on the two year anniversary of the birth and death of my son

In the beginning my grief was raw, raging and so very, very ugly- a jagged piece of stone with edges so sharp that it would cut, scrape and produce scarlet droplets of blood from whatever tender piece of flesh it came in contact with.  My own skin or that which belonged to someone else, it didn't matter, it was an equal-opportunity slicer and dicer.  It was nasty and it hurt.  But it was my truth and I owned it -or maybe it owned me- because other than my husband it felt like the only real thing in the world.  Everything else was made of paper and string.

It was cold hard disbelief that composed the majority of my early grief.  Disbelief that he was gone.  Disbelief that there wasn't anything I could do to remedy the situation.  Disbelief that something this terrible had happened to me.  After all, I had never before been in a situation that I could not in some way or another wriggle out of, work my way out of, or more commonly, luck out of.  I had lived the first thirty years of my life in relative security that nothing too bad could ever happen to me because, well, I was me.

Time rolled on and as the hideous truth began to settle into the farthest reaches of my mind where denial had its last strongholds, misery and regret were the dominant players.  I replayed events in my mind on a loop, looking for the junctions where my current life crossed with my old one.  It was in a parking garage where I pushed back an appointment with the perinatologist.  It was when, after taking the digoxin and flecainide for the hundredth time, I immediately vomited all over our bedroom floor and starting crying that I couldn't do this anymore.  It was when made the decision to stop treatment after his heart rate returned back to 250.  It was when, as they were prepping me for the emergency c-section, we asked for the neonatologist to come talk to us again about what his chances for survival and a normal life were going to be like should we choose life saving measures.

So many choices.  So many possible different outcomes.

I still wonder about the choices we made during those five weeks but it doesn't consume me the way it used to.  I've mostly resigned myself to the belief that had we made different choices things may have turned out for the better but they also, and most likely, could have turned out for the worse.  There are outcomes far more terrible than holding your baby while he gently dies.  I truly believe that.  Of course now I have a beautiful daughter and it feels unfair to her to wish that I had made different choices.  He died and she is alive.  Try as I may to believe it to be true there is doubtful an arrangement of choices I could have made that would grant me the existence of both my children.

These days though, I mostly grieve alone over his loss and the trauma of what happened.  For the onlooker two years probably seems like an eternity to hold on to so much sadness over a baby who I never even took home with me.  Especially when I have a living, breathing, growing baby at home now.  But I relive the trauma of making those choices and watching George die on an ongoing basis.  It is not something easily forgotten and it isn't something that having a subsequent living child negates.

So my grief is quiet.  I've grown accustomed to shouldering the majority of the work in remembering him.  While there are some in our life who still remember there are many more who either have forgotten or lack the courage to bring him or our experience up in conversation anymore.  The truth is I understand that very few people could possibly miss him the way we do; our parents, my sister, a couple of close friends feel his absence.  I don't hold that against anyone.  I really don't.  There is no anger.  Just loneliness...and the wish that more people could understand that what we went through was more than just losing a baby at 29 weeks.  We live with the trauma of lengthy hospital stays, my body being pounded to a pulp by medication, emergency surgery, making the choice to let our child die and then watching that happen.

I think it only gets lonelier with time.

But it also gets easier.

I feel pretty good most days now.  My life is full of love and wonder and excitement.  Clio brings me more joy than I ever thought could be possible and I am overflowing with gratitude that she is ours and that I get to be her mother.  Everyday she starts to look a little more like her father and it gives me pleasure to see the man I am so very in love with reflected in the face of our daughter.

I am grateful for George even in the midst of all the sadness and longing I carry around with me.  The girl I was before is gone and although there are times when I also fiercely grieve her demise, I like this version of me more.  I am kinder and gentler.  I've gained more empathy for the pain of others.  I am most certainly wiser.  I feel less entitled and more appreciative for the people in my life.

George has taught me to take nothing for granted.  So today, on the two year anniversary of my son's birth and death, I am going to hold close to my family, escape to the mountains, and be thankful for the life that his existence prepared the way for.



*Thank you to everyone who has sent emails remembering George on this day.  This community makes my grief less lonely.  You are all amazing and I am tremendously grateful for each and everyone of you.