Another Funeral

We said our final goodbyes to sweet Eli yesterday. It was the same funeral home but so different. A different year, different month, different season and different child. Same family. Everyone was wonderful. There were so many "I'm sorries" left hanging so perfectly. Just when one thinks that her heart cannot break any further, it does. Our middle daughter wanted to hold her baby brother again and again. It was as if she could not bear to let him go. Watching her sob so hard in her beautiful pink princess dress was very difficult. Holding her little body and drying her tears was gave me more comfort than I understand. It was a very special time. Wyatt is buried between the future graves of my husband and myself. Eli is buried at his feet.

I have these song lyrics by O.A.R. running through my head, "How many times can I break 'til I shatter?"

Today our oldest returned to school. She was so excited to share Eli and his pictures with her classmates. It gave me so much joy to help her select pictures to share and see the excitement and pride she takes in her little brother. She said it went very well and her teacher even emailed me to tell me how wonderfully she did sharing Eli and his pictures and answering her classmates' questions. She told me she even shared Wyatt today. What a brave little girl. Today my heart swells with pride for all of our children.

Funny Thing Happened While Planning a Funeral

Today I received a call from my parish nun regarding an email I sent yesterday to her and the priest about funeral arrangements. She was wondering if we could get together to do some planning. I was excited to have some help since my husband is not religious and that's not exactly "his thing" so we set up a meeting for later this morning and she graciously offered to come to our house. Sister arrives and we sit down at the kitchen table and begin looking at readings and talking about the service. My two youngest daughters are happily dancing in the adjoining living area. The older one catches my attention and points to her youngest sister. I look up and see the little one running around with just her shirt and underpants on. I asked her to please put her pants back on to which she promptly refused. They disappeared for a minute and returned to the living room both without their pants.

My children dancing around the living room with no pants on and a nun at my kitchen table. Seriously. I just couldn't make this stuff up.

Gathered the Courage to Call the Funeral Home

Today, for whatever reason, I found the courage to do what I have been postponing for some time. I called the funeral home and set up an appointment to meet with someone to arrange our baby's funeral. I had hoped my husband would do so and asked him, but he has been avoiding the call as well, I'm sure for the same reasons I have. It's all so final. I have made so many of these calls in the last week. I have notified my Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep photographer of our c-section date and time, notified the genetic counselor we met with that we have decided to pursue an autopsy of this little one (we chose not to with Wyatt and I struggled with the decision here) in the hopes of discovering additional information hidden to the human eye that might tell us why two of our children have been so afflicted, and now I made the call to the funeral home. There are so few things left to do. I even packed my hospital bag today. The casket is almost ready, I sewed a lace and satin pillow this weekend and my husband affixed the cross to the top. We still plan to find a way for our daughters to put some sibling flair on it for baby but haven't quite figured that one out yet. It has always been a waiting game, but now almost all of the work is done and the real waiting, in terms of days, no longer months, begins.

Having already buried one child and subsequently brought three healthy little girls home from the hospital, it dawned on me that losing a child is alot more complicated than raising a child. When you give birth to a child that will live, you don't need to have clothes or diapers or frankly really anything for the baby on hand. The hospital has gowns, blankets, diapers, wipes and everything else you will need right away. When you give birth to a child that will not live or not live long it is so important to have everything at your fingertips: a special outfit, blanket, booties, lotion, handprint/footprint molds, baby book, camera, video camera, etc. You only get one chance to do everything that you want to do with your baby. Moments, minutes, hours to capture all of the sounds, scents, touches and snuggles that will need to endure for a lifetime. All of this careful and deliberate planning fits into one carry-on sized bag. I know this because I have now packed that bag for a second time.

Choose the Birth Not the Funeral

This post comes from a selfish place.  It is very important for me to have as much family as possible at the birth of our child, to meet him or her.  This, at the outset, is not so much for me, as it is for them.  I want them to hold and touch our child so that he or she becomes a tangible human being to them, rather than just a picture or "something that happened to Mandy".  Somehow I feel that meeting the child will help them to understand my loss in some small way and I suppose I hope that understanding will minimize their future judgments or expectations.  I don't believe anyone can experience the loss of a baby quite like the mother and father, but perhaps witnessing the excruciating pain of letting go will give them a small glimpse of the grief that will follow.  That after watching such suffering they will be kinder in the future when they feel better, when the memory of that child has faded into the background for them.  When they want me to be me again and I'm not.

So I come to this struggle when I find out that a close family member believes (although I am hearing this second hand) that it would be better to support us at the funeral.  Honestly, it really doesn't matter to me who attends the funeral of our baby.  I don't know if that sounds callous or ungrateful but that's how I feel.  I remember Wyatt's funeral vividly and I recall nothing said that day that eased my pain or made me feel better.  Instead, I remember silently suffering through platitude after platitude.  "It's God's plan", "God has another angel", "You're young and will have other children" and on and on.  Those only made me feel worse.  It's not God's plan, how could a kind and merciful God strike my child down?  God has plenty of angels, people who have lived long lives and he could not possibly have needed mine.  While I am young , I am not guaranteed to have more children.  Yes, I did have more children after Wyatt but I also had a miscarriage and had to seek fertility assistance to conceive my last two children.  Now I'm losing another and due to the number of prior c-sections, I may be told that I cannot have anymore children.  This time I anticipate painful comments about how I should be thankful for my girls and take comfort in them.  Obviously I appreciate and love each and every one of my children, but they cannot replace the ones I have lost and I will forever grieve those children. Anyone who can say "But they already have three children" has not lost a child.  So, the selfish part of me wants people at the birth, not the funeral.  Funerals for babies  are just so difficult, there are no memories to share, people can't tell you their favorite qualities of your loved one or even share a humorous memory.  Just platitudes and tears.  It's no fun.

Goodbye Wyatt

We chose to spend some precious time alone with Wyatt to say our final goodbyes and prepare to let him go. At some point and time my husband had changed from his scrubs to regular clothes.  I was finally able to sit up in bed and hold Wyatt a little easier.  I believe we let him go in the early afternoon.  And then we were alone.

Wyatt was born on a Thursday and I left the hospital before noon on Saturday.  Leaving the hospital with empty arms was an indescribable experience, heartbreaking is the closest words can come.  The three flights of stairs up to our quiet apartment had never seemed so long.  Family was there but they didn't know what to say.

We had the funeral on Monday.  Of course, just enough time had elapsed for my breasts to be large swollen and extremely painful.  This was a cruel twist of fate that took my completely by surprise.  I had never given birth and my body simply did not know what happened to my child when he left it.  We went to the funeral home early and were able to spend some time alone with Wyatt.  He looked like a chubby little doll.  Beautiful and at peace.  Though I did not see him differently in life either.  He was dressed in a baby blue Winnie the Pooh onesie.  We wrapped him in a homemade blanket.  We held him for the last time.  I honestly don't remember the funeral much, I sobbed through most or all of it.  I rarely took my eyes off the tiny coffin made by my husband for our precious son.

My brother in law drove my husband, myself and Wyatt to the cemetery.  He rode between us.  To me, the worst day of my life was not the day we received Wyatt's diagnosis or even the day he died.  It was the day we buried him.  There would be no more opportunities to see, touch or hold him.  My thoughts of snuggling his warm little body were replaced by thoughts of him deep below ground, cold and alone.  I will never forget the memory of that little coffin being lowered into the grave.  I worried whether he was okay so often in the weeks and months to follow.  A mother's instinct I suppose.  At least when I carried him I knew he was okay inside of my womb, safe.  I knew he wasn't actually in the cemetery in the sense that he needed me, but I needed him.

My grandparents offered to have a lunch at their house afterwards.  I remember mostly two things, that my mother made my favorite strawberry pretzel dessert and the shock of looking at my ankles and seeing how extremely swollen they had become.  I'm pretty sure I cried myself to sleep for a long time afterwards.