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.