right where I am: 2014

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
Join in here: still life with circles

Happy Birthday, No-No

day of hope

So many days spent in darkness before I finally realized: the light never went anywhere. It's only that I had my eyes clenched shut so tight. There is no shame in it, I was only protecting myself -- brilliantly, I might add. I hope one day you will see it too, if you haven't already. That the light never leaves you. That you can be warm again if you want to.

I will probably lose friends over this pregnancy. I know what it's like, a betrayal almost, to go to a place that housed your pain and find it filled instead with tentative hope that you are not ready to take part in, not yet. I'll understand if you don't want to come here anymore, though I'm still myself, still willing to hold your hand, and your pain will never be strange to me.

I am grateful for the space I had to know myself, before this baby came along. We can enter our relationship on sturdy, even ground. I am not desperate for this baby. I do not need him/her more than he/she needs me. We are bound by our mutual relationship, no more and no less, rather than a pre-existing need to possess or replace, and already I am giving my baby a better start than I ever had a chance at.

Love and light to you on this remembering day, wheverever you are, whoever you are.

Hurting and healed, desperate and calm, eyes open or shut -- you are worthy.



Visit Project Heal for information about the Day of Hope. Or read more of my thoughts on babyloss here.

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

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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.

capture, release

I went over the list, saved it on my computer. Read it again, closed it again. I am an avid photographer, like it or not; I could have completed the project easily enough. But in the end I didn't feel compelled to. It might have helped, early on. But grief is not something I want to capture, anymore. Those particular relics are not what I want to keep.

I am still the face. I have been captured by grief -- and then, without quite knowing the exact moment that it happened -- released. And I find I am able to return that favor, finally. And I am pleased, and pensive, and content.

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.

Right Where I Am: 2012

I saw the invitation from Angie on Thursday morning, and I've been attempting to write this post ever since. Opening, rewriting, saving, staring, deleting, closing. Where the hell am I, anyway?

Ironic, that this call to write comes hot on the heels of my decision to stop tracking the days since they died. It was making me feel sad, and stagnant, so I traded the tickers in my sidebar for simple memorial buttons. And I had no twinges about it.

Will you judge me very harshly if I say I don't miss them like I used to? Not that I don't miss them--of course I do. But it's not the same as it used to be.

I don't look around and see where they're not. I don't resent my space or my nice clothes or my paychecks spent only on me. I don't obsess about how big they would be or what milestones they would have achieved by now. I don't worry that total strangers can't have the faintest idea whether I'm a mother or not. That they might look at me and see just another fairly pretty twenty-something who seems to mostly have her shit together. I think the reason I don't worry about that anymore is because I've realized that it actually is who I am now. I've realized I'm not fooling anyone, including myself... because it's no longer a lie.

I've got necklaces and initials. I've got two boxes of baby clothes in the back of my closet. I've got their pages on my blog, and indelible ink on my left thigh: two little doves I designed myself. My wrists are bare, but if I didn't know better, I'd swear their names were written there too. An invisible list. Indelible in its own way.

S has seen my tattoo, and the pictures that hang by my bed. He hasn't asked who they are, and I haven't told. I will, eventually. But not yet. We've been seeing each other for two months; long enough that I realized yesterday it will hurt if we break up. The thought made my stomach drop. It means I'm invested now, you see.

My babies often cross my mind, but for the most part tend to move on quickly. A smile and a nod--they get it. Mama's busy. And anyway, they've got time. They understand forever. They know we've got all the time in the world.

I feel like they each took a piece of my heart with them, when they left. That it is with them, that piece, wherever they are. Always. Except they didn't leave behind a hole, as I first thought. Clever thieves! They filled that small but gaping space with eternity instead. I simply didn't recognize it right away, couldn't sense the shape of it, was confused by its unfamiliar weight. I did not know, at first, that what I thought was lonely emptiness was really the vast wholeness of all things.

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Last year's posts: Lissie. No-No.

a good life

Sometimes I think it's enough. Enough already. So much sadness. Death and sadness and sad pictures and sad faces and sad words and my baby died and maybe if I am sad enough no will forget that.

I don't want anyone to forget that. I love you, all of you. I'm not telling you not to be sad. Be whatever you are. Be sad forever if you want, if it seems right. But I am so tired. I don't want to be sad forever. And I think maybe it is enough.

The tickers crouch on my sidebar, calculating silently, and I don't look at them directly for ages. Or I look at them and the numbers jab at me like spindly fingers, sharp and accusing. Eyeball, heart, stomach, lung: poke, poke, poke. And it hurts. It hurts and it's sad and it's not helping. Maybe it is okay to lose count of the days. (What are hours and months and days, to an eternal creature? And aren't they all eternal, now? And if part of us is with them, isn't part of us eternal too?) I think I'll take the tickers down, once I've come up with something to replace them with.

My thoughts run where they will and I suppose it might look a little gloomy around here at times. I may seem to dwell overmuch on the macabre, I don't know. But I am happy. I am really fucking happy, actually. I have a good life, a better one than I've ever had before or ever would have thought I could have. Every day is better than the last--even when it doesn't feel like it is. The people in my life love me, I don't have to hide or be afraid. I am doing meaningful work that I am good at. I have friends. I am meeting new people. I am more and more myself. And I am not sorry for or ashamed of a single thing I have ever done.

If that is not a good life, I don't know what is.

rum, whiskey, gin

The airline offered free drinks to mothers and I am one but I didn't want a crappy airline drink. I look young--ever so young, they tell me--and I would have had to make a point to tell the attendant that my drink ought to be free. The older women were handed them without comment, and I wondered how many were barren. How many bled out their babies like I did. How many lost them at 2 weeks or 20 years or any time in between. How many were sitting quietly in their row, sipping their rum or whiskey or gin and thinking, rightly, that they deserved it, for surviving this day one more time.

unless death

Unless death has tiptoed or
crash landed or
slipped or
body slammed its way
into your life

Unless death has
touched you, brushed
against you, gently
rested its cold hand on you while
it steadied itself
reaching for someone else

Unless death has
claimed someone you loved
more than anything else, more
than sun, more than air
more than all that is good

Unless death has
breathed
on the back of your neck while you tried
to will yourself to stop breathing because
you were holding someone
who was not breathing anymore, and who
you knew
would never breathe again

Unless you are
familiar with death
you might think it
in poor taste
to mention

Unless you have encountered it, face
to face, you might think it
a morbid thing
to dwell on and
you might not understand
what I mean when I say:

I wish we were closer friends, death
and I; Me and Death.


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I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago, and I started to write an essay based on it to submit to Glow, but ran out of time and ended up missing the deadline. Ah, well. Maybe next time. The essay is still not done, but I wanted to post the poem here, at least.

Do these thoughts resonate with anyone else?

dust

I think
about burning
when it's all over
burning to ashes
dust and tiniest
bits of bone.

I think
of my body, a grey-white cloud
wafting away on a wind or
sifting into an ocean wave or
settling over a mountainside
or maybe just sitting
in a jar
on a shelf
somewhere.

I wonder:
Is this what I want?

I wonder: is the funereal fire
more holy than
the waters of the sea?

If I'd had their
fragile, broken bodies burned
to softest ash
would I
feel closer to them, or farther
if I'd seen them
wafting away on a wind or
settling over a mountainside
or maybe just sitting
in a jar
on a shelf
somewhere or if
I'd ever put my hand
into that jar, felt them
slipping through my fingers
again--oh, not again!
and wondered again if this
was a lock of hair, this
a delicate lung or this
a perfect toe.

I think
the bodies of my babies
are in the ocean (or they were)
mingled with the waters, washed away
along with my blood and my tears
but perhaps they are now
in Alaska's snow or
Chicago's rain or
riding the Ganges river, or perhaps
they are now
high, high up in the atmosphere
or maybe they are here, in my breath
gone cold and crystallized and dancing
before my eyes.

Look, mama.
Watch me twirl.


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I learned that it is actually illegal to spread someone's ashes. Around here, anyway. You must put them in a container and bury the container in the ground, and really what is the point of that? You may as well be buried in a big box as fit in a small jar and buried all the same. I don't know. I thought I'd like to be put into the sea. But when I think of being ashes in the sea (my first and last intentionally illegal act), I think it is not quite the same as the way my babies are part of the sea, and it unnerves me somehow. Like we won't be together the way that I'd like. *sigh* I suppose it doesn't matter much. Or not yet. Presumably by the time I die there will be others who have an opinion on what should be done with my body anyway. Maybe a husband who'd like us to be buried side by side. Maybe children who'd like to make a memorial to me, rather than the other way around. There's a first.

Just something that came up at work the other day, and has been on my mind since. Any thoughts, dear readers? What are they going to do with you, when you've gone? Who do you want to be near, for forever?

In my dream, he has a red coat.

In my dream, he has a red coat. A red coat, and a striped scarf, and tiny black mittens and tall green boots.

I lift him out of his car seat, and he cheers and wraps his arms around my neck. He is big enough to walk, but I love the smell of him, love the way he rests his cheek ever so briefly on my shoulder, love how his hand wanders into my hair, despite the mittens. And so I carry him. Because I can.

It is cold here. Our breath leaves us as wispy white ghosts, making us giggle. We whisper together excitedly as we walk up to the apartment, and knock, and wait to be let in. My brother whips open the door and we are welcomed with that enveloping enthusiasm that never ceases to startle and amaze and comfort me. My brother is all enthusiasm, all quick movement and noise and taking up space and I absolutely adore him for it. Noah hides his face, feigning shyness--but we all know better. Soon enough he is laughing and playing and running around with R, and they are ridiculously cute together, and it is good, it is so, so good, and we are happy.

We are so ridiculously happy.

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Sometimes I wonder if this is happening, right now, in some alternate universe. I hope it is happening. I hope it happens again and again and again. I hope there is a place where my baby is alive. Live, baby! Live, my darling. Live and be happy. Play with your cousin and grow and live and be happy.

And you too, other me. I hope you can live, and be happy. Just like in my dreams.

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

raw

My consciousness streams like comets, like meteors. Streams like rivers running madly, racing to the sea. It could be like this all the time; this free flow of thoughts. This sea of ideas. But I am surrounded by sluices and dams, all meticulously handmade... I'm terrified of drowning, you see.

A seamless transition.

That's what we all hope for, isn't it. But does it ever really happen? Is it even possible? I don't know. I think it might be a thing we made up.

I feel like every change I've ever made has been wrenching, like ripping off a band aid--only not done and over then, quickly, like they say it will be, but awful and messy and the sting doesn't fade, it just gets overwritten eventually, maybe, by a new kind of sting that isn't any better, just different.

It is so abrupt, this wide world. Blatant. Blatantly kind; blatantly cruel. Lacking in subtleties.

Oh, subtlety.

How I long for quiet details, rather than this vast, raw experience I've had. Raw like meat. Raw like bones exposed. Raw like animals in the winter in the wild, cold, ravening, merciless. Harsh.

Weeks, months, years. My baby is dead, dead! And it guts me still, in the same beautiful, haunting way it always has and always will, except that my breaths get bigger, now, instead of smaller, and I am so excruciatingly alive I can hardly stand it. I want to cry and sing. Laugh and scream. Shake my fist at the falling sky. Dance. Dance. Dance.

I am alive.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant, heavily so, and happy. Near the end of the dream, I thought my water broke, but I wasn't sure, because I'd never felt it before. It made me sad, in the dream. I didn't know what to do next, and I was so sad. I felt like less than the other mothers, the ones who had done this before. I felt that I should know.

I was still sad, when I woke up, still unsure.

There is indescribable pain radiating outward from behind my right shoulder blade, as if there were a massive hook through and through my flesh. (It's happened before, right there, though I couldn't tell you why.) I've been almost totally incapacitated for two whole days. Disheartening. I try to breathe into it, but it's deep deep down and it's boiling lava hot and it hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts, and I'd rather just lie as still as I can, and pretend it's not there.

Story of my life.

Oh god, it hurts. All of it hurts.

But I am fierce, and clever, and strong, and no one has completely gotten the best of me yet.

day of hope

Learn more about the Day of Hope.

mercy

One month.


Oh, mercy.


I am coming undone.

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

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.

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

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.

unfinished

I am seized once again by the need to do something. Something meaningful, for my children. And once again, nothing seems sufficient -- because nothing is sufficient. Because no matter what I do, I can't shake the belief in my gut that they're simply not paying attention, our only time together is over and they're gone forever, and all my antics are an empty charade, and if it's only to placate myself then what the fuck is the point? Why not just give it up, just let it go?

My efforts feel ill-timed, amateur, self-indulgent. Look, Self! Look how much I love them! Look world, look! Look how I miss what I never really had! Look, baby! Look how I would have cared for you. Look at what you're missing! Why didn't you stay? Why was I not enough for you?




Ah.



There it is.




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* pause for tears *

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I tried to make a painting today, but I didn't finish it. And I feel defeated, I feel like I failed, because I couldn't finish this little 8x10 painting that I had envisioned in my head. And even though I know "real" paintings might take days and weeks and even years, I still feel like I failed. Maybe it's my long history of unfinished creative projects, haunting me. Clothes, blankets, stories, scripts, drawings, paintings, films, piano, guitar, original music... Oh, and babies.

I've still never quite finished a baby.