Almost Three

2013 has not been kind to our little household. My boys have been sick, trading germs back and forth, since before Thanksgiving. After rounds of antibiotics, ibuprofen, and days off from school, I'd naively assumed they were out of the woods.

Cut to 4 PM NewYear's Eve, a house full of parents, children, one dog and lots of food. And O getting crankier by the minute. He went to be at 7:30, only to wake up at 11 and stay up until 4. AM. And then get up for good at 5:45.

Two days later, E's sick with the same, only this time he gets a nearly 105 degree fever, sending us to pediatric emergency care on a Saturday night. We were panicky, a banner of "meningitismeningitismeningitis" flashing across our brains.

Not to mention, three years ago on this very same weekend, we were racing in the exact same direction to the hospital just down the block from the emergency care facility, with a similar yet distinctly different chorus ringing in our ears.

I sobbed the entire way there on Saturday, pleading with whatever energy there is in the Universe to please, don't take another one.

Double ear infection and conjuctivitis diagnoses after about an hour. Medicine prescribed, given, sent to bed. Nice and tidy, happy ending so far.

*****

Tomorrow is Calla's birthday. Today is the day we found out she'd died. Three years ago right now I was starting to worry, but still wasn't even starting to freak out. That would come, a few hours to go.  Somehow three years have passed, and yet it still feels like just yesterday. But, that's not entirely true. Somedays it feels like a lifetime ago. And in many ways it was. Three years ago today was the very last day of my former life.

God, I can still hear the noises from that room so clearly; feel the soft, firm grip of the nurse's hand as we watched that terrible sonogram together, her gentle tears and my animal wails. The sheer horror that would ensue over the next twenty four hours, each minute that passed taking another shred of my hope and understanding of my world. How was I to survive that?

I did, though. There were beautiful moments, believe it or not. Holding my perfect, lifeless, beautiful baby girl. Her small weight heavy in my exhausted arms. My whole family, nearly, getting to hold her and bless her with their tears.  C and me, the only two people in the world who understand this particular loss in this particular way.

Damn. I miss her so very much. Always, the question remains for my dim little brain, is HOW? And also, WHY? But there never will be answers to those, really. I guess it doesn't matter.  The answer, as always, will be JUST BECAUSE IT IS.

Three years old. She might be getting ready for dancing school. Christmas may have been an even mix of pink and princess alongside the superhero-lego-playmobil insanity. Would she have kept that black curly hair? Who knows, really?

It's been three years, almost, since I held her. How could I have walked out of that room, left her there when it was time to go? She should have come home with us. But it was never to be. We had to leave, and so, I guess, did she. I hate so many things about her death. I do not hate that she was here, was mine, no matter how awful living without her might be.

I love you, baby girl. How I wish so very much you were here with us. I miss you, Calla Valentina.

*****

We are on Day Five of our self-imposed quarantine. The boys are recovering, the marvels of modern medicine kicking in nicely. Tomorrow we will likely go to breakfast, spend the day together as a family, go on and about our day as usual. We will light our candle and the space between then and now  will grow a little wider.

I am grateful for our life. We have so very much and are really, truly, quite happy. The sadness will never leave, and what kind of person would I be if it did?  Being sad is important, so tomorrow we will honor our sadness even more.

Be well. Thank you for reading.

Enough

I have no time to write. I have no time for, really, anything right now. With Christmas a week away, I am buried in a self-created pit of cookies, wrapping paper, and Elf shenanigan planning.

And, I say this without the slightest trace of my usual irony, lucky, lucky me.

Like the rest of our country, and some of the rest of the world, I am beyond devastated for the families in Connecticut who are forever changed by, well, you know. I can't bring myself to think of that boy's name--and yes, I mean boy despite his being 20, or however old he was. Those children, those teachers . . . just gone. For no reason other than someone else's personal . . . what? Suffering? Anger? Vendetta? No reason, really. Just because.

And it feels like we, as a collective country/society/world, can do nothing but blame blame blame. It feels necessary to look for an answer, a WHY to follow the WHAT and the HOW. But guess what? There is no WHY. Only a big, fat IS, WAS, DID.

Maybe we should blame the guns. Yes, yes, it was the guns. No wait! It's the access to mental healthcare, the way we treat people with mental illness. No, it was actually his MOTHER'S fault! Yes, the mother, as per usual, right? Oh but wait, maybe it was the video games. Or maybe the movies. Or television. But probably it was the President's fault--no, that's not right. It was God's fault. Nope, got it wrong again, it's because God was "kicked out" of school (my personal favorite--there's that irony!).

It was all of this and none of this (OK, I'm almost positive it wasn't the god-kicked-out-of-school thing--that's shit thinking is just inexcusable). It was a young man who had a weapon and took the lives of 26 people and filled the broken hearts of our country with absolute fear. The end.

And arguing about it? Co-opting the sheer anguish of these grieving families? Disgusting. I get that we all grieve differently, and for some of us clicking on FB links and pictures and sharing vapid messages makes us feel empowered. But really? This is the best we can do?

I've had enough of the pablum that comes along with tragedy. "Light a candle for . . ." "Hug your children . . ." "Wear school colors . . ." Frankly, I've had enough of this type of tragedy to last a thousand lifetimes. Shit, I'm tired of the word "tragedy."

Among the phrases and words that make me want to scream, coincidentally, is tragedy, along with its qualifier "unthinkable." Really? Unthinkable? It wouldn't be nearly as terrifying if you couldn't imagine it, couldn't believe it could happen to your family, your child, your parent, your friend if you truly *couldn't* imagine it.

I'm a jerk, right? I am. I'm really, really sad. None of this bullshit we call "helping" does JACK for these mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, children, and friends in utter agony right now. My own solution? Forget all that noise, the memes and the FB pages and the pictures of sad candles and the j-man field trip. Send light, and love, directly from my own broken heart to theirs. Say the names of those children and teachers. Honor their memory by emblazoning their faces on my heart, making room for them there with all the others.

Turning off the television, tuning in to their pain and honoring it. Shutting out the distractions and sending them love. This is all that makes sense to me, it is all I would want.

It's all I did want.

Love to you all. xo

Catching Up

Holy crap, is it really November? And I haven't been here since August? Shoot.

I'm mad at Blogger for being an asshole. I keep trying to comment on posts and my comments get eaten, sent into oblivion. Anyone else? What the hell. So, I guess, if you're reading this and I usually comment on your posts, please know I've been reading, and trying to comment. But maybe what I have to say is deemed too stupid by Blogger, and it's saving face for me.

Life's been, you know, life. Busy. Bumbling. E's in school four days a week, so O and I have some more time, just the two of us. Sleep schedules are erratic, hence little sit-and-think time for me.

But I have been thinking. O turns two in two days. Gosh. Two years. I can't help but remember those last days of panic, worry, fear, anticipation and excitement before he was born. I hardly dared hope he would make it. But oh, he did.

And she didn't. And I wasn't worried about her at all. Now I worry about the two here, all the time.

I think about the rest of forever. Forever missing that little girl I never even knew. I think about those first days after she was born. The earthquake in Haiti. The cold, cold January air. Being wheeled out of a hospital empty handed.

(No, that's not right. I was wheeled out with my maternity clothes and a binder full of good ideas on how to grieve.)

My life is so very different from then, now. That was almost three years ago.

I am getting better at being around almost-three-year-old girls. The pounding in and on my chest has slowed to just a dull thump here and there.

It's the waiting, though, for the inevitable stumbling blocks. This is the thing, I'm learning, about forever. Shit's bound to happen sooner or later. Like, "You're not going for a girl?", "You have boys, they're so much easier than girls," or meeting a girl named Calla--which has happened, but she was the hostess at a restaurant, an older teenager, maybe early 20s. Meeting new people and deciding when, or if, I should explain about our dead baby, what their reaction and departure-time-out-the-door time will be.

The sadness just creeps up and surprises me sometimes. And it surprises me, really, to think that I've gone so many days and nights without crying, when almost three years ago I couldn't imagine the crying could ever stop.

It is a challenge to parent my children sometimes. E is . . . intense. The kind of kid who wakes up before 6, worrying if he'll have to have a try-bite at dinner twelve hours later in the day. He has, as my mother says, one speed--and that is GO, fast. O is way more mellow, but man, that kid can be a hard head. We are currently locked in the epic battle of Hat Wearing--and lo, I will win.

It is a challenge for which I often believe I am ill-equipped. Having a dead baby makes my parenting even more difficult, because lumped in with all the usual patience-reservoir-scraping, the guilt is multiplied to a factor of infinity. But maybe I'm overestimating myself? Maybe the guilt is this heavy for everyone, dead baby or not.  I should be more, I could be more, I should be better. I swore I would be in that hospital bed almost three years ago, and many days I fall so very short.

Somehow this turned into a pity party, and that wasn't my intention. Life has been busy, life has been good. I'll leave you with this. If you see me in the parking lot of Target with my windows up and a little boy in the back seat, head on the steering wheel, you'll know what I'm listening to.

Poking My Head Out Of My Hiding Spot

I keep starting to write this post, and keep getting stonewalled before I can even get my thoughts out. After being away for so long, my brain feels rusty, the words coming out like water through and old tap. Slow, sluggish, discolored. Hard.

Where to begin when it has been so long? I look at my reader every day, the blog posts piling up, leaving me feeling like a complete jerk.

Hey everyone! Things are going PRI-TTTTTY well over here, so, like, keep on keepin on, mmmm'kay? I'll letcha know when I need you!

It's not like that. I read. And I want to comment, and say, yes, me too, I get it, I'm sorry. I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over.  But it is true. I get it. I am sad, too. I am sorry.

My grandmother died this past week. She was my last grandparent. She was 91. She was funny and crafty and enjoyed so many things in life. She was in pretty good health and outlived almost all of her friends and her husband and several other family members; I almost believed she'd live forever. Magical thinking strikes again. She had a knack for making you feel like you were her favorite, like everything you did was amazing and noteworthy.

She was my friend and I miss her, will always miss her. Even though she was old. Even though I knew she would eventually die. Even though.

E has been processing this all week. She was diagnosed with cancer a little over two weeks ago, went immediately into Hospice care and died a week and a half later. So fast, which I think maybe was a blessing to not have to suffer and worry for months, or years. But E has been asking questions:

"So GG is up in the stars? Can we visit her? Did you watch her climb up into the stars? Is she in that box but can't talk?"

And the one question that broke my heart, asked with a fleeting frown and almost tears:

"But who will be your grandma now?"

I feel lucky my boys got to meet her and know her. I feel lucky to have had her in my life.

*******
I have a confession, too. I've been wanting to write about something for awhile but just, I don't know, didn't want to come across as a bitter crone.

No, no, nothing earth-shattering or life-altering.

Right after O was born a new family moved in across the street. We have since become friends with them, and it is just lovely. E and their oldest child are six months apart and play together so well. They were on the same soccer team this spring, even.

And their adorable daughter was born in March of 2010.

I'll let you go ahead and process that math, the permutations of children and possibility and what is and what is not, and what was and what was supposed to be.

And it's cool. I'll admit every so often I'll squint a little more carefully or think a little too hard and it will twist something in my midsection, but mostly it's cool. I'm 100% positive it's because of my youngest, my O. I am not ashamed to admit he has made these living arrangements a billion times more bearable.

But then the neighbors across the street, a different yet equally lovely and kind family, just had their second child. A girl. Born just over two years after their son.

It makes me dizzy, occasionally, to look across the street and think about . . . what, exactly? How we'd be a trio of matching families if my life hadn't taken a complete shit two and a half years ago when Calla died? Because matching families--whoopdeedoo--we have two amazing boys, so, like, whatevs?

Sigh. I just don't know. Maybe I should just crawl back under my rock, stick my head back in the sand and shut up. Be grateful and sad on my own time.

Just wanted to share.

In Your Wildest Dreams

Sometimes, even often, beautiful songs become so ubiquitous that we forget what they truly sound like, or have to tell us. I blame lite rock stations. With the overplay of easy listening, adult contemporary, lite sounds--whatever you want to call it--some gorgeous music gets turned to brain mush.

Think of Stevie Wonder. The Beach Boys. Elton John. Amazing songwriters and musicians whose music is harmless enough to play in the office, but still powerful enough to make you stop in your tracks as you ponder the creation of such heartbreaking harmonies and lyrics.

This morning I went for my run with O through the cemetery, and as we rounded a curve we caught up with our deer. And its fawn. They were literally scampering around the well-manicured lawns, chasing each other and playing tag. But then the adult saw me and stopped. So we stopped and just looked, waiting. The fawn was still scampering, darting towards its parent then darting back. The big deer wasn't so sure about us, so we started up again, saying our gentle goodbyes as it watched.

But then a convergence of music and placement and happenstance caught up with me.  Our deer. Right up the hill from Calla's spot. Pushing my big almost-20-month-old boy. Listening to a song that just made sense. A song that I would have been embarrassed to admit I liked in high school, that's how uncool it seemed. It all fit together just right. And as desperately as I'm trying to find the words to capture the beauty and pain and just perfection of that moment, I can't. But maybe if you listen to this relegated-to-lite-rock song you'll hear it.

Granted, not every word of this song applies. "Our bodies felt the morning dew?" Not so much. But. "I wonder if you know, I wonder if you think about me . . . " Magical thinking, yes. Nothing wrong with a little indulgence now and then.

(Just one more song that needs to be redeemed. Maybe it already has been, you know, from Garden State. But some of these songs need to be pulled out of soft-rock hell.)

**Full disclosure: while I do not, regularly, listen to soft-rock, I do like many of the songs on those stations. It's the Celine Dion that kills it for me, truth be told.

Right Where I Am: Two Years, Four Months, Twenty Two Days.

I am participating in Angie's Right Where I Am Project for the second year. It is an incredible compilation of stories, voices, and families along this path of grieving. Please check out all the rest of the stories here. And this is where I was last year. 

Well when you put it that way it seems like a blip. Two years? And a little bit? That's nothin'.

And yet is is so very much something. Right where I am . . . well, judging by the frequency of my blog post, not HERE, so much. But where I truly am? Is kind of complicated.

Two years. And a little bit. Two years ago I was just inextricably tethered to this blog, this space, this community keeping me afloat. I was freshly grieving Calla and newly pregnant with O. To say my head was fucked is an understatement. I was barely surviving, clinging to grief and hope and the tiniest bit of sanity.

But now here I am, in a place I never, two years and a little bit ago, thought I'd ever be again.

Right now O is just the same age E was when Calla died. It is a strange place. I don't remember a lot of what E was doing at this age, and that makes me sad. They have their own distinct little personalities; okay, they have their own distinct BIG personalities. I look at O an then think back to E and wonder, what the hell was I trying to do back then? Another baby at THAT stage of the game? Hoo. But O is a different chap than E. E was all chatter and business and non-stop go-go-go. O, not so much. He's content to communicate with several little half-words, leaving us to guess the rest, fill in his blanks. He'll sit for what seems like hours amusing himself with made-up games and ideas. He is content.

Which is lovely, because when he was inside me I was anything but. I couldn't imagine what the FUCK I was doing having another baby. Daily my blood was a cocktail of anxiety, worry, hope and sheer terror. That poison pumped through my body and luckily passed right through O. He is the happiest little clam in our ocean.

Our life, as it stands, is actually pretty wonderful. Something I never, two years and a little bit ago, thought would be the case. We have fun as a family, and hoo boy are we busy. E dances (tap! so cute! recital next week!) and plays soccer, along with preschool three times a week. O and I hang out; I take him running in the stroller and on errands while E's busy at school. The days just fly by, filled with trucks and superheroes and playing. C and I manage to go out a few times a month just the two of us--granted often those dates are other people's weddings or some such obligatory function, but a child-free night does wonders for our collective married soul.

And man are those child-free nights a world away from the nights we once spent, missing our toddler at home and our baby girl in the stars.

But where I am isn't all sunshine and roses and unicorns pooping Skittles. The overriding emotion, the one that threatens to overtake sadness, is disbelief. Monday night as I manned our grill, C inside with the boys washing hands and setting the table, I looked around our sun-washed backyard, toys strewn about, mulch and sand settling into the bottom of the baby pool, and wondered how, again, did this come to be my life?

I look around at families of two children, older brother and younger sister, and feel a distinct stab in my upper abdomen. But then I look down at the strawberry blonde boy heads bobbing at my sides and can't really imagine our life any other way. This is how we are supposed to be, sadness and awfulness and all. Without Calla there would likely be no O, and that makes my already taped-together heart start to wobble.

E talks about her a lot, but I think he's just trying to make sense of it all. He has a sister who had to go live in the stars. And she can't come back. But she's his sister. And we miss her. Around and around we go, in the maddening-yet-heartbreakingly-adorable way of the almost four year old.

So she exists in our family, in a nebulous, vague sort of way. I miss that baby girl I left, lifeless, in that cold hospital room two years and a little bit ago. Fuck. I miss her with every ounce of flesh on my skeleton, every breath in my lungs, every hair on my head, every pulse in my neck. Every second of every day.

But I can't imagine it. I can't see her. I can't believe she was ever actually real, or meant to be. I look at our life now, and know this is real.

But, still, how?

Catching Up

As the title of my blog suggests, I am currently enjoying a double nap time. And, you just know that now I've typed it, someone will wake up. Which explains a bit of the hiatus I've taken. You see, the boys have a bit of an aversion to sleep. So when they actually do sleep? I need to get things done. Which means this here writing hole gets neglected.

I sit here in disbelief that it's springtime again. Maybe it's because our winter was so unbelievably, weirdly mild. Usually by the beginning of April I start getting a little overly cabin-feverish, but really we've been out and about for weeks. (Oh, and next winter? We are so effed.) But mostly I can't believe it's been two years since I found out I was pregnant with O, still freshly grieving Calla's death. It seems like it was yesterday, and last century, too. I watch the leaves peek out from the tree branches and smell the air and feel the half-brittleness of the wind and can remember, vividly, being emotionally obliterated and scared shitless. Sometimes just the sight of a daffodil sends shivers down my spine.

I am so grateful for that little sleeping soul upstairs, and for the one asleep over there on the couch. I am still in disbelief that Calla died, but sometimes even more so that E and O are alive.

********
I have a friend who this winter, had two babies, twin boys, very very early. And without going into the nitty gritty, one of the babies died recently. And I just sobbed for a week. When she let everyone know, all I could do was fall to the ground and weep. Which made me feel like I was overreacting--like it was more about me. But shit, you know? How can you not, right? I am devastated for her, and can't think of a thing to do, even though I've lived through a brand of this hell myself.

E watched me cry, and wondered. So it got us talking about where exactly my friend's baby is, why it is so sad. I told him he was in the stars, like Calla. And now, at lunch almost every day, E asks where they baby is, and why he is in the stars, and tells me he misses him. And Calla. And I tell him I do too. And then I wonder if three-and-a-half-almost-four is too young for these things, but then I think, I am too young for these things, too.

********
Life right now is nearly how I'd imagined it would be before Calla died. Chasing around two little ones, having fun but getting irritated when I haven't had enough to eat or sleep. But I catch myself, hear that almost Pollyannaish voice in my head saying, "Yes, but they're here. Be happy for that."

I have a difficult time when I find myself getting annoyed, or, heavens forbid, yelling. Yep. I sometimes yell. I do not enjoy every second of every day. And this sometimes makes me feel like a failure. As though I've learned nothing. As though I'm taking my relative good fortune for granted. What kind of mother with a dead kid gets annoyed with the children she has?

Being happy all the time, I've come to finally accept, is not possible. It is okay to be annoyed that I'm reheating my coffee for the third time; that despite bribing using all the positive reinforcement known to man my child still routinely wakes me at 5AM (no, not the baby) and I get grumpy--these things are not happy things. The fact that these boys are here, alive, breathing, hearts beating--for this I am so eternally grateful.

********
So during the time it took me to write this--not long, obvs--O woke up screaming. But with a little finagling and another go-round with the sleep sheep he's back to sleep. Which means, since I've put that in writing, he'll be up again in about four minutes. I'll try not to be away for so long.