Grief makes one hour ten. ~William Shakespeare
Time.
Goes.
So.
Slooooooooooooooooooooooow.
Yesterday was my first day alone, really alone, and it wasn't a good one. Z. and D. went back to school, M. went off to work...and I stayed in bed all day. I ate something around noon. I brought it back to bed with me. Finally, around 3pm, I took a shower. The kids were due home around quarter to four.
And still, I didn't really get out of bed. I stayed there while they went to play outside. I got up to get them snacks, dinner. I forgot to eat again. Drank a glass of milk. That was good enough. Stopped the gnawing. Then back to bed. Listened to the rain. Watched TV. Flipped channels, mostly. Surfed online, reading more blogs, doing more research on stillbirth.
And every time I looked at the clock, I was surprised how little time had gone by. A minute. Two. Ten.
And today, William would have been two weeks old. How can two weeks have passed? How can it feel like an eternity and yet like yesterday, all at once? It's been two weeks since I held him, kissed the soft spot on his head. Just two weeks since the dreams of our last baby were born and died all on the same day.
His ghost is everywhere, all around me. I wake up in the morning and see the shadows beside my bed and think it's his cosleeper, and he must be sleeping in it. I stand at the sink doing dishes and my belly doesn't bump up against the counter anymore...but there's no baby in a sling there, either. In the morning, as the kids are getting dressed and ready for school, I sit on the couch where I found out he was gone, and remember how he used to kick me every morning. I think about how I used to imagine nursing him there on the couch while they got ready, but there's no baby in my arms, at my breast. He's just a mirage, a flicker, a glimpse out of the corner of my eye.
Two weeks gone. I don't know how I've managed to get here. And I have no idea how to get through the next minute, the next hour, let alone the next day, the next week, the next year... the rest of my life... without him. I don't know how I'm doing it. It defies all logic and reason.
Addicts say recovery is one day at a time. Grief isn't like that. It's more immediate. It's one breath at a time. And every single one is like sucking in razor blades.
5 comments:
Yes, razor blades to breathe in, walk on, and eat.
And you've got it right, this is a grief we will always carry, a hole that will never fill.
Hopefully you can get some sunshine today. It really does help. There is nothing wrong with sitting (laying) outside for a bit.
I'll think of you while I am in my garden.
Yup, the grief will become easier to bear but you will always remember your son and grieve for his loss. It sucks, but there it is. :(
Off to work for now--got a webinar to do, followed by a meeting with my boss. Hugs, Dear One.
John
Razor blades ... yup. Nobody ever told me that absence could be SO TANGIBLE. I think of you & little William often.
((hugs)) I don't want to say it gets easier I guess the pain just becomes so familiar, that you become used to it.
The whole time thing has been strange here too.. it still is, 7 months later. Sometimes it FEELS like things are going fast.. but then I realize that they are just as slow as they were in September.
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