once did. I don't lick them and pick at them in the same way. I am scarred though. And the scars ache.
Josh: I have hope that time heals, or at least allows me to understand my grief in different ways. I can already feel my grief in deeper, more profound ways than I did a month out, so I guess that is something.
Julia: It doesn't heal in the sense that it fixes you right up, but it does give you room to get better, to bear weight again on what was once torn to shreads. So I find myself put together again, though different than I was.
Tash: I used to throw around that Milay poem in HS regarding relationships. Boy, talk about green. Time heals wounds, but sadly time doesn't erase memories. It's true, I do feel better and I truly believe the majority of that healing is owed to simply the passage of time and distance from the event. I also believe Milay and I could do with a lobotomy to fully cover the rest of it and those horrible flashbacks.
7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)? How about your relationship with the past?
Angie: I try to live one day at a time, as cliched as that is. Both for my sobriety and my grief. Someone left this quote on my blog, "Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different." And I think I am finally at a place of forgiveness for myself and about Lucy's death.
Catherine: I try not to plan too much for the future but I do find it hard to resist the lure of schemes and dreams. I feel a mixture of embarrassment and fondness when I think of the past and the person I once was. An oblivious and silly person in many ways but I kind of miss her. I certainly miss being her on occasion.
Cheryl: I try to live in the now. I try to avoid romanticizing the past, but even more than that I try to not live in the future. I did that after Gabe died. I did that when I waited for the next baby. I had all of these plans for when I got pregnant again. Finally I realized, everyone was right. Life is what happens when you are waiting for things to happen. I wanted to live my life, so I stopped living in future.
Chris: I don't trust the future anymore and I can't believe the past me was so naive that I used to. I focus on right now and what is coming up next. Looking too far down the road seems foolish to me because I know now there is no way to be sure of anything.
Jess: It has made me fiercely ambitious, losing Iris. I suppose that speaks to a future-focused shift in me, since her death. I feel like I just can't waste any time. Life is such a capricious little creature. Right now it's hurtling along and so I feel compelled to race alongside it, before it changes its mind.
Josh: I don't really count on much in the future anymore. My innocence regarding death has been stomped on. I'm taking life one day at a time. I'm not exactly embracing life one day at a time, but I am thinking about life in terms of what today brings.
Julia: Planning far ahead is still hard. A few days at a time is as far as I am comfortable looking. Though I am beginning to take joy in putting some things on the calendar for a bit out and anticipating the fun of these.
Tash: After Maddy died, for years I was stuck in the present. I was too chickenshit to plan ahead because I had been so burned by what I assumed was a given outcome. I honestly thought if I didn't plan out more than two weeks, how bad could anything hurt if it didn't come to fruition? But it became really debilitating living like that, every day a fire drill, and my calendar remaining empty. I'm up to a few months now and it's odd, but I'm trying. As "integrated" as I've become, I definitely still think in "preMaddy" and "postMaddy." It's impossible not to, given the changes in our social and familial lives.
8. How long did it take to answer these questions?
Angie: Exactly fifteen minutes.
Catherine: Twenty minutes for the answers that came easily. Nearly three days spent mulling over one particular question.
Cheryl: 16 minutes, with a cup of coffee and a call in the background.
Chris: about 15 minutes
Jess: Thirty six minutes. I made and drank a cup of tea in that time too. Multi-tasker!
Josh: Three days, or twenty odd minutes, however you look at it.
Julia: 30 minutes. Typed and erased a few answers a few times.
Tash: 15 minutes, give or take. But it took me a few days to get over and actually put my mind to this.
tash
Reader Comments (19)
http://lazyseamstress.blogspot.com/2011/07/kitchen-tableglow.html
It has been just over 20 years since my daughter died. I mark the time in years at this point. The fast vs. slow speed of living changes with circumstances. Raising two live children and one who died, I have always felt that the days are long, some really long, but the years are short and pass quickly.
2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?
My goal was to not die. I didn't know how much time that would take or if I would be able to complete it. It took me almost two years to get to the point of not having to make a decision to stay alive each and every night.
3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?
For me, the maker was at about 18 months out. I rented a paint sprayer to paint the back fence. That was a 48hr commitment to pick up, use and return the sprayer. Before that, I had a hard time committing to get through the day. I had also reached the point where I wanted the fence painted. Things were starting to matter to me again.
4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?
My daughter died an hour after birth. They could not keep her breathing. I had time to love her, to have that love grow, and to fit her into her spot in our family. We just needed her to stay and make it her own.
5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?
Somewhere in that 2-5 years, little by little, not all at once, I realized that it was good and comforting to me to love my baby. I no longer felt only pain, but pleasure and peace with her. No one had ever told me that loving a died child brings smiles and happiness. And that it is good feeling.
6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?
I believe both. Elizabeth's death opened many wounds. Some time has healed, and some I have only learned to more or less live with.
7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)? How about your relationship with the past?
At first, for a couple of years, it was a matter of getting through each day as best I could. Then it seems to be a time of testing new priorities, and settling into the ones that work. Plan for the future, yes, but not at a high cost to the present. Such as, how much time do I need to spend now to make money vs. how much time do I need to love my family and be there with my kids? And what from my past can help me to achieve these new ways of living?
8. How long did it take to answer these questions?
About 30mins (Though I could probably talk about these ideas for hours!)
When my daughter died, we didn't have the internet. There were 2 books in the library that had a chapter each about child loss. I mostly had help from family and a couple of friends, most often it was just very isolating and lonely. Last year a friend of mine had a son who was stillborn. Whenever she mentions a website or blog, I go look, too, to see what she is seeing and reading. It is a wonderful community you all have established! Very loving, caring, open and supportive. Thank you!
Jill A, I just wanted to say a special thank you to you, I take heart from women much further along in this world of loss. I think if you've made it so far, then maybe I can too. x
http://lifeafteraddison.blogspot.com/2011/07/glow-questions.html
http://fireflyforever-onlyawhisper.blogspot.com/2011/07/at-kitchen-table-time-glow-in-woods.html
I also enjoyed reading everyone's answers.
Thank you
http://tess-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/kitchen-table-glow-in-woods.html
Thanks for putting these questions up. It's been a fair purge, which feels nice and theraputic.
http://darlingido.blogspot.com/2011/07/kitchen-table.html
http://cullensblessings.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/at-the-kitche-table-with-glow/
My daughter died February 26, 2011. It has been five months since her death. She was 2.5 weeks old when she died. At first I marked the time in days, then weeks, and now months. The time seems to be going fast. I can’t believe it has been so long since I last saw her.
2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?
I do not have an end goal to my grief. It seems easier for me to imagine that this will be a life long process. My pregnancy (we had a pre-natal diagnosis), my daughter’s birth, and her death were very traumatic experiences. I now suffer from PTSD that I’m sure will be a long lasting challenge.
3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?
There are some milestones; I can speak about my daughter without falling into despair. I can listen to the songs we sang her, I drive past the hospital, and I can look at photos and videos of her without intense sadness. However, I do not expect to ever attend a baby shower again. I think being in the presence of that intense joy, anticipation, and happiness will always be too painful for me. After my experiences with miscarriage and infant death I will never be able to know those emotions in connection to a pregnancy, and that makes me deeply sad.
4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?
I feel deeply grateful to have had the short time with her that we did have. I feel grateful that we had the third trimester to prepare ourselves emotionally for her death. We spent the 2.5 weeks that she was with us bonding with her and I feel that has helped with my grieving process. I’m not sure how I feel about the 9-month gestation period. I remember feeling like I never wanted my daughter to be born, since we knew that after she was we would have to be prepared to let her go. But honestly, the end of the pregnancy was so emotionally challenging for me that I also remember needing the experience to be over so that I could move on.
5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?
I’m not sure. I think that I am incorporating my grief fairly well. I’m working, exercising, and generally taking care of myself. I still allow myself a lot of space to grieve.
6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Millay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?
I believe Edna St. Vincent Millay. I cannot imagine time ever healing the “wound” of my daughter’s loss. There is no healing. I will learn to cope.
7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child? How about your relationship with the past?
My relationship with the immediate future is tentative. I have trouble making commitments socially. Any appointment or responsibility other than work must be flexible. I just never know if I will be able to fulfill these commitments. I am apprehensive about the far future. I avoid imagining it. I avoid any hoping or dreaming. My loss still feels too raw for hope. My relationship with the past is the same. I have always felt a type of nostalgia or longing for the past. I feel those same emotions when I remember my early pregnancy and the short time I had with my sweet girl.
8. How long did it take to answer these questions?
I these questions then though about them for a couple of days. It took me about an hour to answer them once I sat down to write.
Here is mine
http://www.patchofpuddles.co.uk/archives/5721/at-the-kitchen-table-with-glow-time
and thank you for the questions. It helped.
http://www.caringforcarleigh.com/2011/08/kitchen-table-with-glow-time.html
8 months and 3 weeks. I mark grief in months and weeks. There have been some days and weeks that time just seemed to drag on interminably, at others, it seems like time just flew by.
2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?
I suppose I do- if anything, I’d like to be able to function in my new “normal”. To be confident again, to know who I am, what I believe, what direction to take. To achieve that goal- I know that it will take more time than I’d like it to. Right after my loss, I naively thought grief was something that you ‘got over’ and that there was a linear progression. I wanted a map, guidebook or recipe to follow and thought there would be a specific time frame. I wanted to be done with it. (Snort). I know better now. I thought I was good to go at 12 weeks out, we were focused on getting opinions on when it was safe to try again. After that, I went back to work. Reality delivered a TKO and I hit the floor. As I think about how I feel today, 8 months and 3 weeks from her death, I’m really not sure how much time I really will need to achieve any sort of ‘end goal’ to my grief, if it’s a realistic or possible goal. I like to believe that certain aspects of my ‘end goal’ are realistic, but I feel like any progress will come through trial and error over a time frame that will be longer and more challenging than I want it to be.
3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?
Yes, I have had some markers that have made me realize that my grief is less acute. I can go to the grocery store now without that paralyzing fear in my stomach that I will see someone I know, a pregnant belly or a baby stroller. Pregnant bellies and babies still aren’t my favorite thing in the world to encounter, but the stabbing grief is no longer as debilitating and I can continue my grocery shopping (albeit in another aisle). Before I would just run right out of the store and cry the entire drive home. I can drive by the hospital where we delivered without holding my breath. I no longer cry every day. I can cook and taste again. Beer and wine no longer send me into a tail-spin of depressive thoughts. I can baby-sit my 2 month old niece and let her use my daughter’s things.* My niece is the ONLY baby that I’ve been able to see thus far, other people’s kids are still on the “can’t deal” and “don’t’ have/want to acknowledge their existence” list.
4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?
I am so very grateful for the 39 weeks I had with Simone. It was the best 39 weeks of my life and you bet your ass I bonded with her. I fell head over heels in love with her at her first ultrasound. I shared all of my life’s loves with her: food, running, zumba, Pilates, dance, music, traveling, cooking, etc. As we moved through those 39 weeks, she was introduced to all the people in our lives that love us, and through us, love her. Those weeks are very special to me. I’m grateful for the absolute privilege being her mother and for the ability to carry her to full term. I never before looked at pregnancy as a privilege or as a gift to be treasured. She changed all that. I imagined that she would be intelligent and kind, a good swimmer, a future trail runner, and be musically inclined (I was hoping for the violin/voice/piano). I still wonder if she’d be a sleeper like her Daddy, or a morning person like me and what personality traits would she have inherited from us? Would she have good hair? (I wanted her to have her Daddy’s hair; it is thick, healthy and grows so fast). Would she smile a lot like me? Or be more serious like her Dad? I suppose I will always have those unanswered questions. As I contemplate trying again, my initial thoughts are that 9 months is way too long to wait to see if I will ever be a mom to a live child, but without it that time, I know that I won’t be able to create new (and hopefully similar) memories for any subsequent child. If we are so lucky as to conceive again, I’m sure those 9 months will be emotionally difficult, but since it is what it is, I have to say it is just long enough.
5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?
Ugh. 2-5 years?? Well, if my life expectancy is 40+ years, I guess 2-5 years to incorporate my grief into my life isn’t the worst news. I don’t know if 2-5 years to incorporate grief into one’s life is an accurate statement because everyone’s grief is so individual, but I think it could be true. I am winding my way towards the end of the 1st year, with a little more than 3 months to go till the anniversary of her delivery date. I’ve been told that the first year is just getting through all of the ‘firsts” –all the holidays, the change in seasons, going back to work, just dealing with the shock of it all. I can only assume that years 2+ are adjusting to her absence, minus the shock. I think after that first year, I will no longer be in survival mode. The 2-5 year timeline makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry at times because I’m not confident that I have the strength to keep moving forward day after day, year after year before I have fully integrated my grief. Crap. I've met parents that are 20+ years ahead of me on this grief journey, but it still is difficult to accept.
6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?
I think time has made the grief less raw, and allowed my wound to scab over a bit, but I don’t think time heals all wounds because that would mean that what was broken is now ‘fixed’. Time can’t ‘fix’ the fact that Simone is gone, but does make her absence less emotionally/physically/mentally debilitating. For me, neither is an accurate statement, I’m somewhere in the middle.
7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)? How about your relationship with the past?
Ha! The future? In the very beginning of my grief, I couldn’t even fathom the next minute, let alone the next day. I wanted to die- I had no reason to live, my baby was dead- there was no future to be had. I was living minute to minute, then hour to hour. I progressed from there to day to day, week to week. I kinda feel as if I’m getting closer to living month to month, and being okay with that. I don't think I am ready for a relationship with the future beyond that point (month to month) - I can project like a mo’fo’ and freak myself the F out.
Thinking about the past makes me so very sad. I miss the person that I was, that joyful, naïve, glass is half full person. I was that person that would smile and say hello to perfect strangers-I would make my husband crazy! I just wanted the world to be a better, happier place, and if just smiling at someone made them feel better, then I did too. I miss the woman who was confident, self-assured and full of life. I look back and almost feel sorry/angry that I just didn’t have a clue, and wish that I had some idea that life can be cruel and unjust, as I think that it might have made Simone’s death a little less traumatic for me.
8. How long did it take to answer these questions?
A couple of days. I started it, left off and came back to it.
Here are my responses: http://ilostaworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/at-the-kitchen-table-with-glow-in-the-woods-august-2011/
Now I'll try and read some of yours as well :-)
Just over a year. 14 months. I don't really mark the time anymore - I think "last June" and it takes me a minute to count out the exact amount of time (14 months). Time doesn't seem particularly fast or slow right now - sometimes both, I guess.
2. Do you have an end goal to your grief? How much time do you think that will take? How much time did you think you'd need to get there right after your loss? How much time do you think you need now?
I don't think I have an end goal. I will miss my daughter for the rest of my life. I guess the goal has been to hold on to the parts of myself and my family that I treasure. My goal has been to avoid being destroyed. I've always been a positive person who tends toward happiness, and I didn't want to lose that. There is a lot more sorrow in my heart than I ever would've dreamed, but the joy and happiness is there too. In the early days, I think we prided ourselves on this, that as we were going through the most horrible pain imaginable, there was still joy in our house. Our son was 2 1/2 when we lost our daughter, we needed to hold on to some joy. Sometimes the joy was only a millisecond, but it was still there, and helped us pull through. Now there is a lot more joy than sorrow. Of course my yearning for her and my sadness for the way that it happened can still bring me to my knees, but I do feel like in 14 months I've gained that magical thing - perspective - which makes it a lot easier. I would trade anything in the world (other than another member of my family) to have her back, but I know full well that this is not a choice I'll ever be offered, so I don't linger on it. I guess if the goal was to remain myself, I feel that I've succeeded. But life is ongoing and I'm sure my grief and love will change with every year.
3. Rather than a clear end goal, is there a milestone or marker to indicate that you are feeling grief less acutely, i.e. going to a baby shower, listening to a song that made you cry early in grief, driving past the hospital? How long did it take to get there?
I held a 3 month old baby girl (my neighbor, who was to be her best friend) just hours after my daughter died, as soon as we came home. It was okay. Of course babies and pregnant bellies were horribly painfully for quite a while. Mostly I did what I could to acknowledge them without hurting myself more (and on some occasions, I'm sure I was actively rude in my refusal to say hello or chat...sorry stranger at the playground with a toddler boy and a huge pregnant belly, I just couldn't.) It was sometime around the first of the year when these interactions suddenly lightened. It sounds dramatic, but suddenly I realized that there was no longer a screaming sound in my head while I was saying hello to a baby or acknowledging someone's pregnancy. I hadn't realized it was even there until it was gone. I met a good friend's baby girl (born just a few days after Pearl's due date) and suddenly it just felt so much better. I cooed at her, with my heart completely open, no screaming inside. What a relief! I love babies, and I didn't want them to be ruined for me forever. My mom mentioned a similar phenomenon in her own grief. She was going to visit a baby born around the same time as Pearl, and she said, "I'm so glad I can see her now, for the longest time it hurt just to think about her." So, it took about seven months before I could wholeheartedly enjoy other people's babies again. A huge weight lifted from my heart.
4. How do you view the time you had with your child, either alive (within or outside) or already deceased? Before you all answer "Too short! Not enough!", did you have time to "bond" or develop a future imagination about what this child would be like? Perhaps depending on whether yours was cut short, how do you now feel about the nine-month period of gestation -- too long or not long enough?
I don't regret a minute of it. Of course it was too short. Thirty-six weeks I was pregnant with her, and I know I enjoyed her as much as a busy second-time mom could have. I held her as soon as she was born, feeling such intense joy and love. And then I held her again one more time before we said goodbye, and I sang her a lullaby that she'd listened to often while she was in my belly (though it felt more like I was singing to the air than to that tiny lifeless body - she was gone). We left the hospital within 5 hours. I didn't want to spend any more time with her body - I knew she was dead, and she was becoming more dead, and those were memories I didn't need. When they asked us at the funeral home if we wanted to see her again before she was cremated, we said no, and I feel good about that. I know some people spent more time with the babies after death, but this was the right amount for us.
5. One grief book suggested that it took 2-5 years to incorporate your grief into your life. Where are you on this timeline, and you do you find that to be true?
14 months, it feels pretty incorporated. I talk about her easily. She's part of our family. I cry for her, but not all the time. I don't know, I'd have to answer again in 2-5 years. I'm expecting twins in December, a boy and a girl, my 3rd and my 4th. I suspect that the rest of this pregnancy and their birth will awaken many new elements of grief. Since before I got pregnant again, my doctor has said that she believes the birth of a new baby will bring both healing and new layers grief. I suspect that's right.
6. There's a familiar saying, "Time Heals all wounds." Do you think this is true? Or do you subscribe to Edna St. Vincent Milay: "Time does not bring relief, you all have lied"?
Time is beautiful. God bless time. Time doesn't heal the wounds in a way that makes them disappear, but I believe it does heal them. The way I feel now is nothing like the way I felt in the first days and months after her death.
7. Has your relationship with the future (immediate and far) changed since the death of your child(ren)? How about your relationship with the past?
I still believe in the future. That's a part of me that I didn't want to lose, and I haven't. I don't want my daughter's legacy to be the death of hope, and so I hang on to it. I know that it's all so very precious, and there are no guarantees. I try to live as fully and as beautifully as I can. I cherish the past too. All of it is precious.
8. How long did it take to answer these questions?
Half an hour.