our son

We sent this card out to our friends and family to acknowledge his birthday.  

I never thought I could love anyone as much as I love my husband until there was George.  Made from love.  Perfect and beautiful.

We miss him so much.  

seven days

This time last year my baby was still alive and each kick I felt was breaking fragments of my heart away, knowing that any one of them might be the last.

Sometimes I am left stock-still by the shock of it all.  I went into the hospital to give birth knowing that my son would die and I would be going home without him.  Yet I still went!  How did I not run the other way, screw my health, and just take off running in the other direction? How is it even possible that it all happened?  How does anyone go to the hospital very pregnant and leave with an empty belly and no baby?

Now I have an urn and three terrible quality photographs for that horrible experience.

I'm feeling very alone these days.  I love my family and friends and am especially appreciative of the ones who have been reaching out recently to see if I'm ok -I'm not really- but I want someone who knows how I am because they've been where I am.  But there is no one I know in my every day life.

I want to take the next week off of work, close my eyes and try to remember every moment of that last week.  As hard as it was, I still had him with me and I would rather it be hard like it was then, than hard like it is now.

pulling teeth, or might as well because it'd be easier

Words are not always so easy for me to come by.  My thoughts race around and bump into each other and I often don't have the capability to gather them neatly into sentences and paragraphs with any kind of discernible message.  I want to write something beautiful, like my favorite passage from Mark Helprin which I've written about here before:

         "The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is."
          
or something honest, like this from Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
      
         "Don't wish me happiness 
            I don't expect to be happy all the time...
            It's gotton beyond that somehow.
            Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
            I will need them all"

or something funny, like this from my beloved Oscar Wilde:

        "I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability." 


or something profound, like this from Kurt Vonnegut:

        "Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why." 


I want to write something that does justice to how much his brief life has impacted my own.

Instead my words fumble and tumble.  My sentences: disjointed.  My syntax: sucky.  My hyperboles: cliched.  My message: repetitive.  My use of semicolons and colons: probably incorrect.

There is so much I want to write about.  So much I want to say about being lonely and about being bereaved and feeling unlucky but also about being in love and living life as best as I can.  But, especially lately, I can't find the way to say those things and make them make sense to anyone but me.
So I stay quiet because what I want is poetry but what I get is a textbook.

If only I could capture the thoughts and emotions that are bubbling up. Capture them and turn their nebulousness into something more tangible. That would be good.  That would be good.

As if starting a new job isn't stressful enough...

add an entirely new career,

one in which I am responsible for people's actual physical health

while I'm pregnant,

still mourning the loss of our son

and trying to navigate that mine field of emotions.

All while watching the date on the calendar get closer and closer to the anniversary of his death.

Even though I work with nice people (really I do) there are days I come home and just want to crawl in bed and pretend that I don't have to get up and go back the next day.  I want the confidence that comes from practicing medicine for years even though I know full well that I am actually going to have to put those years in before that happens.

Years.

Suck.  Why didn't I pick a career with less stress?  Like billionaire heiress.

what comes next is the crazy

We went back to the perinatologist's office again for the first time since George died.  The last time we were there was the day before he was born.  The doctor was evaluating my condition since they were concerned that I was developing HELLP syndrome.  He performed another -what turned out to be the last- ultrasound in order to see how George was doing (even though we knew it was only a matter of days before he would most likely die).  I couldn't even look at it.  Leif did though.  He watched our son on that screen- moving and alive.  But I couldn't look and now I often feel the pangs of regret about that.  The me on this side of his death wants to scream at the me on the other side, "You stupid idiot!  This is all you have!  Look.  See him while he is still alive!!!"  I feel ashamed that I didn't have the emotional reserve to see him one last time like that.  

I'm four months -and some miscellaneous days- pregnant.  Everything is fine with this baby so far.

But last night I had my first, and I am sure not the last, breakdown of this pregnancy.  I sat on the couch and cried and sobbed on Leif's lap before moving to the bed and doing the same there until I fell asleep.  It has been awhile since I have cried myself to sleep and I woke up this morning with puffy bags under my eyes.  I recognize you, I thought about the woman I saw in the mirror.  Last night I realized that part of me, the insane part of me, was thinking that somehow we were being given a do-over.  Same doctor's office we were first given his diagnosis.  Same room.  Same sonographer.  Different outcome.

But this baby is not George.

George is dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  I am never going to see or hold him again.

I have to live the rest of my life without ever knowing him.

Last night the envy for all women who got to take home their children was stronger than I have ever before felt.  I wanted to scream that it wasn't fair and throw shit around the room.  Instead I just slobbered it into Leif's flannel shirt.

I am grateful for this baby.  I am grateful that this baby is alive and well so far -fingers crossed- but my desire to have George back is still so palpable it scares me.  What kind of mother will I be when all I can think about is the child who isn't even here?

turtles and tapestries

I deamt I was on the moon.  I looked out and saw the world and it was on the back of Old Turtle.  Turtle asked me about the world.  He said he had been holding it up for so long- How long again-  For eternity, I answered.  -How long is that- Forever, I replied.  -How long is that-

I shrugged, A very long time.

He told me that he had been holding it up for so long yet he had never seen it or, if he had, he could no longer remember what it had looked like.

He sighed a great deep sigh that only old Turtle could sigh.

Are you tired, Old Turtle?  I asked.

Sometimes, was his reply.  But most times I just wish I could see and feel things as I once did.  Old eyes and a tired back...time corrodes us all.  Nothing lasts forever.

I nodded my head in agreement and Old Turtle squinted at me through aged yellow eyes.

Everyone carries a world on their back, Short Timer, he said to me.  In that, we are all the same.

....

I awake in the morning and it is so still.  The tide of my breath and the rhythm of my heart against a background of silence makes me feel a million miles away.  A million miles away and still tethered to a single point in time.  

I remember that the world still spins and my tapestry is still being spun in shades of golds and blues and grays on an invisible loom.  But a new color is being spun too -added to the golds and blues and grays- and it has already begun to change the landscape.  I touch my belly and briefly wonder about the possibility beating away there.  A waver of hope, too intimidating to contemplate.  

Stay.  Please stay with us this time.

My mind shifts.

I arch my back.  I feel the grind of the weight of my world on my spine.  Still there, I think.  Always there.  

And another day begins.

....

white squares and upcoming events

Some weeks ago we got a piece of mail from the hospital where George was born. In it was a square of white fabric and a letter explaining that it was time for their annual "Forever in our Hearts" ceremony to commemorate all the babies who died during the previous year. The white square, which will be added to a quilt, was for us to decorate in whatever way we want to memorialize George.

Also last month we got a refund check from the hospital. Apparently we were overcharged 150.00 for George's delivery. Hmmph.

Sometimes I forget that George ever even existed to anyone but to me and to Leif. People generally tend not to bring him up anymore in conversation unless we do so first. As we come closer to the one year anniversary of his birth and death, it is increasingly strange to get these kind of reminders that he was indeed real in this world.

Next week brings us to the year mark when last year everything went to shit. We walked into an appointment at the perinatologist as blissful expectant parents and walked out a few hours later nearly catatonic with shock.  

I'm not sure how these next six weeks are going to go for us. The other night we finished his memory square, sent it off to the hospital and I emailed the coordinator to see what we could do at the event to help. We are still trying to figure out what to do for him next month. We are taking the day off from work but beyond that we don't know what feels appropriate.

We never had a memorial service for him and I don't think we will this time either, even though I do eventually want one.  I just don't even know where to start planning such a thing.  Invitations?  Is there food?  We aren't religious so what would we do?  It all seems overwhelming.  Part of me feels guilty that we haven't had one but the other part of me feels like it just isn't us.

What kind of fucked up shit is it that these are the kind of events that some people have to plan for their (dead) child?  It is some real fucked up shit is what it is.

For those of you who read this and know what being here is all about, how did you commemorate your child's life?