The long goodbye

The other day I read an article about the formalized mourning rituals observed by Jews. Being married to someone who is half Jewish, I'm familiar with some of those rituals - like sitting Shiva for 7 days, and the unveiling of the monument one year later.

But what I didn't know is that they understand that that grief takes a solid year to truly process. They figured this out, wrote it down, handed it out and now they all just know to treat each other a little more gently when the heart is healing post-loss. Imagine that.

It has now been one year and five days since my dad died.

Losing Thomas taught me that you don't get over a loss, you simply learn to live with it. So I knew I wouldn't magically feel like "the old me" when the sun rose on January 5th. I knew I would feel like the new me: the one who now lives in a world where my dad does not. The one who lost someone whose voice has been dear to her since before she was even born. But the one who is, nonetheless, still alive.

That's why I also knew I'd probably feel like I could take real breaths again on January 5th. Long, slow, deep ones - not just short, quick gasps designed to keep me alive.

And I did.

The hellish first year is behind me.

And I can breathe.

We're not so different

I can't believe Thomas' third birthday is coming up so fast. More than that, I can't believe he'd be three. Three already.

It was so easy to keep track of what exactly I was mourning when he'd just died because I knew what I was missing in a very tangible sense. I'd just seen him. Held him. Kissed him.

But now? Now I'm mourning for a three-year old I've never seen as well as my little baby. And I've already mourned for the one-year old and two-year old he would have been.

I didn't realize, in those dark, early days, how the mourning would change. I was so fixated on losing that beautiful little baby boy with his Daddy's chin that it didn't occur to me, at least right away, that I'd be mourning so much more than that, on and on and on for the rest of my life.

It's a fact I'm now acutely aware of, particularly as each birthday approaches.

I watch other children his age and see what I'm missing. I see the ghost of my child in them.

I sometimes wonder if it's healthy to think this way - to think so much about what Thomas would be like now and to feel the loss of that boy as well as the baby I did know.

But since this is the only way I know how to mourn a dead child (and as far as I know there's no manual for dealing with maternal grief), I'm just going to run with it. To do otherwise feels like I'd somehow be leaving him behind - and denying the mourning process that feels right and natural to me.

I don't dwell on it, the boy he'd be now, but it crosses my mind. How can it not? How can I see a child Thomas' age and not think about what he'd be like? How can it not make me miss him more? Or, at the very least, wonder about what might have been?

I can't help it. Maybe it's a mother thing. Maybe you are always this connected to your children, living or dead.

I find it interesting that no one blinks an eye when mothers of living children are consumed by thoughts of their children - of their daily doings, their accomplishments, their achievements, their triumphs and failures - but people furrow their brows and worry when the mother of a dead baby admits she thinks about her lost child.

I have yet to meet a mother - any mother - who can "let go" of her children.

We're not so different. We're not.

The crib

The other day I was cleaning out the basement. It needed it. Badly. I can't for the life of me figure out how two people can create such an impenetrable jungle of boxes, tools, Christmas decorations and random crap in such a short amount of time. I swear it hasn't been that long since I cleaned and organized it, despite evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, I was deep into the thrilling task of purging and cleaning when I dug my way down to Thomas' crib. Most of his things are in big covered plastic bins on shelves at the bottom of the stairs, but the bigger items (the still boxed stroller, the crib and the bassinet) are over in the larger storage area in the basement.

They're safe and sound, it's just that they were kind of hidden by other stuff. Until I excavated them again.

I stood looking at the crib. I ran my hand along the curved end where once upon a time I'd draped the beautiful pink, blue and white blankie my mom started knitting when she found out I was pregnant with Thomas, and slowly exhaled.

I stood there looking at it. Inconceivable, even still.

Anyway, later in the day I called My Beloved to let him know how the excavation was going, and we got talking about the crib. Suddenly, more than two years after the birth and death of our son, we're having a conversation about the crib. About the fact that neither of us feels comfortable using it for another child (should one, by some miracle, happen to come our way again) because we're nervous that it has been stored, uncovered, in our basement for so long.

Just to clarify, our basement isn't cootie-ridden or infested with anything other than Lucy the cat who occasionally wanders down there to use her box. But it's still a basement with its less than fresh air and, despite two dehumidifiers, slightly musty aroma. It's an ordinary basement. And it's just not where a crib should be.

And we're paranoid.

So there we were, agreeing with each other that we'll buy another crib if the time ever comes. And there I was, suddenly bone crushingly sad, talking about the crib our beautiful son never used, which will now never be used by his sibling either.

And this is why it makes me absolutely mental when people suggest (either outright or by more subtle methods) that there's a finite amount of time to be spent on the task of mourning a child.

Let's just clear this up once and for all. For the blissfully ignorant who just don't get it: IT NEVER GOES AWAY. Never. Not only because it's utterly impossible to "get over" losing your child, but because for the rest of your life there will be situations - like discussions about what to do with the unused crib two years down the road - that will pop up out of nowhere and remind you that your life is touched by an unthinkable sorrow.

Those moments can't be predicted, but they're always going to come. The wound is routinely stripped of its protective scar. It happens All. The. Time.

I was perfectly happy down there in the basement cleaning and sorting. I'd been walking by bins of unused baby things for two hours and coping perfectly well. I'm used to passing those bins. But I'm not used to making a final decision about the crib we lovingly picked out and put up for our darling boy, who never once used it.

You never get used to moments like that.