Birthday kisses to heaven

I love you more and more every single day. I can't imagine how there will be enough of me to hold all that love eventually, it'll be so big.

I miss you. Happy 4th birthday, sweet one.

Balance

I'm much better tonight.

I just forgot that it's okay to allow yourself to feel sad. I wasn't purposely ignoring it, but that's absolutely what I was doing; focusing on the good and pretending there was no bad at all.

For balance and sanity it is, unfortunately, necessary to feel everything.

Once I gave in and just let myself hurt, I started to feel better. It sounds counter intuitive, but for some reason acknowledging the dark somehow makes it okay to bask in the light.

Okay, I'm not exactly basking - let's be honest. But I do feel better.

So what if there's a little mind-game action going on? That's necessary too. On days like this, very necessary indeed.

Crash

I'm blue. So blue tonight.

The lead up to Thomas' birthday has been so good - easier than last year which was easier than the year before, and so on. In fact, it's been almost happy in a strange sort of way. There are nearly 1200 people signed up to do random acts of kindness on Monday - and more who are not part of the Facebook group who have said they'll participate too. I have our good deed arranged and ready to go. My Beloved has the day off and we have plans to spend it together. It's good. It's all good.

But I've been so focused on all the things being done in his memory - and excited by them too - that I kind of forgot that he's a memory.

And I miss him. Oh my God, I miss him. So much that every fibre of my being is screaming for him; searching blindly in the dark for the missing piece of my heart.

It is easier. It gets better. But it's still the hardest thing I do, breathing in and out every day while I miss my boy. While I watch My Beloved miss his son. While the world around us carries on as if this massive wound was never inflicted in the first place.

The bigger world, I mean. The world that never knew of him and still doesn't.

I'm okay. It's strange that my heart can open up and bleed itself dry, but somehow fill itself up again and keep on beating. Over and over again.

But it does.

It's just that it still takes some getting used to. Four years isn't enough time to become accustomed to such agony.

Prayers and a plea

I admit that I don't really understand how prayers work anymore. I used to. Or I thought I did, anyway. But the useless, frantic prayers I said for Thomas weren't answered - at least not the way I wanted them to be - and I've remained very wary of the "power of prayer" ever since.

But just in case they are sometimes heard and answered in ways that bring us smiles instead of tears, could you remember a friend of mine in yours today? She underwent a kidney transplant a week ago yesterday and things aren't looking very good.

She says she can feel the prayers being sent her way. If this is true, I'd love for her to feel more. As many as you can spare.

I'm sending mine too, but I worry that mine are too small. Too weak. I have little faith in my own prayers and in their ability to be heard.

Please. Help?

Marathon

I've been thinking a lot about the past six years lately. To be clear, I don't regret a single thing we did. Not one single choice. We made the decisions we made very seriously and with a lot of thought and soul searching. And under great stress - and a shroud of sorrow too.

And I don't - and never will - regret Thomas or our other wee babies. They are my children. My heart and soul. They made me a mother, and they have helped to make me the person I am today, scars and all.

But there's something about coming out the other side of an emotionally traumatic period in your life that makes you turn around and stare back at it in awe. It knocks the breath out of me when I think that I've spent six years focused on just one singular goal. I've lost almost all of my 30s to my quest for a living child.

It's like I've opened my eyes up to the world around me for the first time in years.

My parents are old. Old. They need so much help now. They have aged so much since I first stuck my head up my uterus in the summer of 2003.

And me - I've aged too. I'm limping towards 40 with a stagnating writing career, a basement full of unused baby things, and a drawer full of condolence cards.

And I don't really know what to do now. All that keeps bouncing around my head is, "What now?"

I have some creative irons in the fire, as it were. Some ideas that I'm moving on. And freelance work continues to dribble in here and there. But essentially, I'm standing on the threshold of...something. And the wide openness of it all is scary.

Mostly.

My mind flickers back to high school when I still believed that anything was possible and the world was at my fingertips; full of ripe, juicy apples of opportunity just waiting for me to pluck them from the trees.

And I'm warming up to those feelings of excitement and possibility.

But I'm still scared. I'm worried that I'm damaged. Maybe irreparably. And too old. Too old for so many things now.

I dream of winning the lottery. I would buy a lifetime supply of yarn, a house full of books and a nursery full of plants and shut myself away in a happy cocoon of crochet, reading and gardening.

But odds never seem to be in my favour. Well, unless you count bad odds.

I get the feeling that nothing is meant to be easy. And I'm meant to keep walking towards whatever is waiting for me, regardless of how broken and old I might feel. Regardless of how useless I worry I am.

So I'm walking. One step at a time.

I love my cat...

...and she loves me.

Clearly.

We are the lake

I was telling my therapist today that the approach of Thomas' birthday gets easier each year. Because somehow, inexplicably, it does.

And yet still I find myself drifting back, pulled into another time - another life - by the warmer February breezes and the thawing snow. Remembering a time that seems like such a very long time ago, now.

I'll say it until the day I die; I still can't believe it. I can't believe he was here and gone. So fast. The more time passes, the more it feels like a hazy dream. The pregnancy, his birth, his death, our struggle to recover.

Our lives have slipped back into an easy routine, free from fertility treatments and panicked trips to the doctor for betas and ultrasounds.

It's very calm here. Safe and quiet.

It's nearly impossible for me to fathom what almost was in the midst of this gentle peace we've so carefully cultivated.

We went from parents to empty-nesters in just 20 hours. And now we walk together in this strange fringe world where we almost belong. Where people almost see us as parents. Where we almost, but don't quite, have experience raising a child.

I used to love to sit on the dock and watch the lake at my Grandparents' cottage when I was a child. It fascinated me to see it glide effortlessly, shimmering in the sunlight. It never occurred to me that the calm, placid surface was moving so gently because of the currents coursing beneath the surface. So much unseen. So much movement and darkness and pull and swirl and flow. Just the gentle, sun-touched beauty on the surface - that's all I saw.

We are the lake.

Reminder

The other day I was rooting blindly through the back of my night table drawer (which needs a very thorough sort, as I've discovered) desperately looking for Chapstick, when my hand closed around a little pink notebook tucked beneath some papers.

I had a vague sense that I knew what it was when I pulled it out, but opened it anyway.

Inside were notes from our baby classes scrawled in My Beloved's handwriting. I guess I must have figured that since I was making the baby, taking notes in class was his responsibility.

The first few pages listed breathing exercises and labour tips. Then there were some doodles he drew while we were in L&D the week before Thomas was born, including one of a little baby saying "Hi Ma!" and waving. That was the day they told us they were too busy to admit me - even though my blood pressure had spiked high enough for my OB to send me there with the intent of having me induced - and sent us home.

The last page with writing on it simply listed numbers. Contraction intervals.

I closed the book, put it back and left the room; the wind knocked out of my wheezy sails.

It seems like a lifetime ago.

Huh. I guess it was. It was.

The story

A long time ago, maybe two years or so, I tried to write down Thomas' birth story. Partly because I'd never told it here in its entirety, partly because I didn't want to forget any of the details, and partly because that's what new mothers do and I didn't want to be left out.

I started and the words came easily enough, but they wouldn't stop. And each one tore at my heart because I knew how the story was going to end, and no matter how much I wrote, the end would never be the one I wanted to write. Forcing myself to relive, in exacting detail, the days and hours leading up to his birth just reminded me of how quickly things went wrong. How suddenly he was snatched from us. How little warning we had.

The last words I said to My Beloved before the earth gave way beneath our feet were, "Soon we're going to see our little boy."

We were that close. That close.

And suddenly it just somehow didn't seem to make sense to tell the story in great detail. Or, to tell it at all.

He was born and he died. Does it matter how?

God - I mean, of course it matters. Everything about him matters, but what purpose does it serve to write it all down? What good will it do me? Or you? Or My Beloved?

So I saved the unfinished draft, and it remains buried in the list of post titles, somewhere back there.

At the time, I was deeply disappointed with myself for not being able to finish the story. I added it to my list of failures and went to bed with a heavy heart that night.

But I think very differently about it now.

Now I'm not so sure it would be all that terrible to forget some of the awful detail I was struggling to capture on paper. Because I don't know what earthly good it does to remember it. It doesn't fix anything. It doesn't bring him back. And it certainly doesn't make me feel better.

People always say that you forget the agony of childbirth the moment you hold your brand new baby in your arms.

Should I be made to hold onto the agony of mine simply because my child isn't here any longer?

It's just another confusing thing to wrestle with when your child dies. The rules change for you. What others cherish and try to remember, you sometimes struggle to forget; torn because sometimes it's all you have of your child.

Things are different for us. It's the way it is. Trying to pretend otherwise will make you crazy.

In truth, I know will never forget giving birth to Thomas. Or the days before or the days after. But I know for a fact that what has helped me heal and what has kept me moving forward is focusing on the boy, not on the tragedy. Of course they're inextricably linked to each other, I realize that. But I can choose to what degree I make that link.

Granted, it's easier now with time and distance my constant companions in this epic journey, but it still sometimes takes effort to keep my love for Thomas and my grief over losing him in their separate corners when I need them to be.

But I make the effort, because that's when I most feel like he's my son and I'm his mother. It's when he's most real to me. It's when I can best feel his sweet spirit in my heart and in my life.

He is not my grief.

This, that and the other

THIS

Because I am vain, please look at this. Please?

I'm very proud.

And, yeah, vain.

THAT

My right inner ear has been twitching for daaaaaays. I'm slowly going mad. MAD, I tell you!! Twitch. Twitch.

I think I might be jaw-clenching at night, so I'm wondering if the two are related.

Riveting bit of information, I know.

It's been a slow news week.

THE OTHER

I didn't mean to offend anyone with my last post, by the way. I absolutely know that those kinds of offhanded remarks aren't said to hurt me. I know they're simply meant as jokes and, sometimes, as tension cutters. And I know that parents have been offering to give away their children in jest for as long as humans have been breeding.

I totally know that.

I'm just sayin' that it's not always all that funny to me. That's all.

But then again, the world isn't here to amuse me. I know that too. Seriously, I really do, despite evidence to the contrary...

If one more person...

...with living children says, "Oh, you can take him/her!" when I comment on the cuteness of their child, I'm gonna.

You've been warned.

Picture Monday

Last week, late in the afternoon after a morning of more snow (ick), I peeked out the office window and found a great big angel on our driveway.

It was just the work of kids who'd made tracks in the fresh snow on their way home from school, but from where I was standing looking down on the footprints, it looked like a giant snow angel.

See? Look at her!

I shoveled her away later that night, but she was sweet while she lasted.



There are no words adequately beautiful enough describe this sunrise on January 18th, captured from our bedroom window...



Lucy likes our new office chairs. It's important that the cat approves.

This 'n that

I feel badly that I rarely respond to comments. I read them all (it's very exciting to know I'm not just talking to myself), and I'm so touched by each and every word you so kindly choose to send my way. Truly, I am. They make me laugh, cry and everything in between, those words do.

But I always forget that you can't see that, what with you not having spy cameras and recording devices planted inside my house.

So thank you, so much, for the support, advice, smiles, commiseration, sympathy, compliments, hugs and kind words.

You rock. In the very best ways possible.
__________________

The other evening I was outside shoveling snow - a task that I normally loathe - and I found myself enjoying it.

The cold has finally gotten to me. I've lost my mind.

___________________

This morning I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a kitten instead of a puppy. A kitten would be much easier to work into our little family dynamic. Easier on Lucy and easier on us (never having owned dogs before).

I just wish the Norfolk Terriers weren't so cute, and that I hadn't already started envisioning nightly walks and furry dog kisses...

___________________

On Tuesday I started a Facebook Group in an effort to promote good deed doing on Thomas' birthday, and I was floored to see that as of this morning, there were 190 members.

It has spiraled out from just people I know, to friends of friends of friends.

It's even gone overseas to Scotland, Spain and India.

And every time I think about it - about all the extra little kindnesses that will be done in Thomas' memory on his birthday all over the world - I smile.

I'm so proud. So unbelievably proud.

____________________

This morning I read about a craft co-op in Toronto - a space where locals drop in to, well, craft. The co-op rents out sewing machines, space and tools, and people come in to make handmade treasures and commune with other like-minded artisans. They sell fabric too, but mostly it's a space to create.

I drooled. Enviously.

I'm a lone crafter out here in the suburbs. I crochet on the couch, sometimes with Lucy and Sandy nearby, but usually by myself, because I don't know anyone in my real life who shares my passion for hooks and yarn.

The thought of a cozy, creative, community space right here in my neighbourhood where other knitheads and hookers might congregate is so appealing.

I wonder...
____________________

Sometimes I let myself think about what my life would be like if Thomas was still in it. I mean in the tangible, earthly sense.

With the passage of nearly four years, it's becoming harder and harder to imagine it. I had a sense of what the baby years might have been like. The house was littered with babyness and its accompanying paraphernalia prior to his birth - I could see that life. I know what it would have looked like, if not actually felt like.

But now? There's nothing about the house to suggest an almost four-year old could have lived here.

It's lost to me, that life.

The sadness that fact generates is no longer quite as desperate and agonizing as it used to be when I'd let myself wonder about my once-upon-a-time world. Now it's just sort of wistful. I sometimes even smile when I try to imagine a four-year old Thomas bounding up the stairs.

Maybe it's easier because there is no visible evidence to suggest a four-year old should be here.

Or maybe it's just that time has worn the jagged edges of my sorrow down so that it's smoother and easier to hold now.

I don't know.

The house is still too quiet. But I'm used to it. It's amazing what you can survive, isn't it? It's amazing what you can come to accept as normal.


I miss him.
______________________

And finally,

To the person who wanted a monkey (like the one I posted the other day, who now lives on My Beloved's desk at work), I do manage to sell the odd bit of crochet work every now and then (which helps me to justify the time I spend doing it...mostly). And here's where you can find it ----> Plumpkin Heads

How much is that doggie in the window? Again.

Sigh. I want a puppy again.

It happens every single year around this time. During the weeks leading up to Thomas' birthday I crave puppies.

Which sounds kind of weird, I admit. For a number of reasons, but particularly since I'm such and ardent cat lover - and devoted owner of the world's greatest feline ever.

I get that it's because I want something little to snuggle and love. I get that I'm trying to fill the gap. Close the wound. Distract myself. That makes sense. In a twisted way (and, in case you're concerned, I'm well aware that you can't replace children with puppies).

But what I couldn't figure out until today was why it only happens now - why it doesn't seem to happen during the rest of the year. I mean, it's not like puppies are seasonal, after all.

What dawned on me today, is that along with wanting something new and little to snuggle and love, I crave a puppy because it was in the dying days of winter that we were waiting, with so much excitement and anticipation, for an addition to our family.

It's the anticipation. Or anticipation's ghost, if you will. I still have it, and have no reason for it anymore.

So apparently I've invented one.

It's the same reason I still get that "back to school" feeling in August, even though it's been years since I packed up a knapsack and headed to class. Habit.

Those weeks before Thomas was born were so exciting, and I have connected it with the season; with the small hints of spring in longer days and brief thaws, and the overwhelming joy of the coming new season.

Which, of course, brought sorrow unlike anything I'd ever known before. But right now, my brain is just remembering the anticipation. The good bits prior to the world imploding.

And with nary a baby in sight, and all this focus-less anticipation, it has also set its sights on a puppy.

This year, a Norfolk Terrier.

Sigh.

Monkeying around

I wish someone would pay me to sit around and write what I want to write and crochet what I want to crochet when I'm not writing what I want to write.

Why is there no job out there like that? Why? Why?

Sigh.

I suppose I'll just keep looking for other, less exciting paying gigs until my dream writing/crocheting job appears.

And blog and make monkeys with reckless abandon while I'm waiting.

Abracadabra

A friend recently asked me how I do it - how I manage to cope in a world where, as she put it, everyone is pregnant and babies are popping out all over the place.

My first response was, "I'm dead inside" (after which I laughed heartily at my self-deprecating witticism).

The serious answer was, "I don't know."

Because I don't, really. There's no magic in my ability to hold babies. To smile and coo at them. To listen with rapt attention to endless stories of breast feeding, colic, teething and foiled naps.

I just do it. Then I crawl home, regroup and carry on. It's just what I have to do. And, sometimes, what I actually want to do.

My Beloved and I were just saying today that the very best thing that could have happened to us, in terms of our healing, was the arrival of a new baby next door a little over a year after Thomas died.

It was immersion therapy for both of us. The baby was there. We were here. And soon our lives become intertwined and we fell in love.

And suddenly babies weren't so scary anymore.

She was the first baby I'd held since my own. And, I won't lie, it was agony. The weight of her. The life in her. But I did it. And I've done it a million times since. And now I've held her brand new sister too.

Because it's that or cloister myself away - separate myself from a world that I sometimes do have a hard time feeling a part of. And I don't want that. I've never wanted that. I've fought hard to make people not fear me and my sorrow. I've worked like a dog to prove I'm greater than the sum of those parts.

I figure if I'm going to talk the talk, I have to walk the walk.

So there's not an ounce of magic in it. It's just stubbornness - my inability to let my particular brand of motherhood keep me from being friends with women who haven't buried a child.

Magic would be easier though. There's no doubt about it.

On the other side

Last Wednesday my Mom and Dad had to put their 15-year old cat to sleep after he suffered what they suspect was a stroke.

My Mom called in tears to give me the news, and my heart tore into a thousand pieces listening to her cry over the phone, her voice small and broken.

I went over the next day just to be with them - to make sure they were okay and to try to cheer them up and distract them as best I could. And for the first time since Thomas died I realized what a useless feeling it is not to be able to take away someone's pain.

I didn't know. Somehow I didn't realize.

I have appreciated every single gesture - every brave word, every card, every donation, every flower, every carefully chosen gift, every mention of his name. Not one single thing anyone has ever done for me - for us - since Thomas died has gone unappreciated. Ever.

But I didn't realize until I sat there helplessly watching my Mother cry over her lost Paddington Bear that those gestures were made out of both love and desperation. Because there's absolutely nothing you can do to take away the pain of someone's loss.

And you can't know that until you try. And fail.

I know I was able to comfort them a little with my presence, but I also know that my Mother probably cried herself to sleep thinking about how increasingly small and fragile their world is becoming; about the tragedies they've witnessed and the losses they've endured. And about the little cat she said goodbye to that day.

And it breaks my heart. Over and over and over again, it breaks my heart.

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

So, today I decided to clean up the spare room (which, while it's sitting there being spare, has been doubling as my craft room - and by craft room I mean depository for all things vaguely craft related. And, sometimes, totally and completely unrelated).

Lately I've been having lovely visions of a pristine, freshly painted craft-themed oasis, complete with shelving for all my yarn. Especially shelving for my yarn. Shelving instead of plastic tubs that are surprisingly easy for balls of yarn to get buried in. Lost for months. Years, even.

A place for everything and everything in its place. This was my dream.

My Beloved and I went out hunting for cheap shelving today (I want order, but I'm desperately frugal about it) and were successful beyond my wildest dreams.

Plain, unfinished wood shoe racks. Just $3.97 each (50% off at Zellers, in case anyone is interested). Simple, light, cheap, stackable - and perfect for yarn. We bought eight of them. I wanted to have lots of room.

Uh, but...



I seriously had no idea there was this much yarn tucked away in tubs, bags and knitting baskets in that one, small room. No idea.

And now that I've put it all out there on display there's really no way to convince anyone that I need more. Even though, God help me, it feels like I do. Seeing it there all lined up neat and at the ready just makes me want more. Mooooooooore.

Yarny goodness. So. Much. Yarny. Goodness.

There's no 12-step program for this, is there?

Sigh

Ugh, forget yesterday's post. My victory. My pride. All of it.

Today I remembered one last article of maternity wear hanging in another closet. I retrieved it...noticed it really doesn't look like a maternity sweater, tried it on, felt how soft it was, remembered that my Mom bought it for me.

And totally couldn't part with it.

It's so cozy! And it really only seems big around the hips, for the most part. It must not have fit me very well when I was pregnant. It can't have. Either that or I was really stretching it out. I mean yeah, it's too big - it's not the size I'd buy if I was buying a sweater NOW - but it's fuzzy, red, soft, and it'll be nice to cozy up in by the fire.

On days when I'm feeling particularly crazy, apparently.

Oy.

Is this weird? Is it?

Why do I need constant reassurance? Why?

Yeah, answer that question too, please.

The end.

Strange goodbyes

A couple of years ago, I can't specifically remember when now, I gave away my maternity jeans. Donated them to charity along with a motley collection of unloved sweaters, shirts and assorted crap. It was a big deal.

Well, mostly.

I actually hated them. They were never comfortable, always digging into my sides before sliding down and leaving me with a terrible case of saggy ass. But still, giving them away felt like a big step - a monumental shift in my thinking and healing.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure it was, really.

I was thinking about this the other day, how we donated some of Thomas' things just a few weeks after he died and how it barely bothered me at all. For some reason I was able to very easily separate the sentimental from the disposable in those early, dark days. The diaper bag, boppy pillow, lotions, diapers, books, parenting magazines, and baby bathtub. They all went, and with very little difficulty.

And yet other things I still cling to with a ferocity that startles me. Tubs of clothes, toys, blankies. Little socks. A sunhat. Things. So many small, unused things.

There is no rhyme nor reason for the way I categorize his things; for what I decide can and can't go. I adored my diaper bag, but when I came home from the hospital I couldn't stand the sight of it. But the 9 billion receiving blankets, each a dime a dozen? I can't let them go.

It makes no sense.

I never liked the jeans. I wouldn't have worn them again even if I managed to get (and stay) pregnant long enough to need them. I tricked myself into thinking donating them was an achievement.

When really, it was just common sense.

And I may have done it again. The tricking bit. Because tonight, all the rest of my maternity stuff is packed away in a donation bag waiting for pick-up. All of it. A skirt, a pair of nursing jammies and several tops, including the striped one I loved and wore so much I'm surprised I didn't wear it right out.

I'm proud. I am. I've had that stuff sitting in a neat pile on a shelf in my closet for nearly four years. I couldn't see it very well and didn't look at it often, but I knew it was there. I needed to know it was still there.

But I'm smaller now than I was then. And it's not just the absence of a baby belly. All of me is smaller. I likely couldn't wear any of that stuff anyway even if I did magically find myself pregnant. It would be too big. In fact, it would have been too big if I'd tried to wear it two years ago.

But I couldn't let it go. Until today.

For absolutely no good reason, today was the day I was able to let it all go. Even though I know I never would have worn any of it again anyway.

So yeah, I know I'm kind of tricking myself again. Like the jeans.

But I'm not really sure that matters.

There's a clearer space in my brain just the same. Does it matter that the victory isn't as big as it might appear? Does it matter that I had no intention of wearing the clothes again anyway? Does it matter that the odds are stacked against me and my uterus, making the likelihood of me needing any maternity clothes pretty small?

I don't think so.

I'm crossing my arms, holding my head high, and calling it a victory.

Warm

So, I've returned to the hairdresser from whence I came. After spending the last 7 years trying to find one I liked closer to where we live now, I gave up this past summer and went back to my old haunt.

It's a long way to go for a haircut, but aside from being very satisfied with my stylist, the salon is right around the corner from the cemetery.

And so on my way home from getting a new 'do yesterday, I stopped in to retrieve Thomas' Christmas wreath.

I should have known better, really. We're in a deep freeze here - bone chillingly so. The snow, a mostly untouched blanket flecked with diamonds gleaming in the late afternoon sun, was probably close to two feet deep in the cemetery.

I parked, climbed over the snowbank and plodded my way to Thomas, putting my feet in the faint indents of the tracks left by the last person who trekked his way.

Of course, when I got there I couldn't move the wreath. Couldn't budge it at all. It's frozen solid deep in the earth where I placed it in November. So it'll be there for a while, I'm afraid. Snowmen, ribbons and all.

It was too cold to linger. I thought, briefly, about digging the snow off his plaque, but I couldn't bear the wet gloves and snow up my sleeves. Not yesterday. Not in that cold.

So instead, I kissed my gloved hand, like always, and pressed it into the snow above where he lies.

I pulled my hand away and looked at the print; the image of my hand marking the spot where my baby boy lies. And I smiled.

I know it's still there today. It was clear, bright and cold again today. Too cold for the snow to have melted my hand print, and too clear for more snow to have covered it.

It's still there, hovering above my boy.

And it makes me so happy.

When I listen

Saint Theresa's Prayer  

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

My cousin sent me this today, and it was exactly what I needed to hear.

I don't understand God, or the ways in which he works. But when I pay attention, every once in a while a message manages to slip through the cracks and find its way into my heart.

Heading back

What. A. Day.

I'm all done with being a grown-up. Someone get me a flux capacitor so I can hightail it back to 1977.

ASAP.

Please?

Thinking

Back in the fall My Beloved and I set an arbitrary sometime in January deadline for sitting down and talking about where this nearly 6-year journey of ours is heading.

The plan was for us both to come to the table, having had two months to mull it over quietly on our own, with some thoughts. Maybe even conclusions.

But, uh, I'm not sure I have any. Thoughts yes, conclusions, no.

Although lately I've had a vague sense that I'm moving into acceptance mode. That I'm recognizing and coming to terms with the fact that our time for having more children may have passed. Entirely. No biological babies, no adopted babies.

For some reason that notion seems to be sitting in my head, making a lot of sense.

It's desperately sad, yes. I think I would have made a good mother to a living child. I had a very good role model, and I had many quiet, happy daydreams about the ways I was going to mother our children. Making them feel cozy, safe and loved.

But we've had six years of loss, fear and sorrow. I'm not entirely sure I have the mental energy that the me of simpler days used to have. I hate to think that infertility and loss have beaten me. I hate to think that after all this time they have finally won.

But maybe they have.

Maybe I just can't put myself - or us - through this anymore. Maybe it's time for My Beloved and I now. Just us. Moving on and finding peace and happiness together; making the most of the life we have and the love we've always shared.

I'll be 39 in a few months, My Beloved 40. I know people will throw up their hands, stomp about and vehemently deny that we're too old to be parents. But the thing is, we're older than most people our age. We've seen a lot and we've lost a lot. Too much. Too much.

We're tired. I'm tired.

I want my life back. I wanted children. I wanted that life so much. But sometimes you have to accept the life you're given instead of spending all your time wishing for the one you weren't. Because that's no way to live at all.

We have tried so hard. I don't think anyone could accuse us of not giving it 100%.

We are a family of three that looks like a family of two. But we are still a family. We had a child. I was pregnant. I was pregnant four times.

And now, maybe, I'm done.

If I am alone when I'm old - if everyone I know has gone before me and I have no children and grandchildren to visit me - I'll just find comfort in new friends. I'll write. I'll read. I'll crochet. I'll try to pray. I'll keep searching for whatever makes me happy and brings me peace. One day at a time.

And eventually I'll see my babies again. And I'll wrap them in my arms, hold them close and then, then finally have a chance to be the mother I should have been here.

I'm not making the decision alone, of course. And as sure as I might sound at the moment, I'm just as liable to change my mind tomorrow.

But then again, maybe I won't.

The last line on one of those epic Christmas letters sent to my Mom from a cousin of hers was, "Hope Kris and her hubby will be successful one of these days. Must be heartbreaking."

I don't want people to see us that way. I don't want them to think we somehow weren't successful at life because our son died and because I miscarried our other four children. I don't want our losses to define us or our marriage.

The letter really make me stop and think about how long we've been running on the hamster wheel.

And about how I think it might be time to step off and just walk quietly and peacefully together instead.

In the absence of a proper post...

I have a couple of posts sitting in my head, but lack the energy to make them exit my brain via my fingertips.

So instead, I'll just say a quick thank you to those who were sweet enough to follow me to blog v.2, and to those who have posted some very nice and encouraging comments there. I appreciate the indulgence.

I'm really enjoying my little project. And, what's even better, so far have no niggling feelings of regret for starting it in the first place. I know I'm only 7 days in and all, but it has yet to feel like a chore. Not even a little bit.

Miracle of miracles.

Sound bite

The headline read, "Travolta breaks two day silence to talk about son's death". And my head came *this* close to exploding.

Breaks his silence? Are you kidding me?! Does the media - does anyone - think that we're owed something from this family, so freshly introduced to the unfathomable depths of child-loss grief? Does anyone think we should be his top priority right now? Does anyone think we have the right to be miffed that it took him two whole days to speak?

I have criticized people in my own life who have kept their distance from us. But I have to wonder how much worse it would have been to have everyone feel that they had a right to know everything I was thinking and feeling - to continue to poke me until I bled the information they so desperately wanted. For their own entertainment.

My public statement two days after Thomas' death would have been unintelligible. Or, actually, probably really cold and formal. I was still in shock and operating in a strange parallel universe all my own. Looking back, the only outward evidence of my grief was the fact that I refused to leave my room. For 6 days the only time I left the safety of those four walls was to see Thomas the day he died, and to reluctantly walk the hall the day I was released, at My Beloved's urging.

I didn't cry in front of anyone, except My Beloved, and I was pleasant, friendly and calm. And totally, completely out of it.

I can't imagine what it would have been like to feel that way and have the entire entertainment industry breathing down my neck. Waiting for words they could print. To sell papers to gawkers.

A comment. On the death of your son. They should instead ask for a sound bite so that the grieving parents can demonstrate the pain that words simply cannot; with a guttural howl.

That just might get them the privacy and respect they deserve.

His name

On New Year's Eve, when the heat of one too many whiskey sours threatened to ignite me from the inside out, I slipped out onto the quiet winter cool of my sister's front porch.

I stood there, letting the chill of the frozen air seep into my clothes, and watched the snow falling softly to the ground through the glow of Christmas lights.

I wondered if I was so hot that I'd actually see steam rising from my body. But I didn't.

So instead, I whispered his name into the night and watched as the cloud of my breath whirled into tiny beads, sweeping the word away from me.

Thomas.

I said it again.

Then I went back inside and continued on.

I'm not leaving this blog...

...I've just decided to start writing this one too.

Because apparently I just. can't. stop. talking.

Only on the Eves

From Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve. With lots of nothing in between (save the busyness and feasting of Christmas day, of course).

But since then it's been long stretches in our jammies, chocolate in hand and endless hours of Mad Men on the tube. We blew through all 13 episodes of the first season in three days.

Heaven, I tell you. Heaven.

If, of course, you don't count what's missing. Which I do, naturally. But I'm also paying close attention to what isn't, and enjoying all that very much.

As for 2009 knocking furiously on my front door, I just don't know. I'll answer it at midnight. But I'm wary of the new guest blustering in with such universal fanfare and promise. And so I have no expectations.

I have only a plea for a kinder year. For peace. For direction. For guidance.

And for happiness that I once feared would elude me forever, and which I have worked very hard to cut and paste back into my life in a patchwork of moments and memories. I've papered over some of the badness. Replaced some of the sorrow with quiet peace. And my plan is to keep on going. To keep adding and building.

The little house of my soul might, to some eyes, always look like it's in tatters; bits torn out, patches taped over top, small cracks letting the cold in now and then. But it's still standing. And this is what it looks like as I work at the job of repairing it piece by piece.

Eventually, I hope, turning it into a mosaic.

Because even things that are broken can be beautiful again.

They can.

It's Christmas Eve...

...and I'm okay.

I hope you are too.

This 'n that

Remember those ridiculous fingerless gloves that were popular in the 80s? The hand part of the glove was in tact but the fingers only came up to about your first knuckle. Remember those? Remember how useless they were for keeping your fingertips warm - the part of your hand that usually gets the coldest; The part they are known to amputate if your frostbite is severe enough?

Remember those gloves?

Why are they back?

___________________________

Despite eating a ridiculous amount of chocolate and very little vegetable matter over the last several weeks, I seem to be losing weight. Not huge amounts, mind you, but a half a pound here and there (which Weight Watchers is very happy about).

So either I'm dying or I've discovered a whole new way to diet.

I'll keep you posted.

___________________________

The Duggar family had another baby. That's 18, if you're counting.

And I'd prefer not to.

___________________________

My eyes flew open a little before 4:00am this morning, and haven't shut since.

My therapist gave me a foolproof way to lull myself back to sleep for occasions just such as these (and it has proven 100% effective in the past), but this morning I couldn't be bothered.

Seriously, how lazy do you have to be to find yourself unwilling to work at going back to sleep?

You'd think, being that lazy, that I'd be all over her method. But I just. couldn't. be. bothered.

And now I'm stupid tired.

____________________________

Speaking of Therapist Lady, after a full year of talking, I recently discovered that I'm no closer to resolving my guilt issues.

I feel better about everything, in general, but that specifically? The poor woman hasn't even made a dent.

The other day after My Beloved and I had a very minor argument about something small, I found myself alone and sobbing my heart out.

He had said, "Don't you know that you can love someone and still be angry with them?"

My response was, "Of course I do". Of course. But then my mind drifted to the dark side and I thought, "But how can he love me when I am responsible for Thomas' death? I blame myself - how is it that he doesn't? And what's going to happen when he finally realizes that he DOES?"

And on, and on, and on.

Luckily he was at work and I was here. No one needs to witness that kind of unattractive neediness first-hand.

But yeah, Therapist Lady and I need to work on this.

A lot.

__________________________

I think the grieving and infertile, in all our varied forms, need to work on cutting ourselves some slack over the next few days.

Because maybe it won't quite feel like Christmas. Maybe it won't be happy. Maybe we'll be angry. Maybe we'll be quieter than we used to be. Maybe we'll cry. Maybe we'll need reassurance. Maybe we'll need to be alone. Maybe we'll hurt more than we have in a long time.

And maybe we won't.

But people, if we do, it's okay.

Okay?

Okay.

________________________

One of the odd side effects of grief is that I now look forward to January. I used to see it as a bleak, cold, empty month. But now I see it as a time when the nothingness spreads out in front of me like an exciting blank canvas. No expectations, no commitments, no additional responsibilities. Just time and endless, beautiful space.

I can breathe in January. I inhale and exhale without thought; without trying to remember how.

I'm looking forward to jumping back on the Weight Watcher's bandwagon (all the chocolate, cheese and cookies should be gone by then) and starting in on a regular exercise routine (although the specific details of said routine are TBD).

As much as I do enjoy Christmas, the fact remains that I still have work at it. I spend a lot of time taking care of my mind during the holidays, sometimes at the expense of my chocolate and Bailey's laden body.

And so the easiness of the January emptiness is endlessly comforting. And very, very healthy.

The three of us

Christmas looms.

And it's not as hard as it was last year, fresh from the loss of the twins. And it's not as hard as it was the two years before that (time has given me distance and an effective arsenal of coping mechanisms).

But still, amidst the happy bustling and the busyness, there's a sadness that I suppose might always be there.

Because there's no little boy to rush down the stairs on Christmas morning, tousle-haired, bleary-eyed and all excited to open his stocking and see what treasures Santa has left him under the tree.

We have quiet, sweet Christmas mornings, My Beloved and I. Our cozy time together, just the two of us, is one of the things I treasure most about Christmas. Next to unbridled chocolate consumption, of course.

But I don't think either of us forget for one second that there were supposed to be three of us.

That there should be three of us.

Sometimes I look at the tree for Thomas. I try to see it through his eyes. The twinkle of the lights, the ornaments new and old, the shiny bows on the presents beneath. I imagine his wonder. The questions he'd ask. The stories we'd tell. The glow of the lights bathing his sweet little face in red and green as he took in every sight and every word.

My imaginary Christmas.

The real one isn't so bad. Truly. I have love and family and friends all around me. And I am happy. For real.

But my heart also longs for the imaginary Christmas it will never have. And the boy.

The three of us.

In his shoes

I had to make a last minute trip to the vet with Lucy yesterday to get a nasty little rash on her chin looked at.

She's fine. It's either feline acne or an allergic reaction to a new food I gave her. We left with reassurances and an antibiotic to clear up the infection.

I'm sure it would have gone away on its own, to be honest, but late Thursday night Dr. Google told me it could be cancer and I panicked. As I am wont to do.

Especially at this time of year.

In fact, this will be the first Christmas in three years that I haven't run to the doctor with a suspected life-threatening aliment of my own. In 2006 it was breast cancer. Last year a serious heart condition.

This year I opted to subject the cat to the drama instead, since I can't seem to find anything wrong with myself. Knock on wood.

Anyway, as we were sitting in the waiting room prior to her appointment, I overheard the vet give an elderly couple very bad news about their dog. I only heard bits and pieces, but there was an enlarged heart, fluid in the lungs and nothing to be done but minimize the symptoms of whatever was eventually going to kill her. Finally, I heard him tell them they had a difficult decision to make.

And I felt the panic rising.

No music to distract me, no chatter from other pet owners, no ringing phones. Just me and Lucy and the vet's words of doom creeping out from beneath the exam room door.

A minute or so later an old man left the exam room, his eyes red and wet with tears, and went to walk the parking lot while his wife stayed with their dog.

It was agonizing.

And all I could think was, Please, please don't put their dog to sleep while I'm sitting her. Please don't make me watch them pay for their dog's euthanasia while I sit here, useless and small, in your hard gray office chair. Please don't make me."

In the end, because I guess they've done this sort of thing before, they took me first. And so I was the one who stood at the counter paying while the teary-eyed old man, who'd come back into the office while Lucy and I were in the exam room, sat behind me and watched.

I tried to keep my voice low. I tried not to sound happy that my cat was alive and well. And I didn't look at him on my way out in case he didn't want me to see his pain - or my relief that I wasn't in his shoes.

It wasn't until later that it dawned on me. This is what people with living children must think about me. I must look like the sad old man on the bench in the vet's waiting room with tears in my eyes.

Well, to those who sneak a glance, anyway.

'Tis the season

We have our annual Family Christmas Tea on Saturday - an event also known as "the cookie party" because really, that's what it is. I bake as many kinds of cookies as I can in the weeks leading up to the big day, and we spend the afternoon eating them up and washing them down with wine, eggnog and coffee. With my family and the in-laws, of course. It's not a two-person gorge fest. I swear.

It's a tradition I started in 2005 - the first Christmas without Thomas.

I needed everything to be different that year. I refused to put up red and green lights outside. They were blue and white that year. I refused to have a real, red and green tree inside decked with all of our old, cozy ornaments. We adopted my parents artificial tree, pre-lit with white lights, and covered it in all new white and silver ornaments and balls. I refused to open presents Christmas morning in the living room by the tree. My Beloved and I carried our stockings and presents into the family room and opened them there.

I was simply unable to bear the idea of seeing Thomas missing from the Christmas picture I'd had in my head while I was pregnant. Without him there, I had to change everything.

And I did. With painstaking attention to detail. I changed it all as much as I possibly could.

I have no idea if it really helped or not, but because I believed it would, I did it anyway. I suspect that having red and green lights outside wouldn't have added to my pain or made me miss my baby any more than I already did, but the busyness of changing everything was like an addictive salve. Once I started, I couldn't stop. I felt productive. And healthy. And smart.

I fooled myself good.

The lights outside are red and green again, and now we have two trees every year - the artificial one in the living room with the white and silver finery I bought to mask my sorrow, and a real one in the family room heavy with the weight of our treasured old ornaments and trinkets.

But the cookie party tradition has stuck. I started it because I needed to create a new memory - I needed that first, lonely Christmas without Thomas to be about more than just the first, lonely Christmas without Thomas.

So I slapped on a happy face and baked my heart out.

They came. We ate. And a tradition that I now find cozy and sweet was born.

Today, in between the chocolate marshmallow meltaways and the magic cookie bars, I paused for a moment and admitted to myself that even though the motivation for having the event isn't fully therapeutic any longer, it is still a salve on an unhealed wound.

I know part of the reason why I'm still doing this four Christmases later is because it keeps me busy and gives me purpose during this season that is sometimes so hard on my heart.

Christmas is for children, I hear over and over and over again. But for people like us, it's also about survival. And making the most of a difficult situation. And finding sweet moments wherever you can.

Even when you have to bake them one by one.

Something's missing

In the midst of the construction I suddenly felt him missing. Suddenly noticed the Thomas-sized hole beside my chair in the kitchen.

I stopped, looked out at the gray sky drizzling cold rain down onto the freshly fallen snow, and told him, for the millionth time, that I miss him.

Sometimes, despite my best efforts, this is what Christmas looks like in our house.

It was only a matter of time...

Me, reacting to a gaggle of teenagers wandering through Zellers laughing and talking: "Good God, young people are loud."

It's finally happened. I'm officially old.

It changes

I finished writing my Christmas cards today, but they've gone out without the tiny angel stickers included in the signature - something I vowed to do that first lonely Christmas without Thomas in 2005, and something I did in 2006 and 2007 too.

For some reason this year, it didn't feel necessary. And I'm not entirely sure whether to be happy or sad about that.

Over the last year I've found that I need those kind of visible remembrances less and less. It always startles me a bit when I find that I'm content to keep him in my heart instead of on my sleeve, but I don't have the energy to dissect the reason why. It is what it is, and it feels right.

Sometimes I dig too deep to figure out the motivations for the way I think and feel, when sometimes it's best just to think and feel and move on without question.

I don't need the angel stickers this year. End of story. I love Thomas every bit as much as I did last year when I used them - maybe even more. I just don't happen to need the stickers anymore. It's as simple as that.

I think I'm just whittling down the rituals - condensing them, maybe.

Maybe it's all part of the slow acceptance process. At first you need outward signs of grief and remembrance - you need to actually see tangible things that might help you explain the agonizing pain you're in. But eventually, as time passes and the sorrow becomes more a part of who you are rather than something foreign you're constantly fighting to make sense of, you're content to be quieter about your ways of remembering and grieving.

But whatever the reason, I'm at peace with what I'm doing. And how I'm doing it.

I have ways I remember and honour him that I'm pretty sure I'll never change. The special candle at family dinners, the new ornament for his cemetery wreath each year, and the request for good deeds to be done in his name on his birthday. I can't see those ever changing. They are too much a part of my relationship with Thomas to change.

But other things have quietly slipped away, just like he did.

And it's okay. Somehow, it's okay.

I just can't stop...

...but it's not my fault! How many look-alikes doesn't this dude have anyway?!

Remembering

A year ago today a friend I never knew outside the virtual confines of my computer screen died suddenly just a few weeks after giving birth to her second child.

She died. Just like that.

There is a widower suffering the anguish of unthinkable grief and no doubt clinging to his two motherless children for dear life tonight, and I feel selfish taking up even the tiniest amount of space talking about how her death affected me when I know for a fact that their sorrow is utterly matchless.

So all I'm going to say - because for some reason it feels important for me to say it - is that I haven't forgotten her or the kindnesses she showed me.

I will never forget.

Two steps forward, one step back

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I'm at least as big as my sorrow now, but sometimes I still worry that if I let it go unchecked, I could quite easily turn into one of those ugly people who let a wound fester until it becomes so big that it's all they feel. And when it eventually scars over, instead of shrinking and disappearing it turns into a gigantic chip on a self-absorbed shoulder. An excuse to think bad things. Say bad things. Feel bad things.

I don't want to be that person. I don't. But sometimes I feel her lurking quietly inside, waiting for me to fall asleep at the wheel so she can kick me out of the driver's seat and commandeer the bus.

My Beloved and I had a "discussion" on Friday that has had me thinking about all this ever since.

Misdirected anger. That was the topic.

I was blowing off steam in a spectacular non-stop tirade. When I finished, he pointed out that I wasn't angry - I was simply jealous.

I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

And he was, of course, right. I didn't want to hear it at the time - and I still maintain that some of what I was venting about was actually warranted - but still, I know a lot of it was fueled by something uglier.

And I hate that it's in there. It's demoralizing to know that some of the goodness you once had has been displaced by bitterness. It makes the struggle so much harder when it feels like you're battling from the inside out.

And I feel like I've somehow cheated My Beloved by changing into someone who has the capacity to feel spectacular anger and bitterness.

I was never perfect. But at least I wasn't this.

My only defense is vigilance.

I will always need to vent. I will feel jealous and bitter. I will want to rage at the world and have the one person who lost the same child as I did understand that sometimes overwhelming need.

But I will be careful never to let myself get too comfortable or like it too much.

I will be watchful.

"As you wiiiiiiiiiiiish!", says Brad Pitt

Look. Now he's channeling Cary Elwes' Westley...

Jesus and then some

During the SARS outbreak back in 2003, Catholic churches in the greater Toronto area advised their congregants to take communion by hand instead of directly into the mouth. It was a practice most people were doing anyway, but after the edict came down from above in the midst of the SARS pandemonium, pretty much everyone opted to follow the new rule.

Because SARS scared me, I obeyed too, even though I was used to simply popping out my tongue and being served.

We stopped shaking hands at the sign of peace for quite some time too. They were strange times, that frightening Spring of long ago.

Anyway, for some reason I never got back into my old full-serve habit and have been taking communion by hand ever since.

And it's been working out just fine.

But...

On Sunday...*shudder*...on Sunday, in that fraction of a second when you see something that isn't quite right but don't have enough time to react to it, I saw a hair on my host.

A. Hair.

And I know it wasn't Jesus'.

With absolute horror, I saw it laying across the top of the host sitting in my upturned palm. "BLOW" was my first thought, but it somehow seemed wrong to dust off the body of Christ before putting it into my mouth. I didn't want to offend. Or cause a scene. Or get Jesus all mad at me.

So I ate it. Hair and all.

I can only assume that it belonged to the Minister of Communion. The good news is that she looked nice and clean, albeit colour processed.

But still, dudes, I ate her hair.

I didn't sign up for this. I totally did NOT sign up for this.

Mark your calendars

A while ago I mentioned a documentary called Capturing a Short Life...

Dimestore Productions Inc. in association with CBC Newsworld have just released a new documentary film called Capturing A Short Life, by noteworthy Toronto director, Sheona McDonald.

This beautifully photographed film uses verité footage, interviews and still photography to tell intensely emotional, poignant film about the tough, and often taboo, subject of infant loss. It hits right to the heart of the matter and allows the viewer access to situations rarely experienced.

“You, as parents, form a bond. And the moment that you feel that baby move inside you, you’re attached and you’re talking to it and you’ve got a relationship, you have hopes and dreams and wishes...and it all just shatters, right in front of you”
- Amanda, Hailey’s mother, Capturing A Short Life

For many, the idea of even talking about the fact that babies die, may seem disrespectful or inappropriate. Sometimes, however, the opposite is true. In many cases, parents want to talk about their babies to acknowledge that they existed.

Few people are aware that in North America every year, tens of thousands of families are having to say goodbye to children they’ve only just met and millions more lose babies to miscarriage or stillbirth.

When a baby dies, it is not only an infant that is lost, but a toddler, a child, a teenager and an adult. An entire life, an entire future, disappears. There will be no first birthdays, no first steps, no first report cards,no first loves…instead there is an intense, impossible, few moments to say hello and goodbye.

Capturing A Short Life is not a film about death, it is a film about how critical it is to remember and celebrate the beautiful babies who are only with us for a moment, and how impossible it is to forget them.

This is a must-see film about a subject that we, as a society, need to learn to talk about.

Capturing a Short Life will have its premiere broadcast on CBC Newsworld's series "The Lens" on Tuesday December 9, 2008.

For more information click here.

It looks like they're be releasing it on DVD at some point, so if you miss the broadcast or just want to have your own copy, check the site for updates.

Smile

If this doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will.

Enjoy.

The rules of cake

Last night I got to thinking about the way people recognize the birthdays of the children they have lost.

I do it. Most of us do, in some way.

For me, it begins with cake. Every year on Thomas' birthday I make a small cake for My Beloved and I to share, complete with candles which we both blow out together.

We take the day off, do a special annual good deed in remembrance of our boy, have lunch together then come home for cake. There's a great deal of comfort in the repetition of this now annual rite; In wrapping ourselves in the warmth of shared love and collective sorrow as we take the same familiar steps every March 9th.

Some people release balloons, some make donations, some light candles, others take flowers to the place their child is buried or to the spot where their son or daughter's ashes caught the wind and swirled up to the heavens.

But more interesting than what we do, is the fact that we do something at all. I don't celebrate the birthdays of any other dead people. Well, except maybe Jesus - but his is kind of hard to avoid. And somewhat mandated if you're Christian.

I think about my Grandmother on her birthday, but I don't stop to ruminate on how old she'd be, what she'd be doing, what present I'd get her, how excited she'd be - or any of the other things I think about when Thomas' birthday rolls around.

Dead baby birthdays are a whole different animal.

Sometimes I worry that I'm walking the fine line between remembrance and morbidness (a fact that is in itself a hard thing to reconcile - that anything about your child should be even remotely morbid). Is it "off" to make a cake for a dead child? Is it strange to make a point of doing something to mark the day?

Maybe it is. But maybe only to people who've never had to.

The rules are different for the rest of us.

And until the world at large learns to feel more comfortable dealing with and acknowledging our sorrow, we'll have no choice but to continue making the rules up as we go along, teaching them to those who will never have to use them, and gently passing them on to those who will.

*****


Naomi - I'm so sorry. In three and a half years I haven't read a story that is so much like my own either. I just wanted you to know I'm thinking of you.

Out of the fog

As we drove through the fog on our way home from dinner tonight, I told My Beloved that I think my own fog is lifting. In the last few weeks I've been noticing almost imperceptible little hints of "me" coming back - in small glimpses and in tiny moments.

I can feel again in a way I'd forgotten I ever once knew how to.

I think the difference is that I'm living with the sorrow instead of living through it. It's there, but suddenly I'm there too. And I'm almost as imposing as my grief, which is a tremendous shift in the balance. For more than three and a half years it has dominated me body and soul, but we are nearly equal now.

I think we can live together peaceably. I'm almost sure of it. I've figured out its demanding ways and its all-consuming neediness, and I know how to manage it. I know how to feed it so that it stays quietly beside me without screaming in my ear. I know how to soothe it so that it rests softly in my heart instead of pounding inside my brain. I know how to accept it so that it feels like it belongs.

Because of course, it does. It always will.

I'm not naive enough to think that things won't still shake me. Sneak attacks will still catch me off guard and bring me to my knees. I will cry. I will rage. I will curse.

But I can feel again. I can feel more than my sorrow.

At last.

Today...

It feels like a whole new world.

Is it just me...?

Or is Brad Pitt...



...starting to look an awful lot like Burl Ives?

Things you'd think I'd have learned by now...

1. It's not wise to gorge yourself on dried apricots a few hours before going to evening Mass. That's juuuuust enough time for them to make themselves known in a most uncomfortable, cheek clenching sort of way.

2. Perfume will not cover up the stink of just cooked fish clinging to your clothes and hair. Attempting to disguise it in this manner simply renders one smelling like a fisherman's wharf inside a perfume factory.

Yeah, at Mass.

3. People will butt in front of you no matter what kind of line you're in. Even if it's one that has formed in front of a Book of the Dead where people write down names of those who have died so they can be prayed for during the month of November.

Seriously. Butting.

4. The pressure of a long line of people waiting behind you will make you edit your list of names down until you have just one.

Thomas.

Imagine that

"I just read your "about me" section", she wrote in a Facebook message to me.

"I am sorry to hear about your baby tragedy :( I didn't know."

She wasn't afraid of me. She wasn't afraid to speak of the unspeakable. To acknowledge my sorrow and my loss. To risk reminding me of my grief (as though I could ever forget it). To reach out to me.

She wasn't afraid.

And my heart feels as light as a feather.

My elf

You never forget your first.

A week after the miscarriage in October 2003, I sat slumped on the love seat in the family room watching the clock. It was a dull, foggy Saturday morning. November 1st. My Beloved was busying himself in the kitchen. Clinking dishes, washing pots, moving, moving, moving.

While I sat.

I remember feeling like I'd never be able to move again, so deep was my sorrow. My little baby, so wanted and already so adored, was gone forever.

I watched My Beloved shuffle dishes from sink to cupboard. I watched my arms lying still on the couch cushions at my sides. I watched the clock count down the useless seconds that now meant nothing. My baby wasn't growing anymore.

"Go out", My Beloved urged me gently.

I'd been planning to go to a Christmas Craft show at a nearby high school. Before. But instead I was helplessly glued to the couch listening to time slip away in each tick of the old wind-up clock I'd rescued from my Grandparent's cottage before it was sold years earlier.

I don't remember my arguments against moving off the couch, but I'm relatively sure they weren't valid ones. I was healing well from the D&C and physically felt just fine.

Which is, of course, the worst part of dealing with the loss of a child through miscarriage. You look just fine. There's no way for people to know the pain you're in. There are no scars to show the battle you've just fought and lost.

You become the invisible walking wounded.

And that's exactly how I felt. Broken with grief, but whole to the rest of the world.

Eventually his pleadings won me over. I got dressed and drove through the fog to the Christmas Craft show.

I aimlessly wandered past booths of knitted potholders, summer jams, walnut mice, Christmas wreathes and other assorted festive paraphernalia until I spotted a booth crowded with exquisite handmade dolls.

They drew me in. Lit a tiny spark in my burned out soul.

I stood transfixed, staring at the whimsical faces the artist had so painstakingly created. Dozens of dolls, their gray hair curled in clouds around their wizened faces, smiled back at me.

I couldn't tear myself away, and eventually I came home with an octogenarian elf tucked up carefully in miles of tissue paper.

It was the sweetest possible retail therapy.

And when I look at that elf (which I still can't bear to put away with the other Christmas decorations - she sits in the curio cabinet all year long) I remember the little one I lost, the wisdom of My Beloved, and the strength I somehow found to drive through the fog in search of the light.

A journey of a thousand miles

Five years ago today we lost our first baby. For 10 weeks and 6 days I carried what we thought was a healthy baby until a long, painful night in the ER revealed that our child never really started growing at all.

"Products of conception" and "blighted ovum" were the words they used to describe the baby we so desperately wanted. I became a statistic instead of a mother that night, and My Beloved began his studies in how to survive being a bystander; desperate to help, but completely unable to do a single thing to fix what was going so catastrophically wrong.

I remember the pain, the blood, the fear and the numbness. The miserable, condescending nurse and the kind one that glowed like an angel. The unsure young doctor and the terse veteran. The reassuring anesthesiologist and the brusque OB. The D&C, the recovery, and the chest wracked with sobs.

And so began our journey.

Sending kisses to heaven with assurances that you are not forgotten, wee one.

It's worth repeating...

I made this for my sibling's 40th birthday last year, but I think it's totally fine to recycle it for #41 - especially since it's all still very, very true.

Happy Birthday Kathy!
oxoxox

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

More this 'n that

I have a great big gnarly, multiple-pronged ball of rant stuck in my throat. But if I cough it up I know I'm going to offend, so I'm going to continue to drink lots of water in the hopes that I can get it to go down.

Swallowing my words.

Mmmm. Delicious.

____

It annoys me that I so often type "and" instead of "an".

____

I've been wondering a lot about of couple of faltering relationships; wondering if they have been irreparably damaged.

I want to sulk and plead innocence. Stamp my foot and say, "But I'm the one dealing with the combined tsunami of grief and infertility - it's not my fault" - but I probably need to take some responsibility for their slow decline.

The thing is, I have wonderfully strong relationships with lots of friends and family members who still want me, tattered soul and all.

So a little bit of me wonders how much I meant to those other people in the first place.

_____

I'm procrastinating. I'm supposed to be writing a rush ad right now.

Don't tell my client.

_____

I started Weight Watchers (again) on Monday.

I'd forgotten just how agonizing that first dreadful week is when all you can think about is every single delicious morsel of food you were gleefully able to jam down your great gaping pie whole just a few days earlier.

And now it's 20 nuts and low fat cheese. With a water chaser.

My body and I have been at war since I lost my very first baby five years ago Saturday. I have hated it since then for its inability to keep our babies safe over and over and over again. For its stubborn betrayal and frustrating defects.

So my theory is that if I can find a reason to be proud of it again - to see it losing weight and changing for the better - maybe I can resolve some of the antagonism I feel towards it.

Or maybe I'll just look better in a pair of jeans.

It's win-win either way.

_____

I should really stop procrastinating.

Or maybe play just one more game of Word Twist...

And nothing but the truth

If you knew an almost 39-year old woman who'd had three miscarriages, a massive placental abruption during delivery that killed her son, and unexplained hemorrhaging during a D&C, would you wonder why she would even consider trying to get pregnant again?

What if you found out that she also has one blocked fallopian tube, a bicornuate uterus, and an issue with high blood pressure?

What if she'd already had one lap surgery because she was "riddled with scar tissue" from a C-section and subsequent blood infection, and that her OB suspects that she may also have Asherman syndrome, a "rare condition" where adhesions form inside the uterus?

What if she'd been told that the scar tissue her OB removed during the lap may have all regrown more than 6 months ago?

Would you think she was certifiable for continuing to try to get pregnant - particularly when it seems so difficult for her to stay pregnant?

Would you encourage her to keep trying?

Would you tell her that the odds are so stacked against her that it might be wiser and healthier to move on?

Would you keep her at arm's length?

Would you tell her to pray harder?

Would you tell her to send positive energy out into the universe?

Would you tell her what she wants to hear?

Would you tell her what you'd want to hear?

Would you tell her the truth?

This 'n that

I eat stuff off the floor. MY floor, I mean. Okay, and maybe my Mom's floor. And other floors belonging to people whose homes and feet look especially clean.

I'm a firm believer in the 5 second rule, particularly where chocolate is involved. Or candy. Or anything sweet, really.

So I was kind of gob-smacked to discover that my 8-year old niece is not a follower of said edict. She fumbled a fresh-out-of-the-oven cookie while she was at our place on the weekend, and, giggling at her clumsiness, threw it out.

THREW. IT. OUT.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm more bothered by here - the loss of a perfectly good cookie, or the fact that apparently small children have better food-related hygiene than I do.

I mean, it's not like I keep a fork in my pocket in case I see something interesting laying in a discarded heap on the sidewalk or anything. But a cookie meeting tile for less than a fraction of a second? Come on - that's totally good to go!

Right?

Right?

Uh...right?
___________________________

The other night I had a dream that I had a baby. One of those I've-woken-up-and-it-was-so-vivid-it-must-be-real dreams.

Soul crushing.

But the problem is, in addition to the cloud of sorrow it cast over me, it's made me start second guessing the decision I made about not having "just one more surgery".

Because what if...?

Fuck.

______________________________

I often wonder if, once the baby-making days are long gone, all this will still consume me the way it does now. The what ifs. The regrets.

Thomas.

What will it be like, as a mother in mourning 20 years from now when all hope truly is lost and my lady bits have ceased to function at all? How will I feel then?

I think about Thomas so much. Not all the time, but still, so very, very much.

I suppose parents of living children think about their little ones as much as I think about Thomas. Probably a lot more.

Tonight I'll take comfort in that, given that it makes me feel less like a lunatic for regularly finding myself caught in trances filled with images of my boy.

I miss him. So much it feels like it could eat me alive.

__________________________

A friend posted this on her blog on October 15th.

I need to pass it along...

Don't Tell Me...

Don't tell me that you understand, don't tell me that you know,
Don't tell me that I will survive, how I will surely grow.
Don't tell me this is just a test, that I am truly blessed,
That I am chosen for this task, apart from all the rest.
Don't come at me with answers that can only come from me,
Don't tell me how my grief will pass, that I will soon be free.
Don't stand in pious judgment of the bonds I must untie,
Don't tell me how to suffer, don't tell me how to cry.
My life is filled with selfishness, my pain is all I see,
But I need you, I need your love, unconditionally.
Accept me in my ups and downs, I need someone to share,
Just hold my hand and let me cry, and say,
"My friend, I really do care."

Author Unknown

Beautifully said. So beautifully said.

So, whatup with you?

Last night I had a dream about having another baby that has left me wistful and melancholic. I have a pile of work to do (which is great, but also a little daunting). This dreary Monday seems to be sorely lacking in sunshine. And, after an abysmal early morning meeting with the scale, I decided to start Weight Watchers today. Again.

I'm whiny and tired. And hungry.

So instead of listening to me mope, why don't we talk about you. What's on your mind today?

Amuse me.

Please?

Remembering...

It's the best I can do

Today, being Thanksgiving here in Canada, the priest challenged us to think of two new things to be thankful for this year. Which is an especially challenging task for me since the holidays tend to bring out the big blue funk in me - and I'm usually anything but thankful when I'm feeling funky and blue.

But I'm nothing if not determined, so here we go:

1. I'm glad that when we came home from our first Thanksgiving dinner of the weekend tonight we found the cat vomit on the bed before it had a chance to soak all the way through to the mattress.

2. I'm thankful that I haven't had any surgeries or miscarriages this year. Granted, that also means that I'm probably still full of scar tissue (having opted out of surgery in September), and that I haven't been pregnant at all. But still.

There. Done.

Amen.

No surprises

Last night we went out to get a baby gift for friends who just had another baby girl. In the parking lot I discovered that the clerk forgot to swipe the little socks we bought to go with the Pooh sleeper.

$4.97 in reparation from the universe.

That's less than a dollar for every loss, and each year we've struggled. But I suppose that's about what I'd expect from the universe.

Yeah. Fuck. That's about what I'd expect.

They say you can run...

...but you can't hide.

You can, however, keep trying.

And so we do. Every Autumn when My Beloved is finally able to take some time off work, we make good our escape. Usually not far, but we flee just the same.

Although it's entirely too true that you do, in fact, take your worries with you, it's still nice to give them a change of scenery every once in a while.

And it's been a while. As a freelancer my schedule is much more flexible than My Beloved's, and his has been anything but flexible for the last 9 months. We're long overdue for some R&R and we're making the most of this blissful week off.

So I'll be quiet for a few days while we're vacating.

Until we meet again, happy trails, my friends!

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.