The haves and have nots

Ahhhhhh. I'm sitting alone in my office with the (finally) cool breeze bringing in the earthy smell of new rain and damp pavement, and it's just so peaceful. If it weren't for the fact that I'm sitting in the office because I have a ton of work still left to do tonight, it would be perfection.

Except for the odd rumble of thunder and the chirp of spring birds, it's quiet. So, so blissfully quiet. I suppose the fact that it's nearly 8:00pm on a weeknight is part of the reason. All the little ones who are usually out in the street playing during the day are, I presume, getting read their bedtimes stories right about now. Snug in their jammies, fresh from the bath.

But it was a little less quiet a few minutes ago. The unmistakable sound of a most excellently delivered tantrum, Oscar-worthy in fact, came pealing in through the open window along with the evening  breeze.

I stood at the screen listening to the fracas - sobs, angry screams, and "daddeeeee, daddeeeee, dadeeeeeeeee!!!" - and breathed a sight of relief as I turned to sit back down at the computer.

I sighed. I sighed because it's not me trying to cope with a 3 year-old who has just copped an, "I don't want to go to bed and you can't make me" attitude. I sighed because tonight my only responsibility, other than getting cat food and picking up My Beloved at the train, is to myself. I sighed because right now it seems easier to be me than them. 

It was a happy sigh. And kind of a relieved one.

And this is a startling turn of events. Easier to be me than them? Huh?!

I don't know if this is some sort of a self defense mechanism at work, or just that magical ability humans have to adapt and accept and push on. But this has been happening quite a bit lately. I just haven't wanted to admit it because it seems, well, wrong. In fact it seems all kinds of wrong to be seeing the silver lining in such a dark and awful sky, doesn't it? I mean seriously, doesn't it??

I've become so accustomed to focusing on the negative - on what's missing -  that it seems wrong to, every once in a while, actually be happy with my life. Just the way it is.

Not that it's wrong to be happy, but wrong to be happy about this.

This can't be right, can it? Is this even allowed?!

I'm not happy that my son is dead and I miscarried his four siblings. But sometimes I'm incredibly happy with the peaceful life we've managed to carve out since, and sometimes that happiness is directly related to the stress I know we don't - and will never have to - endure. Like bedtime tantrums, for example. Hell, any kind of tantrums. And messes too, dirty diapers included.

Of course it goes without saying that I would trade in all my new-found peace to have Thomas back. In a heartbeat. But since that isn't an option, I'm going to try to stop feeling guilty for enjoying the things our live has given us, even if we have them because of what was taken away.

Guilty

It takes so much energy to chase away the unfounded guilt that I still occasionally find lurking in my head.

I've worked hard to distinguish unfounded guilt from real guilt, so much so that now I can feel it. I know it by its weight, and height, and breadth. I can actually feel it taking up space. In my neck. In my shoulders. On my back.

Today I made my Mother cry. Now, in my defense, it doesn't take much to make my mother cry. She is one of those people whose protective armor is about as strong as cheap cling wrap. And with good reason. She has lived a difficult life in many ways, and is certainly no stranger to the kind of tragedy that crashes in on an otherwise quiet existence, turning it upside-down and inside-out.

But still, I made her cry.

We were talking, in a round about way, about Thomas. About our common sorrow, and how it affects your views of life and death. About the curious ambivalence you have towards both once someone so wee and dear is taken from you.

And, she cried. She choked back tears as she told me that she has nothing to look forward to because what we all thought was going to be our future was suddenly gone one sunny March day. She said part of her died that day too.

And she cried.

And I sat stupidly mute on the other end of the phone searching for the right words. Because I'd made her cry.

And I felt responsible for her grief. For who she is grieving for, and for what she now knows is never coming. For the future she lost so many times over.

It pressed me down to the bed. Held me there. Sat on my back and tried to suffocate me in the blankets.

But I am not responsible for this. In the smallest voice I have, I quietly told guilt that it isn't my fault. That I can't do more than I have. That I can't risk more than I have. That I cannot be held responsible for someone else's sorrow.

I pushed back. I stood up. I shook it off.

But I made my mother cry.

I'm a blogolympian...

...for one day, anyway.

So today this is where you can find me, blathering on about God and grief and miracles and demons.

You know, same old same old.

It was groovy

Are...are those AGE spots on my hands???

The gray hair wasn't enough of a giveaway, I suppose.

____

Yesterday I spent a few hours in the neglected back garden and got a sunburn on my back.

Despite the age spot issue (and the annoying kink in my lower back), today I feel like I'm 7. Back in the day I'd run around all summer in my bathing suit at the cottage and go back to school looking like a gingerbread cookie. Minus the icing.

It was the 70s. No such thing as sunblock. I got burned, then tanned deeply and spent the rest of the summer with a golden hue that people these days would pay good money for at a tanning salon.

I miss the 70s. Not because of the carefree tans, but because of the carefree ME. It would be years before my Dad would have his first heart attack and grind my childhood to a screceching halt. It would be decades before I would start losing babies.

It was golden.

______

Friday night we went to the neighbours' for beer and snacks. I had a lot of both and stumbled my way home giggling with my similarly soused spouse.

But apparently a good beer buzz (the best I've had since long before Thomas was born) isn't what it used to be. Or perhaps I'm not.

My Beloved fell asleep instantly. While I lay in bed curled up beside him, my mind drifted quickly and unexpectedly to Thomas and I found myself quietly whispering endless apologies to My Beloved while he slept.

I really thought I'd moved past that raw, bleeding guilt. I swear did.

But beer, it seems, brings it out in me.

Good to know.

_____

See? SEE why I miss the 70s?

Guilt

My Beloved and I were having a conversation about my lingering guilt the other day on our way home from our annual Thomas birthday mission (which was delayed a few weeks by a couple of circumstances beyond our control).

He doesn't understand, but I don't really expect him too. He thinks I blame myself, but I don't.

For 9 months I did everything I could to make a healthy baby and I trusted professionals who I had faith in. I did everything I possibly could.

I didn't know the pain I was feeling during labor might have been the start of the abruption. How could I? How could I possibly know the difference between two degrees of agony? I didn't know that taking Thomas off the monitors while they took me into OR for the C-section would be when the abruption would complete itself. If all the nurses and the OB missed the signs of the abruption, how could I have caught them?

I did all I could. I don't blame myself. I'm not at fault.

My body is.

And that's the guilt I can't let go of. That's the guilt I don't have any idea how to expunge from my heart and mind. From my soul.

It wasn't my fault, but it was still my fault. Me as an entity, as a thing physically designed to fulfill a biological role in procreation.

There was much grimacing, hair pulling and sighing as I tried to explain this to My Beloved.

He said he doesn't feel any guilt and just couldn't understand why I do.

I finally told him that, as much as I hate it when people say this kind of shit, if you haven't carried a child inside your body and then been unable to keep it safe and sound when it mattered most, you can't possibly understand the guilt of living in that body in the aftermath of the death and destruction it caused - the catastrophic failure.

You just can't.

To be quite frank, I'm a little frightened of this particular guilt because I don't know how to control it and I can't see it ever, every going away. I've talked myself out of the other guilt I used to feel. I comforted it all away long ago.

But this miserable specter of physical responsibility remains.

I can't make peace with my body for the way it failed us and as long as I can't make peace with it I will feel this agonizing guilt.

I want to walk away from it so badly it hurts. I can imagine what it must be like and how much farther along the path of healing I would be if I wasn't dragging this anvil of burden behind me every step of the way.

I envy My Beloved the peace he has knowing with such verifiable certainty that no part of him is to blame. Or ever was.

NOW can I have a cookie?

I feel like I owe the world an apology for the way I sometimes see things. For my occasional inability to find joy where everyone else does. For my penchant for feeling gut twisting jealousy when I have no business doing so. For my angry thoughts. For my twisted sense of logic. For my inability to pray. For my lost patience. For my tempers and moods and self pity.

Or maybe I do have the right to see life through these jaded eyes but just have trouble making the justifiable fit into the nice, pretty, organized world around me. The world that doesn't like to think that people feel the way I do sometimes, justified or not.

You know, I worry incessantly that I'm turning into someone ugly and bitter that people are eventually going to opt not to be around.

Which then makes me want to fall to my knees in a tear and snot filled frenzy and beg for forgiveness.

When I try not to be the ugly person I am inside during these moments of torment, I end up feeling like a fraud. And a confused one. Is trying to be a better person actually not being true to yourself? Is trying to change the way you feel about something lying or healing? Can you re-train your brain after something so earth shatteringly tragic has altered it?

I never used to be like this. I swear I didn't.

I'm at war with my head today. Can you tell?

I don't fault other people who are grieving and recovering for the feelings they have or their reactions to the ordinary that is suddenly anything but. I never have. But for some reason I have a hard time cutting myself the same slack.

Ugh.

I think I need a cookie. That's the only answer. Clearly.

So, you know, if you have a really good recipe that you're willing to share and you feel so inclined, I'm all ears.

I could use the distraction...

(You can't see it, but I'm furiously batting my eyelashes here - and I'm not too proud to pout...)

A revelation, courtesy of someone else's mind

One of the things that has really bothered me since Thomas died (and during the ensuing childless-but-not-for-lack-of-trying-and-trying-and-trying years) is the way I've felt about other people's pregnancies. I have been riddled with guilt for feeling a whole host of unpleasant things upon hearing pregnancy announcements and upon seeing bulging belly after belly after belly all around me (quite literally, since my neighbourhood is now on its second baby boom since Thomas died).

The intensity has lessened. The shock isn't quite the same. And there is now real joy that I think - or at least I hope - actually comes across when a friend tells me she's pregnant. Because I feel that now. I really do.

But yeah, I still feel some of the bad stuff too. And it still makes me feel guilty as sin every single time.

I've tried to rationalize it, and that usually works like a too small band-aid for a little while. I tell myself that I held my dying child in my arms and kissed him goodbye in a cluttered hospital office, and so it's okay for someone else's happy news about their own live, growing child to reduce me to tears in the privacy of my own quiet little bedroom. I tell myself that, but I don't always believe it.

It seems wrong to feel like I've been drop-kicked in the gut when someone else tells me news that I know (in a way thousands upon thousands of women never will) is such a blessing.

And I wonder each time when the hell that kick will stop coming. Or at the very least when the guilt that follows will ever go away and leave me alone.

I wonder if it'll be when menopause sets in - when I'm no longer physically able to bear my own children. Or if we have another child. Or if we adopt.

I just wonder if this particular hurt and guilt will ever go away.

I came across another blogger's musings on this subject last week. She had an epiphany about the whole thing after hearing the news of a 43-year old friend's pregnancy after just three months of trying. Unassisted.

She said that she did feel true joy at her friend's news, but at the same time she had the unsettling notion that the gods were laughing at her (she's had several losses and undergone every fertility treatment under the sun).

And then (and this is the good part) she realized that it was okay. Okay. Because the way she was feeling wasn't about any ill will she felt towards her friend. It was, as she said, all about her.

WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS??? It's so simple. And it makes such perfect sense.

I don't begrudge my friends their children - their shot at parenthood - nor do I want anyone I know to suffer the loss of a child. I don't. I want them to be happy and to have as many children as their little hearts desire. I do. I really do.

It just happens that the flip side of all that good stuff happening to other people is a whole bunch of not-so-nice emotions for me. Happy news reminds me of my sadness. But it's about me. It's about my sorrow. It's the flood of memories that wash over me, the "what ifs", the "I wishes"...

They're about me. They're about Thomas, my other two angels and the babies I just can't seem to make.

The feelings have nothing to do with anyone else but us, and therefore I can have all of them, theoretically, guilt-free.

And so I'm going to work on that. I have enough guilt crawling the walls of my brain without holding on to any more.

Let's see if this works, shall we?