Does One Bad Seed Spoil the Apple?

I find myself waking to a country song repeating in my head and while I can't relate to a lot of them in many ways (though I thoroughly enjoy them nonetheless) there is one that I can extrapolate on.  Two Black Cadillacs.  Now if you know this song, you may be saying, wait a minute!  I'll put you at ease quickly - my husband has not had an affair and I have not plotted to or succeeded in killing him.  Now that we have that settled....

The lyrics say something like "[t]he preacher said he was a good man and his brother said he was a good friend but the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry".  Of course my first thought was what a dirt bag this guy was, how could there be anything good to say about him?  But then once I started thinking a little deeper it occurred to me that perhaps he was a good friend.  If he was a father, he could have even been a good father.  Obviously he was a lousy husband and a lousy boyfriend but the question then becomes ...

    Does a bad deed, even a very bad deed, make a bad person?

I struggle with this question because my instinct says yes.  My relation to this song comes from some interpersonal relationships and judgments that I have made in those relationships based on the other parties' behaviors.  I have deemed these behaviors bad and so I have attached that label.  Once that label is stuck on, goodness gracious do I find it hard to peel back.  The fact that I have made these judgments in the first place pains me and is a different topic for perhaps a different day but I've done it so we'll move on.

Could I be wrong?  Absolutely!  Have I ever made bad choices?  Absolutely!  So why am I throwing stones?  Short answer - weeding my garden.  Wyatt and Eli have brought great introspection to my life and how I lead it as well as who I let grow in my garden.  I've come to realize that some people can act as weeds in my garden.  Their negative energy, words and actions can threaten to overtake the beauty which I carefully guard within.  I've learned that a weed is a weed and no matter how nicely you treat it, a weed will grow all over your flowers, veggies and fruit and make absolutely no apologies.  My weed removal method of choice is to pull them very slowly from the ground taking care to remove the entire root system if at all possible.  As an aside, it is also really fun to burn them with a handheld torch until they shrivel and die!

Yet all of this still leaves me speechless.  I don't have the answer.  Perhaps there is goodness.  Honestly I want there to be goodness but I have yet to find it.  So I will leave you to ponder and maybe even contribute to this discussion.  Does badness eclipse goodness?  Can they coexist?

Ushering in a New Period of Mourning

My littlest little girl is going to turn one next week and I find myself not only now sleeping mostly through the night but also feeling that old pull.  The one that catches my eye as I pick out our infant daughter's clothing in the morning.  Those little boy outfits that have been hanging in that same closet on the same hangers, untouched, for about nine and half years now.  The ones for my son.  The baby blue Winnie the Pooh outfit lovingly washed and hung, ready to wear.  Frankly, those outfits have done nothing but make me angry lately.  Angry because even though those outfits weren't for Wyatt, they were for Eli.  He was the son that came after Wyatt.  He was my boy.  I knew it soon after he started growing in my belly.  I knew he was a boy.  I knew it just as surely as I knew that something was wrong with him before I even walked into that ultrasound room.  What I knew then doesn't matter now.  I now know that I will never again hold another little boy from my own body and that I will forever mourn those two little boys I did get to briefly hold but that I will also forever mourn the absence of another son.  At the same time there is great peace in my heart knowing that I will not carry another child.  There is a very real possibility that we could have had another child with Potter's syndrome.  I am so thankful to have welcomed our healthy little girl one year ago.  It has been healing for all of us.  After Eli died I wrote about how heartbreaking it was to watch our three daughters love him and then have to say goodbye.  They had empty arms too.  I have now filled their arms and their hearts.  They still miss Eli and talk of him often.  We know that Baby cannot take away all that hurt but we did not expect that she would.  She just fills a different place in our hearts.

Staring My Demons In The Eye

I have always been a shy person and there are so many reasons for that.  In part because genetics have not been my friend.  I was sporting eyeglasses before I started school, got asthma in first grade, wore braces starting at age 11 for five years (yes 5 years!) and those braces were super awesome with rubber bands, then due to the congenitally missing teeth as a teenager I was missing two front teeth and had a super fun retainer with fake teeth which through a couple surgeries was then replaced by dental implants.  And I won't even go to my frizzy, coarse thick hair, bad skin, or abnormally long legs with a short torso (which equaled high water pants)....the list goes on.  Basically I never felt confident in my appearance nor was I given any reason to feel confident in my appearance.

I can now say that my appearance issues for the most part have resolved themselves  - even my hair (yay!) and I do feel confident in my appearance.  But inside, I'm still that teenage girl sometimes and I tend to regress to her emotional maturity.  Which means that I basically crawl inside myself socially.

This is where the demons have found their ways in.  The cracks in my facade have left them plenty of room.  The insecurities are deep and profound at times.  Wyatt and Eli's lives and deaths only intensified those feelings and urges.  During each of their pregnancies and after I delivered them I felt that my forehead had some kind of neon sign announcing that my baby would or had died.  I was sure that sadness was just seeping from my pores most days.  I didn't want people to see that, I didn't feel comfortable with many people seeing that.  My answer was to huddle in where people couldn't see that.  And each time, it took a lot of time for me to venture back out into the world.  Even then, I was so fragile, so afraid of just breaking apart.  I avoided so many social situations and find myself still doing so even two years after Eli's birth.

Until last weekend.  Through fate and a long string of fortuitous circumstances I didn't just agree but volunteered to organize and create a new spring carnival for our elementary school's pto.  Did I mention that the school has almost 700 kids?  I put over two months of blood, sweat and tears into it and had many sleepless nights wondering if it would actually happen and then if it did, whether my ship would sink or float.  Friday was that night.  But to make it happen I had to stare my demons right in the eye.  I had to put a smile on my face and look people straight in the eye, over and over and over and over that night.  Not something that is easy for me to do.  Definitely sent my flight reaction into overdrive.  But I did it!  I walked around that carnival all afternoon and evening organizing volunteers, introducing myself, talking to participants and ... I enjoyed it!  For me it's just more proof that I can get through anything, even when that self doubt creeps in.

Because of my boys I can always tell myself in a difficult situation that I have been through much much worse and I know that's true.  I know that I made it to the other side not once but twice and that most anything else is small peanuts.

Take that demons.

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.