On Sunday afternoon during a quiet moment I realized, with both relief and horror, that I was feeling good. I was actually feeling good.
It's a combination of things, I think. I'm no longer worried that I'm going to unexpectedly bleed to death, I picked up some freelance work that's hopefully going to keep me busy for the next few months, and I made it through the first 5 days of Weight Watchers (a little hungry but otherwise relatively unscathed).
I think it's the combination of those three things that has made me feel so much better. And yet so guilty too.
With healing comes the recognition that the sorrow - the only thing you knew of your lost children - is getting easier to bear.
And while that's great from a "pick yourself up, dust yourself off and carry on with your life" perspective, it's also agonizing to know that the one thing that connects you to those children is the one thing you need to try to get past.
Except for the brief moments of strangled hope we had that the twins would be okay - that we'd find two little heartbeats in there eventually - all I know of them is sorrow. In a strange and horrible way it feels like healing from the sorrow means healing from them.
It's unbearable to have all your children so inextricably linked to such agonizing pain.
When I think about Thomas I do remember all the joy he brought while I was pregnant - the hope for his future and the dreams for his life and ours. And when I look at his pictures I'm flooded with a love that overwhelms me.
But in the end, I still know he died. I can't think about Thomas without ultimately thinking that he's not here. That no matter how much my body aches to be able to hold him just one more time, I never, ever will.
I've been thinking so much about him lately. Playing his birth over in my mind and remembering those horrible moments I try not to think about.
He is the face of all my sorrow. The only child I ever saw or held or really "knew" in any tangible way.
And then I feel guilty again. Turning my attention to Thomas when I should be thinking about the two little tigers who only just left me.
Grief is a monster I'm not sure I'll ever truly understand. And at the same time, one I know all too well.
13 comments:
No words but I am sorry. I can't even imagine. Thomas will always be right there in your mind. It is okay. Let yourself love them all.
"It's unbearable to have all your children so inextricably linked to such agonizing pain."
I could not have said this better myself. I find myself relating so much to your words and literally nodding my head as I read your posts.
oops..typo, so I had to delete it. Let's try it again...
With each miscarriage, I seem to mourn the loss of my twins more and more and I think it's because I held them and had them the longest...just like your Thomas.
"Grief is a monster I'm not sure I'll ever truly understand. And at the same time, one I know all too well."
You are a very good writer.
And a very good mother, to all your babies, even when one is more at the forefront of your mind than the others.
(((Take care)))
What you say is all too true. There are griefs I've held onto, clung to, embraced, because the feeling of loss was all I had left of the people I'd lost. The end of grief meant cutting my final tie to the people I grieved for and seemed like a betrayal, both of them and of myself. How much could I really have loved them, I asked myself, if I could go on living without them?
"all I know of them is sorrow"
In an early blog when you just found out you were pregnant with them you wrote "I love them so much already" and it brought tears to my eyes the joy and love in that little sentence.
You know sorrow because you know love.
And I can tell you REALLY REALLY know love. That my friend is a thing you know even more then you know greif. It is so obvious in everything you say and do - your garden, even your little monkey - they just have love written all over.
It's not from them you are healing. You loved them, and with time, I hope, the healing will allow you to have the love step forward, to become bigger than the hurt, to let you remember the joy of the early days in bigger measure than the heartbreak that followed. I hope.
I sit here and read your words and cry for you because I know there is nothing I can say or do that will make it any better. It IS unbearable to think that your happiness came with a price of such sadness. It just does not seem right or fair.
I think it's a combination of things - that you've done this before and sadly you "know" this already, that the twins and sorrow are linked together (along with love), that grief is already your unwanted friend.
I also think a lot more about V. than I do about A. even though A. was much more recently in my life. When I read back my blog entries I am shocked and saddened by my own story. Maybe that's just an automatic coping mechanism.
The way that our love for our dead children is intertwined with our grief makes it almost impossible to seperate the two. I know that I sometimes equate my love for C. with the hurt that I feel relating to his death. It is hard, too hard, to see the difference sometimes.
Thinking of you.
it's a mother's (guilty) instinct to think of all her children the same way, at the same time, to cry the same tears, to feel equally sad for all (in many of our cases)of them. but when grief hits we can't choose how it affects us, or which button it chooses to push that will trigger feelings for a specific loss. and i figure, it's all ok, in the end there is our overflowing love and there's no guilt in that.
thinking of you, always. (sorry for preaching to the choir.)
I'm still here... checking in on you now and again... I'm wishing for the moment when you can have a happy day without strings attached.
{{{hugs}}}
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