Two Years Flies By When Mourning a Rosebud and Raising a Rose

Today is Eli's second birthday.  In my memory he was born just yesterday.  Memories are like snapshots frozen in time.  I remember getting to the hospital, just my husband and I wearing my "lucky birthing outfit" (I've been able to wear the same outfit to the hospital all six times I gave birth).  I remember waiting for everyone else to arrive.  I remember before going to the OR everyone waited to give me a hug one by one before they filed out and left us alone once again.  I remember the excitement of knowing in just moments I would meet my little boy.  I remember pure joy at hearing his cry and knowing he was alive.  I remember my very next thought was of his impending death.  I remember crying and smiling and smiling and crying as I stroked his cheeks and nose.  I remember the soft little cries he emitted.  I remember when those cries stopped and he became still.  I remember my cries when that happened.  I remember how Eli looked in my husband's arms.   I remember the wonder of his naked little body as we bathed and dressed him.  I remember every precious moment we spent as a family of five as I watched my daughters meet their brother and snuggle with him.  I remember the anguished cries of my older two girls as they sobbed uncontrollably when they had to say goodbye.  I remember how good it felt to take pictures because I knew how invaluable each one would become.  I remember the anguished cries as I had to say goodbye.  I remember the crushing  loneliness after he left us that evening.

I've wondered how it's possible to miss someone I didn't even know so much.  I have no real memories, no words to cling to, no stories to laugh or cry about, nothing but a few items of clothing, a clip of hair and many photographs and snippets of video.  But I did know him.  He was knit in my womb.  I knew him from the moment of creation.  My body recognized a tiny bundle of cells as a human being that needed special care and attention from that moment on.  I grew to understand his waking and sleepy times, his movements and even what sounds he liked.  I knew his spirit from within and I believe he steadied my spirit.

I miss you baby boy.  Every minute of every hour of these last two years.  Happy birthday.

Healing is a Recurring Theme

I'm Mandy, I've had six children, but only enjoy two on earth because my two precious sons died the days they were born almost eight years apart due to Potter's Syndrome bilateral renal agenesis.  This blog is my story and in telling that story for the past two years I realize that I have a recurring theme - healing.  That's because in the almost ten years - yes, ten years (which caused me to tear up when that hit home today) - since I lost my firstborn, Wyatt, I have been in the process of healing.

I'm preparing to go under the knife (dental bone grafting to help fix a lovely congenital defect on my side of the family - ugh!) today and find myself thinking a lot about healing.  My gums will close up around the graft and with the most minimal help from me and my hygiene, they will heal and hopefully grow lots of bone thereafter.  Most wounds will do that.  They just heal so long as we keep them clean and undisturbed.  Which makes me wonder if the human brain has a similar capacity.  How does our mind heal from such a damaging wound as a child's death?  Would my brain heal these wounds much easier if I would just stop sticking my finger into them?  But how can I not?  How can I not remember the days of my sons' births?  How does a time of year, outfit, flower or even a scent not remind me of moments when I carried them in my belly?  I don't know but it interests me.  The human body has a remarkable capacity for healing so it's logical to believe that the human mind does as well.

I'm a healing in progress.  Imperfect.  Broken.  But healing.

Something Different About a First Child

Eli's second birthday is quickly approaching and I find myself this year, for the first time in two years, not pregnant in February.  The memories of the last two years haunt me during these few weeks.  My husband's birthday and our second daughter's birthdays are also rapidly approaching so it is hard not to remember our celebrations last year and how joyous (and plump) I was compared to the year before when I was just a little less plump and a whole lot less joyous.

But the pregnancy, birth and loss of Eli was different from Wyatt's.  The knowledge of what was to pass made things easier but so did my children.  For all of my worry about what Eli's death would do to them and then when he did die, having to watch my children suffer through the same emotions that I felt, it was nothing like watching our first child, Wyatt, die, and living through the aftermath.  I now know why.  Because when Wyatt died, in a way, so did my motherhood.  I had nothing but pictures, a few clothes, blankets and stuffed animals to remember him by and to identify myself as a mother.  But without the baby those things could not be so readily displayed and I found myself visibly robbed of claiming that identity.

When Eli died I suffered through many of the same emotions and difficulties.  Some of the worst for me was my milk coming in and still looking pregnant but not having that baby to make it all worth while.  But I was still a mother to everyone else.  I had three little girls at my bedside the day I gave birth to him and every day after.  They needed me and more than they'll ever understand, I needed them.  They gave my days purpose and eventually they helped me to see the little joys again.  After Wyatt died it was just my husband and I.  But he went back to work and then it was just me alone with my grief and my wounded body.  Physically and mentally I probably healed more peacefully since I was really able to go at my own pace.  But it was so lonely and overwhelming that I ended up going back to work as soon as my doctor would let me.  We tried to fill our hearts by getting a dachshund puppy but her needs and our abilities to meet them did not quite match up so we made the gut wrenching decision to find a family who could make her happier.  That didn't exactly help my grieving process.  But neither did banging my head against a brick wall over a five pound puppy!  It just wasn't the same.  My husband gives me an identity as a wife but only my child could identify me as his mother.

So with Eli even though it was physically, mentally and spiritually exhausting to care for our children while going through a pregnancy that would end in loss and then experiencing that loss and trying to heal from giving birth via c-section, it was those three girls that saved me.  They kept me afloat and for that I am so thankful.

Lenten Observance

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday or the beginning of the Lenten period in the Catholic Church.  Yesterday marks the one month countdown to Eli's second birthday.  Sunday was weekly mass.  Sunday I found myself thinking about one month from yesterday (Eli's birthday) and how appropriate it is to me that his birthday falls during Lent.  Lent to me is a heavy time.  For me, it is a time to prepare for Jesus' death and as a mother who has experienced two of her own sons' deaths I can really relate to the time and to Mary's loss as Jesus' mother.  Now, more than ever, I feel that heaviness in my heart and my bones.  And apparently I will for at least the next five years.  You see, I looked at the calendars through 2018 and Eli's birthday during each of those years, and likely for all of the following years, will always fall during Lent.

Giving up chocolate or other sweets, even television, seems so silly in light of what I gave up just two years ago.  Lent has now become an acute observance of mourning for me and there is no earthly deprivation that could hold a candle to the deprivation of my sons that I live with every day.  I would live that one day of Eli's life just one day every year if I could.

Nothing Places

I recently read the book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Up Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer.  In it is a married couple with some serious love/communication issues which results in the creation of what they dub "nothing" or "something" places.  They invent these places where they can just disappear from the other person's presence.  It's an interesting thought to me, these nothing places.

With four kids and a husband in this moderately crowded sized house I can't fathom any place being a nothing place unless they were all out from under its roof.  But it would be nice sometimes to find one of those places.  A place where just for a few minutes I could be nothing, feel nothing and do nothing.  Nothingness.

I imagine that those few minutes would lead to a few minutes more and then eventually I would never leave my nothing place and that scares me.  Because nothing is really nothing.  We are meant to feel, the good and the bad, and to live, the easy and the difficult and through those things we learn and adapt and want more.  I want to be in a something place and mean something to at least someone until the day that I turn into nothing on this earth.

Untangling the Knots

I feel that I am just navigating a complicated web of knots lately much like an unraveled ball of yarn.  Some strings are loose and easy and others have inexplicably wound themselves into the tightest of knots.

I think it has a lot to do with number four.  More than ever, watching her grow up and move through the babyhood stages has made it crystal clear what I am missing and what I will always be missing.  When I went through this stage with number one I was so overjoyed just to have a living baby it really didn't matter as much whether she was a boy or girl and though her babyhood was bittersweet it was also elating in the celebrations of each little milestone.  With number four I know what's coming and I know what has passed.  The surprises aren't what they are with a first living child.  There is still joy and celebration but there is also a level of comfort and knowledge.  I've done this three times before so the little things don't send me into a tailspin of doubt and worry like they used to.  There's an ease to raising a fourth child and that ease has paved the way for my mind to wander down a different path.  A path on which I have at least one little boy, though hopefully both, in my life.

It probably doesn't help that Eli's birthday is just two months away.  Last year at this time I was pregnant and all of my focus went into getting this little girl here safe and sound.  I focused on a little person wriggling in my belly.  She didn't have a face, a personality, a smile, a laugh or a cry.  I couldn't make her happy or scare her or soothe her bad times away.  This year that is most of what I find myself doing and it's just too much sometimes.  I wonder how things will feel once his birthday is passed.  As my four year old says, "One, two, three, wait and see".

Christmas Future

Here we are into the new year, another Christmas gone.  My ninth Christmas spent missing my firstborn and only my second missing my fifthborn (if that's a word).  My emotions got the best of me this Christmas, and not in a good way.  Six stockings and four children really hit me hard.  My daughters perfectly innocent but searing questions as to why Santa didn't leave their brothers anything and how I knew their stockings were empty just killed my inside.  I left the room with a trail of tears.  We did everything like normal.  The usual hustle and bustle, the usual family busyness and the usual stress that goes along with a lot of family visiting for a short time.  We still got the boys gifts for their graves which we lovingly placed at the sites on Christmas Eve.  But it wasn't enough.  It wasn't right.  For me.

Next year will be different.  If I get my one wish we will find ourselves at the happiest place on earth and I will leave with some of the best memories ever.

But there will always be the year after and it is for those that I am seeking change.  The traditions that have been in place and that I find myself and my families clinging to desperately have to give some or give way to new traditions.  Traditions are traditions for a reason, I know.  They stand the test of time.  But I need to be able to stand through them and this year they frankly brought me to my knees.

For those of you newer to the grief that accompanies the loss of a child and specifically the shooting range full of triggers that accompanies holidays such as Christmas, I am officially nine years from my first loss and I can honestly say that ever single year since his loss I have experienced an unnamed sadness this time of year.  I have found it hard to smile, found it hard to find the joy in the season at times (not always) and found it so much different than the Christmas I remembered.  I thought hard about it this year since somehow as I find the years passing I find myself less internally flexible.  I am less willing to give myself license and space to grieve.  Another words, I am my own worst enemy.  I am telling myself its not okay to grieve, or at least grieve so much, at Christmas anymore.  That's not okay.  I have given myself permission and now taken it one step farther.

I am changing Christmas.  I am willing to create new traditions that will work for me.  Ones that respect my sadness and will hopefully help me through it much better.  I've come to the conclusion that it's just not worth it for me to continue putting on a smile just to make others happy when I am anything but happy inside.  It's not all about me and I am going to find a way to gently incorporate as much tradition into my new traditions along with a healthy infusion of honesty and let the chips fall where they may.  A few words to the big guy and the two little boys he's keeping for me can't hurt either.