Thursday, May 31, 2012

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?

12 comments:

  1. "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? "

    Yes- this is it exactly. I know they should have been here, but I have no idea how it would have been if they had been. I know nothing but this, and I don't know how I got here. Beautiful words, Mary Beth.

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  2. Oh Mary Beth~ I know you have a unicorn that poops skittles :)
    I was talking behind your blog today and then I saw you posted. I always used to say "you end up with the one you're supposed to have" in regards to your children. But how do we come to terms with that when one of them dies. I know Calla was supposed to be here just the way Camille was supposed to be here...BUT O is supposed to be here too yeah? so how do we make sense out of that? I guess we don't, we can't make sense of something so Fucked up! There is no rationale...at least none that is worth the sense that make it up.
    I am so glad you have your boys...but boy do I know how you miss your girl.
    "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"
    ~this is how much I miss too.
    Love to you my friend.

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  3. Awww O, the happiest clam in the ocean. I love it! Strange isn't it? Reuben is also, on the whole, kind of a content little guy. When I consider the rather horrible environment of anxiety and sugar consumption that he grew in, it seems even more marvellous. Surely he should be neurotic and miserable? But no.

    That disbelief. You are so right. I don't think that I will ever shake it. How? How?

    And I don't even have that added complication, that without one there would not be another. That must be quite the thing to make your heart wobble.

    E and J are nearly of an age?! How bizarre, I never realised that for some stupid reason.

    And, like you, like Renel, I miss my baby girl with every ounce of my flesh and every breath of my lungs. With every hair on my head and every pulse in my neck. I miss her. Desperately and painfully and pathetically and lovingly. Always lovingly. Calla. Camille. Georgina. We miss you, sweet girls. We miss you. We miss you. We miss you.

    Mary Beth, I'm always so pleased to see a post from you. Thank you for writing x

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  4. jesus christ it's about time for a post. i've been looking at "catching up" on my feed for what feels like forever now. even if you write once a year, i'll be here reading the brilliant way you spin your words together. seriously, you have a gift woman. i could practically copy and paste your whole post and disect it line by line.

    i really wish our families could hang out. :(

    i love what you wrote and even though i'm a year behind you, I get a lot of this post. the beauty that has come of life and the heartache that still remains.

    since having leo, i feel this all the time:

    "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."

    It's so complicated, isn't.

    Love and love and peace and peace. :)

    josh

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  5. Oh Mary Beth, blog posts don't make me cry much anymore. Fuck, nothing really makes me cry anymore, but I got all choked up and a little tear escaped at the end of this post. Because I know, I just know. How do you manage to do this, ever time you sit down at the keyboard. As Josh said, you have a gift. Calla is loved and missed, dear friend.
    xo

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  6. Oh, yes, to the real life—and the how. (That and I could use a few more child-free evenings out and still sometimes feel like when I say that I need to knock on wood or add an explanation to the universe that I want to go out without them for a few hours and come back to them).

    Although I knew I would feel joy again, even in the earliest days (knew it but couldn't imagine it), I don't think I realized just how beautiful and full and happy my life could be again. And it is, but don't know how that fits with the fact that he is not here. And how has always, always been my question about all of this.

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  7. This is beautiful, I'm glad this is where you are.

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  8. God. Yes, yes, yes. Every last bit of this.

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  9. I nodded along to so much of this. That sense of disbelief, all of that wonder about how we got here - gods, yes. Just, yes.

    I'm so glad that O is such a happy little clam, and I love the way you write about your life - so clearly painting the happy bustle of it all, but with that longing for Calla running underneath.

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  10. Yeah - disbelief and happy clams (and can I wish for a unicorn that poops skittles, please?).

    I seem to remember I wrote in a blog post recently (or more likely I just thought it!) "Did I have a baby who died? Really, me?" because sometimes it seems dreamlike. The pain proves it true but life just moves on and around and the disbelief winds around it.

    And my boy-who-lived is two and the most joyous little chap. Like Catherine, I can't quite equate that with the stresshead I was through his pregnancy.

    I loved this post so much (and I heard bits of it in your own voice which I so loved when you did the spoken word vlog!).

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  11. I have lurked. I'm sorry. I cannot imagine what two years is like. Thank you for sharing your blog with me. I am Crystal; my eldest daughter dances at Donna Scott. At your suggestion that your blog helped you, I have started a blog too. Well actually I started it a while before but had forgotten about it. http://crystallined-dreams.blogspot.com/ It has helped. So thank you. And I hope you don't mind if I peep around for a while. I just can't imagine what two years is like. It's only been not quite two months.

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  12. "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."That's exactly how I miss too... Actually I can relate to so much of this, but I can't really keep quoting your entire post back at you.:) Remembering Calla with you and wishing you continued peace and healing.

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