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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The Robins Are Back

the robins are back,
springtime is nigh.
the sun overhead
fills the powder blue sky.

i hear their cheeping,
those chicks, very tiny.
new life, fresh and green
new eyes, bright and shiny.

springtime is coming
its scent fills the air,
i run through the streets,
sweet breeze through my hair.

the robins are back,
i hear their singing.
and on days like today
i know what spring's bringing.

at the back of my teeth
there's acid i taste.
i've fallen right in,
cement block 'round my waist.

my head swirls and bobbles,
my thoughts all a-jumble.
i run and i run
but inevitably stumble.

the robins are back,
their song mocks me so.
sun, go back in.
grass, please don't grow.

springtime, you see,
is eternally tied
to grieving, to worry
from when my girl died.

the first sun of spring
turns my body to stone.
frozen in time
and still so alone.

the robins are back,
and so is my grief.
shrouding all of my thoughts,
stealing light like a thief.

Here I Am, There I Go

When Calla died, like right after she died, it felt like my life had a reboot. Suddenly, tasks that were rote, routine, were complicated and foreign. C started making the coffee in the morning for me, despite him not being a coffee drinker. I often would forget which way to go when driving. I, for a little while, forgot how to cook and, more alarmingly, how to eat.

My entire life was shadowed by a thick fog of grief. I felt as though I was wandering blindly through it. In those early days, we got a new computer and had the house set up for Wi-Fi. C also treated himself to some wacky video game that required the player to slay these awful, screeching things. After E would go to bed we'd sit, in our television room, and exist through technology. C would play his game and I would dive into the blogs. There was one particular blog I found, and whenever I check it these days I can almost hear that screeching, shrieking sound from the game--so linked are the two in my sensory memory. The background color seems to just elicit those screams. E now has a little game for the wi.i that has a similar sound. We don't allow him to play it all that often.

And then, well, when I found myself pregnant again so soon after she died, the blogging life kept me alive. Reading about healthy subsequent babies, and the emotions attached to all that baggage, was a stronger jolt than my morning, C-made coffee. I maniacally checked my reader, often several times an hour, looking for some glimmer of hope.

When O was born, alive and kicking as he was, again my life took this crazy turn. And suddenly I had run out of time to write. Despite all this grief and sadness that still existed, exists still. Except now no one wants to hear about it. Well, that's not true. People do talk about Calla and ask me how I'm doing and most people acknowledge that things are hard sometimes. And listen honestly and unflinchingly when, on the rare occasion, I choose to open up about it. But life, now, is more complicated. I've relearned how to drive and eat and cook, but I am still, dammit, stymied by how to fit my dead daughter into my life.

If I talk about her too much--which, frankly, I rarely do, it's just too hard for me--I feel like the wailing banshee parading her dead daughter's body through the streets. If I don't talk about her often, I feel like a neglectful mother. And like I'm putting myself out there as completely FINE! I'M FINE! Can't you tell I'M JUST FINE?!

I am in a place that I, two years ago, never believed I'd be in again. I function mostly like a normal human being. This past weekend I went away with my friends for a crazy-insane-whirlwind-beyond fun weekend--without C or the boys. What? Who does that? And! I'm doing it again in a few months with another group of friends!

But then it turns, in my head, to this:

So, what you're saying here is you, lady, have not one but TWO healthy boys, a loving, caring husband, a roof over your head, you can stay home with your kids, and have not one but TWO groups of good friends who can just pick up and go away for a weekend of fun? AND! Also you manage to have people stay with your children when you want to say, go for a run or yoga class? Who, exactly, do you think you are? And by what right do you think you have to be SAD?! Like, ever?!

But see, that's just it. All these wonderful things in my life mutually coexist with this crushing sadness. All it takes is a stray noise, a click in my Reader, a picture, a memory and I'm back there, more than two years back. And I keep coming back, now to just one word: HOW?

Apology

I'm sorry I've been gone.
I'm sorry I'm still here.
I'm sorry I don't comment.
I'm sorry I comment too much.
I'm sorry I've been crying.
I'm sorry I'm not crying enough.
I'm sorry I want to leave.
I'm sorry I want to stay.
I'm sorry I want time to myself.
I'm sorry I don't want to be alone.
I'm sorry I want to go with.
I'm sorry I want to stay home.
I'm sorry I can't do it.
I'm sorry I'm actually kind of good at it.
I'm sorry I'm so busy.
I'm sorry I have nothing to do.
I'm sorry I seem happy.
I'm sorry I seem so sad.
I'm sorry I care so much.
I'm sorry I don't seem to care at all.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.

Two For Real

Today is her birthday. Somehow this day is easier than yesterday was. Remembering that chilling, eerie feeling of knowing my daughter was dead, but not really knowing for sure, then knowing for sure . . . it was my own little horror film. Delivering Calla, waiting for the labor to be over . . . well, that was really hard. But I had a goal, a focal point, I knew the outcome.

Her delivery, sadly, was not beautiful. It was emotionally and physically the most torturous thing I hope I ever have to live through. I screamed like a mortally wounded animal and wanted with every fiber of my being to die.  I have guilt that her birth was so ugly.

So now I feel compelled to give her beautiful things. But what, I am wondering, do you give a dead baby?

Today we went here with the boys, and then when we got home I ran through the cemetery. I thought it was fitting to spend the day with children and dead people. C took the day off from work and we just put our heads down and got through it.

On my run I stopped at Calla's marker and cleared it off. I sat and had a good little cry. It was a beautiful sunny and relatively warm day. I couldn't help remember two years ago, after she died and was born, driving around the cemetery looking for suitable places for her marker. It was so very surreal. And yet, it still is surreal. Visiting my dead daughter's cemetery marker on her second birthday. That sentence has about fourteen things wrong with it.

I debated writing anything on the eff beez today. I don't want people to think I'm trolling for sympathy. But then several friends wished their living children a happy birthday today, and I thought, "what the hell." So I did.

Here we are, marching onward into our third year without our girl.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for your kind words. It means just about everything to me.

Almost Two

This is the day when every minute has historical significance. When I was making curtains, eating chocolate, getting my haircut. We had takeout tacos for dinner. I was having abdominal muscle spasms which I hoped were baby movements. I freaked right the hell out and went to the hospital.

That sonogram.

Two years ago, today, she was dead. Two years ago, tomorrow, she was born. Two years ago, yesterday, was the last day of my blissfully naive life.

The weather this January, so far, has been freakishly warm. Unsettlingly so. It is giving me that nauseating feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the other eight feet of snow to drop. The weather two years ago, right now, was blisteringly cold. The night we went to hospital, in fact, was the coldest day that month. And still, while waiting to deliver my dead daughter, I was waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Two years. I look back at my life, then, and am amazed by how far we've come. The milestones are too many to list. But we are a different family. I am a different person, almost entirely.

And yet she is still dead. That stays the same no matter how much we grow.

I am still caught winded by pregnancy announcements, by third babies, by little girls with curly hair and blue eyes and who are two. It stings much less now. The sting is not entirely gone.

Her death has not defined who I am, but it is maybe the most real part of me. It is immoveable, unchangeable; it is woven throughout my speech, my thoughts, every action.

It is all I have of my daughter. And I miss her so very much.

Handle With Care

I wonder, sometimes, why I continue to be surprised by how insensitive people can be. Maybe I should just hide myself away in a cave, far away from anyone else and their opinions.

Often I'm caught off guard by how fragile I still am, and continue to be, even nearly two years away from my baby girl's death and birth. How just a suggestion can shatter me completely.

And then the strange bedfellows I keep really send my head spinning. First the Duggars, and now Rick Santorum? Who AM I?!

So, this morning on msnbc dot com there was an article about the Republican presidential candidate, a list of facts the public might not know about him. And right there, at number four, was the requisite family blurb. Within that bullet point was the fact that his third baby died at 20 weeks gestation. And then he and his wife brought the baby home so their living children could meet him, and cuddle him.

Now, people, please. I'm not going to get political here. However, Mr. Santorum shouldn't, nay, CAN'T count on my vote. But I do empathize with him on this point. The path he travels is quite different from mine, socially-speaking.

But how beautiful for his living children. I wish, now, I'd been able to give E that same gift. He will literally have no memory of his sister, her life, her body, her weight, her black curly hair.

So anyway. This morning I had the pleasure of reading someone's opinion of this particular bullet point, expressing how "creepy" it was of the Santorums to let their living children meet their deceased baby sibling. And immediately I wanted to puke and punch something. (I did neither)

Sigh. Just another example of how people just don't get any of this. Just another way for me to feel like a freak. Just another reminder that we are a motley crew, we mourning parents, and there simply are no boundaries separating any of us. We are all connected through dumb shit luck, forever.