And then my cat died

It's been quite a spring. There was the brain tumour, then there was the 20-year old cat who had a stroke, rallied, then quietly died 2.5 weeks later on the table at the vet's office while I sobbed and sobbed over her tiny, frail body.

2016 has been a bit...challenging.

But what I'm finding pretty fascinating is that I seem to be handling it all with a shocking amount of competency (for me, anyway). I'm not sure if I'm just immune to trauma at this point, or if Therapist Lady was onto something when she suggested I try EMDR a few years ago. I very reluctantly agreed, and plowed my way through several agonizing sessions from the summer of 2014 through to early 2015.

They were unpleasant (understatement). But I felt calmer afterward - more relaxed than I had been in years. So when disaster struck and I thought I would lose My Beloved, my brain didn't implode; I didn't lose my mind. I went to the specialist appointments, I went to the hospital, I waited during the 3-hour surgery, I saw him lousy with tubes and hooked up to monitors and leaking blood from that precious head. All the hospital sounds, sights and smells - all those triggers.

And I didn't lose my mind.

I did come close to having what I suspect would have been an epic anxiety attack while we were in the pre-op waiting room just minutes before they wheeled him into the operating room. But I dug deep into my bag of "Calm the hell DOWN, Kristin!" tricks, remembered some breathing exercises I could do without him noticing, and managed not to pass out, throw up, or run screaming from the room.

I admit I'm bone tired. My nerves are frayed. If possible I'd like there to be a nice long break before the next crisis arises (because one always comes). But I am still putting one foot in front of the other.

So kudos to Therapist Lady, the family and friends who once again stepped in and offered exactly the kind of support we've needed over the past few months, and to My Beloved for somehow managing to host the best possible kind of tumour in his noggin.

And as for you, Lucy, you were the best kitty that ever lived. Even though you were, in the end, barely 6 pounds, you've left a huge hole in my heart and in our house. Miss you, pretty princess.

Brain tumour? Why not?

So to recap, there were the five lost babies, the failed fertility treatments, the depleted bank account, the busted mind, the therapy, further depletion of the bank account (re: therapy), resignation, childlessness, a little more therapy, fragile peace.

Actual peace.

It took several years to get to the point where I was mostly okay with this life. I mean, never completely satisfied because of all the missing kids 'n stuff, but mostly okay. Happy even. I got into a cool groove with my niece and nephews and felt them filling in little gaps I didn't know could be filled, and I started to relax into this unwanted life in a way I didn't know was possible.

And then on my motherfucking birthday an optometrist told My Beloved that the weird test results from his visual field test could only mean two things: a stroke or a tumour.

THOSE WERE THE TWO OPTIONS.

I mean really, no fluff in the eye? No mechanical error? No, "I just got my license and I don't really know what I'm doing"?

Nope. Just a stroke or a tumour.

And, to make a long story short, of course it was a tumour. Of course. Because we don't do anything small around here. If we're going to lose babies, we're going to lose five of them. And if one of us is going to have weird vision issues, it's going to be because of a brain tumour. Obviously.

And just like that, we were once again thrust into a situation for which there is no survival manual. I mean, if you don't count medical textbooks. And we handled it with our usual weirdness. After the diagnosis came, we went out for hamburgers and bought Lego mini figures like there was nothing wrong at all. And we sighed and held hands and said how relieved we were to finally know for sure. THAT HE HAD A BRAIN TUMOUR.

I lied my way through the next two weeks telling My Beloved everything would be fine. Side note: I learned I can lie like a rug. It was truly some Oscar worthy stuff. In fact it was so good I almost believed it myself, at least when he was within arm's reach. But every day when he left for work all I could feel was the crushing weight of his absence, and it terrified me. I couldn't bear him not being with me because I was so desperately afraid that soon he wouldn't be with me.

To be clear, there are other very, very dear people in my life who I love and rely on - but he is my person. He is literally my better half (really - I do mean that literally), and he is also the only person who completely understands this weird life I lead because he leads it too. We are parents to the same missing boy and the same four little sprites who were too tiny for us to meet.

So in addition to all the lying, I did some of my very best praying during those weeks between diagnosis and surgery while he was at work. Actually, it was mostly begging and sobbing, but we'll call it praying.

I got so used to saying, "You're going to be okay" with conviction I didn't feel and confidence I didn't have that the lying became second nature. I hardly had to think about it. I'd hear him sigh, or catch him looking pensive, and the words would come. "You're going to be okay."

Because if you say it enough, maybe it comes true.

I did mostly think he'd be okay, but only because the alternative was too chilling to contemplate. All I knew was that 17 years wasn't even CLOSE to enough time to have together, so to think it was going to end in that operating room on that sunny May day was inconceivable.

And it didn't. He is here and the tumour is gone. Best of all, it was benign. Benign, thank God.

At today's 2-month follow up we got the official all clear. Not only is the surgeon very happy with My Beloved's recovery, the interloper is completely gone and no new hitchhikers have taken up residence in the meantime, so it's back to business as usual.

If you don't count all the blinking, staring into space, and muttering, "What the hell just happened!?"

Yup. Business as usual.

Travel plans?

My Beloved and I have never been big travelers. In fact, the last time either of us was on a plane (or out of the country, for that matter) was more than 13 years ago when we went to Las Vegas for a short mid-winter vacation. We even went low key for our honeymoon, taking the train to Montreal (which was so fabulous. If you've never been to Montreal, go. Go NOW).

Travel has just never been particularly high on our priority list. Babies were.

Were.

So now that babies are not on our list at all, pretty much everyone wants to know why we don't travel. Because I guess after people have finished grilling you about why you aren't adopting, the next thing they want to know is why in the hell you aren't traveling. You know, since now you have this fabulously carefree, responsibility-free, kid-free life that parents of young children can only dream of.

Ha.

To be honest, I had to stop and think about why exactly we don't travel. For a big chunk of my 30s it was because I was immersed in the drama of trying to conceive, being pregnant, and losing babies. I had laser-like focus on family building, and that didn't leave room (or time or money, once we started visiting the fertility clinic on a regular basis--ah, weren't those the days) for planning much of anything else, especially vacations.

I couldn't wrap my head around anything except the idea of bringing a live baby home to stay. That was all that mattered.

And, of course, no babies came home. So we consoled ourselves by cocooning: watching endless hours of Mary Tyler Moore, going for walks together at night, visiting local farms on the weekends, losing ourselves in comic books (him) and yarn (me) and whatever else soothed our pain and took the ache away for a few blissful moments.

That just happened not to include travel.

For some people it does, I guess. But we were battered and bruised and just wanted someplace warm and safe to rest for awhile. And so we did play it safe, sticking close to home where our comforts are, in an environment over which we have as much control as you ever can in life.

As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with that. We all heal differently, after all. Maybe the travel bug will bite us one day. Maybe once we've healed a little more we'll get the urge to throw caution to the wind, pack our bags and run away to some exotic locale. But for now we've had more than enough excitement. Enough to last a million lifetimes, really.

Also, we happen to be content with the way things are. Maybe it appears as though we're frittering away our child-free life by not taking advantage of the kinds of things people with kids can't do as easily. Maybe the Hollywood version of our life story thus far would end with us climbing Mount Everest, cruising the Caribbean or  kissing atop the Eiffel Tower.

But right now it's just us curled up on the couch reading comics and playing with yarn.

Which sounds perfect (for us), if you ask me.

Eight

Thomas' birthday came and went. Mixed in with the annual busyness of trying to promote his Random Acts of Kindness Day (thanks to everyone who participated and made the world sweeter on my boy's birthday, by the way!), were the usual flood of memories.

It's interesting how the brain protects itself. The unthinkable happened eight years ago. We held that little boy--a tiny, motionless bundle of beauty that I still can't believe I had any part in making--as his fierce little heart fought to beat. We held that little boy after it finally stopped. We buried that little boy in a cold cemetery on a mercifully sunny day in March.

And for most of the year I just think about the ways I miss him and the ways my life is different than the one I'd come so close to having. For most of the year I am okay, triggered now and then by life and the joys others experience that I'll never know, but generally okay. Functional despite the tear in the fabric of my heart that will never mend.

But on and around his birthday, my mind sinks back to those early days of deep, dark confusion and grief. I hear the sounds, I smell the smells, I see the shocking and disturbing detail that my mind somehow locks carefully away for the rest of the year. It floods back during those first days of March. Every year.

I don't know how we're meant to survive this sort of thing. But yet somehow we do. Time pulls us forward, willing or not, and suddenly we're in the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year. Still breathing, still walking, still being.

My mind is quieter now. The birthday is past, the cake is eaten, and the acts of kindness have been recorded, so the memories have quietly started to pack themselves away for another year.

I'll bump into some of them again in the months to come--those sneaky stray bits and pieces that escape now and then--but they'll unpack themselves completely again next March.

And so it goes.

Thomas Joseph, March 9 - 10, 2005
I love you, sweet boy, and I'll miss you forever and ever.

Perception vs. reality

Back in the spring of 2010, when Thomas had been gone just over five years, I had a meeting with my very first boss about some freelance work he wanted me to do. Actually, it was with one of his underlings, but on my way into the boardroom we popped into his office so I could say hello.

I hadn't seen Ted in years. The last time I'd had any contact with him was just after Thomas died. Immediately after, actually. When I was about 8 months pregnant he'd contacted me about doing some work for him. I naturally expected I'd be having a live baby in a few weeks (and told him so), so I turned it down. Work was the farthest thing from my mind in those heady pre-baby days.

The next time I contacted Ted was to tell him that, as it turned out, I didn't bring Thomas home after all. His response was lovely. Sweet and sympathetic, with a good dose of concern and disbelief mixed in. I remember him saying that after he'd gotten my e-mail, he and his wife sat on the couch together in shock, talking quietly for hours about life and death and tragedies like mine.

So when I stuck my head into his office that spring morning in 2010, I expected him to see the mother of a dead baby. It's all I could think of--that he hadn't seen or heard from me since that horribly unexpected e-mail five years earlier. In fact, I briefly wondered if he was giving me the work out of pity.

The first words out of his mouth? "So, how's motherhood treating you?"

All he'd remembered was that I'd had a child. He'd forgotten that it died. 

He was, of course, horrified when I gently reminded him that motherhood wasn't all that great when all your children were dead. Although I didn't say it exactly that way, of course.

And then I made fun of him for forgetting, because that's what I do. And oh how we laughed.

Okay, we didn't really laugh and my joke probably wasn't all that funny, but I wanted to let him off the gigantic fish hook from which he was dangling as fast as I could.

I think about that day a lot. I should have been upset. I should have been hurt. I should have been desperately angry that he'd forgotten about something so huge that it consumes my life and has changed me forever.


But instead I was relieved. Buoyant, even. Because the fact that he'd forgotten meant that maybe, just maybe, people really do see more than just a bereaved parent when they look at me. Granted, most people don't forget entirely (although my new hairdresser did, asking me again if I had any children at my second appointment after we'd had a very long and thorough conversation about the fact that I don't at my first appointment), but it means that it is possible that I am more than the sum of the sorrows that I carry.

I don't know if Ted remembers any of this. Ha, probably not. But I'm grateful to him just the same for his ability to see and remember me.

Hats Off To Liz!

Huh. I guess I've gone a little quiet here lately. I haven't even made it up to 10 posts yet this year, for heaven's sake! I've started a bunch of 'em, but I can never seem to get them squeezed all the way out of my brain, so they sit in the queue unfinished.

Luckily I have been able to follow through on something...

There's this:

 

And there's the website that goes with it.

Wait, I didn't design the logo (that's one of My Beloved's awesome creations). I just had the idea and called upon my generous and talented friends (far and wide, as it turns out!) to help me get it up and running.

And it's been kicking it marathon-style ever since. We've been able to donate close to 150 handmade chemo caps and dozens of infant loss items (tiny blankets, burial buntings and hats) to the hospital where my friend Liz was treated - which happens to be the same hospital where Thomas was born and died.

I'm kind of proud of this little handcrafted, grassroots effort. But more than that, I'm unbelievably grateful to the friends and family who have supported it with such a passion.

People are awesome.

Back to school

Thomas would have started grade two this week. On the first day of school, I lay in bed and told him about the day that would have been. The special breakfast I would have cooked, the way we'd have walked to school together, the treat I'd have made him to snack on after school while he told me about all the adventures he'd had as a big boy in grade two.

Then I got up and carried on with my day. I don't remember what I did, I just know it was painfully ordinary.

Back to school pictures, which began popping up on Facebook back in mid August as children of my American friends headed back, reached their agonizing peak this week. The annual assault.

I would have done it too, of course. Thomas all dressed up in his first-day best, smiling at the camera as he headed out the door to grade two. I would have sent the picture to his grandma and his Auntie Kathy. And his bubby and nonno too.

I would have.

Ha. Would.

It was wearying. My last grief-frayed nerve about to snap on Tuesday, when a new friend e-mailed me and asked how I was coping with the onslaught. She barely knows me. We've met once. But she has been a staunch supporter of Thomas' Random Act of Kindness Day since a mutual friend told her about it a few years ago, and she has a rare kind of sensitivity that I'm discovering is like a cooling balm on a sunburn.

A blissful salve on time-worn grief.

It didn't occur to anyone else. And nor should it, really. I'm not the centre of anyone's universe but my own. At seven-years old, my grief is seasoned. And besides, I don't tell people that eleventy-billion milestone pictures coming at me for two solid weeks eventually starts to erode the stitches holding my heart together. So how could anyone have known?

But thank God for that one friend who did think to ask. It's all I needed.

All the bereaved moms I know say the same thing: every once in a while we just want someone to acknowledge our loss. Not all the time and not out of guilt or obligation. But maybe once in a blue moon; just a quiet nod to the ongoing agony of loss that ebbs and flows as life marches on. Especially as life marches on.

Because grief marches in place.

Brainpower is overrated

Okay, so here's the weird thing: I don't know what to do when there's nothing to worry about. My dad had his first heart attack when I was 13. On that sunny February day in 1984, something in my brain clicked on and it appears as thought I'm powerless to turn it off. I worried about him endlessly, right up until the night he died when I cried myself to sleep before I even knew he was dying in his.

I worried all through my tragically flawed pregnancies (and with good reason, as it turns out), and I worried during the endless hours I waited for doctors and tests results at the fertility clinic. I worried about the work I wasn't doing and the money I wasn't making because I was trying to make live babies. And then I worried some more about my dad.

Then the time for having babies came to an end. Then my dad died.

And now there's this peace that I can't seem to find a way to properly embrace, no matter how much I want to. There's peace and there's work and there's this lovely, quiet life waiting here for me - and all my brain wants to do is latch onto another problem and get to frettin'.

Who knew peace was this problematic?

So I've turned inward and I've started worrying about myself. I've worried myself all the way into a scorching case of acid reflux - which is, apparently, what happens when your brain is frantic to find something to do with itself after 27 years of hardcore worrying.

Eventually your body rolls its eyes, sighs resignedly, and gives Brain something real to fret about just to shut it the hell up.

On a related note, I hate Dr. Google. He will tell you you're dying almost every time. Doesn't matter if you have a gunshot wound to the head or a stubbed toe, Dr. Google will kill you either way.

I don't actually think I'm dying (mostly). And as of last week I'm on medication that will, with luck, see the symptoms improving soon.  I'm also working to adjust my diet (which means cutting out all my go-to comfort foods, naturally), and losing weight is penciled in on my calendar somewhere...

But still, I'm annoyed with myself and my all-powerful brain that seems to take such great pleasure in thwarting me at every turn.

I bet if I went back to the beginning of this blog and read it straight through, I'd find dozens of instances where I begged for peace - for things to be calm and normal and quiet.

And they are. Just not in my head.

Siiiiiigh.

Seven

"I miss him so much! I can't wait until he's home!", she said. Her boy was away for a few days and, like all mothers, she missed her child desperately. She was excited knowing that she was soon going to have him back home, safe in her arms.

"I'm miss him so much."

Multiply that by forever, I thought.

I have absolutely no idea how anyone survives the loss of a child. Every day I do it, and after all this time I still don't really know how.

Thomas would be seven today. He is gone. And I still breathe and the world still turns - and I just don't know how any of it is possible.

But somehow it is.

And so once again, I'm sending all my love and big birthday kisses heavenward to the sweetest and most beautiful boy I've ever seen.

oxox

Just thinkin'

Mass is always an interesting experience for me. I find my mind wanders to places it doesn't often go during the rest of the week. I think the internet, television, work, and yarn have a lot to do with the reason my brain is so distracted and otherwise employed during the other 6 days of the week.

But the quiet of the church and the fact that I can't easily supplant deep thoughts with shallow diversions means my mind wanders its way along roads that often lead to Thomas. And not just Thomas, but this life without him, and what that means and what it looks like now and what it'll look like 20 years from now.

It's not always a fun walk. But I think these moments of contemplation are an important part of the healing process that continues for the rest of a bereaved parent's life.

On Sunday, while absentmindedly scanning the congregation, I noticed that a reader I see all the time was sitting with an altar boy that I also often see. I'd never noticed the connection before, but seeing them side by side made mother-son relationship obvious. He was the image of his mother, in tall, strapping, teenage-boy form.

I couldn't take my eyes off him. I kept looking back from his mother to him, noticing how much they look alike. It's still astonishing to me that it's possible to make something that so clearly belongs to you that it actually has your face stamped upon it. Magical.

I was still watching him as he took to the altar in preparation for handing out Communion (he's now a Minister of Communion, having graduated from altar serving, I suppose).

I stared at him, thinking how incredibly proud his mother must be of this lovely young man - both because he came from her, and because he's obviously as committed as she is to participating in something that's an important part of her life. As I watched him, I imagined what it would be like if he were my son - if it was my son standing there on that altar, tall and handsome and demonstrating his commitment to his faith at a time in his life when it's probably really, really not cool to do so.

I stared. And I thought, "She must be staring in awe too, the mother that created this perfect boy version of herself. I wouldn't be able to take my eyes off him if he were mine." I looked over to where she was sitting, and saw she had her head bowed, her eyes either on her missal or closed in prayer.

And I realized that people who have living children don't need to stare at them in awe they way I imagine they must. They do sometimes, of course, but seeing her son on the altar isn't new for this mother. Seeing her son isn't new for this mother.

I have no idea what it's really like. Thinking that a mother wouldn't be able to take her eyes off her almost grown son for even a second proves this. What a sad thing to have had a child and to still not know what any of it is really like.

There are times, during Mass, when I want to pick up my things and walk out. It's not from anger anymore, but from a feeling of not belonging that sometimes overwhelms me. I'm watching the children of others grow before my eyes. Little boys now tower over their mothers. Little girls now wear women's clothing. It's a strange feeling when all I've done is sit in those pews alone - with, perhaps, five little spirits hovering nearby.

Family and church are inextricably linked in my brain, and when it can't escape into the internet it sometimes wills me to think that I don't belong where families are. And that makes me want to escape from places where families are.

But I stay. And I wait for my mind to take me to places that are sometimes hard to go because I have no choice but to let it.

I suppose my fractured little mind knows best. And anyway, I have the busyness of 6 other days to recover from the revelations of the 7th.

Motivation

If you've seen mine, please give it some cookies and milk and send it home.

On a related note, I'm shocked to discover that the only thing worse than a bone-chilling, snowmageddon style winter is a dreary, spring-like one.

Huh. Didn't see that coming.

I'll try to remember that next year when I'm (hopefully) up to my eyeballs in snow drifts.

The unberable lightness of being

It's not like I'm walking on sunshine and floating two feet off the ground or anything. But this morning it dawned on me that life is sort of good right now. Uncomplicated in a way it hasn't been in, well, in virtually my entire life, really.

We're not trying to have a baby anymore. So my body has ceased to be a science experiment/means to an end/poorly constructed baby-making machine. It's just my body again. Arms, legs, graying head and a busted uterus that can just fucking relax now, since it's not going to be called into action ever again.

If you listen closely, you can probably hear it sighing happily from all the way over there.

I pay little to no attention to bodily fluids. I have no idea what my temperature is on any given morning. I've stopped shelling out a fortune on sticks designed to be peed upon. I no longer mark the passage of time in 28-day units. I don't have to decide if just one more surgery or fertility treatment will do the trick. I no longer live in fear worrying about what one more loss would do to my already-fractured brain. And, perhaps best of all, the end of a cycle doesn't shatter me to my very core like it used to. Every single time.

People are no longer depending upon my body to produce a child, grandchild, cousin, niece/nephew. No one's crossing their fingers or praying or hoping or giving us knowing glances. The pressure cooker existence I once boiled away in has cooled to a lovely lukewarm bath.

The guilt is still there. It will always be there. I couldn't produce a living child, grandchild, niece/nephew. But at least the trying is over. We can all just agree that I failed and move on.

Or I can agree that I failed and everyone else can be mad at me for calling myself a failure.

Either way, we all move on.

And then there's the other shoe. The one that dropped on January 4, 2011 when I got the call that Dad had died. He got horribly sick (sicker than he'd ever been, which is saying a lot since he'd been in fragile health for 27 years), and after tenaciously battling a host of medical issues that would have immediately felled a lesser (or less stubborn) man, he quietly slipped away in the night.

I no longer panic when I hear the phone ring. I don't dwell on what it's going to be like "after" because I'm living it now. My stomach doesn't clench in anxiety when I pull up to their house. I don't have to wonder about what kind of day he's having - if he'll fall, if he'll die in front of me, if he'll be so confused he won't know who I am. I don't ache as I watch him suffer unthinkable fatigue, pain and indignities. Most of all, he is no longer suffering.

As I said yesterday, I am breathing these days. The good kind of breaths. Better than I've breathed in almost as long as I can remember.

My life is more about me than it has been in a very long time.

I'm not 100% carefree or without responsibility. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, here. But the fact is that I am living a more peaceful life right now. Work is plentiful enough, My Beloved is still beloved, my mom is in relatively good health, and I passed my annual physical with flying colours (which is astounding given the grief eating I did during 2011, not to mention all the stress).

Sorrow is still an ever present interloper, but it's a snarling beast I've mostly learned how to tame. I know to lure it into its cage when I need relief, and let it out to be walked when it needs to stretch its legs.

We have it mostly figured out, me and Sorrow.

So life is just...life these days. Quieter, less complicated and much prettier than I've seen it in a very long time.


I could get used to this.

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.

Friendship's wings

My friend died on Saturday.

There are a million and one things to say about this, but the foggy swirl of grief and remembrance is making me nervous that I'll forget something important - that I won't eulogize her in the way she deserves.

So I will just say this:

She went to visit my dad one day while he was in dialysis. They were receiving treatment in the same hospital; one for kidney failure, one for cancer. She had never met him, but she wanted to stop in and say hello to the man I'd talked so much about. 

Like everyone to whom I introduced Liz, he was instantly smitten. After their brief, and only, meeting, he asked about her constantly - even when he could finally no longer remember her name. And he prayed for her fervently. One of the last things he ever said to me was that he was praying for her, and that I was to tell her.

On my last visit to Liz, when she was so weakened that it was sometimes difficult to hear or understand what she was saying, she told me, through tears that threatened to shatter me, that she would look after my Thomas. Over and over again, she said she would look after my boy for me.

A mother leaving her own children here, pledging to take care of mine there.

She had acknowledged her death before. We both knew she was going to die - she was frank, was Liz. But this time I knew she could see it. It was both frightening and beautiful all at once. She was close enough to begin planning what she would do once she left us, and I was in grateful awe that she chose to make my boy part of it. And that, God bless her, she made sure I knew.

I've only known Liz as someone journeying with cancer. I met her shortly after her diagnosis in 2009. But cancer never defined her - she refused to let it. She lived fiercely and fully, and with more grace, courage and humour than I ever thought possible under such heartbreaking circumstances.

Someone who takes time to visit an old man they've never met in dialysis while on her way to chemotherapy? Well, that's just the best kind of person there is - and someone I'm so proud and honoured to have called my friend.

Love you, Liz. Godspeed, and thank you for watching over my boy.

Do as I say, not as I do. Obviously.

Okay, so here's the thing about grief: it makes you sooooo tired. I'm sure it's that and not the nine zillion calories I eat every day in an attempt to smother the grief with Nutella and wine.

Because that's what I do. It's been my modus operandi since Thomas died. I try to kill grief with food, or somehow disable it with credit card transactions (like when I bought two pairs of shoes on the way home from errand-running this afternoon).

Both are effective, but only fleetingly. Somehow I'm still pretty sad. And kind of fat. Huh.

Oh, shopping and eating do work in the moment, of course. Spectacularly so. A big spoonful of Nutella completely eclipses EVERYTHING for the 4 seconds it stays on the spoon. And the rush of finding two cute pairs of sandals that actually fit my chubby feet? Bliss that repeated itself when I got home and tried them both on again.

The afterglow is pretty short-lived, unfortunately. But I'm no quitter. Eventually I'll find just the right combination of eating and spending to kill grief forever. I'm sure of it.

Right now I'm trying salami and beer. And later I'm planning to hit the cosmetics aisle at the drug store.

I'm nothing if not committed.

Of course, I kid. I know that what I'm doing is stupid and unhealthy and fruitless. But I figure since I know that it's a crap plan of action, it's totally okay to continue along this destructive path for at least a little while longer. Because knowing is half the battle and blah blah blah.

Shit continues to happen. I will self-medicate for as long as it takes me to not need to self-medicate. I'll get there. I have before and I will again.

But for now, beer and salami it is. And some new lipstick later.

Cheers!

From the "outside looking in" files:

'Tis the season for graduations on Facebook. These days my wall is flooded with announcements about little ones saying goodbye to kindergarten, changing schools and getting bigger and bigger each day.

They tug at the heartstrings, these innocent posts from people who are lucky enough not to realize that a little boy growing up is actually something to celebrate, not mourn.

I would give just about anything to have been blessed with that kind of luck.

And so it goes.

Rapture

I haven't been paying all that much attention to the alleged facts behind the claim that the world is going to end at 9:00pm on Saturday, but I have given a little thinking time to the concept itself.

Let me be clear: I have no wish to die. There are a lot more things I want to see and do here. I don't feel quite done.

But the truth is, when you've buried your only child and know there are no more coming, the idea of death - even at the relatively young age of 41 - isn't quite as daunting a prospect to consider. I am by no means sitting around waiting to die, and that's not how I'm living my life. But I'm also not living the same way people with children do. I'm not marking time with developmental milestones, birthday parties and school graduations. My child won't have a first date, first prom, first day of work. He won't get married. He won't call me, half out of his mind with excitement, fatigue, and relief, to tell me that I've become a grandmother.

People with children live for these things, and I can guarantee they've thought of half of them before changing that first diaper.

Those who are childless-by-choice are probably shifting uncomfortably in their seats right now, irritated that I'm suggesting that life is somehow less important, less interesting or less fulfilling without a child in it.

That's not what I'm saying. Well, not exactly. 

What I'm saying is that when I was carrying a wriggling, healthy baby boy in my tummy, I looked out at the vast expanse that was rest of my life and expected him to be in it. You know, alive and everything.

But he's not. I'm passing time without him instead, and that's the difference between someone who wanted it and someone who didn't. I missing him, and all the future he was. It's not that my life isn't fulfilling and often very happy, it's that it always has that empty spot where Thomas - and his own big, full life - might have been.

So to me, life is less fulfilling, less interesting and less important than it would have been with my son in it. How on earth could it not be?

Which means that if I do die on Saturday - if those placard carrying doomsday enthusiasts are correct - I won't be leaving one of the people that I love most in the world, I'll be meeting him again. And sooner than I'd expected at that.

I have so much to live for - so many wonderful things I haven't done, seen, read, heard, and experienced. But I have a lot to die for too.

That's just the way it is.

81

They want me to write about rental housing and life insurance and private home care for the elderly, but the only words that really matter today are: I miss you Dad. Happy birthday.

He was one of the best people I've ever known. And I'm almost positive I'm not being selectively blind about this, viewing him through a gauzy haze of grief and longing that's blurring out his rough edges. Because he had those. He totally did.

But he also taught me to notice things like a golden autumn leaf or a long dormant tulip bulb poking its way out of the earth in early spring. He saw small beauties everywhere, and the wonder he had for those everyday miracles radiated from him like summer heat off the sidewalk. He had a way of talking about the people he'd lost that somehow showed more of his love for them than his sorrow over losing them. He was joyous, relentlessly pursuing the things that made him smile and brought him comfort. He fully immersed himself in everything he loved: church, sacred music, sports memorabilia, and his family. He was settled, secure and confident about himself and the people and things that he believed in.

He also once hauled some guy halfway out of his car window and punched him, punishment for a driving offense of some sort that Dad felt wouldn't otherwise be properly meted out. In his much younger years he took to the streets of Toronto late one night looking for crimes in progress that he could bust up. Irish temper. He had that too.

But the Dad I knew best went to Christmas craft shows with me. Once he bought himself a tiny gingerbread house - something that still somehow makes me want to weep, because that's just the kind of person he was: a great big man with a great big laugh who won (and lost) bloody fights when he played hockey, and bought gingerbread houses with his daughter.

Last summer, as we sat on the deck while he ate an old person's snack of digestive cookies and water, he told me he'd had a good, happy life. He reminded me that he always managed to find joy, especially in simple pleasures. His eyes shone, looking beyond me into the past.

And oh, I miss him. I first knew I would lose him when I was a terrified 13-year old sitting in the emergency waiting room late one winter night. Twenty-seven years later I finally did. And it was every bit as awful as I'd been imagining it would be for all those years.

But I'm looking at spring buds, and taking solace in the simple pleasures that make me happy. Because that's what he taught me.

I miss you, Daddy.
oxox

A Widow's Story

Yesterday I heard a portion of an interview with Joyce Carol Oates on the CBC radio. It was about her new book, A Widow's Story, which is a memoir based on the time after the sudden loss of her husband of 47 years in 2008.

I listened to it with the kind of rapt attention you probably shouldn't when you're driving. I can't remember getting to my destination.

It's just that she spoke so honestly and simply about loss. She was unapologetic about the ravages of grief and the toll it took on her after her beloved husband died. She didn't look on the bright side. She didn't claim to have learned anything from it. She didn't praise it for making her stronger, more empathetic or more patient with others. She didn't use it to find ways to do good.

She just endured it.

And coming from the world of babyloss where we're always trying to make sense of it and find something good to take away from it, this was a breath of fresh air.

Losing someone you love is bad. Period. It hurts, it isolates, and it scars.

I'm sure, like everyone who struggles to find meaning in loss, she has done some of the mental gymnastics the newly bereaved engage in to keep the ground from moving and shifting beneath them every moment of every day. She probably has tried to make sense of it and find lessons from it.

But she didn't say she did. At least not in the interview. She said she made a nest of her bed, taking refuge there through sleepless nights surrounded by books to comfort her. She admits she thought about, but then dismissed, suicide. She said she regularly impersonated the "old Carol" while she was working as a professor at Princeton, then returned home to be a grieving widow once again.

I haven't lost my husband so I have no idea what this particular of grief is like, but so much of what she said resonated deep within me. Especially the notion that we impersonate the person we used to be. I suppose it's some sort of ancient survival skill, not unlike the way cats can literally be dying but still successfully pretending to be a-okay.

I've done it. I still do it.

And then I come home and I can be the girl who lost all her babies and then her father.

I ordered A Widow's Story for my mom, and I'll read it when she's finished. There's something deeply necessary about people sharing the grief journey, and I'm so grateful that people who have walked this sad, lonely road do talk about it.

For us, and for themselves.

What remains

Yesterday I hosted a jewelry party - a fabulous girly event attended by some of my closest friends and lady family. I put out a little cookie spread while my incredibly talented friend (accompanied by her helpermom) arranged her gorgeous handmade pieces in my dining room. She works in stone and sterling silver, and oh my - such loveliness my dining room table has never seen!

It was a too-quick sort of affair for me. I was, as it turns out, starved for this kind of joy. The house rang with the sort of raucous laughter that can only be generated when women are under the spell of lovely things and in the company of good friends.

I spent the evening buzzing in the afterglow of the happy energy that filled my house for those three perfect hours.

And what I realized, after thinking so much about each of the lovely people who flitted around the dining room table snatching up Donna's bracelets, earrings, and necklaces as they laughed and chatted; is that I love my life.

There are great holes in it. There are massive sorrows. There are missing people. There are scars that will never fade. But I love what's here. What's here now.

What I do have, as it turns out, I adore.

I watched my friends - people I have cared about and known for years - as they flooded my house with their joy, and found myself pulled in. I have danced on the periphery for so long. I have spent endless days, months, years; waiting, trying, struggling. I have pretended to be happy. I have lied about being happy. Even to myself. Often to myself.

But yesterday I really was happy. And it occurred to me for the first time that I love this life.

I love what remains.

This is not to say that I'm happy that this is how my life has turned out. This is not what I chose - it's not what My Beloved and I wanted or planned. But in the aftermath I've somehow managed to carve out a sweet and happy place, and I'm grateful for the peace. And for the friends who helped me realize that I have it.

 (One of three (yeah, three) of my pretty new bracelets. Seriously, it was a good day all 'round.)