oh, August...

Can August be the month of change for me?  Can it make me ready to return to work?  Can it bring a closing date on the house and provide us with new place to call home?  Can it bring more peace to me?

Gracie skipped her nap yesterday.  At bedtime she was a raging, crying debacle of red-eyed craziness.  To get her to sleep we turned the light off in our bedroom and I held her to me and rocked her softly off to sleep.  It reminded me of when she was baby and I’d feed her in the darkness, rocking her until she was back to sleep.  It reminded me of what I’m missing with her sister being gone.  It made me wistful for days gone (Gracie's not a baby anymore) and lonesome for what can’t be.  I stayed awake long after D was asleep.  His arm around me I held his hand in his slumber, listening to the sounds of nighttime.  Gracie was up a couple times, too tired to sleep apparently.  I spent much of the night hugging and comforting her, patting her gently back to sleep.  I can’t help but think how much more tired and drawn I’d be if I was kept awake by two small children.  I know now that I would not complain.  I’d willingly take exhaustion in hand and cuddle with it if it meant having Gabbie back.  But that cannot be.  When will I stop considering the bargains I’d have made if it would have allowed me to keep her?  I miss her. 

It’s nearly the month of August.  This point last year we were talking about getting ready to try to have another baby.  This point last year I was preparing myself to be pregnant again.  This point last year I was making plans and considering futures with a new tiny person in mind that would change the dynamic of our family in so many inconceivable ways.  It’s not fair how much the change that ended up being no change at all, was inconceivable and terrible and has now altered me in a way that I am still not familiar with.  How does one move past that?  How does one move past the devastation of cremating every dream and plan for the future you’ve had for 9 whole months?  Time?  Time is so painful.  Time and the universe continue without consideration, merciless baby-loss makers. 

                August is upon us.  August: the month one year ago that held the beginning of so much promise.  Can it bring just a little back to me?  Please.  Knowing that such deep expectations for the future began one year ago and now those promises are gone, wiped away leaving nothing but sad broken remembrances like a sand castle built too closely to the water, hurts me so deeply that I think I hate August.  And it didn’t even get here yet.  Redemption of August’s broken sunny promises would be bittersweet.  Please, August, be gentle with me. 

When is this ride gonna be over?

I’ve never voiced these concerns out loud.  I know that some people will tell me that they are stupid worries, or useless worries, or concerns that are pointless.  There was nothing I could do.  Gabbie was going to leave or not and there is nothing that I should or should not have done that could have saved her.  But nevertheless these concerns still swirl inside my head.
I’ve been told that reaching above your head can cause the cord to wrap around the baby’s head.  I reached anyway. 

What if exercising more could have made me gain less weight, and less water, making her have less room inside to move?  I couldn’t bring myself to exercise much at all, I was always so tired.

What if eating better could have done the same thing?  I ate whatever I wanted.

I wonder sometimes if I’d missed signs that warned me that something was wrong.  Maybe I should have been more observant and less “this is my third baby, I know most of it already” attitude.
They say you shouldn’t lift too much.  I disregarded this and did whatever I felt I had to do. 

Was I somehow not going to make a good mother of 3 right now? 

Are these all just selfish thoughts? 

Maybe she was just going to have a poor quality of life and to keep her from hurting the angels came to take her. 

I’m sorry if I’ve done something that made the cord wrapped around her neck tighten.  I’m sorry if I didn’t notice something I should have.  I’m sorry if I’m expected to have moved past this point in grief, I’m writing these thoughts down so I can move on to other thoughts.  I’m sorry if looking at others' babies or hearing about how beautiful they are makes me have a pang of jealousy.  I’m sorry if hearing a baby cry makes me sob because I so miss that sound.  I’m sorry if when people talk to me I seem distracted.  I’m sorry that I get angry so easily.  I’m sorry if I don’t have patience for minor annoyances.  I’m sorry if I’ve done something to cause this, or not to stop it. I'm sorry I'm grasping for butterflies.  I'm sorry I want to see her everywhere.  I'm sorry if I cry over spilled milk.  I'm sorry if I want to walk forever, as if I walk far enough I could out distance the grief.  I'm sorry if the thought of going back to work makes me want to scream. 

I feel as though I’m being punished in life right now.  The house sale is causing so much angst, and stress and doesn’t seem to being going in our favor at all.  I have no idea where or when we’ll be moving if at all.  I have no idea where Sky will be going to school.  I have no idea what literature I’m teaching next year and the list is still not available so that I feel very unprepared.  I can’t keep my house clean and feel inadequate as a mother and wife.  Gracie is so nasty lately and I’m totally at a loss as to why.  She frequently lashes out at us and everything I try to do to fix it seems to make it work.
 My car feels like it’s a way for the universe to poke fun at me.  The seat won’t move anymore so that Derek can’t drive it (poke).  There is a hole in the floor of the driver side that threatens to swallow any high heel shoe I might wear (poke poke).  The window/door seal in the back leaks and causes the interior to stink if it’s a wet season.  The dashboard lights and gauges all blinked out the one day and may do so again at any given time (poke poke poke).  The radio has literally caught on fire and burned out so that now when Gracie has a fit I HAVE to listen to it.  In addition, now any drive anywhere is soundless except to listen to any possible creaks and coughs the car might make to cause me more worry (Whole Handed Poke).  The shocks are long gone and now driving down the street is like bouncing on a water bed.  

Nothing seems to go right.  

I’m just so stressed, and so sorry.  For everything I’ve done, or haven’t done to make it all so awful.  This year just continues to drone on.  And on. And. On.

I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.  

I'm not looking for pity.  I don't want eye rolling or heavy sighs.  I'm just so tired of stepping in crap and not being able to see it coming or to clean it off my shoe.  I try to roll with it but do you know how hard it is to "roll with it" when it rolls for months? 

Or maybe it's just me whining.  Sigh..... what-the-frick-ever (said in total resignation).  It's my hand right?  I can't fold it, I'm already all in.  A dozen eggs.  One basket.  I just wish this part of this ride would get over so I can open my eyes again, quit hanging on for dear life and count how many eggs I have left.    

My M.C. Escher world

Tomorrow will be three months gone, three months gone and counting.  Three months gone means that exactly three months have gone by since I got to hold my baby.  It also means in exactly 9 months, the time it takes to make a beautiful and perfect baby, I will see the anniversary of birthing, loving and losing my perfect still baby.  She WAS perfect, except for one thing: at 38 weeks gestation she didn't breathe. Tomorrow is three months gone, 9 months to the one year anniversary, but tomorrow is also the three year anniversary of being married to the man who makes holding on, being strong, working through, and being okay, not an option but a necessity.  Three years is no time really, and yet I have trouble picturing a week, a month or a year. We are at a different place now in "us." It's a better place in the realm of absurd, true. It's a closer, latched on, clinging to each other kind, scared to lose everything kind of place. Most days I am a shell shocked person resuming and piecing back together a semblance of life, but normalcy is gone now. Things are so much harder to make sense of. How do I enjoy three years of being married to my heart when my soul had a hole burned in it exactly three months ago to the day? He deserves a day like we would have had, had none of this happened. He deserves a day of relaxed fun, dinner, drinks, carefree laughter, and bright smiles. But it did happen, she is gone and I don't know how to make sense of a world that is much more like an M.C. Escher drawing than real life.

M.C. Esher’s artwork is exactly how I feel every day.  Gabbie’s death has turned me sideways, upways, downwards. I’ve been spun in circles and now I’m waiting for the world to stop swirling. I feel like everything sort of looks the same as did before but now I know it’s not.  There is a parallel universe that you can fall into at anytime.  Nothing is how I thought, in this world babies aren’t born they are made angels.  In this world even the most expected events have a secret agenda.  At any time the world can spin and suddenly you’re trudging up the stairs instead of effortlessly strolling down them.  I want to warn every pregnant woman that their baby inside could die without a real explanation.  I want to grab onto them and shake them and with crazy hair flying, whisper, “Don’t take it for granted that your baby will live!  Love them, love them, love them, but be careful.”  I want to pop that clueless bubble of blissful ignorance and shake them until their teeth rattle and their eyes fly open to make them believe me.  No one is immune to baby-loss.  No one is sure to be blissfully happy with a tiny mewling blend of perfection.  It’s like the people who drive drunk and think it won’t happen to me.  It can happen.  It can happen to anyone.  At any time you can suddenly be serenely strolling along when your world flips upside down and your baby is gone and you find yourself holding hands with the only man you ever loved enough to fight through the soul burning death of an angel for. 

 Maybe this is no way to celebrate a wedding anniversary, but it's the only way I can think of to show him how much I love him.  I will continue to fight to find some of that blissful happiness we once had but with more wisdom to not take it for granted because he deserves that happiness.  I love you Derek. 

to be thankful means I can see beauty through darkness

I read a post from a stranger who visited my blog about giving thanks to God because when you give thanks you let Him lead you on the path He chose for you and do not have to fear the future.  I cannot give thanks to Him.  I just can’t.  I first cannot believe that He would allow such things to happen.  Babies shouldn’t die just because and so I can’t bring myself to give thanks for it.  Secondly, I can't give thanks to Him, because if He did do this then I don't currently agree with His plan. I'll just wait to see where he's going with this.  However the blogger did have a point.  There are many things that happened around this darkest time that I absolutely can give thanks for, so here I go: 

• I am thankful for the doctors who sat on my bed and had to give a very terrified me the worst news they probably ever have to deliver.  Someone had to tell us and they tried to ease those terribly heavy words onto us as lightly as possible.  They had very difficult days that day and I can only imagine what it must have been like for them.
•   I am thankful for my husband who held me and comforted me with the whole of him, and was my buoy when I was drowning in chaos and sorrow even though his world was crushing down on him too, in painfully heavy waves. 
• I am thankful for nurses who pulled the bangs away from my eyes ignoring the rest of the world just to squeeze my hand, or bathe me with warm rags, but never telling me it would be okay.  They sat on my bed next to me just to be near me, and came to visit me the next days just to check in.
• I am thankful for the nurse who bathed Gabbie, took pictures, dressed her and lovingly held her without fear or aversion to my beautiful still baby. 
• I am thankful for my mother and father in-law who sped to the hospital as fast as their car would go and swept my girls off even though their hearts were broken too.
• I am thankful for my sisters who tried everything in their power to ease the heartache even when it meant hurting their own to ease mine.  I am thankful for them crying with me, and letting me talk about her, and for answering texts in the dark of night when I just wanted someone to know I was crying after everyone had long been sleeping.  
• I am thankful for a brother who, although he may not know what to say, he came to the hospital too be with us.  
• I am thankful for my mom who held her grand-baby and touched her and loved her even though she was perfect but not perfect.  I am thankful for the way she tried so hard to show she had meaning and been loved by everyone.
• I am thankful for my stepfather for telling me in the only way he knows how, that he loves me: with 2 strong arms wrapped around me in a hug and a promise that I'll be better some day.
•  I am thankful for a pastor who put the world and his own family to the side for the day in order to be with us and baptize Gabbie and cry with us.  He filled out endless paperwork for us and made sure that the things that he could make perfect were perfect.  
• I am thankful for friends who, although they just lost their tiny baby too, they still came up to the hospital when their own pain was so raw.
• I am thankful for my OBGYNs who had to deliver a very still baby and who cried with me and helped to make me feel better physically even if they couldn’t help that she had died, or ease the pain and shock.  They too must have had a very difficult day that day.  Delivering babies is supposed to be a happy experience.
•  I am thankful for a hospital who notified the staff before entering my suite that the baby was gone, and who tried to ease the suffering by putting us on the opposite end of the wing from the nursery. 
• I am thankful for friends who sent cards and letters and money to help with expenses and who came to a funeral for a baby and who hugged us and cried for her, and who cooked for us and sent us food to make it so we had just one less thing to think about.
• I am thankful for my father and stepmother who came from miles away to hug me and kiss me and hear about her from me.
• I am thankful for a funeral director who footed the bill for most of the funeral expenses and who helped to make the whole day a little bit easier. 
• I am thankful for my best friend who even though she was pregnant herself, she ran to the hospital to be with me and stayed though she didn’t have to in order to hold a baby that should have been born alive. 
• I am thankful for daughters who even though they knew that things were not okay, they still gave me their most beautiful gifts, their sweet and goofy self to cheer me.   
• I am thankful for friends who show patience and empathy for me as I write down my teardrops into words and who try to provide me with support and insight though they seem so far away in so many aspects.
• But mostly I am thankful for getting to feel, hold, and kiss a beautiful angel.

raindrop lamentations

Written Friday, July 20th.

It’s raining and quiet and about 60 degrees of chilly dampness.  It’s 10 am in this camper haven but it’s a ghost town.  No one is about in the misty gray.  Between the raindrops and the bird calls from the not so far off trees I hear a lament.  It’s only for me, a sad sweet lullaby of a baby gone.  I’m trying to ignore it.  I’m trying to enjoy serenity but serenity is only serene when it’s not accompanied by sorrow.  It’s the rain I’m sure.  I say that like I used to say it before her.  It’s not the rain.  The rain is making the world green and beautiful. It is making the flowers grow and the world stretch and breathe after so long a period of dryness.  Drip .  Drip drip… Gabbie…. whispered in my head? On the breeze?… Drip drip drip…. Bird song…. Sigh…. A deep heaving sigh inside my heart.  It’s her.  She is here, and there, and all around. Every drip on the outdoor carpet sounds like a heartbeat.  Maybe you think it’s melodramatic.  Maybe you think it’s in my head, a figment of my imagination, a story I’m telling.  It’s the life I live now.  I wish I had a way to show you but you wouldn’t want to see it.  Not for real.  It’s a terrible movie to watch; it’s Kleenex box emptying, heart twisting, stomach wrenchingly terrible.  But I see beauty: my girls, D’s love for me, the green, the flowers, the butterflies.  The loss is the lens that I see the world through.  I wish it were different.  I wish it were all unicorns, and rainbows, and Gabbie.  But Unicorns aren’t real, and rainbows can’t be touched.  And though the world would miss butterflies, only some will miss Gabbie.  The world will never know her like I knew her, and it’ll never know her like I wish it would, like I wish we, D and I, could.  She would have been amazing.  The angels knew that she would be; she was too beautiful for the world to see. I am glad they thought me worthy to birth an angel, I wish they’d thought me worthy enough to keep her too. But women can only raise angels, they can’t keep them and she was born an angel. The lament continues through the trees, in the rain dripping from the awning, on the cool breeze and in my heart, an aching emptiness in the serenity.

to honor her

I went to the cemetery with my in-laws to water the flowers on the graves of family: cousin, great-aunt, grandparents, great-grandparents; they are our family in heaven watching out for us.  I never met some of them.  I hope they would have liked me.  On the graves of Grandma and Grandpa Swader is an iron butterfly on a metal stick stuck in the ground go hover in the air next to the gravestone.  I hope there is a place for them to meet her and that she is held and loved until I can hold her someday.  I didn’t say anything to Derek’s parents.  What do you say to someone to tell them that you noticed that they try in their own way to honor my baby-loss too?  It is their loss too.  Sometimes I forget that she is something to other people too, outside the immediate us, I mean.  It’s just she was so mine and so close, and she left me so quickly, and it hurt so damn much.  I know that people grieve on their own, like me, I cry in shower, or in the car, or in my pillow, on Derek’s shoulder, when I make dinner by myself, and in the dark.  My sadness doesn’t need to be others' sadness.  Part of me writes this blog for me to grieve, and part of me writes this blog so she’s not forgotten.  I’m afraid of time rolling by and the world moving on and she becoming a forever gone kind of thing.  I don’t want her to be forever gone.  Words here, on the internet, and saved, and in print become a forever thing, like I wish she were. 

                Part of me wishes I had a place to go to honor her and to sit and think.  I wish I had a place marked with her name so the world would know she was someone loved and her marker would be able to be read for as long as the world will allow it to be.  I have her ashes but where do you put the ashes of a baby?  She went nowhere except with me, where do the ashes of a baby belong?  With me?  Forever?  Everywhere?  I can’t imagine spreading her ashes anywhere just yet.  I don’t even like leaving her ashes at home when we camp.  But I think too, that I don’t need a place for me to go to love her, I love her every day.

 I think of her everyday certainly.  All day long I can feel the loss of her in my soul.  I have been trying to honor my love for her by doing things to appreciate life more since she didn’t have enough of it.  I try hard to enjoy the girls; although, Gracie is trying on my patience she is sweet and goofy and Skyler is getting older more opinionated, though she is beautiful and good-hearted.  I wish they could have known her, and she them.  I have tried things I may not have tried before: four wheeling, jet skiing, trailer camping.  I just want her to be loved, and if trying to enjoy what I can of life, even though it is without her, is the only way to do that then that is what I’ll do.  I still cry often because I miss I her terribly and because the unjustness of it still lingers.

I went to a party on Saturday where I knew there would be babies.  The babies were there, but there were also friends and children and fun.  Drawing away from others because they have babies is not something I want to succumb too.  Derek and the girls should be able to enjoy the company of others even if I have trepidations about it.  So I went, anxiety ridden but not willing to let it get the best of me.  The babies seemed to be everywhere, but so did the kids.  They were so full of life and fun, and sun, so were Sky and Gracie.  I love to watch them laugh and play.  My heart hurt to hear the grown ups talk of their bundles sleeping patterns and hair (or lack of) and eating.  But they should talk of those things, they should be fawning.  I just wish that I could too.  I didn’t cry.  Not until one of the babies cried.  My very first thought: I miss that sound.  I looked to Derek, in an attempt to make light of the crying and to imply how some of parenting is less desired he commented: “I don’t miss that sound.”  He didn’t mean anything by it.  He would take all of it if it meant having her back.  But that his very words were mine reversed and out loud, I couldn’t hold it anymore.  Away to the truck I fled, hoping no one saw what I know was written on my face and seeping down my cheeks.  Derek met me there.  He knew.  God I miss her, and although there is so much beauty, this world is truly an f’d up beast to give me something so wonderful and then snatch it away and then to have the very thing I wish for all around me everywhere to watch but not have, is cruel.  And still I haven’t held a baby, I'm afraid to.

running

Did you ever have a dream where you’re running and running but you can’t break free, you can’t get anywhere?  That’s what life is like to me now.  I am running my hardest but it’s as though someone slipped a treadmill beneath my feet without my notice.  My legs are flailing to keep up, my heart is beating like it’s going to beat right out of my chest, my breath is as though I’ll never get enough air but I am going nowhere.  I’m nervous that I’ll never get away or catch up or whatever, so that I have butterflies. 

I can see the world go on around me.  I have occasional interaction ("Nice day today," or "How you doing?") like the breathy “hello” or silent wave of a jogger going by but everyone is passing me.  They all look at me knowingly, sadly, “she’s the girl who lost her baby,” “Poor thing, look at her.”  No one wants to tell me I’m standing still.  No one knows how to start the conversation to tell me I can stop running, that it’ll be okay to just walk for a while, that the worst of it is over.  (It is over right?)  Even if they could come up with the words they are afraid to tell me, I might break down and cry, I might get angry and scream, no one wants to upset me.  I don’t know if I’d believe them anyway.  How?  How will it be okay exactly?  I’m not angry.  I’m just sad, that I’m running in place and I can’t stop.  I don’t know how to feel right with the world again.  I don’t know how to feel like I did before. There is no way I’ll ever be the same as I was before.  I suddenly don’t trust the world; I don’t trust that everything will be okay like I used to.  That implicit trust in what will be is the right way is gone and I don’t know how to view the world, the future or any of it anymore.  My impression and way of thinking about life is altered and now I’m totally clueless with all of it.  I try to just let go.  I want to live free again, but I’m terribly afraid now that at any moment I could lose more.  I could lose everyone, anyone, anything that has ever meant anything to me.  So I run.  I run in place with tears streaming down inside, heart constricted because I don’t know how to just be, to be what I was, and think what I thought, or to think new thoughts and I'm terrified that it could happen again, that I'll lose again.  I don’t know how to adjust to the world now.

Separately, there is still this trouble with babies.  He says he understands, and I know implicitly that he does.  He says he doesn’t care, and I know that is the truth.  But I know too that he wants to hang out with all of them, all of our friends.  I don’t want to pull away from them because they all have babies.  I am glad that they are all healthy and beautiful.  I, truly with every part of my heart, am glad that they are all okay.  But that doesn’t change the fact that every one of them reminds me that I don’t have mine.   We went to a wedding the other day.  I counted at least three babies there.  I cried for a bit, thankful it was dark.  He held my hand. They aren’t my baby.  I don’t begrudge them their happiness.  I also have a severe amount of guilt attending an occasion where there are babies and that someone may notice I’m sad, and become uncomfortable at a place where they should be able to relax and be happy, and show off their precious babies.  I want him to be happy too, to be able to relax and not worry about me (although I don't think he'll ever stop worrying about me.) So perhaps it’s not separate at all, this trouble with babies, it’s that I just don’t know how to adjust to the world and I don't know what my place in it is. 

Dreaming

I had a dream I was holding a tiny baby, with bow lips, pink cheeks, round belly, 10 fingers, 10 toes.  I had a dream that I held her to me.  Nestled in a white blanket with pink and blue stripes she opened her eyes to look at me. She didn’t see my bloated cheeks, my ugly hospital robe, or my poor complexion.  She only saw Mama.  She has already known me, more than most; she’s heard my heart beat from the inside.  I held her head so full of hair to me and she pursed her lips and finally comforted, fell back to sleep.  I got to take her home.  But it was only just a dream.  I had the dream when I was awake, I had the dream when I was sleeping. 

The dream has changed now.  Sometimes it starts out as before.  But the doctors had to take her away.  She never opened her eyes, never pursed her lips in sleep, never nestled in a blanket, and never had pink cheeks.  I got to hold her for a few hours, and then they had to take her.  I went home with a couple pictures, an impression of her hands, and feet, a pink blanket, but no baby.  I scream no… no please no… and I wake up…  lonely feeling and empty. 

The dream changes often, sometimes I am being chased by a darkness that I can’t shake.  I think its sadness… I cower in a corner… no please no.  I wake up crying. 

Sometimes I am running, running away, or to, I don't know but I'm scared, and breathing hard, and it gets scarier and I run and whimper.  Sometimes Derek has to pull me to him to get me to stop. I know I'm dreaming sometimes, it's so lucid but I can't awake from it.

 Sometimes tears roll down my cheeks and I wake and my pillow is soaked but I don't know why.

Sometimes I hear crying, and I wake up to listen to no one.  Sometimes I hear crying and my waking self thinks, oh please… maybe… but no, it’s Gracie.  So I go to her and comfort her, but can’t shake the sadness to send myself back to sleep.

Sometimes I dream of my girls, and know that somehow I am missing something but can’t think of what it is.  I wake up just as I remember what I’m missing…. But she’s gone. 

Sometimes I don’t dream at all.  I wake up tired and dragging, and just a step above functioning.  

Imagine what my day is like if this is during sleep.

I wonder if a dream of butterflies would be as sad.

I wish she were here.