Perspectives: How to be there for your friend

Lest it appear that I am bragging, let me fess up—I am sort of bragging. I have some incredibly supportive friends. We've been through thick and thin together, many times and in many ways. When A died, we couldn't imagine not having them by our side, and for the most part, most of them have not disappointed. But even among the very good ones, some stand out in this meta-way that maybe only a true geek can appreciate. These friends not only do what is right, but they are the ones who can articulate why they do these things in this particular way. They are the ones, in short, with whom you can have practical conversations about needing that damned drink already and philosophical conversations about your experiences, the asshats around, about why they are such asshats, and about what it is about the asshats that gets you so much. My friend Aite is one of these very very good friends.

Our little forest campfire hadn't even been going for a week when we got an email from a friend of a very newly bereaved mom. What can I do, she asked? What is there to do? A flurry of emails later, Kate put together the compilation of our thoughts and suggestions. Interestingly, that was also right around the time I had my little rant about the me-me-me type of "friends."

That was when Aite told me those two things have prompted her to formulate her own thoughts on being there for the friends in grief. Which, given the kind of friend she has been and continues to be to me, made me think that her perspective might be at least as valuable as ours to other good friends out there, friends who want to do what's right but are not sure how.

And so, without further ado, I am proud to present to you my friend Aite and her thoughts on being there. She is around and reading comments. She is kind of shy, but she promised to jump into the conversation in the comments if warranted.

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Aite writes:

One time someone I know asked on her blog what to do when a tragedy befalls a friend. The post made it sound abstract, and most commenter didn't know it was precipitated by a stillbirth among our rather large group of friends and acquaintances. One commenter (who recently lost a close relative) reminded the blog's author of an experiment when two groups of people were told to keep their hands in very cold water—it's harmless, but it hurts. Both groups were to report the intensity of their pain on the same scale.  People in the first group went through the experiment alone while those in the second had one other person in the room. This additional person did absolutely nothing, not even making an eye contact with the participant of the experiment.  It turned out that people in the second group reported less acute pain. Clearly, the matters aren't that simple with grief, but my own comment built on the "presence in the room" analogy.  Here it is:

This topic cannot be discussed in the abstract. Let me talk specifically about grief arising from irrevocable loss. In such a case, saying things like "Everything will be all right" are out of question, by definition. The comment about the experiment suggests that you should simply be present for your bereaved friend. Using this analogy, before you can do anything else, you must enter her room. It helps me to remind myself that it's not about me. That thought helps to spend less time hesitating at the door before possibly deciding that it must surely be too late to enter now—no one expects you there anymore.

What are you going to say? Where were you before? Won't you somehow make it worse? What if you end up looking stupid? The point is that none of that matters very much because you, a friend, are by far not the most central figure in this situation, and the particulars of your actions matter infinitely less than the fact that there is nothing to fix. What's wrong can't be fixed. This is the essence of grief. Do not try to fix the irreparable, and you won't say anything stupid and inappropriate that could hurt your bereaved loved one.  Her grief will not get worse if she voices her pain. It's always with her. By and by she is learning to live with it, and it may take up a slightly different place in her life, but this process never ends and it's pointless to wait for its successful completion. And if she feels better right at this moment, it doesn't mean she is now better for good, and if she feels worse, do not be frightened, the rough patch will not last forever either.

Bereaved people often mistakenly believe that those around them forgot about their tragedy, or perhaps never cared in the first place. Those around the grieving ones, in turn, mistakenly think (even more often) that people who suffered a loss above all else want to be left alone.  True, some of them do, but that happens orders of magnitude less often than we tend to believe.

You have to realize that things will never be the same for you either whether you try to be there for your babylost friend or hide under a rock. If you bail out, it will cost you at least one relationship, and likely a good measure of self-respect. It's not that a babylost mother is necessarily keeping a score on who's been a good friend (although she is certainly entitled to).  It's just that you can't count on preserving your friendship if you can't deal with her grief.  Staying by your friend's side though babyloss is challenging and scary in part because it will inevitably change you as well. It may challenge your beliefs, your worldview, the way you look at people, they way you think, feel and behave in many instances. It will give you knowledge in areas of life where ignorance is certainly bliss. But it will allow you to continue and possibly deepen a valued friendship, to not be ashamed of yourself later on, and, well, to be of some support to your friend.

I think of my bereaved friend as the same person I've known all along, now in pain and grieving. This way, our history together can serve as the starting point for how we relate to each other after her loss. It's good if you can draw on things which always provided you with your strongest connections. (If you bonded primarily over happy carefree pregnancies—tough. You'll have to think of something else.)  You'll know best what you can offer to your friend, but realize that some of the offerings will have to wait for a bit.  Early on, concentrate on keeping up communication. The more you communicate, the less you'll need to think how to do it.  It's your responsibility to keep your conversation from being awkward and uncomfortable, so don't expect your friend to be articulate or take the lead. It doesn't mean she won't. But it does mean you need to abstain from placing any expectations on her and your conversations. Don't insist on her telling you what she needs right now. She may or may not know or concern herself with that at this point. If you stay connected, she will let you know in due time. Get in touch with her often, ask if it's a good time to talk, and take cues from her on how long she wants to talk. If you don't know where to start, ask her about something you two discussed in your previous conversation.  Express your concern about other members of her family. If there was an initial outpouring of sympathy, do not be swept away as the tidal wave recedes. Stay on.

You have to learn to put your babylost friend first in your relationship. On the other hand, you are responsible for keeping yourself on a firm ground. Hopefully you find other people who can prop you up. It goes without saying that you must have your grieving friend's consent to discuss her situation with them, if you feel that's what you need. But it's good to have someone to whom you can answer the question of how your babylost friend is doing in some truthful detail. I've been lucky in that my husband lent a steady, unflinching compassionate ear. I can mention to him still baby's pictures, cemetery issues, autopsy details, fears and grief without feeling like a pariah of the polite society. If you have midwives or doulas among your friends, they could be of good support to you because they often find themselves supporting babylost families as well. Stay away from people who are likely to suggest that you are enabling something unhealthy by being there for your friend, that you are reminding her of her grief and not letting her be all better already. Such attitudes are likely to make you angry and frustrated.  Depending on your personality, you may try to take them on, but I prefer to avoid them.

Early on you are likely to have a lot of conversation that start with, "Oh, have you heard what happened to the X family?" When you answer yes and that you are in regular contact with the bereaved family, many acquaintances will share that they are thinking about it, but aren't sure what to do. Communicate babylost parents' preferences. Many people assume that it's somehow indecent to contact the family, especially if they haven't been in touch for a while—that it betrays inappropriate morbid interest or something of the sort. I ask such acquaintance if she would have contacted the family have the baby been born alive and healthy. The answer is usually yes. Then what's the reason not to send condolences?

Some mutual acquaintances will ask if they can do anything to help. Again, communicate the family's preferences with respect to memorial services and charities of their choice. There may not be anything the acquaintance can do for the babylost family, but depending on your relationship with the person who's asking, you might get some logistical support. If you have small children of your own, ask people to look after them for a few hours so that you can spend time with your bereaved friends. This is very concrete, emotionally uncomplicated and highly valuable help.  In some circumstances, you may need rides or help with shopping and cooking.

As weeks and months pass, people will ask you how babylost parents are doing. What and how you answer is important. I usually say something along these lines: "Some days are better and some are worse. They find certain situations especially tough, and sometimes those aren't the most obvious things and present themselves unexpectedly."  I typically qualify this with "naturally" and "of course" in a few places. Here is why I think this works. It's important for people to understand that babylost parents aren't "over it" and "all better". It's equally important to make it clear that they aren't some kind of extraordinarily sad exception because they aren't. That you in no way expect them to be. That you don't suppose the person who's asking to expect such a thing. You may hear, "But I saw them as such-and-such social function and they seemed just fine," refer to what I said above about being momentarily better or worse.

I believe there is one more reason to make whatever effort it takes to be there for your bereaved friend. This reason, this goal is at the same time the most abstract and the most practical, the most ambitious and most naturally served by your effort. Our social circles are large. Bad things happen to people. It is important for us to learn decent, appropriate ways to respond to someone's crisis, both personally and on the level of our widest social circle. The courage to respond appropriately comes from experience. Contrary to the common exasperated cry of how hard, maybe impossible, it is to know what to do, the model is very, very simple:  remember that grief belongs to the mourner, come to her side, take cues from her, abide by her wishes, respect the finality of her loss. Do not expect everything to be all right again, ever. Do not leave. By taking these simple steps you challenge, and maybe even shift, conventional wisdom (or, shall we say, stupidity?) that it's oh so hard to know how to respond. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we personally aren't in a good position to help in a particular crisis. Stepping up when we can, we can help ensure that no one we know is left all by herself with her grief in her room.

grade me not

So once, when some (!!) people said and acted really insensitive and stupid to me, I cried. Not right in-front of them. I was hypocritical, weak, and dumb. So I acted like it was ok but once home I burst into tears. And so poor R had to comfort me and he told me, "In times like this, you really get to see the true mettle of people. You know what they are really made of."

Whoa. That made me tilt my chin up. Huh! Now I have been placed in a position where I can judge and evaluate people, woo-hoo! So, based on what they said or did not say; did or did not do, I get to grade them, yes?? I get to tick off what they are made of. Heck, if they appear in-front of me wearing a shirt the wrong hue or a pair of sandals I just hate, I can give them a thumbs-down and put them on a black list with skull-bones and hissing snakes as border. Wow. It's like getting a new toy.

Except, very soon, a small little voice in me asked, "So you think you can judge them because your baby died?" I have flashbacks of soap operas or movie scenes wherein one accused the other, "Don't think you can judge me just because you are blond/taller/bigger/fair-skinned/older/skinnier/younger/drive a fancy car/have a PhD, etc!!!" There was not one that said, "Don't think that you have a right to judge me because your baby died!"

No, I have no right. Sure, there are dumb ones, clueless ones, obnoxious ones, whatever ones, but I am sure at one point or other in my life I was also dumb/clueless/irritating/annoying/obnoxious/crappy, etc.

So, I was deflated. Chin down to chest. I slumped back down into my little corner to ponder life after a loss.

BUT. I was not left alone.

There are people who think they can judge me because my baby died. Grade me even. You know, how well, or how awful I am coping? How slow I am getting out of my grief. How bad I am mothering my two living daughters. How I could have done more. How the house could have been neater, since I do not have three, but only two kids to handle. How I must be in self-denial. How I am ruining my children's lives. How I should be over it already, and quick! have another new baby! How I think too much. How I am thinking the wrong way. How I am blah-blah-blah or how I am not blah-blah-blah. I am either too blah-blah or not blah-blah enough.

I don't need all these evaluations, judgments, or advice. Unless I ask. And sometimes, I do like to know, like if I totally am beyond salvation; if I should just go jump off a cliff already, or if i have a halo above my head. If the cake I baked is out-of-this-world or awful-inedible. If I really should get some hot-pink lacy underwear, or if my face resembles a prune by now. But, often I get unasked for judgments and evaluations, and even more harassments, without my asking. I just need to stand there and whoosh--- watch out! there they come.

Why? Is it just an expression of the overwhelming need to be of help? And thus, they have to give an opinion of how I am doing? Is it an art of conversation? To tell the other where they are on a certain scale? (Good/not bad/ failure/ try again)

How do they know? What makes them the expert? What makes them think that they know? But really, if they wanna help... come and clean my house. Come and cook my meals and do the dishes and scrub out the kitchen grout. Buy me a good supply of expensive chocolates and/or truffles (dark ones ONLY, please). But really, if you cannot bring me back my baby, just sit there. Just hold my space.

Sigh. I just want to be a human being. That means, I am not static, even though it may look that way. But bear in mind that you are not in my skin, and looks are deceiving. Being means to be, and that -ing part means ongoing. To me it means constant change of the state of what one is. From one second to the next; from one breath to the next. Even if I choose to remain in a state for a longer period, it is my decision. It is my journey to walk. (If you tell me everything happens for a reason, then maybe there is also a reason why I need to freakin' dwell.) The best you can do is walk alongside with your mouth shut, unless I am stepping right off the cliff; or a bear is breathing down my neck already or you can run and get me water when I run out; or keep watch for me when I need to sleep. And you know what, journeys are not necessarily made in a straight line. Not every journey is a straight line between destination A and B. Sometimes it is a circular path that needs to fold over and revisit some places. I sometimes think it is a spiral, always coming back to some same points, but passing with a distance, and it is never static. Although sometimes I do need to sit down. Or lay across the road. (If you come across me like that, step over. Please do not try to evaluate if I am dead or alive.)

But please, let me be. Just like I have no right to judge you because I lost my baby; you have no right to judge me because you have not lost a baby. Especially if you do not get it. Don't tell me what to do.

I know, the line between being concerned and being intrusive is very fine. Sometimes it takes intrusion, a gentle one, to express concern. It truly is not easy being a friend to one who walks the grieving/healing path. So I thank all those who have done so and for being so patient and wonderful. And those who have stuck around despite my sour face the last months? Precious.

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What about you? Do you feel judged and evaluated? Do you feel concern is sometimes intrusive? What are the best ways someone can express concern without making you feel evaluated or judged?

To the core

You know what annoys me, like, a lot? People around us who manage, effortlessly it seems, to make their interactions with us in our grief, yes, say it with me... all about them. People who make a production, often somewhat publicly, out of agonizing over whether to call their grieving friends, and of what to say. The sort of backdoor self-compliment highlighted on last night's 30 Rock-- "It's hard for me to watch American Idol because I have perfect pitch,"-- the "It's  hard for me to talk to grieving people because of how sensitive and considerate I am" sort of thing.

Luckily, we didn't get many of these directed at us. This past winter, though, I got to witness a public (in as far as an open post on the wilds of the internets is public) display of woe-is-me-I-want-to-be-the-bestest-friend-ever-but-
-it's-so-hard-how-do-I-make-everything-better bit. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was so distasteful to me in that piece of writing and the follow up comments from the author, but then I got it-- it was all about her, about her desire to fix things so she can be seen as the savior, the one who did the right thing, the rightest thing.

Now, I get that humans are self-centered animals, and I am certainly not blameless on that front myself. But dude,  if there is one area, one effing area of human interaction where it behooves you to check your shit at the door, this might be it. Don't you think? I get, too, that doing something, anything, makes people feel less powerless in the face of the big bad random universe. But see above re: checking shit. Because making yourself feel better at the expense of the person already in pain is.. how do I say it... oh, yes-- a pretty shitty thing to do.

This concludes the rant portion of today's post, and brings us to the part where I contemplate, much more calmly, I hope, thoughts this brought up.  

In that post, a few commenters tried, very gently, to tell the author that in grief there is no fixing things, that basically all you can do is be there for your friend, but she wasn't listening. But, but, but was all she had to answer. Finally, Aite, a good friend I've mentioned before, basically gave it to her straight-- it's not about you. Entering the grieving person's space should not be about worrying about how you will look doing the entering. You can't fix anything. Grief is what happens when there is nothing to do. Don't try to fix it, and you won't look dumb. You can't "remind" someone of their grief-- they remember all the time. Whether they want you to bring it up or wait for them to do so is individual, and you should follow your friend's lead in that, but assuming that people forget and you can remind them is pure wishful thinking.

My friend is mighty skilled in this art of abiding, being there for your friend, selflessly, at whatever distance and with whatever in hand your friend needs. I hope, too, that what we are doing here, in this space, is also very much abiding. Talking, listening, not trying to fix the unfixable. Now, if only laptops could dispense booze too... I'd send you all a drink or five.

So who is this grieving person now? If you are the one doing the abiding, who do you assume is in front of you? Is the grieving person changed, forever altered by the grief? Or is this the same person you have known all this time, only in pain and grieving? Are we changed or are we, at the core, the same?

My first impulse was to say that of course we have changed.  A deadbaby blogger who has since gone private was told by one of her friends to not let this change her. What a shitty thing to say, was my immediate response. Would you tell that to a mom who has birthed a living baby? Hell, no. It's a foundational value of our society that parenthood changes people. In the classical mythology of the media and entertainment as well as the assumed playground wisdom, there are things only a parent can understand. Condescending? Of course. But also pervasive and commonly accepted. So why would people not allow it as the same level of truth that having a dead baby should change you? Change you as profoundly and as deeply as having a live one is assumed to change you? And also, don't we all change just by living? Would you want to still be your high school self?

But isn't it also true that we are the same basic people, only now with extra crunchy shitty experiences included? Extra sad.  With extra tender feelings. Extra sensitive to things people say without thinking. Maybe even wiser and more compassionate. But with the same chewy center?  

What defines us as people? Are we changed abruptly, or are we in the process of integrating our grief into the fabric of our selves? Are we defined by grief, or are we living towards defining our grief as a part of our selves? Are we changed, or are we ever-changing?

what they say

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When F died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it creates invisible boundaries.

eight short words

Three years ago.

It was three years ago today I left the hospital for the first time after nearly three weeks of bedrest.  I'd been airlifted in during winter's last April gasp, but in my hermetic isolation in ye olde Craftmatic, the ground had transformed into a mushy carpet, spongy with sprigs of green poking through it.  I felt like Rip Van Winkle, utterly out of time.

We drove out of the city, to the old tower on its outskirts, the one I'd climbed as a child every time we visited.  My legs were weak and I walked gingerly.  I was not in pain, per se...just timid, afraid I would break.  The tower was closed, too old, too dangerous to be left open for tourists any longer.  I stood in front of it, staring, as if I looked long and hard enough I might catch a glimpse of a younger me, might disappear with her into a different time, any other time than this.

She did not materialize, that former self.  And I realized, viscerally, that she never would again...that there was no going back.  I had stepped off the side of my own flat earth.

I turned in the rain, then, and tested my footing on the slippery bank of overgrowth there that leads up and then down, eventually, to the harbour.  I climbed a little, until I was alone on a low ridge, looking down through the brush on tiny sailboats, seabirds.  And when I was sure I was far enough away that no one could hear me, I spoke into the wind, and spoke his name for the first time in the thirty-six hours since he'd died.

i had a son.  his name was Finn.

It was only a whisper, spoken to raindrops.  But I knew it might be a very long time before I had the courage to say those words aloud again, to risk exposing the gaping wound I had suddenly become, to risk being that crazy lady talking about her dead baby.  I knew too that I needed, desperately, to mark him on the world, to tell someone of my joy and my pride in him, of my sorrow, to tell that he had been here. 

My tears mixed with the rain and those eight words echoed.
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It was only in the year and more after his death that those echoes found expression anywhere, for me.  On my blog, I began to carve out a space in which I could say his name, lay out sides of my parenting experience that I had no way to speak in polite company.  I felt exposed, but freed, too.  And in finding ways to incorporate Finn's story into my own narratives of myself as parent, I slowly became, once more, a version of whole.

Of the six of us here, I am the furthest out on this road of grieving and healing, the one whose loss is the furthest removed in time.  I am the one whose firstborn died, who went home both a mother and not a mother.  I was utterly changed by the eleven hours of my son's life, but the disconnect between the internal sea change of becoming a parent and the external lack of anything to show for it...that sparked its own particular grief and isolation.  I am the only one, yet, who has had another child born since my loss, and perhaps the only one who has had another loss in the interim.  I am proof of survival. And I am grateful to be in the company of these woman here, sister Medusas and friends, all of us with our stories.  

My name is Bonnie.  I had a son.  His name was Finn. 

Welcome.