.just another day.

Two weeks ago today George's due date came and went with not much more than regretful thoughts of what should have been and imagined scenarios of how wonderful things could have been.  There was no fanfare, no congratulatory flowers or nervous excitement.  There was no car seat or stack of diapers ready to be used.

There was no baby.

Instead there were hushed voice mail messages, consolatory texts, and emails heavy with sadness from family and friends.  None of which I knew how to respond to except to thank them for remembering him.  Because memory is the only thing left for him now.

And of course there were tears.  I never realized how many varieties of tears actually exist in the world until now.  Frustrated tears, sorrowful tears, angry tears, exhausted tears, and guilty tears.  So, so many guilty tears for so, so many different reasons.

I never wrote much about our attempted island escape that day because I was never really sure of what to write that I had not already written in one way or another.  But having that day come and go was like losing him all over again.  As Leif described it, that day was the point in time where the shadow life started and we, here in this life, were still left with the reality of what happened. 

We could not fix his heart.  We could not save his life. 

...if only we had caught the tachycardia a week earlier...
                                        and
...if only he had been a few weeks older when it started...

We could not manipulate time.

Modern medicine failed, despite everyone's best efforts.

And so George has two birthdays.

I find myself slowly resolving into acceptance of the things that I could not have changed and fixating on things that I had the power to change but didn't.  I should have brought the baby blankets my mom and Leif's mom made for him to his delivery.  I should have made sure they gave us the cap he wore.  I should have told the Anesthesiologists to stop being so fucking normal and fine with what was going on while I was on the table waiting to say hello and goodbye to our baby.  I should have taken more photographs. 

I should have spent more time with him.
I should have spent more time with him.
I should have spent more time with him. 

Everyday I still miss him and everyday I still wish for him back.  Yet these last few days have been good ones, I swear.  I can say his name without my eyes brimming with tears or my voice trembling with sadness.  I can laugh and it is not just pretense.  I can make jokes and not feel like I am betraying my son's memory by feeling happy.  I can look at the future and not see a solid black wall of nothingness.

God, had I known therapy would be this awesome I would have started long ago, when I didn't even need it.

I know these last few days are probably just a brief break but this feeling of some kind of normalcy is welcome.  Soon enough I am sure that I will find myself struggling with the same feelings of sorrow and longing that I have become accustomed to.  They will start to creep in around the edges before long but I know that this is just the nature of the beast called Grief.

.in other news.

Today Marc and Natalie are celebrating their first wedding anniversary.

I had more fun at their wedding than I have ever had at any other wedding.  Maybe even our own. 

Wishing you two a very Happy Anniversary and many more to come.

.belated.

When it comes to anniversaries or birthdays Leif and I usually don't buy gifts for each other.  It is not that we don't celebrate the occasion, we just generally prefer to celebrate by gorging ourselves on food from somewhere that we are otherwise too frugal to afford. 

This year for our third anniversary things were different.  Neither of us felt much life celebrating.  Yes, we have a very happy, very strong relationship.  We love each other wildly and we are best friends.  We have so much to be grateful for.  But we also have a dead son and we miss him everyday.  As you can imagine losing a child tends to suck the happy out of many occasions. 

Without even discussing it really, we each made the extra effort to do something special for our anniversary this year.  We went to Palm Springs for the weekend and spent the majority of our time eating and laying out by the pool.  We also gave each other gifts.  Leif gave me a beautiful handmade diorama of a balsa wood bird and a hollow red metal heart.  I carry with me in my purse.

My gift to him was a family portrait, of sorts.  It took awhile to find the right artist to make it because most portrait artists out there are either prohibitively expensive or not our style.  By the time I finally found the right artist there was not enough time for her to complete it before our actual anniversary.  So he has had to wait all this time for his gift, not knowing what it was.

It was completed yesterday, and although I haven't seen the printed version, I have the digital copy.  I'm pleased with the way it turned out.  More importantly, Leif loves it.

So here it is. 

Leif + Brianna + George

The artist is Nan Lawson.  She was very easy to work with and I highly recommend her.

You can find her work here, here, and here.

.i love not camping.

My husband likes to camp.  He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and as a consequence he enjoys spending the night in a sleeping bag in the middle of the forest.  That and he wears plaid and flannel, like a lot.   Seriously, check out how much of this he actually has...

That isn't even including the one he is wearing today or the ones in the dirty laundry.  I encourage his love of plaid and flannel because I think he looks good in it, so there you go.  I am an enabler.

Unlike my husband, I do not like to camp.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate camping but I generally find the idea of using the backside of a tree as a bathroom facility unpleasant, which is pretty much the situation one finds oneself in when backpacking and camping.

The last time I went camping was back in the fall of 2006 when we were visiting Leif's brother and some friends who live in Portland.  I have to admit that was a fun trip. It was an anomaly of camping.  However, it would have been more fun had we encountered Sasquatch because I am told he lives around those parts. 

Despite my disdain for camping there are times when I get the urge to get out of the city and for longer than just our normal day hikes.  I've been having this urge for the last couple of weeks.  I am tired of hearing stupid helicopters all the time and the people working on the house renovations two doors down.  I am sick of the traffic and of the smog.

I want out.

But backpacking in Southern California is so much less appealing to me than doing so in Oregon.  But I am open to suggestions and if we actually make it out camping, I know my husband would be forever grateful.

.of bones and fossils.

I don't live too far away from an area of Los Angeles that was named for the tar and oil that has been seeping up from the earth there for nearly forty thousand years.  During these forty thousand years or so animals have been getting stuck in the tar and dying, leading to a massive amount of fossilized remains for nerdy scientists to play with and piece together like some mighty economy sized box of Tinkertoys.

Works out well for us since we got to go to the museum recently, which is comprised of all the bits and pieces of animal remains that they've found in the tar pits.  We oohed and aahed over how different life was ten...twenty...thirty thousand years or ago.  Didn't really work out as well for all the animals that got stuck in the tar though, as demonstrated by the life-sized installation outside the museum that depicts an adult and juvenile mammoth watching helplessly from the shore as another adult mammoth slowly sinks into the dark muck.  Very uplifting, that installation.

I can admit that sometimes I feel not unlike that mammoth stuck in the tar.  It was probably wondering, right after it first stepped into the tar and realized that it was in serious trouble, what the hell just happened and how did it get there when just moments before it was on perfectly solid ground.  I keep thinking the same questions.  How did we get to this place?  It feels like just moments ago everything was going along quite smoothly and suddenly WHAM! we're stuck in the fucking tar pits.

It makes me wonder if years from now we will be in our own museum that we have named George and after roaming the halls for the hundredth or millionth time we will stumble upon the fossilized remains of the people who we were before we got stuck and the ones who we had to sacrifice to slog our way out again. We will hold hands and ask each other, "I wonder what they liked to do for fun or how they dressed?" and "Do you think they loved each other as much as we love each other now?"

"They probably had no idea what was about to happen."

"How very sad for them,"  We will say.

There may even be a placard with a description that reads: "They thought they were invincible."

.sew say we all.

I have a sewing machine.  This is backed up by photographic evidence here.

I know how to use said sewing machine but only in the most rudimentary way.

This woman makes sewing look easy.  See?  See how easy it is to turn hideous thrift store finds into really cute clothes?  See how easy it is to do this every single day of the year and for 365 dollars?

.before.

.after.

 .before.

.after.

So I could pull out the sewing machine, blow the dust off of it and try to use it to create something interesting.  But I know all I will succeed in is causing myself a bunch of frustration and an allergy attack.

P.S. See how I did that up there?  In the title?  I made a pun out of a reference to Battlestar Gallactica.  Nerds everywhere bow down to your Queen!!!

.mondays and why they suck.

Mondays are the worst.

I know that the majority of the working population would agree with the above statement.  You go to bed on a Sunday night, after having fun for the last two days, and wake up to a whole week of suck.  For me Mondays are not about going into work, because well I'm not working right now.   

What?!?!  In this economy?  I thought you lived in Los Angeles????

Yup.  What can I say?  Leif and I are just frugal old fuddy-duddies. We make it work.

There is, however, a huge stack of board review books that is sitting on my dining room table at this very moment.  If you listen closely you can hear their soft whispers shaming and judging me for the five weeks since graduation that they have mostly gone unnoticed and neglected.  On second thought, I guess the author of those whispers is my own guilt.  After all, I have an absurd amount of educational debt to repay since I went to the most expensive university in Southern California [insert more shameful and judgmental whispers here]. 

But I digress.  Back to the topic at hand.  Mondays and why they suck.

They suck because it is back to just the two of us when Leif leaves the house.  Meaning me and Grief.  We are the newest version of Bosom Buddies, if you will.  You can think of me as Henry, the reluctant cohort, and Grief as Kip, the obvious leader of the comedic duo.  Instead of the cross-dressing charade of Kip and Henry, Grief and I try to convince other people (ok, mostly I just try to convince myself), that life after George will not be shit forever.

We don't even need to change the theme song.  Don't believe me?  Just watch/listen for yourself.



Grief can really be a high maintenance pain-in-the-ass.  Grief demands attention constantly.  He has a larger than life personality and frankly he dominates almost every situation that the two of us find ourselves in when Leif is not around.

Leif is the only one I know who can quiet down Grief in any meaningful way.

Side note: Why do I refer to Grief as a "he?"  Really Grief is more androgynous a la David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust period, I think.  


Almost everything Grief does is over the top (again like David Bowie?).
"Look at me!" Grief exclaims. "I'm juggling your entire world over here.  What?  You don't want me doing that over a giant gaping black hole of sorrow?  You're afraid that it might fall in?  You have nothing to worry about.  What could possibly go wrong?"

But there are sometimes, like as I write this, when it is just the two of us that Grief tuckers itself out early and naps on the couch next to me.  Grief is always there, probably will be for the rest of my life (BFFs Forever).  But during the last week Grief has been in overdrive so I think it just doesn't have the energy this morning to tear shit up like usual.  A welcome respite but I know it won't last for long.

So I guess I should take advantage of this time and get some actual work done.  I mean really, if everyone else has to go to work maybe I should too.

I think the next visit with my therapist I will bring up the fact that Grief is looking more and more like David Bowie these days.  I wonder what other peoples' Griefs look like...

.my favorite fathers.

To my father:

As fathers go I have pretty much the best one a person could ever hope for.  I love him dearly. 

The skinny tomboy who was always at the heels of her father, a second shadow following him where ever he went may have grown up and gotten married but she has never stopped being his little girl.

My father, the most gentle man in the world, taught me what it means to be compassionate and giving.

 And he is so very proud of me...which means the world to his youngest daughter.

To Eric:

What a great father-in-law I have.  Some people complain about their in-laws while all I do is sing their praises.  One who can raise their son to be as respectful, loving, polite, and kind as Leif, is a great father indeed.

To my husband:

You are the most courageous father I know.

I love you so, so much.

.stay classy los angeles.

How do Angelenos like to celebrate the Lakers' 2010 NCAA Championship?   

LA Times

National Post

With riots, of course.

Despite what it may look like there really are sane and respectful people living in Los Angeles.  It is just that sometimes we seem far outnumbered...

.travel envy.

 Nepal, or "Never Ending Peace and Love" as my friends called it after their trip there, is where Melissa is right now.  She has been gone for over six weeks and has spent the last three or four of those doing a medical mission in Nepal.  As a nurse practitioner she can practice medicine there under the umbrella of a relief organization (physician assistants are finally starting to be allowed to work in the area as well).

Melissa's photographs are pretty amazing.  She has a knack for capturing people, something which I've always had trouble doing.  Being able to capture people as they really are and not in some fabricated pose is a difficult task as we are all trained to put on a show for cameras.

These are some of my favorites that she has taken while on her trip.  

Anyway, Leif and I are missing our friend these days.

..

I don't really have much to say.  Yesterday was George's due date. 
We went to Catalina because we didn't want to be home.
We thought it would make things easier but I am not sure that it did.

.june 16 2010.

Our hearts are in a million pieces.

.make believe.

"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend..."
Neil Gaiman (Brief Lives)

.day after.

Yesterday was a really, really bad day.  One of the worst since right after we lost George.  Today is not as bad.  I didn't stay in bed all day and feel sorry for myself.  Well, I still feel sorry for myself.  I think that is not something that is going to go away for a long while and I reserve the right to periodically wallow in self pity.  I think I've earned it.


But to prove that I haven't completely lost my shit (I think I inadvertently really freaked my sister out yesterday) here is a little something to brighten your day like it did mine.

From here.

..

This is complete and utter bullshit.

Today I refuse to try and be happy.  Today I will lay in my dark bedroom, close my eyes and let myself remember everything.

I will remember his button nose.  I will remember his tiny arms and the blue-green veins that traced along his fingers.  I will remember watching his dad hold him.  I will remember him alive.  I will remember kissing him while he could still feel my touch.  I will remember him in death.  I will remember everything we lost when we lost our boy.

There is no consoling, no "things will get better with time." They will not.  Not really.  I may learn to live my life but there will always be a gaping bleeding hole inside.  I will be eighty years old and I will still grieve my son.

I want to find solace with other women who have lost their babies too.  But mostly I find women using terms like "angel baby" and how God will see them through this and all along this was part of His plan...  and I cannot relate.  I don't have any notion in my mind that George is an angel in Heaven and I don't believe God, if there even is one, had any hand to play in this disaster.  Praying to a god who allowed my son to die is not going to heal my heart and it most certainly won't bring him back from the dead. 

I used to believe.  In another life.  A life long before George was even a light on the horizon . 

I often wonder, while jumping from blog to blog if dead babies mostly only happen to Christians.  It seems this way.  Perhaps before their own dead babies at least a few of them were like me: agnostic at most.  But maybe tragedy of this magnitude makes people hold on to anything that makes them feel less despair.  I can understand and I certainly don't begrudge anyone of their faith, but I can't relate.  Right now I want so much to relate to another person who carries this around with them with the same sense of finality that I do.  I only feel more alone and isolated with every blog, every message board, every book I find. 

Leif believes.  He believes we will see our son again one day.  I am happy that he does.  It makes me happy that he has hope.  He has hope enough for both of us and for now that has to be enough.

.me.

If I don't bring up the subject of him it is not because his name is not on the tip of my tongue or running through my mind.  Always, he is always there.

If I seem to be happy and jovial it is only because I want to make you feel comfortable. You see I fear that if you were to see the real me you would feel nervous, uncomfortable…frightened.  For you would see the lost woman who lives deep in the woods, barefoot with leaves in her unkempt hair and a tattered dress that hangs in rags over bony prominences.  You would see the mother of a dead baby who holds the remains of her infant close to her chest as if her warmth might somehow warm his cold skin.  As if the pounding of her heart might restart his still one.  She walks aimlessly through shadows of the tall trees, catching occasional glimpses of other faces.  She has forgotten where she is and only vaguely remembers a different place: one that was filled with sunlight and rolling hills of wildflowers. 

So when you ask me how I am and I give you the answer you want to hear, understand that it is an act of compassion on my part.  But if you are not afraid to see, to really see, tell me you miss him too.  Tell me you miss the boy he would have become.  Tell me you remember his name.

Hold him for a moment.  Feels his weight in your arms.  Remember him and by doing so help me to remember myself.

.my hopeful living room.

I made this through a website called olioboard. I would love to redo our current living room to look like this but at the moment, considering we aren't sure how long we are going to be in this apartment, it just doesn't make sense.  Oh well.  Dreaming is fun too.

Danish Modern lounge chairs from Danish Modern Teak Classics.
Kilim rug from Overstock.
Sofa from Room and Board.
Side tables from West Elm.
Lamps from Crate and Barrel.
Curtains from Ikea.
Pillows from CB2, Crate and Barrel, and Chiasso.
Coffee tables from CB2.

.yogurty yogurt.

Today I made yogurt.  If you have never tasted homemade yogurt you are seriously missing out.  It is so easy to make and tastes worlds better than any type of yogurt you can buy.

Basically the recipe goes like this.

1. Get a gallon of milk, any kind you want except for nonfat because we've found that it doesn't work as well.
2. Heat it up until it reaches a near boil or about 180 degrees.
3. Take the milk off the heat and let it cool until it reaches 120 degrees.
4. Add about two tablespoons of store-bought yogurt.  It doesn't really matter what kind you use as long as it has live cultures.
5. Let is sit for at least four hours.  It is important to keep it warm so either wrap it in a couple of towels to retain the heat or leave it in an oven that is turned off (this is what we do)
6. At this point the yogurt is done.  You can leave it like this if you like a thinner type of yogurt or you can filter out the whey using cheese cloth to make a thicker greek-like consistency

For a more detailed recipe you can go to this blog.  

From here.

.for the birds.

A pair of sparrows have made a nest on our porch.  When our front door is open we can see them on the telephone lines outside, flying back and forth from their nest.  I've never been much of a "birder" but lately I've been loving watching all of our feathered friends that live around our apartment.  So I got this bird house/feeder from Anthropologie yesterday.  I'm hoping that it attracts some of the other birds that I know are in the neighborhood even though it means cleaning up bird droppings (yuck).

.recuperation.

It started out as a cold.  Three weeks later it is mild pneumonia, or "walking pneumonia," as people like to call it.  This is what happens when you are coughing up green chunky phlegm for weeks before going to see your health care provider.  Also what happens when you don't take care of yourself is that you show up at a doctor's appointment for a cough and end up getting a pulse ox and an EKG because your heart rate is too fast (oh that feels too familiar...).

You know it is most likely because you are anemic since you never took iron replacement (even though you knew better) despite the blood loss from the c-section and subsequent six weeks of bleeding that followed.  So you get your blood drawn, a prescription for an antibiotic, and a follow up appointment for two weeks.

Last weekend my therapist strongly encouraged me to take this week off from studying. Yesterday gave me a reason to not feel guilty for following her advice.  Because taking time off simply for the reason that I have not had enough time to adequately take care of my physical and emotional health since George died isn't enough to ease my guilt about not being productive.

.an open letter to the next great drummer.

Dear Neighbor-Person Learning How to Play the Drums,

It is great that you have found an activity that you so obviously enjoying doing.  I can say that with confidence even though we have never met because for the last two weeks I have heard you banging...I mean, jamming, every day from the hours of 2:00pm to 6:00pm.  If you are really having a good time then you will keep going until closer to 7:00pm.  I can tell you must be getting really good because you play the same riffs over and over and over again so I know you are getting lots of practice.

At first I thought you were playing outside, because how else could you be coming in so loud and clear in my living room? But now I think you are playing inside and that you leave your doors and windows wide open so you can share your love of percussion with the neighborhood.  This is very thoughtful of you.  If you didn't make me listen to your...umm...music, I would have to just sit here in silence while studying for a very, very important exam.  I think you must have gotten the idea from our other neighbor-person who likes to repeatedly play scales for hours on his clarinet nearly every day as well.  It is nice to live in a neighborhood where music is so greatly admired.

So thank you, neighbor-person who is learning to play the drums.  I really, really appreciate your passion for music.

Sincerely,

Your biggest fan.

P.S.  Just minutes ago I heard a new addition to our music-loving neighborhood.  You have a singer to go along with your drums now!!!  This is very exciting news.  

.mocking birds.

So after nearly an hour of searching through online images of native southern Californian bird species I have finally found the name of the birds that have been hanging around outside of our apartment for the last couple of months.  They're Northern Mockingbirds.  Whenever I hear them singing I am always reminded of my grandmother's house and afternoon naps because I would always wake up to warm golden afternoon sunlight and their chaotic but beautiful songs.

Sometimes late into the night or early morning we can hear them singing, which is unusual for birds.  But I discovered that the un-mated males, during mating seasons, will sing well into the night.  The males are also fairly territorial and aggressive and we have seen them, on more than one occasion, chasing after crows.

From here.

This is what they sound like.

.first aid kit.

Last night on a whim we went to see First Aid Kit play at a tiny little venue not far from our house.  Two sisters, aged 17 and 20, from Sweden are probably most well known in the US for their version of Fleet Foxes' song Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.  

This was the first show either one of us had seen at the Bootleg Theater (we missed Broken Bells playing there a couple of months ago when we went to The Magic Castle).  Per their website it was originally a warehouse built in the 1930s which is now a space used for art, theater and music.  I'm guessing packed to brim the place only holds a couple of hundred people so any show there is going to be pretty intimate (another pang of sadness for missing Broken Bells).

The second act, Samantha Crain, was one of those bands that as soon as you hear the first few notes of their first song you know that it is going to be a good show.  Samantha Crain, the singer (and I assume primary songwriter) has a good energy about her, which is contagious and when they play it is hard not to want to bounce around to the music.  Also the drummer is a girl.  And she is good.  I always appreciate a good female drummer as you just don't get to see them that often (I'm sure they're our there I just rarely get to hear/see them).

For the most part I wasn't too familiar with much of First Aid Kit's music, aside from the Fleet Foxes cover.  I guess you could describe them as folksy.  They definitely write and sing songs that make you think that they have experienced a lot more of life than is realistic for people at their ages.  Which, I guess is why the average age of the audience member was a bit older than what you would normally see at any type of Indie music scene in central Los Angeles. 

They did a beautiful job, even though it was obvious that they were a little jet lagged since they had just arrived in the US (for the first time) the day before the show.  I would absolutely go see them again and would highly recommend their show to anyone else.  Leif noted on our way out that this was probably the last time they would ever be at such a small venue in Los Angeles.

My favorite song of the night, Ghost Town, was possibly one of the best songs I've seen played live in a very long time.  No mics, no amplifiers.  Just two amazing voices.

.should.

Today is the day that I start studying for my board exam.  I figure that it will be two months of full time studying before I am actually ready to take the thing.  The last thing I want to do is fail it because then I couldn't take it again for another three months.  No pressure.

I have to admit that my anxiety about taking the test is tied up in my heartache over George.  Being alone, in silence, with a bunch of boring reading material is a recipe for disaster.  My worst moments, those moments where I am so overwhelmed with grief and irrational thoughts,

If only I had made the ultrasound appointment for a week earlier....If only we had tried another intracardiac injection...If only we had not decided on comfort care...

are those when I am alone. 

I can't help but be distracted and wonder how differently things should have turned out.  Should.  My favorite word.  As if life should be anything at all other than what it is.  I should have been able to have a healthy baby.  I should be washing tiny little baby clothes and packing my hospital bag to be ready for when I went into labor.  It should be very, very soon.  I should be anticipating holding my son for the first time. 


June 16th.  
June 16th.  
June 16th.
June 16th.

Shoulds and if onlys will follow me around for the rest of my life, biting at my heels every time I see a child around George's age.  How does one get over that part? How does one go on in this world instead of the one that should have been?

I miss him so much. 

I want him back.