In my last post I inadvertently touched on a very sensitive subject. Well, actually I knew it was a sensitive subject but I thought I did a pretty good job at explaining myself about being faced with the challenges of participating in other people's lives when it comes to pregnancies and infants while also grieving the loss of a baby. I am red-faced because I did not do such a great job of explaining it at all. I think now, in hindsight, that the explanation and the feelings behind that deserved their own post entirely.
If grief was an object, it would be a high wire (if it was a person it would be
David Bowie). You start out from one end, marked by the death of your child, with no one giving you any real direction on how to traverse the Grief high wire. You are not given a balancing pole or special shoes or even a net, although occasionally you get to a point where you can rest for a moment before you have to be on your way again. Despite this you go forward because otherwise it means being stuck or worse yet, falling to your death below.
As the walk lengthens and time passes you become aware of what exists on each side of the Grief high wire. On one side, should you fall, you would fall into the deepest despair and depression imaginable. On the other side, should you fall, you would fall into pretending that everything is perfectly alright even though your baby is dead. Either way you are lost. Either way you are no longer you. You are either a black shadow of your former self or a dollar store replica of yourself- plastic and cheap. Either way you are lonely from fake relationships or no relationships at all.
It is difficult to find the balance as you walk. Not just for yourself but for everyone else who is living their lives in the midst of your high wire act. People are watching you as they go along their own lives. Some of them make tremendous efforts to help. They watch with baited breath and are scared that you may fall off. So they try to help in whatever way they can. You have the cheerleaders rooting for you, the engineers trying to steady the wire, the philosophers trying to keep you focused, and the clergy praying for you. It helps. All of it. But ultimately you are still on a Grief high wire and you are still there alone.
Some of these people have what you lost when you started this Grief high wire act. Although you are still on that wire, slowly placing one foot in front of the other. You know that they are on their own kind of path, not a Grief high wire, but something else. Most of the time you give them your best and most genuine smile, even though it is still painful up there, because it is real smile. Sometimes you can't and you need to turn away from them to focus on the placement of your feet. All of the time, even through the pain, you are their cheerleader, their engineer, their philosopher, their clergyman.
You share in their joy the way they share in your grief.
They share in your grief and you feel steadied enough by their compassion to share in their joy.
There are other people too. The ones that maybe you knew of in passing (or maybe you knew really well, who knows) before you stepped off that platform. The ones that you still see from time to time from your vantage point, also living their lives in the midst of your hire wire act. They are the ones who look blankly at you as if they can't quite remember where it is or what it is you are doing all the way up there. You look at them and realize that once upon a time they knew but now that you have been walking up there for so long they have forgotten or have chosen to forget. Sometimes it makes you mad. Usually it doesn't. Mostly it just makes you grateful for all the cheerleaders, engineers, philosophers, and clergy you know.
Some of these people have what you lost when you started this Grief high wire act. They want to show those things to you. To the whole world. More times than not, even though you are still walking up there all by yourself and you risk falling off the wire down to the dollar store plastic version of yourself, you want to do for them what they have been unable to do for you. You want to bear witness. But sometimes you just don't have the energy to keep your self perched precariously to that side of the wire.
Then, of course, there are the others. The ones that when you look around you, you see them tottering around on their own Grief high wires. From above, you talk with them. You give them the best support you can and they give you the best support they can.
You trade secrets with them-
If you crouch down when things get really bad it lowers your center of gravity and makes it easier to stay balanced.
You talk about experiences with them-
I've been doing this for two years already. Trust me, it will always suck but you do get better at keeping your balance.
You commiserate with them
- You ever get overwhelmed by the inescapability of all the pregnancy and baby-related content there is in the world and the silence we feel responsible to keep about how it affects us?
It is good. All of it. We need it to survive. At least I do.
But sometimes I forget that all of us on our Grief high wires are not really and totally alone up here even when it feels like we are. The other people in our lives are still there with us, most of them doing their best to understand -even though hopefully they never will because there is only one way to understand life on the Grief high wire- and they are still watching us intently. Watching us intently because they want to be there in case we need a cheerleader, or an engineer, or a philosopher, or a clergyman.
I have forgotten what life was like before being up here. Sometimes I also forget that there are others who aren't on this Grief high wire that are doing the best they can to still be present.
I talk shop. I trade secrets. I commiserate. I forget. I inadvertently touch on a sensitive subject.
I am so fortunate to have so many people in my life who fall squarely into the category of "people who try to help me while I walk this wire" and "people who are walking their own wires." I don't have many people around me who fit in the "people who wan't nothing to do with my grief but want me to participate in their joy" category.
I want to acknowledge that. I want to give it the attention it deserves and say,
Thanks for helping me to keep my footing.
