you want a physicist to speak at your funeral

Maybe you've all read/heard this before but last week was the first time I had ever seen it myself.  It's been around since 2005, long before I knew what it was like to be a sobbing mother looking for my own answers.  I found some comfort in it and thought maybe someone out there reading here will too.  

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen."

Written by Aaron Freeman

fault

The same breath that the doctor used to tell me our baby had no heartbeat was the same one she used to tell me that the miscarriage was not my fault.  The words flew out of her mouth nearly faster than was humanly possible.  It wasn't anything you did wrong, she said.

It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.

Years ago when I was in the hospital a perinatologist sat on the edge of my bed rolling an ultrasound probe around my heavily pregnant belly.  She was studying the rapid flutter of our son's heart on the screen before her.  This wasn't something you caused, she told me.

It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.

I know that...mostly.  I believe what they have told me...mostly.  But in the pit of my stomach sits a heavy black stone and it pulses periodically with ugly guilt.  If I can't blame myself then on whom can I place the blame?  There is no one else and so I wonder if maybe, yes, it is my fault.

the best medicine

Thank you for all the comments and emails sent over the last few days.  They were comforting and much appreciated.  Really, I am doing surprisingly ok with the whole thing.  The first couple of days there were a lot of tears but now I just feel relieved that it is over.  I took the week off of work (which no doubt my employer is not happy with despite the reason) and I plan to spend as much time as possible with my husband and daughter.  In spite of the circumstance it is a rare thing for me to have so much free time available for the two people I love most in this world.  Being with them is the best medicine there is.

G3 P2 A1

About eight weeks ago I took a home pregnancy test and it was positive.  Yesterday, at 12 weeks and 1 day, I had an ultrasound and was told that the fetus had died.  I watched the screen with the same sense of foreboding I had when we were having the ultrasound that first revealed there was something wrong with George.  Back then I watched that screen, seeing fluid in his belly, knowing that something was very wrong.  This time I knew within seconds of seeing the baby that there was no heartbeat.  Like previously, I waited for the doctor to say it first before I actually believed what I already knew to be happening.  It is amazing how the human spirit will hold on to the smallest sliver of hope against all possibility.

This pregnancy wasn't planned.  I mean, it was and it wasn't, if that makes any sense at all.  Things here have been really tough.  I sometimes think that this city is out to get us and that we would have been better off taking our chances with The Earthquakes and The Terrible Housing Market and The Terrible School System back in L.A.  We just can't seem to catch a break here.  There will be days when there seems to be a little light at the end of the tunnel but inevitably it turns out to be just a mirage.

When George died I felt like the world had singled me out when every one else was easily doing that which I seemed to not be able to do; have a healthy baby.  There was self-pity oozing out of my pores for months before I realized that I was not in fact special and did not in fact deserve a good outcome from a pregnancy anymore than the next person.  Realizing that didn't make me any less sad but it made it easier to live with myself.  I think coming to an understanding about that years ago is going to make this loss less traumatic for me.  At least I am hoping it will.

Now I get to decide which way the rest of this miscarriage plays out.  Having a choice in how I end the physical part of this experience gives me a sense of control that otherwise I would not have, so that is good...I guess.  Wait it out, take a pill, or have a procedure.  I'm scared of all three, frankly.  I wish there was a fourth option that did not involve pain, bleeding and crying.

In two weeks it will be three years since George died.

Fucking March.

timeline

At first you count the minutes.  It is the only way to keep moving forward.  Keep breathing in and out.  It has been ten minutes.

The minutes turn into hours and you stare at the clock.  It has been 24 hours.

Hours accumulate against your will and so you start counting in days.  You have to start eating, everyone loves to tell you.  But everything has lost its flavor.  Every color is gone.  It has been six days.

Soon you move on to marking the passage of time in weeks.  You watch as people, who walked with you during the minutes and hours and days, start walking ahead at a faster clip.  It has been four weeks.

Eventually you make the move from weeks to months.  You start to look at the time trailing out behind you and wonder how it is possible that you have survived as long as this.  It has been five months.

Finally time passes in increments of a year.  You look at your future spreading before you and you begin to realize the missing is never going to go away.  It will get better because it already is better.  But you know that the missing will be your constant companion.  It has been one year.

Now.  Still the missing, even with the happy, always the missing.  It has been nearly three years.

replant

When George died we got lots of flowers.  Bouquets and bouquets of flowers from friends and family, attached with their sympathies.  As the days passed and we continued to stay holed up in our small apartment, afraid of the world outside, the petals from the flowers all started to wilt and drop one by one from their sagging stems.  At one point, I remember sitting on our couch, sobbing while I watched the petals from a particular white rose fall to the table below.  I hated those flowers for dying.

We also got two baskets of living plants.  I honestly don't remember who gave them to us but I became attached to them immediately.  Books about grief and grieving love to advise people not to send living plants in sympathy for someone's loss as it might feel overwhelming for them to take care of.  I think that is complete bullshit.  In the immediate aftermath I needed something to take care of.  I couldn't take care of George anymore and I certainly didn't do a stellar job of taking care of myself for a long while.  But those plants I cared for.  

It has been nearly three years since he died and even though I couldn't keep all the plants in those baskets alive there are two that are still thriving.  All this time they have been in their original containers, looking pretty shabby, because I've been afraid to replant them, convinced that the only thing keeping them alive was luck and whatever magic was in the wicker baskets.

Something had to be done with them though.  After three years they were beginning to look too depressing even for me.  So Leif and I took them to a neighborhood nursery and asked them to replant them for us.  It was a particularly chilly morning and the entire place had taken on sort of an ethereal frosty glow.  The stone frogs had halos of ice.  The rounded Buddhas had frozen watery beards.  The trees and shrubs wore icy coats.  We picked out two pots from the dozen or so that they told us would work well for our needs: one large teal one and a smaller white one.  They took care of the hard part of transferring them and I just roamed around admiring the way the frost had transformed everything.

Twenty minutes later the shabby baskets were gone and the plants looked quite majestic in their new homes.  They actually seemed to be standing a bit straighter as if they were no longer pulled down by the very heavy burden of their initial sentiment.  

When we asked how to take care of them they told us that whatever we were doing was working fine.  Just do what you were doing, they said.  I was hoping for more concrete instructions.   All I was doing was watering them and missing the lost baby they were sent in condolence for.

no title

I've been trying to write something here for months.  Literally months.  I open up my laptop, log into my account and proceed to write a few sentences before completely blanking out.  I stare at the screen thinking that if I do this for long enough the thoughts I have knocking around in my head will magically appear, like when you stare at a cloud long enough it starts to look like an old man's profile blowing smoke through pursed lips or a dog on roller skates.

I guess this is what they call writer's block.  Only I don't fancy myself a writer and the only things I've ever thought I was any good at writing about are death and desperation.  Well, writing about those things indefinitely has turned out to be unsustainable for me.  I think partly because of self-consciousness and partly because I don't know how many times I can write about the same thing.

I miss George.  I wonder what he would have been like.  It is lonely.  It never goes away.  Sometimes I miss the person who I was before he died.

There.  You just read the summary of this entire blog in five sentences.  How is that for some Cliff's Notes?

But I keep coming back here because since I left Los Angeles and the handful of people there who I was readily able to talk to about those five sentences I'm kind of on my own out here.  Of course there is the phone and Skype but it just doesn't feel the same as sitting in front of or next to someone who you can look in the eye and know that they understand you.  My life here feels utterly and completely removed from the one I was living in California.

There is a support group meeting tomorrow morning.  I already know that I am going to miss it.  I've looked up meetings here before and thought about going to them only to chicken out when the date came near.  I'll do it again tomorrow, I am sure of it.  Because as lonely as I am in my grief I am even more afraid of allowing myself to go back to the emotional place that going to a support group will bring me to.

I've been emotional enough recently as it is.

So I am back here...watching for old men and dogs on roller skates.