there are days when i wake up and feel as if it just happened, and im right back in the moments and the emotion and my chest feels as if ive been under water for hours.i wish i could make it go away but then i realize that if i didn't have the pain i wouldn't have those moments of wonder and love beyond belief. and it still hurts but it is tempered by the realization that nobody can ever take those precious moments (they were but moments...) away from me, from us. so wrong and unfair and god, why me, why us? why you or her or him?
a smart commenter once mentioned that it wouldn't really help to know why. she is a hundred percent right, but reason rarely enters into matters of the heart. not these matters anyway. when babies die it is the most fucked up of situations you can imagine, so your soul cries out for a reason. why mine? why anybody's?
and if not why, than what the hell happened and how did we end up here?
my mantra for the first four/five months was 'god help me.' i would be going about my day, just trying to get through and suddenly i'd be struck by the concreteness of my reality, by the cold truth of what happened in that gorgeous birthing suite, large enough to hold visitors and well-wishers and the raucous glee of a new family. not meant for the sickening quiet of stillbirth. not meant for one who labors with death on her shoulder, coming to take her children. not meant for me, not for T.
oh this rotten turn, all our hope in vain, our sweet baby girls born and burned. gone. it was in those moments, 'god help me...please'
i have been thinking a lot lately about grief and loss (not me, you say? it's true...)
i was hoping to be the only one. the one my friends all told their friends about but nobody knew. the one who shouldered this load of anguish so others could go about their merry way and get pregnant and have beautiful babies who laugh and coo and gum arrowroot cookies.
if i had to wear these shoes, id be damned if id see anyone else i knew wear them too. sadly, sadly, so very sadly this was not the case. percentages again, not in my favor (shocker) and lightening struck too close to home. one more person i know who feels what no one ever should. me included. i don't want to and i don't want anyone else to either. can't we go back to before this all happened?
when babies drank bottles and filled diapers and took naps and woke the fuck up?
god help me
it got me thinking about loss in a greater sense. from a chemical pregnancy, a blighted ovum, a miscarriage -- all the way up to a person whose parenthood gets cut short by disease, tragedy. it is never in the order of things to be able to completely accept the loss of our children, even if they were only quite literally a glimmer in our eyes.
they were there.
i am thankful i can put two beautiful names and irresistible faces to my pain.
but even if you can't it doesn't make them any less loved or any less gone.
not to me anyway.
6 comments:
Rage away, sweet friend.
I can't wrap my head around any of this grief, and although I haven't experienced it personally, I know far too many people who have been forever changed by this cruel twist of fate, for which there simply cannot be a reason. Not in my world anyway.
uhhhh...I hear you on hoping and wishing we were the only ones. And, the whole time I was in my birthing suite I kept thinking, "this is not how it is supposed to be" one of my nurses left in the middle of my labor to go to another mom...her fourth child on the way...I turned to my mom and said, "she is going to go deliver a baby that matters...a baby that will live." it is so not fair...I am sorry we have these ugly ugly shoes.
so true... Everytime I meet someone who has buried a child, I think the same thing. Really? It couldnt just be us and no one else?
Oh Lisa. I'm sorry you are in this place right now but you are allowed to feel this way. We all wish there was a blackboard in the sky that would tell us which way to go and the how's and why's behind it all but sadly, there is no blackboard. So we just keep on keepin' on. Life is fucked up, there is no doublt about that but you are so strong. Sending big hugs to you.
I can't even begin to imagine what you and T have gone through but I do know that the way you seem to channel your grief and your anger and your sadness really do make it all mean something for others. Your words are powerful. I hope your anger allows you to grieve as you need to. As always your strength and grit are inspiring! Hugs.
You know this but what you are experiencing is totally normal. You will go from feelings of rage/anger to denial, then back to rage. Its all part of the grieving process. You're 100% right when you say that reason rarely enters into matters of the heart. You know I'm here for you.
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