Those Old Gentlemen Made Me Cry

A couple of weeks ago I found myself watching an episode of the Dust Bowl by Ken Burns on PBS.  Having not been around during the Dust Bowl I found it sadly fascinating.  But no more so than when they interviewed individuals who had been around during the Dust Bowl.  These men and women were just children during the Dust Bowl so their perceptions and recollections are very pure and emotional.  Like the older gentleman who recalled his mother going into labor after a dust storm blew through.  She gave birth to twins and it sounded like they were premature.  The gentleman teared up as he recalled the doctor telling his mother that there was nothing he could do to save the little boys.  His tale of how they were buried together in makeshift surroundings made tears run down my own face.  Different story, same result, as another older gentleman told of his family of eight children and how the youngest two, twins, consisted of one boy and one girl.  The only girl of the eight children.  He recalled how she was so adored by the entire family, and clearly by him.  Then he told of how when she was only two years old she got dust pneumonia and became gravely ill.  She had called for him before all others but there was nothing that could be done and she died in their house.  This particular episode recalled the Dust Bowl in the late 1920s which is eighty or so years ago for these men.  Eighty years had not dimmed their sharp recollections of siblings they knew for so brief a time nor did they dim how affected these men were by the absence of those siblings for so many years.  I cried and I thought how amazing and amazingly sad it was that after all of those long years and the many intervening events which occurred in their lives up to that point, that talking about and recollecting their little brothers and sister was still so profound.  I thought of my own daughters and their brothers.  Words are only part of those stories, the tears said everything I needed to know.

Living With Death

When I look in the mirror sometimes all I can see is death.  Death and sadness reflected in my eyes.  Living with death - it's more of an oxymoron but it's also something I am quite adept at.  I've carried two precious boys in my body for about eight months of my life between the two pregnancies knowing that at any second there was a very real chance of my babies dying.  Wondering if that day would be the day, or the day after, or the one after that.  It has now been one year and four months since the last day I have had to wonder and I will never have to wonder again because my childbearing years have finally come to a close.  Now I'm left wondering about many other things.  What the long term impact of those months is for myself, my husband, my marriage and my children.  I don't believe our children will have a long term impact resulting from our decision to carry Eli to term, his death and absence have made a far bigger impact.  My husband is a rock and like most rocks, he doesn't talk much.  So I honestly don't know what emotional effect watching his wife carry two babies that we knew would not survive has had on him.  I don't know what seeing the sadness on my face or the tears in my eyes did to him.  I imagine the impact is probably more than I could guess.  Our marriage has been strengthened in a way that most couples will never experience.  A great amount of stress on such a bond can do that, either it'll break under the pressure or find a way to stay together.  We have done the latter.  Yet I still wonder if the experiences will produce side effects in the future when we least expect it.  Myself, who knows?  Most of the time I am fine.  As fine as any one woman who has given birth to six children yet watched two die in her arms hours or minutes after their birth can be.  I doubt that anyone who doesn't know this little gem about me would ever be able to guess.  There are no visible scars.  So I go on living with death.  I am blessed to have given birth to both of my sons alive and to not know what it is like to truly carry death.  I just carry the fear and realization of death and those did not leave my body nine years ago nor one year ago.  I just go on living.

Living Through Death

I don't know exactly when my sons died.  I know the day but not the times.  Sure, there is a time recorded on their death certificates but that is not it.  Their deaths were not measured in terms of one final breath, but ever slowing heartbeats.  I do know my very first glimpse of death was just hours after my first child's birth.  I also know that I would have it no other way.  If any of my children die, I want to be there, holding them if possible, until that moment passes.  Although I can't pinpoint that moment in June 2003 or March 2011 on the days of my sons' births, I can feel it.  If I close my eyes I can return to the hospital room...my vision adjusts to the dim lighting, I can smell their newness, listen to the near silence surrounding us and remember the awe that I felt every minute of their lives.  There was a distinct before and after.  Before left me in awe of every moment that passed and every minute detail which I could absorb.  There was nothing but Wyatt, nothing but Eli.  Between before and after was just a moment.  Just one moment separates life from death.  Somehow we knew when that moment passed and in that moment everything changed.  I was like a video recorder that switched from record to playback.  I knew the show was over but just had to watch it again.  So many more memories were recorded in the after but they were different than the before.  No less precious, just different.

I lived through my sons' deaths.  I went from the moment before, to the one between and then the one after that.  I live, I remember and I love.

Cinematically Musing

Spellcheck says my title is not correct, but go with me on this one, it fits. Last night as I drifted off to sleep I found myself thinking about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Specifically, the story of the deathly hallows. For those unfamiliar, three brothers trick death into giving them what they desire. The first requests the most powerful wand but his recklessness with it results in his death by the wand's hand and then the wand being claimed by his killer. The second requests a stone that can raise the dead and resurrects his lost love but she is not the woman in his heart and his grief drives him to death. The third wisely requested a cloak of invisibility so that he could escape death undetected. He was able to live a long life and depart this earth with death as an equal at the end.

You may wonder where I'm going with this, you may even think you have me figured out. The resurrection stone, right? No, I've seen Stephen King's Pet Cemetery and any notion of raising the dead vanished after that movie. What interests me is the third brother and his departure from life with death as an equal. My sons never had a choice. There was no medical procedure or alternative to death. At the same time, they didn't understand death. I, of course, did. But I did not choose to give them to death or anyone else for that matter. I held each of them long after death stole their lives. So I've decided that someday I wish to depart this earth as the third brother and willingly accompany death as an equal from this life. There is much to be done until then. Forgiveness must be given freely, kind words spoken often, judgement withheld, truth spoken with kindness and love acknowledged constantly. I must make peace with my decisions and live them to the best of my ability. I believe that these things will allow me to walk away when death comes.

Undo

Computers have their pitfalls, but seriously, is there any better thing you can imagine that the "undo" or "delete" features found on our keyboards and within our computer programs. The ability to take away something unintended, erroneous or regrettable. If I had such a button there are so many words I have uttered which I would simply delete, so many things which I have thought that I would just erase, so many feelings I have felt that I would just undo. Of course I would love to just undo my sons' deaths, erase the pain that those deaths have left, fill in the giant gaping holes in my heart with a photoshop-like ease as if they'd never been there at all. Aside from those obvious things there is another that I've carried with me for probably ten years now which I only began to regret eight years ago after losing Wyatt. While I was employed during graduate school I can across a situation where a family had lost their newborn daughter. I had access to their photographs of her and their family. She had been lost either prior to or during birth. I distinctly remember viewing those photos and commenting to a co-worker that it seemed a little morbid to keep those photos. Typing these words causes me pain now but then I was just an outsider viewing a very unfamiliar and uncomfortable situation. My co-worker, whether from experience or aged wisdom, replied to me that those photos were all they had of their little girl.

How many conversations can you remember from ten years ago, nonetheless conversations with a co-worker? I will likely never forget that one, it made an impact on me years before I would create a photo album with pictures of my own deceased children. However, that would be one I would delete. My lack of sensitivity and empathy is embarrassing. I am so thankful my words never graced that family's ears. I am grateful that my sadness and sorrow has given me a perspective which I believe I may never have otherwise gained and a sensitivity which not so many of us have. Yet as I sit here it occurs to me that even though I have lost two babies on the day of their births I STILL don't understand that family's exact grief because my sons cried, they breathed and they opened their eyes - if only for a moment. Their daughter never did. Her birth was silent and the tears shed that day were their own. Yes, I would definitely "undo" those words in a heartbeat.

Holy

After Eli's diagnosis I turned to the church for help. More so for validation of my beliefs than anything. I needed to know that God was my Father and that he would care for me as a parent and that he could not be the one to have caused me so much pain. I found comfort there that day and I was also surprised. My priest called me holy for enduring to have endured and continue to endure such suffering for my tiny children.

As I grieve another death today I find myself thinking of these words differently. In my mind I picture a quilt, the most beautiful heirloom quilt built one square at a time over countless years. Each square is a memory, a story. Then I imagine one of those squares being violently torn from that beautiful quilt leaving only frayed threads behind and effectively destroying the quilt's carefully constructed framework. When I see that blanket it is impossible to see beyond that ragged gaping hole. The quilt cannot mend itself and it cannot be fixed without adding foreign material, things it has not known and is not comfortable embracing.

I imagine this is what grieving that death might be like. Having a person whom you have carefully constructed a life around, a person who is a constant presence in your life, your thoughts and your heart violently and suddenly ripped away. That hole must be all consuming and may even make you want to get rid of the quilt altogether. I imagine it would be something that I would put aside because I did not know how to even begin to mend such a precious item, nevertheless where to find suitable material with which to mend.

My losses have been different. My time with my sons was spent rubbing, talking and singing to an unknown being in my belly. I had only short minutes and hours in which to memorize the colors of their hair, their eyes, the feeling of their bodies and their sweet baby scents. I grieve the loss of what could have been more than what was. Yet I am holey. The holes in my quilt are tiny but significant.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Today I am shaken. My husband's friend lost his wife this weekend. One day she was very present and the next so very absent. Her absence is at this point unexplained but strongly felt.

My heart dropped when he told me. Death is not a stranger but for me he usually knocks first. I ache so badly for this young man left alone far far too soon. They did not have children which to some may be a positive, but like so many of us he not only lost someone he loves very very much, but he lost the promise of life.

He will never see his wife give birth or witness the melding of their genetics into one perfect little being. Death leaves him with only physical mementos, photos, and the questions that accompany a life ended much too soon.

Death creeps in through days, weeks and months and sometimes like the most skilled of thieves he sneaks in when you're not looking and is gone before you know he was there. Today I am shaken by him.

What if it Happened Again?

Since finding out about this little one's Potter's Syndrome I have read many many stories from parents who have lost children. I have read books and blogs and memorial websites. Very few from parents who have lost more than one child, and I don't know if I've read any from parents such as myself, who have lost two children to the same condition which was supposed to be a "fluke" and continues to be unexplained. My question relates to those who have clung to their faith, perhaps were even strengthened by it as they awaited the birth of a child not expected to survive or attempted to gather themselves after the unexpected loss of a child before or after birth. So many have shared stories of complete faith that God will/would heal their children. So many of those stories end with children whose healing did not take place on this earth and still the parents' faith persists, often stronger than ever. It is a story with which I am intimately familiar. I've lived it, I clung to my faith and my baby Wyatt with every bit of strength that I had and it took me a long time to let go. It was so painful when that healing, that miracle, was not granted with no explanation. It opened the door to more questions without answers and comparisons/judgments that were not for me to make. My path diverged from the faithful and it took me a long time to find my way back.

So, I find myself wondering from the perspective of those whose faith sustained them through the loss of their children - what if it happened to you again? What if you were to lose another child for the same reason you lost the first and no one could tell you why you lost either child? Would you be able to take comfort in the same beliefs that brought you comfort the first time? Would you believe that your child would be healed a second time after having watched your first child past from this earth? Do you, who have not walked this path, look at me as less than faithful because I don't believe that my baby will be healed by God during his or her lifetime? Very hard questions with answers truly beyond our grasp, such a personal situation.

Who do you know who has lost a child?

If you had asked me this ten years ago or so I'd have probably given you an incorrect answer.  Losing a child was something that was not on my radar even though my maternal grandparents lost a baby right after her birth due to what may be a similar condition as what we're experiencing and my paternal grandparents lost five babies to early miscarriages.  My godmother had two stillborn babies.  Since losing Wyatt I know of so so many more losses.  I've made many friends through online support groups and boards and shared in their grief over the loss of their babies.  I've learned of co-workers and friends' losses and other losses have occurred within my distantly related family as well.  Myself, I have lost two babies, Wyatt to Potter's and an early miscarriage between my first two living children.  Soon I will lose another.  I know of losses at all stages of pregnancy and even early infancy and for all kinds of different reasons.  I probably would not have known of many of these losses though had I not had my own.  Pregnancy and infant loss is not something that people talk about.  There are so many reasons why.

I took my middle daughter to the clinic yesterday for a nasty lingering cough.  The nurse who took her x-rays was very excited to see my pregnant belly and asked if this was my second child.  I froze for a second, unsure how to answer.  For the past seven years it has just been easier to answer that "how many children?" question by referring to my living children, the ones people see.  Since I go to the clinic often, I answered that this will be my fourth.  Sometimes it hurts more than others to not mention Wyatt.  It's not that I mind explaining that we had a boy as our first child and that he died.  It's the look in other people's eyes, sometimes pity, confusion or discomfort.  No one asks the "how many children?" question expecting to hear about death.  Most families are blessedly untouched by an experience like ours, they don't know how to respond.

It makes me wonder how many times I have asked someone how many children they have and how many times that answer has not just slipped off their tongue because they didn't know whether I wanted to hear how many children they really had or how many children I could see that they had.

All this Talk about Death

It is the big pink elephant in the room and there is no ignoring it.  Death hangs over me, but not really, me like a bloated raincloud.  My last OB appointment revolved around it.  No happy fundal measurements to see how much the baby had grown, because this was my first fundal measurement due to the lack of fluid.  No jokes about the holidays and pregnancy weight gain.  Talk of studies, autopsy, funeral, testing.  The hearty, meaty stuff that is really chewy and leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you finally swallow it down.  I do know that I will deliver baby early, probably around the time I delivered Wyatt.  I also know that my doctor has hope that my uterus will be able to sustain another pregnancy and that means the world to me.

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.