Colored glass

Sometimes when I'm by myself quietly doing dishes or laundry or some other mindless task, my mind wanders to other concerns, normal daily silly things like "what's for dinner" Or "what do I need to get from the store."  And then silently, like a glint of sun that blinds momentarily, it hits me all over again:she's gone.  Really really gone. Its almost a tangible thought, as though I could take the thought and roll it between my fingers and it would be a hard shiny mishapen colored glass with swirls in it like a marble.  I could take the thought and hold it up to the light but then I'd have to look into the glass thought and see the swirls would be like movie images winding and whispy and sad.  I could try to drop the thought but the sad swirling images captivate, hold me hostage so that I cannot let go. I don't want to let it go.  I do not want to let her go.  There's a villanelle poem about old men not going quietly into the night.  I don't want to let her go quietly.  I cannot let her go quietly.  I'd have given my very parts that grew her to have kept her.  I'd have gone willingly sterile if it meant that I could have watched her grow and have her own babies. 

But truly, her soul did leave quietly, like a breeze on a beach, she was there and then in the stillness she was gone.  So softly she stepped into our lives but what footprints she has left behind.  Her soul may have slipped quietly away but her spirit fights violently within me so that I want her footprint to be lasting in the sands of time.  If you could count every piece of colored glass glinting in the sunset on the beaches you could count the number of times I will have thought of that tangible glass thought that she is gone forever.  Until my own soul has to decide to go quietly or not into that dark night or fight against the sunset I am held hostage by its sadness and the glinting colors in the sands of time.  She may be gone forever physically but there will always be colored glass upon the beach.

Four months and every day again

How have four months gone already? Her fourth month in heaven.  Her fourth month in the urn.  A fourth month of heartache…

When Butterflies Leave

She was carried from me by angel wings

I send love on the flutters of butterflies. 

Someday the butterflies will go away,

Like she did,

And I’ll be left to look for her, for them.

The Colors of All Three

My daughters are beautiful, all three. 

The middle one is the color yellow, bright and cheery like the sun,

Vibrant sunflowers in a field of green,

Beach balls bobbing in the sand.

The eldest is the color pink, soft and sweet like cotton candy,

A warm sweater on a snowy day,

Glossy lips smiling sweet,

rosy cheeks of laughter.

The youngest is the color of endless blue, of nowhere and everywhere

The seaside horizon,

The cloudless sky,

A butterfly fluttering softly by,

And the whisper of angel wings,

She’s gone forever and every day again.

My daughters are beautiful, all three.

gone

It’s simple really.  Every single day I think of her.  Every minute that she isn’t immediately present in my mind she is just off in the darkened leafy shadows of the forest of my subconscious. Perhaps she is watching.  Perhaps she is waiting to be noticed.  Like a curious nymph in the woods who is going about her own business put drawn by curiosity to the human world, she gathers her flowers, sits with her butterflies, and wonders when she will be seen.  Some day she will be good at hiding.  Someday she will blend into the background.  Someday she will not be so easily noticed.  I don’t want her to blend into the dark leaves.  I don’t want her to melt into the background and go unseen.  I miss her already.  Everyday terribly.  I get so I don’t cry much anymore, maybe because crying doesn’t release the sadness.  So I try to recall her softly, so as not to frighten her away.  I try to look casually at her sitting among the butterflies so that she will stay and let me look just a little bit longer.  I don't want time to pass.  I don't want the world to move on.  I don't want to let her go softly into the darkness, because I need her so. 

I have considered how people ask the universe to take them first, to spare the other person from death.  The honorable thing would be to let them go because the real pain is found in the one's left behind.  The real torture and strength is in going on and living, still thinking and missing, loving and hurting everyday they're gone.  So, if the pain is in living, I'd rather live without them, than they without me. 

I’m changed now.  I don’t see exactly how just yet, but I can feel it.  My girls make me see what has been missed and I cherish the times we spend together even more.  I have more patience for them and less for other people’s “woe is me” stories.  Maybe that makes me mean.  But really… it’s hard to feel bad for someone who is complaining about something like how long the line at Tim Horton’s was when there are things like ashes in urns of babies who shouldn't be gone.  It’s a perspective thing.  Is it really so bad to have to wait for coffee?  I kind of think not so much.  But that’s just me. There are far worse things than waiting. 

Spiritual residue from earthquake aftershocks

The house is empty, locked and waiting for someone else to call it home.  After the exhaustion of moving has knocked me totally unaware for two nights I now am awake again listening to the sounds of sleeping and ticking clocks.  The darkness always makes the mystical press on my imagination.  I wonder if a house gives off an impression of the spirits that have resided within it.  If a house was filled with love for most of its existence would it exude that to newcomers who walk within it? Do you think that if it recently wrapped around so much sadness if some of that energy has left a residual effect that can be felt by others? I wonder things like that.  If it is so then the people buying our house got more than they paid for.  I wonder if in the darkness, when the world slows down and there are fewer distractions, if Gabbie is more aware of my thoughts for her.  I wonder if she knows that I am staring into the shadows thinking of her. 
We are staying at my in-laws house now livng out of boxes.  Thank goodness for this because although it isn't perfect, at least it isn't the trailer.  I can't help but think though, how different and more complex life would be to stay here with an infant too.  I will not dwell on the "should've beens" they are far too painful.  Losing a baby is most assuredly as devestating to one's psyche as an earthquake is to a city. However, the aftershocks of losing a baby are like a terrible cut that has just begun to heal and it still aches and itches terribly.  Sometimes you just have to itch it and it breaks open a little, bleeds some and hurts all over again.  This is most definitely going to leave an ugly scar and a rift that surely will never fully heal.  At least no one is awake to see the bleeding scar and even if they were the darkness hides it.  Hopefully my spirit doesn't exude a residue of sadness that could give me away. 

Please say she's coming with ...

Words and thoughts float around in the darkness.  They fly about my head like butterflies flitting in and out of my concious thoughts.  My pillow is damp again.  So is D's shoulder.  I've been packing up our lives today and yesterday and all week, wrapping each of our memories and possessions in newsprint from the spring.  The spring is when she left me.  Coincidental?  Maybe.  But perhaps not.  I've been on edge all day, brewing a sort of bitter sadness with simmering anger at the universe.  My patience is thin.  Snippy.  It's hard to keep all the emotions beneath the surface.  I packed and kept discovering little reminders that had been stashed away out of sight.  Formula and baby food, newborn sized baby bottles, pictures of her, grief brochures and perinatal loss pamphlets have been in and out of my hands all day.  They get to move with us but she isn't, well, she is, but not how she should be. 
Sure her bear will come and her pictures, her memory box and blanket, her hand and feet impressions, and her ashes will all come.  Poor substitutes for a baby. 
I get to pack up and leave the only house she will ever have called home.   I know it seems like a silly question, like a question devised from a tired over-imaginative mind, but she will be coming with us, right?  My heart breaks and more tears, the size of dimes, splash on my pillow. 

I cry because...

I'm trying hard to make something out of sorrow besides tears.  I'm trying hard to give to the world something I would not have given if she were here.  Maybe I'm trying to give something she would have given later, perhaps when she was older.  I'm trying to give her life more meaning than her death.  I'm doing this because I love her still, love her more than I will allow myself to be sad for her death.  Its significant, the two, more immeasurable than the quantity of tears and not-tears I've needed to cry.
I sometimes imagine when I'm crying that she touches my cheek to wipe my tears or that she presses her forehead against my shoulder, her little hand on my arm.  She is older to me already, it's as though time has sped up and she is like a very wise child, too wise to be so young.  Her bear with the heart of her, with her urn nestled snuggly inside is only a couple feet from me.  I want it.  I want to hold it and her.  I want to hold it but I am so tired and I'm afraid I'd fall asleep with it and then D would be terribly concerned when he got up with the sun and found me.  Its the second night now that I've felt this terrible urgency to hold it.  The tears have wet my pillow, my temples and my hair.  I cry still for a baby that I cannot hold and because life is terribly unfair. 

So I started this prayer project because I know that there are people everywhere who have soaked their pillows awake alone at night with tears for a gone-baby.  I started this project for those who have felt the ache to hold a child  that left too soon.  I started this for the people who find it too hard, too painful, to private, and just too much to have a voice for the unfairness of a universe that has taken our babies too soon.
So I cry.  I cry because I will make a flag for my Gabbie and because so many of you have found yourself a partner to this pain too.  I cry because I will hang the flags and each flag will represent the hurt and sadness of one sweet baby (and maybe even more than one) who is loved to heaven and back again. 

Honoring baby-loss

So I have this idea that I borrowed from grief website called Christian's beach…  (Tell me what you think?  Would you want to do it?)  October is baby loss awareness month.  I’ve been looking on grief support sights and thinking.  Since Gabbie has left I’ve had so many people come to me and say that they (or someone they know) have lost a baby/child too.  For some of them, they still feel the loss and weren’t really supported in it.  Some of my friends had miscarriages and because it was early in the pregnancy the miscarriage wasn’t really counted as being significant loss.  I know what it feels like to have hopes and dreams resting inside you and to have them gone in an instant.  Some people don’t want to attend a big event like the walks to remember or memorial service for their baby because it’s either too hard or too private a hurt.  All kinds of baby/infant/fetus/child loss is significant and should be honored.  There is no name for it in the English language, perhaps because people find it too uncomfortable to talk about. 

So here is my idea:

Send me a prayer flag for any baby-loss you or someone you know has suffered.  I will take whatever flags are sent to me, string them together and hang them for the month of October.  I need to have them by September 23 in order to have time to string them before October 1st.  Decorate your flags in honor of the loss.  You might have the baby’s name, just a significant date, or an image that reminds you of the baby.  Here is a link to help you. http://www.care2.com/greenliving/make-a-prayer-flag-how-to.html   It’s the first time I’ve done this too, so I’m learning by trial and error, too. 

I have been considering places to hang them.  I am open to options but here are my ideas so far.  (Now bear with me here, I’ve never done this before.) :

• Down by the lighthouse on the waterfront.
• Along a busy overpass to raise awareness for baby-loss
• Along the wooden rails of a trail in Losson Park.
• Down by one of the beaches along the lake front.

These are just a couple of ideas.  It will depend on how many are sent to me.  I probably won’t be able to send the flags back, as they will be handmade and sitting outside in the elements all of October.  Please remember that when you design your flag to send to me, leave the top two inches of it for me to fold it over to secure it to a string or stake.  Once I’ve hung it, I’ll take pictures of each one, and the whole lot of them, and post them here to honor the pain and love of our lost babies.  

Send me an email crystaline18@gmail.com if you want to participate and I'll respond with my address for you to send it. 

Falling faces

I had a doctor’s appointment today.  It was my orthopedics PA who was seeing me.  The last time I saw her I was VERY pregnant.  She walked in…

“Sooo, what did you have?”  Soft excitement and genuine interest.  I didn’t prepare myself.  Stupid me. 

“A girl but she was stillborn.”  Get it right out in the open.  All my not-so-secret skeletons on the table.  Yep, and there it is… the face contortion, all her thoughts in quick succession.  Nothing hidden there.  It’s like a bubble appeared above her head and I could read her very thoughts.

“Oh my.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.” 

“It’s okay.  It was unexpected.” No tears yet. 

“I’m really sorry.  It’s okay. You can cry if you want to.”  Damn it… now there’s tears.

 “I’m sorry. (I apologize). I don’t mean to cry.  I try to prepare myself for when people ask.  I just didn’t do so well this time.  I didn’t mean to put this on you.” 

“Oh no.  I’m sorry.  It’s just… I knew you were pregnant.  I didn’t even think…”

“It’s okay.  Out of 150 women who come in here, you’d be right to ask 149 times.  They would be almost waiting for you to ask. How would you know not to?” 

“What a terrible thing.  I don’t know how you would ever be prepared to answer that question.  Well, I don’t know if you’re religious or not, but I have to believe then that it was in the plans.  There must be something bigger for you.”  Silence.  Oh please can we change the subject… I want to scoff at her idea of ‘bigger plans!’  Bigger plans!?  What’s bigger than having a baby and then having it taken?  Bigger plans!  It’s BS… but if it’s what she needs to believe to feel better, to think she’s making up for asking well, then… do what you gotta do but… really?  BIGGER PLANS?!  Poor lady.  There are no plans.  Everyone is just flying by the seat of their pants, there are no plans.

The subject was changed.  Yep.  The subject was changed to decide that I’ll be having wrist surgery as long as comp decides to verify it.  Awesome. I get to be in a cast for four more weeks.  I guess if it needs to be fixed then so be it.  Let’s get it over with.

Later I got a phone call from my Human Resources department:

“Hello?”

“Hi, is Crystal there?”

“This is.”

“Hi this is …. (Blah blah blah) I’m just calling to see if you will be returning to work or if you plan on continuing your leave of absence.”

“I’ll be returning to work.”

“I see here you were expecting a baby due at the end of April.  What did you have?”  UGH>>> AGAIN?!!!

“A girl.  But she was stillborn.”  Silence. You can almost HEAR her face fall and her chin hit her desk through the phone line.  More silence.

“Um, I’m very sorry.” More silence.  I think I can hear the phone crackle if phones actually still crackled.

“It’s okay. “ More silence.
If all else fails, change the subject and babble.

“Um, so you’ll be returning to work? Very good.  Okay. You’ll need to have a doctor send permission to return since it was a medical leave.”  No one wants to talk about dead babies. 

Blah blah blah.  … “Okay thank you.  Enjoy the rest of your summer.” 

Poor people.  It doesn’t get any easier does it? 

Sorrow, like scratchy sweaters

I went to my uncle’s wake and memorial service the other day.  Or maybe I should say I went to the funeral home were they were having it.  I couldn’t go to the casket.  It wasn’t that I was very close to my uncle; he was a good man but in a family where there are still 10 living siblings, you can only be so close with so many.  I hugged my mom, and said my hellos and showed my respect for the family.  But seeing a man whom I knew and love in a casket, when I just cremated my baby is too much.  I didn’t sit through the service either.  How can I possibly explain to someone who has never lost a baby?  I would have lost it if I’d sat and listened and felt the grieving of all of those people in that room.  It was standing room only.  It was standing room only and grief and love filled the room where there weren’t people so much so that it could have burst the windows from their frames if it were palpable.  You could feel it pull at your face, arms and feet making them heavy, like the sadness makes hearts heavy. The sadness was around you in the room like a scratchy sweater that you long to shuck but can’t because to do so would make someone else sad.  Standing in the room, with sadness wrapped around me and pulling at me even before the service started was just too much to bear.  I’ve had too much sadness in the last few months.  I’m sorry but someone else had to shoulder my share of the grief this time.  I feel guilty for not staying, but a soul can take only so much.  Oh, the sadness and heartache the walls of a funeral parlor must see: four proverbial walls to hold up against an onslaught of grief.  It’s good, I think, that walls cannot talk. 

Goodbye Uncle Don, hug Gabbie for me and tell her that I miss her terribly, I’ll miss you too.

The end of summer is standing at my front door, and, like an unwanted houseguest, I’m forced to invite it in.  Football season starts again.  I don’t have a problem with football season.  I love that my husband loves it, although, realistically, it’s a love/hate kind of thing.  The walls of our home have never heard as much swearing as during this time of year.  The hours spent preparing before football season even starts, and the hours on the phone, in front of the computer screen and discussing with other coaches anywhere they can gather, are endless.  ENDLESS.  I used to joke about being football widowed.  At least he comes home.  True, this time of year means I take care of most things on the home-front.   He loves football and if taking care of things at home allows him to feel fulfilled with something he loves then so be it.  I don’t have a problem with football season, I have problem with the little goodbyes that start at the beginning of football season.  Last night, with my head tucked in the crook of his arm in bed, I cried a little.  I know that football means I see him a third as much.  I know that football season means he’s gone more even when he’s home.  It means little goodbye’s far more often.  It means school’s almost here and that those goodbyes will extend to more things like saying goodbye to my girls.  Football season this year makes me sad.  I don’t want to say goodbyes, even if they are just little.  How am I supposed to hold the people close that mean so much to me?  How am I supposed to keep track of them all if we all have obligations and have to go our separate ways?

The start of football season is a marker of another year passing.  One year ago, tomorrow, we conceived Gabbie.  One year ago, she started her tiny little life in my womb.  I know the day we conceived because we were trying for a boy.  One day in all of the beginning of August we made love and conceived love.  We are lucky in that it was that easy for us.  Many people try for years to get pregnant.  It took us one day to make a beautiful baby girl, just as it took one day for us to lose her.  Football season makes me sad this year; It’s the marker of too many things that make me sad.  Maybe the things I have to do today will distract me from the sorrow that I wear like a scratchy sweater every day because I cannot take it off. 

A Supernova and other things

I have a collection of things today.  A conglomeration of randomness that sits on my mind like a weight that isn’t heavy but has spent so long in the crook of the same arm it has grown mammoth in its mass.  

The first thing is my supernova.  I read an article (http://www.glowinthewoods.com/home/2012/5/30/the-meaning-of-a-life.html ) about the power of death, the meaning of a life per sae.  I have been since considering the weight of the death of Gabbie.  If you consider the world as a whole, the quantity of people that have inhabited its face is infinite.  The number will continue to grow forever, just as the number line is infinite.  But between any given numbers on the number line is a value that also grows indefinitely as one number is split any infinite number of times and into infinite possibilities.  That one number represents the possibilities of any one person.  They become a world all alone.  One number, one person, has the same number of possibilities as there are number of people in the world.  When a person dies it as though a world dies because within that person was a world of infinite possibilities.  Their death creates a sort of Super Nova that pulls and jars all the people around it.  It most drastically affects those closest to it.  The people in their worlds around it have to adjust to a life without the person who is gone, the person who, from the very first moment they were acknowledged have affected the orbit of life.  (This was explained way better by the author).  Anyway, after reading this, I began to realize the impact her death had.  Gabbie’s life, though she was not here for very long, had already altered my very orbit of life.  Now that she is gone I have to readjust my possibilities to reflect the possibilities of my life without her.  She is the Supernova in my sky.

  

There are so(( ( many variations to the spelling of Gabraella’s name, and they are everywhere.  It seems that some days I can’t avoid them.  Just a couple days ago, D and I were sitting at the light on Union and French making a left on the street when I looked up and on a sign there was a notice of a lawn fete or something at the church of St. Gabriel.  I don’t even know where that church is.  I started telling D about seeing her name everywhere and when, as if to prove my point, we drove past a Gabbie lane.  Really?! Gabbie lane?  First he asked me if I knew it was there, which I didn’t.  Then he tried to explain it by equating it to noticing that “’there are a lot of purple cars on the road today’ and then everywhere you go you are paying attention to purple cars so you see more of them.”  But am I looking for her name?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  Any way… my Supernova butterfly is all around.  

I wish we could live by the ocean, to see it's endless horizon.  I imagine heaven to be like the horizon at the beach.  I like to imagine that each sunset I'd see would be painted just for me by her.  That the footprints in the sand would be hers as she followed along my side.  I like to imagine.

I've been trying to focus on the future in a new place.  The struggle for me is that it’s a new place without her.  It’s a new place, new future, new start, without her. Everything is without her.  And no matter how beautiful or fun something is, a thought somewhere in the midst of it, that I can sometimes push away until later, is that Gabbie will never see this.  If only you could glimpse for just a minute my sorrow.  I’d so much rather the old life where I was naïve about the pain and loss and hopelessness of losing a child, where I was unaccustomed to a damp pillow, where I didn’t cry at least one tear every day, where I had more faith, faith in Him and faith in “it’s all for a purpose”, where the future had more stability and optimism, less anxiety, and where I still had Gabbie.  But that cannot be. The more we look for an apartment, the more I realize the enormity of what that means: without her.  We’d never have been able to afford a place as nice as the one’s we’re looking at with three bedrooms, especially not with an added daycare and diaper expense.  Where would we have lived?  Oh Gabbie, we would have figured it out… you didn’t have to leave. 


(Art work from www.universetoday.com and by Christian's beach artist Carley Marie Dudley.)

helpless reminders

I have a handful of memories, and a couple of hours of holding her.  In the closet in a tote is a collection of pictures and inked footprints, plaster molds of tiny hands, a one-time worn dress, tiny jammies that were never worn with “little sister” sewn on it, and my hospital bracelets .  On a deep brown glider rocker in my room is a beautiful creamy white blanket with the words “Forever in our hearts Gabraella Joy Swader” embroidered in soft baby pink; it’s a memorial blanket from the funeral.  I have an angel charm on a silver chain around neck to remind me that she’s in heaven.  There is a teardrop charm on silver chain around my ankle to symbolize that there are no tears in heaven; I on the other hand still shed a tear daily, at least one.  Wrapped loosely around my wrist is silver chain with a wing on it and the inscription “GJS”.  On the shelf in my living room is a black and white picture of her in a gown in a white frame next to an angel flight bear with wings.  I have another white-frame picture of her sleeping in a pale yellow hospital cap on my dresser.  There is also a wooden "Willow" angel with a shell to her ear to show she is thought of.  Next to it I have a light toffee-colored, curly-furred teddy.  Inside the zipper on the back of the teddy is her urn.  Inside the urn are her ashes.  This is it.  All I have and will ever have of her.  They are cherished things.  They are things that I wish I could bring everywhere with me piled high on my shoulders like the world feels sometimes. My arms still feel deprived, as though I should take all those things and bundle them into a magical blanket and it’d turn into a mewling little likeness of me and D.  But there is no blanket to do such a thing.  I feel helpless in my desire to keep these things around that remind me of her even though I don’t need them at all because the domino effect of her not being here is everywhere.

                Last weekend, D had a meltdown over something I didn’t understand.  I still only kind of understand.  I think.  Maybe.  But it somehow seems like more.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’m reading into it.  Either way, I felt horrible and hurt at the same time.  But then, later, the next morning, whatever, it seemed better. I know.  It’s cryptic. Sorry for that but somethings are still just, I don't know, not mine to share.  But the meltdown was intense.  At one point he told me not to come back if I walked outside but I needed to breathe.  I was hurt.  He apologized.  Marriage and love means knowing when words are spoken unintentionally and forgiving them even before the apology. I'm sure there will be times that I hope he'll be forgiving too. 

On Thursday I took Sky and 4 of her cousins to the drive-in to see Brave and Madagascar 3.  It was fun.  They all behaved and sat and watched the movies chewing on popcorn and scarfing down sodas.  It was fun to hear them laughing, joking, and singing along to the movie soundtrack.  It was fun until out of left field while I was smiling in the darkness at their insane singing to some “polka-dot” song I realized that I will never be taking Gabbie to the drive-in with her friends and her cousins.  I will never hear her belting out a song like she owns it.  And instantly following my smile was a couple tears in the darkness.  Silent.  Painful.  That’s the way it is though.  The memory of her is like a sniper and it shoots me down from a mile away in the darkness and leaves me writhing in pain and helpless to prevent it.

                Friday night we went out to dinner.  I got a phone call that my Uncle, my mother’s brother passed away.  It was rather quick: a heart attack, no long illness, poof, gone within a little over a week of being admitted to the hospital.  Poof.  Gone.  Like Gabbie.  I cried for him and for my Aunt L and my cousins.  I am sorry that they hurt.  But for the evening, I put it aside.  I figured I’d cry more later.  So I went about our evening but D didn’t want to come home with me when I wanted to.  Another meltdown came, not quite as crazy as the first.  Now I know he’s melting.  I don’t know how to help.  He won’t talk to me about.  It’s not like him to knowingly let me go home to hurt by myself, but he would have had his brother not intervened.  I felt relieved that he came home so I wouldn’t worry and guilty for him doing something he didn’t want to do. He apologized for being selfish but that he was sad.  Again, I had hurt feelings but I try not to let it interfere, i just wish he'd tell me.  I just don’t understand this stage in his grief and stress and I so want to, am so trying to.  The house sale weighs heavy on him as do the bills and saving, football and the job search, his responsibilities to the girls, and to me and the house.  I just feel utterly helpless and try not to take his meltdowns to heart.  He would never intentionally hurt me.  I tried to talk to him about it today.  He just said he’s stressed.  I just feel inept and useless and that hurts too.  Grief sucks.  Stress sucks.  But grief and stress together are brutal.  His grief is not my grief and even though we are sad for the same baby being gone, it is not the same grief. I want to apologize but there is nothing to apologize for. Maybe I’ll just clean until the house sparkles and every box is packed or tossed.  At least it shows forthright effort. 

Then today, I called my mom while she was working cleaning an office building while they are closed on Sunday.  When she answered I could tell that she had been crying by herself in that office.  Maybe she was using her tears to cleanse her heart while she cleaned the world.  I talked with her for a bit.  She started crying again and told me she was sorry, that I didn’t need this too.  I told her it was ok.  And it was.   She’s my mom.  I’d do anything for her.  But the gesture to preserve my fragile emotions was noted and considerably sweet.  D didn’t understand the concept of her not wanting to cry to me.  He sees them as two separate events.  And they are.  Except for that now my uncle is in heaven, with Gabbie, which means that she’s in heaven, where I wish both of them weren’t. I'll miss them both.  All of this makes me feel helpless to comprehend.

Everything seems to come back to Gabbie.  She is all around and yet nowhere.  How did my present without her come to be this future where a reminder of her absence is everywhere and I feel helpless about it all? 

Disjointed thoughts on Augusts past, present and future.

             Through the cracks in the blinds I can see the trees rolling in the breeze, but it’s disjointed as though each leaf is not connected to a larger branch.  My body shakes in a sob without tears, a shudder disjointed from the peace around me.  The evening sky is not so dark, as summer is not yet really half over.  But it’s August 1 and I am sad. 

There has been no word about the house yet; no closing date, no second appraisal, no closure at all.  We’re selling, true. We’re almost sold, true.  But the “sold” sign out front feels disjointed from reality.  We haven’t really “Sold” anything.  And when, and if we do close, we close the door and hand over the keys to the only house that Gabbie really could have ever called home. Disjointed, I guess, since she never came home.  I’m sad.  She called me home and the largeness of my womb gave her ample space to move, an action that killed her, a disjointed, and perhaps illogical conclusion, maybe but the truth none the less.  All of my girls were born with the cord wrapped around their necks; each time my womb was large.  Two out of three are alive. I make beautiful babies but it’s like roulette.  The odds remain the same and yet still you put the money down on the same color thinking the last few times were red, black has to come eventually.  A conclusion that is false, each time you put money down, the odds do not change that your color will come in.  Each time I get pregnant the odds do not change that my baby will be any more or less alive than the last one.  But the control groups remain the same, my body will still get bigger than necessary, and provide the baby with too much room to move, and the cord may still wrap around the baby’s tiny neck.  As you can see I struggle with this.  It’s not blame per se.  It’s terror.  There is no other reason that Gabbie died than the asphyxiation from the cord being wrapped.  If she had less room, she’d not have turned so much.  I don’t blame myself; I could not stop my body from making too much fluid.  I could not stop Gabbie from turning.  But the fact remains: she had too much room.  Both of her sisters did too. All of this is a disjointed fear.  How could it possibly happen again?  Yet I know the odds.  I was on the wrong side once. 

 This time last year we rolled the roulette wheel.  This time last year I was beginning the countdown to ovulation.  One day in all of August and suddenly the odds mattered.  One day.  We were trying for a boy.  We read articles that said no sex for 5 days before, and none for four days after.  We tried to increase the odds of having a boy.  So for one day in the first half of august we tried to have a baby and had a 50/50 chance of making a boy.  We made a girl.  In August we conceived Gabbie.  It’s August again.  A few ocean sized tears spill out from behind my glasses.

 It’s August and now we are preparing to hand over the keys to the only place Gabbie ever knew as home.  We are preparing to look for a two bedroom apartment.  I am preparing daycare coverage for one.  I feel as though my heart is taped back together today with too old tape that the adhesive has dried up on.  I am trying to prep myself for going back to work in a month and that after 7 months of being home with my girls, I have to leave them.  August, a year ago we started preparing for a life with Gabbie and now, a life without her.  Forever.  This time last year we conceived Gabbie and now I have to conceive of a lifetime of a family smaller than it should be.  I want to look forward to the possibility that I may one day, perhaps next August, or the one after, try to conceive again. Maybe I will get there in time and be okay with the knowledge that I will have to look at those same odds with a body that still makes too much room for babies.  Yet I so desperately want one, one that will stay forever. In time I guess, slow down, breathe, it's only August, it's only been three months.