Ailis Evelyn - 7 years, 1 month, 8 days
Noah Griffin - 4 years, 10 months, 21 days
Last time I wrote for this linkup I had no idea that a brand new baby boy had only days before begun making his determined way into my life. Throughout those long months, even as my belly grew and despite his constant movement, I did not really think it was possible until the night I finally held him in my arms, all grey and slimy and completely, utterly calm. Fingers curling and uncurling, as theirs never did, eyes open and alert, as theirs never were.
I marked Lissie's day in my heart only this year, my head and my hands being mostly full of her new brother. I expect Noah's will be the same. A little extra kindness for myself, a little extra softness for those around me. A grateful heart.
I love you, my babies. Always have, always will.
I am homesick for their faces. It would be the greatest gift imaginable to know their voices, to hear them speak just once. To feel their hands in mine. To have patted their backs and smoothed their hair and kissed their cheeks, as I do for their brother. The one who stayed. The one who lived. There are moments when the distinction crushes me, but I am ever resilient.
I am asked all the time if Hunter is my first. Sometimes I hesitate, but I always say yes. I call him Biggest, because he is. They never got to be so big. But it's ok. He is not his brother or his sister, and I don't need him to be. He is himself and he is perfect. He is just exactly right. In my mind's eye, the ghosts of his siblings trail him wherever he goes. And they are just exactly right, too. I know and I believe they know: right now, we are each where we need to be.
Previous years' posts: 2011: part 1, 2011: part 2, 2012, 2013
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Showing posts with label ailis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ailis. Show all posts
July 21, 2014
June 13, 2013
May 31, 2013
Right Where I Am: 2013
Ailis - almost 6 years / Noah - almost 4 years
I don't track days anymore. I have to stop and count on my fingers, now, to be sure of the years that have passed. Ah, they would be so big! Kindergarten, for Lissie, can you imagine...?!
Alas, I cannot.
They have made me a mother but I am deprived of the experiences that make up the stories that make you friends on the outside. Prison terminology seems appropriate to me; babyloss is too much like a life-long sentence for the wrongfully accused, or maybe involuntary committal to a psych ward. Except there is no release for good behavior, no cure, and even if you escape, finally, on a rainbow, there's still a part of your life that almost no one will ever be truly comfortable hearing about unless they've been there too.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.*
My heart is changed. It contains more than I ever thought possible. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and through its transformation I became half time-lord, half human, all whole. I have gained a perspective that is dizzying and grounding at once. The universe fits inside of me. Profound and simple and holy and profane. There is room for you too, and in you too.
Mama, mama, be calm. We know how to wait. We are not afraid.
Be calm, mama. We'll wait.
My children are extraordinarily zen. They cannot teach, but I can learn. I suppose that's rather zen in itself.
Into the air, into the earth, into the fire. I am with you.**
Peace. Love. Light.
I am not broken, and neither are you.
*You do not have to be good, Mary Oliver
**Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
-----
You can read my previous years' posts here: Right Where I Am 2011 (Part I)(Part II) & Right Where I Am 2012, and link up with us on still life with circles.
I don't track days anymore. I have to stop and count on my fingers, now, to be sure of the years that have passed. Ah, they would be so big! Kindergarten, for Lissie, can you imagine...?!
Alas, I cannot.
They have made me a mother but I am deprived of the experiences that make up the stories that make you friends on the outside. Prison terminology seems appropriate to me; babyloss is too much like a life-long sentence for the wrongfully accused, or maybe involuntary committal to a psych ward. Except there is no release for good behavior, no cure, and even if you escape, finally, on a rainbow, there's still a part of your life that almost no one will ever be truly comfortable hearing about unless they've been there too.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.*
My heart is changed. It contains more than I ever thought possible. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and through its transformation I became half time-lord, half human, all whole. I have gained a perspective that is dizzying and grounding at once. The universe fits inside of me. Profound and simple and holy and profane. There is room for you too, and in you too.
Mama, mama, be calm. We know how to wait. We are not afraid.
Be calm, mama. We'll wait.
My children are extraordinarily zen. They cannot teach, but I can learn. I suppose that's rather zen in itself.
Into the air, into the earth, into the fire. I am with you.**
Peace. Love. Light.
I am not broken, and neither are you.
*You do not have to be good, Mary Oliver
**Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
-----
You can read my previous years' posts here: Right Where I Am 2011 (Part I)(Part II) & Right Where I Am 2012, and link up with us on still life with circles.
August 28, 2012
remembering forgetting
They are not very important, and they are the most important. Nothing has ever been so important. But why should anyone remember, except for me? Why should anyone be remembered, who is not here anymore, who is not right in front of your face right now?
I remember, but not because I should. I remember because it is a thing that happened, and remembering is a thing that humans do. There is no moral attached. There is no redeeming, no higher connotation to remembering. We do it because we do it.
You can't remember something unless you forgot it for a moment. We forget the things that are not right in front of our faces. And sometimes we even forget those things too.
I remember, but not because I should. I remember because it is a thing that happened, and remembering is a thing that humans do. There is no moral attached. There is no redeeming, no higher connotation to remembering. We do it because we do it.
You can't remember something unless you forgot it for a moment. We forget the things that are not right in front of our faces. And sometimes we even forget those things too.
June 13, 2012
March 23, 2012
Ailis Evelyn
I wish I could hold you, precious girl, and tell you how sorry I am.
Sorry that I love you so much, but much too late. xo
Photo via weheartit.com, sentiment mine.
December 30, 2011
friendly ghosts
Work is just that, isn't it, and taking more out of me than I ever knew it could. My words are scarce, even inside my own head, all echoes and whispers and fragments of things that almost are and then are not. What words I do have are saved for them, for my dearest, my friendly ghosts.
December 24, 2011
bits and pieces
There is nothing left, nothing
but a box and
another, smaller box
which
contain
bits and pieces
ribbons, lace
cards and letters
the teeniest, tiniest
things:
brown monkey shoes
stripey shirts
a hat
a blanket
a book
a dress
all that is left
of the two of you, and
who I hoped
you'd be.
but a box and
another, smaller box
which
contain
bits and pieces
ribbons, lace
cards and letters
the teeniest, tiniest
things:
brown monkey shoes
stripey shirts
a hat
a blanket
a book
a dress
all that is left
of the two of you, and
who I hoped
you'd be.
December 6, 2011
concise
My posts are often short. I cannot go on at length, for what is left to say? I cannot tell you of their darlingness, their splendidness. Their precious, precious hearts. I cannot tell you.
I cannot tell.
I cannot tell.
October 15, 2011
a hole in the world
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
June 14, 2011
yesterday
Yesterday, I wore my letter A necklace and Lissie's new pony necklace all day. I colored in her coloring book. I sat by the pool and read poems. I went swimming. I laughed with my cousin. I went to a hole-in-the-wall Phở restaurant, and had lovely food served to me by even lovelier people. I got the oil changed in my truck. I ate a grape popsicle, outside, in heavy summer heat, and didn't mind it dripping down my wrist. I wrote about my girl, and the circumstances surrounding her existence, on fb. Took a deep breath, hit publish, asked more people to remember her with me. I went to the gym after dark. I ran a 10.5 minute mile for the first time in a long time. I walked out afterward into the first true summer night; still warm, and smelling of flowers. And I was happy.
June 13, 2011
do not stand at my grave and weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
Mary E. Frye
May 27, 2011
right where I am [part 1]
Lissie: 3 yrs, 11 mos
I'm almost to her day, Lissie's Day, again. I've been thinking about her a lot, but I haven't been that sad. Not yet anyway. There are other things, occupying my attention right now; happier things, more urgent things. And I don't feel guilty about this, as I would have once. I recognize that I need to embrace happiness when I can.
My grief has changed, recently, as grief does. I've moved away now, for good, from the "this can't actually have happened" phase: the phase where I keep expecting that maybe, just maybe, there not only really is an alternate universe where my children didn't die, but that one day I might wake up in it. Sucks to be you, version of myself that I switched with! Ha!
Yeah. Probably not going to happen.
I guess you would call it acceptance. My baby died. She doesn't need me anymore. She's not coming back. No matter how much I cry, no matter how much love for her I hold in my heart, no matter how many times I say her name... she's not coming back to me.
But she was here, for a little while. She was here, right here inside of me, as close as one person can be to another. She was here and I got to know her, even if it was just a teeny tiny bit, just the smallest sliver of knowledge. I got to be connected, however tenuously, to a bright-burning spark of life and glory. I got to give her a name. That was my privilege, my honor. And it's a beautiful name, for a beautiful girl -- a girl who simply couldn't stay. A girl I have to continually learn to let go of.
Her story is permanently intertwined with mine. She'll not be forgotten; I don't worry about that. Being dead does not make her more important to me than if she had lived, and if she had lived she would not be more important to me than she is now, dead. She's my daughter, I loved her, I love her still. The memory of her is tied to me like a balloon tied to my wrist. I don't need to grasp at it; I already know it's there. It moves when I move. We are connected.
Even if I let go, we are still connected.
Join this conversation on Still Life with Circles.
I'm almost to her day, Lissie's Day, again. I've been thinking about her a lot, but I haven't been that sad. Not yet anyway. There are other things, occupying my attention right now; happier things, more urgent things. And I don't feel guilty about this, as I would have once. I recognize that I need to embrace happiness when I can.
My grief has changed, recently, as grief does. I've moved away now, for good, from the "this can't actually have happened" phase: the phase where I keep expecting that maybe, just maybe, there not only really is an alternate universe where my children didn't die, but that one day I might wake up in it. Sucks to be you, version of myself that I switched with! Ha!
Yeah. Probably not going to happen.
I guess you would call it acceptance. My baby died. She doesn't need me anymore. She's not coming back. No matter how much I cry, no matter how much love for her I hold in my heart, no matter how many times I say her name... she's not coming back to me.
But she was here, for a little while. She was here, right here inside of me, as close as one person can be to another. She was here and I got to know her, even if it was just a teeny tiny bit, just the smallest sliver of knowledge. I got to be connected, however tenuously, to a bright-burning spark of life and glory. I got to give her a name. That was my privilege, my honor. And it's a beautiful name, for a beautiful girl -- a girl who simply couldn't stay. A girl I have to continually learn to let go of.
Her story is permanently intertwined with mine. She'll not be forgotten; I don't worry about that. Being dead does not make her more important to me than if she had lived, and if she had lived she would not be more important to me than she is now, dead. She's my daughter, I loved her, I love her still. The memory of her is tied to me like a balloon tied to my wrist. I don't need to grasp at it; I already know it's there. It moves when I move. We are connected.
Even if I let go, we are still connected.
Join this conversation on Still Life with Circles.
May 13, 2011
journal
I'm trying to brace myself for the summer's coming grief. But it's hard to do -- and probably fruitless, really -- since I have no idea what it's going to look like this time around. So maybe I will try instead to simply let go of any kind of expectations I find myself developing, and just take the days as they come.
I know I'm stronger now. I've also had time to settle into my new environment. I miss my family still; but I've gotten used to not seeing them every day. It doesn't hurt so much anymore. And I guess with every year that goes by, in the same way, I get used to not seeing my kids every day, too. The ache will always be there; I'm not ever going to forget. And I will always think of them as my babies... But I also know that they are so much more than just my babies.
They are more than their tiny, unfinished bodies ever were. They are themselves. And while the flesh that housed them for so short a time is gone, and they could not stay here without it, they were always more than that, and what is essential about them still exists. I really do believe that. They are a part of my story, and a part of my heart. They have shaped me as a person, and will continue to shape me as a mother.
I'm so sorry you never got to meet them.
They were impossibly lovely.
I will always be sorry that their siblings won't get to know them, too. That my third child will have all the trials and priveleges and common personality traits of a first. Firstborn, though not first borne. But I hope I can do a decent job of integrating Ailis and Noah into our lives, and that their names will be associated with joy and inclusiveness, familiar and sweet, instead of pain or sadness or separation.
I am beginning to subscribe more and more to the idea of neutrality; the idea that things and events simply Are, and it's what we do with and during and after them that matters.
And so I think I'll not say again that Ailis "should" be here or Noah "should" be here. It is too strong a word, and it hurts too much. And I think, perhaps, it takes away a little from the honor and the rights of the child who comes next.
(The one reason I can think of to be grateful not to have had a subsequent pregnancy immediately after my losses is that I do not have the confusion of bearing a child that "would not exist had the other not died." I'm not sure that I believe in that line of reasoning at all, and I hope it wouldn't have troubled me... but it is good to have the clarity that time and distance can bring.)
I choose to believe that everything that was ever essential about my children is now a part of everything I see. That they are reunited with the universe, and so are not really gone, as nothing that was ever here can ever really be completely gone. Stardust. We are all stardust. We are all made of the same stuff, and always were, and always will be.
So in the future, I will look at my children -- the ones who stay inside the fragile tents of their human bodies, the ones who grow and change and speak and reveal to me, little by little, their specific intricacies; and I will smile and I will love and I will drink them in. But I will also look at the sunshine and the dustmotes and the green growing things and the ocean and the stars... and I will smile at them, too. I will fling my arms wide, and embrace what I may of the vastness of the universe, and all that I love that dwells within it, until I am reunited as well.
I know I'm stronger now. I've also had time to settle into my new environment. I miss my family still; but I've gotten used to not seeing them every day. It doesn't hurt so much anymore. And I guess with every year that goes by, in the same way, I get used to not seeing my kids every day, too. The ache will always be there; I'm not ever going to forget. And I will always think of them as my babies... But I also know that they are so much more than just my babies.
They are more than their tiny, unfinished bodies ever were. They are themselves. And while the flesh that housed them for so short a time is gone, and they could not stay here without it, they were always more than that, and what is essential about them still exists. I really do believe that. They are a part of my story, and a part of my heart. They have shaped me as a person, and will continue to shape me as a mother.
I'm so sorry you never got to meet them.
They were impossibly lovely.
I will always be sorry that their siblings won't get to know them, too. That my third child will have all the trials and priveleges and common personality traits of a first. Firstborn, though not first borne. But I hope I can do a decent job of integrating Ailis and Noah into our lives, and that their names will be associated with joy and inclusiveness, familiar and sweet, instead of pain or sadness or separation.
I am beginning to subscribe more and more to the idea of neutrality; the idea that things and events simply Are, and it's what we do with and during and after them that matters.
And so I think I'll not say again that Ailis "should" be here or Noah "should" be here. It is too strong a word, and it hurts too much. And I think, perhaps, it takes away a little from the honor and the rights of the child who comes next.
(The one reason I can think of to be grateful not to have had a subsequent pregnancy immediately after my losses is that I do not have the confusion of bearing a child that "would not exist had the other not died." I'm not sure that I believe in that line of reasoning at all, and I hope it wouldn't have troubled me... but it is good to have the clarity that time and distance can bring.)
I choose to believe that everything that was ever essential about my children is now a part of everything I see. That they are reunited with the universe, and so are not really gone, as nothing that was ever here can ever really be completely gone. Stardust. We are all stardust. We are all made of the same stuff, and always were, and always will be.
So in the future, I will look at my children -- the ones who stay inside the fragile tents of their human bodies, the ones who grow and change and speak and reveal to me, little by little, their specific intricacies; and I will smile and I will love and I will drink them in. But I will also look at the sunshine and the dustmotes and the green growing things and the ocean and the stars... and I will smile at them, too. I will fling my arms wide, and embrace what I may of the vastness of the universe, and all that I love that dwells within it, until I am reunited as well.
For what is to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Kahlil Gibran
May 10, 2011
she'll know
A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had.
But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.
Barbara Kingsolver
Lissie Doll, you should be nearly 3 1/2 years old... but instead you are nearly -4.
I really hate math. And I really miss you.
May 3, 2011
of noble kin
When I first decided to name my baby girl, I searched a myriad of websites for names based on the meanings "light" or "sweet" or "good." I was desperate to attach a name to her that was the opposite of my experience of her conception.
I knew that she was completely the opposite of dark and horrifying and bad. She was my daughter. And it was not her fault.
One site turned up Ailis with the meaning "a light," and I loved it immediately. It was perfect. Interesting and different, and I could refer to her as Lissie, if I ever had the strength. I've always liked Lissie. So Ailis it was.
Except I can't find that site anymore, the one that says her name means "a light." (Not that it matters. It's her name, and it means that to me, whatever else the sites say.) Actually, the most common definition that comes up is "of noble kin."
When I first realized this, my thought was: Whaa?
Noble kin.
Ha.
Her father is a nameless, faceless coward who still haunts my nightmares and every shadowed alley, four years after our single shattering encounter. I have no idea what his family is like. And my own ancestry, generation upon generation, is an embarrassment, to say the least. So, yeah. Noble kin? Oops!
However.
The more I thought about it, the more pleased I was with this additional (and indeed, more commonly offered) meaning that is attached to my daughter's sweet name. I like to think that maybe, just maybe, I could count as that noble kin. That I'm enough. That even though I'm just one person, it's enough to make the definition true.
And of course there are other people, who have stepped up and been family to us. I like to think that it makes my girl and I part of a bigger kind of family; a tribe bound by common spirit, instead of common genes. A kinship of perseverance and right-thinking and courage. Full of hope. And gentleness. And light.
My girl is a light, even if I'm the only one who can see it.
My girl is noble, and of noble kin.
I knew that she was completely the opposite of dark and horrifying and bad. She was my daughter. And it was not her fault.
One site turned up Ailis with the meaning "a light," and I loved it immediately. It was perfect. Interesting and different, and I could refer to her as Lissie, if I ever had the strength. I've always liked Lissie. So Ailis it was.
Except I can't find that site anymore, the one that says her name means "a light." (Not that it matters. It's her name, and it means that to me, whatever else the sites say.) Actually, the most common definition that comes up is "of noble kin."
When I first realized this, my thought was: Whaa?
Noble kin.
Ha.
Her father is a nameless, faceless coward who still haunts my nightmares and every shadowed alley, four years after our single shattering encounter. I have no idea what his family is like. And my own ancestry, generation upon generation, is an embarrassment, to say the least. So, yeah. Noble kin? Oops!
However.
The more I thought about it, the more pleased I was with this additional (and indeed, more commonly offered) meaning that is attached to my daughter's sweet name. I like to think that maybe, just maybe, I could count as that noble kin. That I'm enough. That even though I'm just one person, it's enough to make the definition true.
And of course there are other people, who have stepped up and been family to us. I like to think that it makes my girl and I part of a bigger kind of family; a tribe bound by common spirit, instead of common genes. A kinship of perseverance and right-thinking and courage. Full of hope. And gentleness. And light.
My girl is a light, even if I'm the only one who can see it.
My girl is noble, and of noble kin.
April 11, 2011
the end of my magical thinking
Oh, my dear, my darling girl. I realized last night that somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I've always kind of thought you might come back to me somehow; or I might wake up one day to find you'd never really left. But now suddenly I really understand that it's not true, that it will never be true -- and I can't think that anymore, even if I wanted to -- and it feels like I've lost you all over again.
April 10, 2011
teenage escapades
Got a simple text from my sister in the middle of the night that broke my heart wide open. Broke my heart as if she were my own daughter, for the very reason that she's not my daughter after all. My sister was giddy and excited, telling me about her adventure, but I was crushed, soon spiraling away inside my own head, feeling fresh pangs of loss and knowing full well -- Ailis will never sneak out with her friend one night and get a tattoo when she's 18... because she will never BE 18.
She'll never have the chance to do something naughty and harmless, like get a tattoo without my advice or permission. She'll just be my baby, forever and ever.
She'll never have the chance to do something naughty and harmless, like get a tattoo without my advice or permission. She'll just be my baby, forever and ever.
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