everything but Silas, part 2

Our house and our hearts were filled on Saturday. It has been so long since I have felt as calm and peaceful as I did after we returned from the ceremony at the park.

Inside our apartment was madness, though. I was whipping up press pots of coffee as my aunt shoved food into the oven and people wove in and out of the rooms and between bodies pressed close together. A bag caught on fire. I dropped a pie while rearranging the refrigerator. The cats scampered in fear as our cousins and nephew chased them around. Conversations and chatter filled the rooms and the yard, and it was right.

Music played through the stereo as the Mets fans in the family piled up on the couches, watching the game. Pizzas were ordered, food was brought out and furniture and tables were rearranged on the fly, everyone chipping into do whatever was needed at that moment. We had a plan, but it was loose and success depended on everyone adding their little piece.

It was the same out at the park, when we planted Silas' tree. The three shovels were passed many times and at the end, everyone laid a rock on the fresh mulch under the tiny branches filled with small, vibrant leaves.

We intended to have a marker or plaque, but we just never got around to having it made, and by the time we were mentally prepared to do that it was too late. Instead we figured we would maybe wait a year, until the tree got a little bigger, and have it created and placed then.

Our friends were one step ahead of us. They had Silas Orion engraved on a large, amazing stone, and brought it with them on Saturday. It was exactly what we wanted.

Even the weather was right. A bright sunny day would have been too gorgeous and stark for such a sad event. The low, menacing clouds matched the tenor of my emotions. All day I was calm but unsettled. I felt sad, apprehensive, and that low-grade burble of terror softly churned in my belly. It's like feeling butterflies, but with razor-winged dragonflys instead.

As 2pm approached only a few people had arrived. And then suddenly everyone was there. The house went from empty to overflowing in a matter of about 15 minutes. It was great to see so many friends and family, but it was terrible as well. That twisting, complex emotion made me feel disconnected and a little disoriented. There was a feeling of celebration, having everyone together, but it was also desolate and sharp. "Yay it's everyone we love!" mixed brutally with "No no no no no not everyone. That is why they are here."

But we did it together, and that made all the difference. We walked to the park in small groups. I locked up the house and waited for stragglers and then brought up the rear with some of my oldest friends and one of my brothers. Across the expanse of the park I could see the colorful gathering of our friends and family. The center of their loose arc was immensely small compared to the thick, old trees standing tall all around.

At the park, next to the sapling, I shoved my spade into the earth forcefully, and then asked everyone to come closer and circle around. My father welcomed everyone and then recited Hard Times Come Again No More. I said the Hopi Prayer, and then Lu stepped forward to tell everyone why we picked an Acer Rubrum “Red Sunset” Maple tree to memorialize Silas. "The colors will be brilliant in the fall, when Silas was born. And he was born here, in this town so we wanted the tree to be here, too," she told them, and then she asked for everyone's participation to help us finish planting it.

Before they took up the shovels, though, I stepped forward one more time, because there was something else Lu and I wanted to say to everyone. I was barely able to speak at this point, but it was something we felt needed to be said.

"We do not believe that everything happens for a reason. We do not believe that we are being punished or tested by God. But we do believe that the only way we can can get through this is with all of your love and support. And we are so thankful that you are here with us today to help us, and that you will continue to be there for us, because we need it. We need it so much."

Family stepped forward first to shovel on some dirt and fertilizer, and then suddenly it was done, I was no longer the focus. As each person took hold of the shovel their total attention was on the tree and the task. This was their moment to physically connect with the ceremony, and in turn, our missing son. The action of their arms and hands on the handle, the scoop of dirt, the arc of pebbles and soil in the air as they each helped fill the hole around that tiny tree made the ceremony visceral, complete.

I loved seeing that look on their faces. I needed their sadness and attention to this everyday fact of my impossible life.

It's almost a little sadistic, I'm afraid. I wanted everyone to hurt yesterday. I needed them to feel the bottomless ache I live with every day. It gave me a sense of peace I have not felt for a long time. I didn't have to bear this alone because everywhere I looked on Saturday, I could see pain and sadness and understanding in everyone I loved. My load was lightened because of their hugs holding me up and their tears joining mine.

It turned out that I did not need to demolish the park as part of the ceremony on Saturday. I want that tiny tree to have good role models all around it. I want it to grow up tall and wide and strong. I want it to grow so tall and so wide, that I cannot get my arms around it when I'm out there some day down the line, holding onto it for dear life, because I still can't get my arms around my beautiful, missing son.

Did you perform a ceremony to remember and honor your child?  What was your favorite part of that terrible day?  What prayer or poem or song lyrics did you use in the ceremony?  What changed for you before & after that day, if anything?

losing it. perhaps literally.

“She’s got such a pretty face. It’s too bad she can’t do something about her weight.”

This remark can be attributed to a member of my own family. One I’ve secretly never forgiven.

My love/hate relationship with my physical self started very early. I have a crystal clear memory of being on the school playground in the third grade being called fat by a friend who was angry with me for one reason or another.

I spent high school in a fog of self conscious, shirt tugging anxiety, never happy with myself. Not until someone fell in love with me did I feel remotely confident. That helped, as did the roughly 30 pounds I lost over the summer following graduation. It wasn’t a conscious effort; I simply worked on my feet and rarely stopped to take a breath. Even relatively thin I dressed conservatively for someone my age, feeling as though other people shouldn’t have to be exposed to any more of my body than necessary.

Fast forward, past more than ten years of student and office life spent largely on my arse and I was back to where I was at 15; softer around the edges and thicker around the middle than I’d like.

And pregnant.

By the time Sadie was born at 42 weeks I had gained just under 60 pounds. I was comically rotund but somehow I loved every stretch-marked inch of myself. Even though my knees creaked when I climbed the stairs and I couldn’t get out of bed without rolling out, I felt better than I had ever felt before. My mind was as clear as my skin. Months of clean eating and plenty of sleep had made what I thought would be an indelible impression on me.Within two weeks of Sadie’s birth I had lost 20 pounds. Four weeks later she was gone.

If I’m being honest, I completely lost interest in caring for myself the morning we said goodbye to her.

I’ve spent the past year eating and struggling and drinking and feeling excessively. I joined a gym and went sporadically for two months before abandoning it altogether for three. I suffered from random insomnia and popped pills in all moments of weakness: hangovers, backaches, constipation, and depression. Rest certainly hasn’t come easily for me since her death, not without some sort of help. Whether that was a glass or four of sauvignon blanc or a couple of herbal sleeping pills, it was always something. Like many parents here will understand, it’s when the lights go out and I’m left along with my thoughts and memories that is most painful.

So much for my body being a temple. At the moment it’s barely a lean-to. I can’t decide if I enjoy punishing myself or I don’t believe I deserve to feel good in the first place. Whatever the case, I feel as vulnerable now as that third grader in the schoolyard.

Less sensitive people have been asking us whether we’ll try again for months. Others have tactfully left it to us to bring up if and when we’re comfortable. I have often wondered if Sadie hadn’t been our first, would we be where we are right now. I am doubtful and terrified that my abused old body may not even be capable of making a healthy child. Am I strong enough, physically or emotionally, to try? Am I too far beyond repair to risk it?

My husband has lost more than 20 pounds since Christmas; regularly pounding out God knows how many frustrations at the gym. It wasn’t until he started annoying me with a daily ‘calories burned’ report that my latent competitive streak was roused. Then it got even worse: the bastard started shrinking (damn those men and their superior metabolism). I’ve literally had no choice but to get off the couch and pick up my sneakers.

I’m not making any promises, least of all to myself.

If I were brave I might ask myself why I’ve let the idle lifestyle go on so long. Knowing I won’t allow myself to get pregnant again without being in suitable physical shape first, I might also ask if there is a chance I’ve been using my body as an excuse to put off trying again. But I’ve never been much in the bravery area.

How has your body image changed after pregnancy, and after your loss? Have you ever knowingly punished your physical self, it be with neglect or otherwise?

This post is a part of The Body Shop at Glow in the Woods -- a month of themed reflections and memes that explore what we do in an effort to occupy these physical selves with grace after babyloss.

my body electric

It’s time. It’s spring. It’s time to plant.

I take it out of the freezer where it’s been since last June, since Tikva’s birth.

I put it in the refrigerator and after a few days it has thawed.

I take it out again, open the top of the plastic container, and pour it into a bowl.

I look down on this magnificent thing – deep, dark red blood, a mass of veins, a symbol of life.

Tikva’s placenta, a few inches of her umbilical cord, and the amniotic sac that surrounded them and my Baby Girl. Incredible.

I need to cut off a piece of the placenta and put it in a sterile container. It’s going to a doctor who is researching the possible genetic causes of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. She may be able to isolate Tikva’s DNA from her placenta and include her in the study. Maybe tell me something that might explain… something. Perhaps. Before losing that opportunity, it’s worth a try.

So I dig my fingers into its softness, marvel at every inch.

My body made that. My body made that for my Baby Girl! That which nourished her while she was inside me, helped her grow. I can’t help but wonder at how amazing that is – it is not diminished by the fact that something still went awry as she grew inside me. In this beautiful thing in my fingers, I see what my body did for Tikva – I see how hard my body worked to nourish her and keep her well.

I cut off a small piece from one side, then another piece. I take a piece of the umbilical cord, and some of the blood, and I put them all into a small sterile container. Tikva’s DNA in a plastic vial. The rest back in the big container, back in the refrigerator. My hands under the flowing water, I watch the red of the blood run down the drain.

A few days later I plant the rest of the placenta underneath a new rosebush – golden yellow and orange roses with some pink. The best kind of fertilizer to help them grow and blossom. The roses are going to smell amazing when they bloom. The colors make me think of Tikva… warm and delicious and delicate and soft. So sweet.

photo by sleepingbear

I can’t help but be amazed at what my body is capable of – both the magic and the messy stuff. I’ve struggled with illness, with being overweight and underweight, with the constant practice of learning to love my body in spite of the jiggle and flab and blemishes. I haven’t always treated my body like a temple… I certainly haven’t always loved my body unconditionally.

But the three times I was pregnant I treated it like the Taj Mahal.

I took for granted the magic when Dahlia grew perfectly inside me and was born with relative ease. I was stunned with disbelief – Me? No way! – when I miscarried at ten weeks a few years later. Miscarrying felt like small potatoes when I learned that Tikva had a potentially life threatening birth defect – My baby? How can that be?

I’m honestly not sure what to make of it all – all that my reproductive body has created. I have planted two placentas: Dahlia’s with fuchsia colored dahlia tubers and Tikva’s with orange yellow roses. I planted the remains from my miscarriage with yellow dahlias.

Lots of flowers that are now in other people’s gardens.

One radiantly healthy living child asleep in my quiet home.

My slightly deflated spirit housed in this familiar almost-38-year old body that is both charged by what it is capable of and apprehensive about all that can go wrong.

My body actually feels strong, healthier overall than I have felt in years. It also feels – and certainly looks – older. I can’t say I really thought very intensely about being in my late thirties or even really noticed my aging body until this year – until I lost Tikva. It’s like someone polished the mirror and held it up to my face and said,

See? This is you. You are older. You have been through a lot. You are now even more weathered than you thought you could be.

Remember the movie Fame from 1980, at the very end when they do their senior performance and sing and dance all together…

I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me yet to come. I toast to my own reunion when I become one with the sun.

I sing the body electric. I glory in the glow of rebirth. Creating my own tomorrow when I shall embody the earth.

And I'll look back on Venus, I'll look back on Mars and I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars. And in time, and in time we will all be stars.

That song has been in my head the past few days as I have checked in with my own body electric. As I have thought about the possibility of rebirth after loss. About the kind of tomorrow I want to create – if indeed some of the creation is up to me.

I have been talking to my body, assuring myself that trust is still there between us – that body and I still believe in each other. I have felt pangs – my eyes have moistened – thinking about how incompatible with life Tikva’s beautiful body was. I have asked so many times,

What does it all mean? Why does it work only sometimes?

I have more questions than answers, of that I am sure. Yet I still feel like I have a lot to celebrate about my body…

My body that has given life, however fragile.

My body that is the only vessel I get this time around for my mighty and sometimes weary soul on this mysterious winding road.

My body that is – like Tikva’s – perfectly imperfect. Or is it imperfectly perfect?

I feel tremendous gratitude for my body electric – and the force of energy it both contains and creates.

.::.

What are you thankful for about your body? What brings you awe? What are you inspired to create when you look in your mirror?

This post is a part of The Body Shop at Glow in the Woods -- a month of themed reflections and memes that explore what we do in an effort to occupy these physical selves with grace after babyloss.

anything is possible

This afternoon I spontaneously took Dahlia to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. They’re having a weeklong exhibit called Bouquets to Art, and boy was it gorgeous. As if the museum wasn’t beautiful enough, this week it is adorned with flower arrangements created to depict or appreciate different works of art throughout the place. And… I’d forgotten the two traveling exhibits that are currently there: Andy Warhol and Yves St. Laurent. Talk about eye candy… and color!

Someone recommended to me a few months ago, “Go look at art. Walk in a park surrounded by flowers. Go see something beautiful.” They were right…

Today I fed my soul.

Today I refilled my leaky well.

Today I stroked my tired heart with softness and vibrancy and beauty.

Today I sat on a cushioned couch under a disco ball, watching Dahlia skip and dance and hop among the moving lights and shapes that circled the floor. As if she were a work of art herself, an ever-changing statue in motion. A dancer. A happy child simply playing. Making others around her smile. Filling me up.

We flitted about, surrounded by mannequins dressed in Yves St. Laurent gowns, and Dahlia pointed at each one and said, “Mommy, this one’s me and this one’s you. This one’s you and this one’s me. Look, Mommy… Wow! This one’s my favorite…” Delicious. The bright colors, the sparkles, the eccentricity of exaggeration, just for the sheer beauty of it.

Today I loved my daughters, the vibrant living one dancing before me, and the spirit one whom Dahlia said she saw in the mist that was watering the grass outside. “There’s Tikva!” I loved them both from a bright and full place within me.

And I thought about possibility – the word I have been swishing around in my mouth for a while. Surrounded by all that color, all that imagination, all that life – however fleeting… there’s a reason the flower exhibit only lasts a week – I was able to feel the possibility of what is ahead with greater depth than before.

Because if a person can make art so bright, so gorgeous, isn’t anything possible?

If a child can be born as vibrant as Dahlia, or as fragile as Tikva, isn’t anything possible?

If we can move halfway around the world to try with all our hearts to help our baby live, is there anything we can’t do? If Tikva chose me as her Mama, how can my life be without meaning?

Possibility is tasty.

I have always been an optimist, even in my darkest times. I have had more hard times than many in my 37 years, so my eternal optimism sometimes surprises me. I must have been born this way, it just seems to be my nature – my spirit is a positive one. Maybe I just learned early on that if it’s possible to feel really bad, it must be possible to feel really good, too. I’ve always believed that you have to go through it to get through it. Maybe it’s true that knowing deep sorrow is the only real way of glimpsing profound joy. I don’t know… Maybe it’s not important to understand why the glass is half full through my eyes, but rather to be thankful for that part of who I am.

But back to possibility…

How do I reconnect with that sensation after so much possibility has been lost? How do I trust the possibility of happiness, fulfillment, even hope… after so much has been taken away? After so much letting go? How do I hold the likely possibility that I will one day birth and hold another healthy living child, and that it will be easy and smooth and real?

How?

I just do. Every day I make that choice. Every day, even when I’m not feeling it deep inside – and I have plenty of those days, too – I am choosing possibility. I’ve learned in my later thirties that I can actually choose what I focus on, that I am capable of readjusting my lens if what it is focused on isn’t making me feel good. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but the intention is there. Not an intention to always feel good – because sometimes I just need to cry and feel like crap. But a desire to remember that possibility is always there.

Before she was born and during her very short life, Tikva became such a symbol of hope, not just for me and my family but for so many others who followed her journey. Since her journey took her to another realm of existence, I have asked myself often, “How do I hold onto hope when hope has been lost? And how do I build new hope, new promise, new possibility?”

The thing is, possibility is always there, and hope is a thing with shallow roots but a powerful desire, always seeking to be replanted, to rise back up through the soil towards the moisture and the light. Towards beauty. Towards possibility. Towards love.

I have to admit that I didn’t find possibility at the museum. I actually went there already feeling it deep inside me. My eyes were open to seeing it, and there it was. The magic I encountered there reaffirmed promise, gave me permission to hope, showed me proof that more beauty is possible. And I was reminded of the incredible beauty that exists in the very short life of my little girl. I stood before a soft all-white arrangement of flowers and loved it completely because it reminded me of Tikva.

And Dahlia pointed at a stem of orchids hanging down from it and said, “That flower. That’s Tikva.”

Even though she’s gone, she’s never really gone. For me, Tikva will forever be proof that anything is possible. Not because she overcame the greatest odds and lived a long healthy life, but because she was powerful enough to teach me hope and possibility.

And the deepest love imaginable.

.::.

How do you hold possibility? Where does it hide after the loss of your baby(ies)? Where do you find it? 

the shape of grief

Upon Ferdinand's death was a big void. And I filled it with tears and words. I wrote and wrote and wrote, because I did not understand my grief and I had to figure it out.

There were many things repeated: the tears, the hollering, the pain, the hurt, the questions, the anger. Sometimes there were appreciation: gratitude, seeing the beauty.

But sometimes it seems my words were just not touching it, not describing the grief right. I really wanted to yell out to the world what it feels like, how it is, but it seems no matter how I string together the words, no matter how hard I contemplate the letters on my keyboard, there is a glass wall between me and grief. It seems I hold and cradle it, and I rock to sleep murmuring its name, yet it seems so intangible.

Then one day, my wonderful friend Leigh sent me this poem:

The Phoenix Again

On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.

After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.

You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.

It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.

And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief

To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die.

~ May Sarton

and upon reading it, I broke down and cried. I realized that I have been trying to grope with the shape of grief, and perhaps denying what it was. The poem spoke to what I feared to face up to: I had died with my son.

And it spoke for what I desired: to live again.

Those words gave shape to my grief.

Often, it is when reading the blog of a fellow bereaved when I will chance upon a line that makes me say, or think, "Oh, my gosh, you just nailed it. You just said it for me, in a way more eloquent, and more beautiful, and more wide-eyed that I ever could."

Yet, it is not just the fellow bereaved who knew my grief, or who actively and compassionately sought to feel around this hole in my life, groping, tenderly touching, patiently trying to understand it all with me. At my Blessingway, organized by my two wonderful, incredibly awesome friends, a friend read the following poem during the session in which we all honor my son Ferdinand:

When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn
you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed,
I shall say, “Baby is not there!”–mother, I am going.

I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you;
and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe,
and kiss you and kiss you again.

In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves
you will hear my whisper in your bed,
and my laughter will flash with the lightning
through the open window into your room.

If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night,
I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep mother, sleep.”

On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed,
and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.

I shall become a dream,
and through the little opening of your eyelids
I shall slip into the depths of your sleep;
and when you wake up and look round startled,
like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.

When, on the great festival of puja,
the neighbours’ children come and play about the house,
I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.

Dear auntie will come with puja-presents and will ask,
“Where is our baby, sister?”
Mother, you will tell her softly,
“He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Oh, how I trembled as those words left her lips. Those words made me realize how close my son is to me, and yet how far away he is. Those words reached deep and touched me where it is the most raw and most tender. My entire being shook, down to the very depth of my soul, because in those words, my grief had once again been given shape. Those words beautifully expressed my grief and longing. I read the poem many times over after the Blessingway and cried many good crys.

::::

How about you? How do you find shape to your grief?- thrugh your own writing, by reading? Do you have a poem that you return to often, be it for comfort, or just to give yourself permission to have a good, good cry?