This Time Last Year

This time last year, my baby was already dead inside me, but I didn't know it. 
Now my baby is dead and I can't unknow it.

This time last year, I had an empty nursery.
Now, too, I have an empty nursery. 

This time last year the skies were blue and the sun was shining and spring was coming... 
Right now the skies are blue and the sun is shining and spring is coming... 

This time last year I had hope. I didn't know that in just a little over twenty-four hours, my midwife wouldn't be able to find my baby's heartbeat. 

But still, a part of me knew - our little mommy group had lost one precious life already, but I told myself it couldn't happen again. Lightning couldn't strike twice. But I was afraid. My usually active baby had slowed down so much... but this was labor, pre-labor, I told myself, it would be over soon...

And then it was over. Forever over and now I relive it all, over and over.


My grief has grown less sharp around the edges over this past year, like a knife blade worn dull from use. I cut myself with a butter-knife nowadays. That's progress, isn't it?

This time last year I was oblivious. Today, I wish I still was.

Today, I am spending a gorgeous spring afternoon sitting in the dark and watching movies about the holocaust and crying.

Maybe I just want to be reminded - there are worse horrors. I didn't have to choose - who should die, my son or my daughter? My son didn't know that he was going to die - he didn't suffer (please, god, let that last be true...) and he isn't suffering anymore.

Or maybe I just want to see fear and hopelessness and the pain of loss mirrored a million times on a million faces. Maybe then I can recognize my own face in the mirror - who is this woman who has aged exponentially in the past year, who fell down a rabbit hole, who crossed over to the other side and hasn't managed to find her way back through hell...?

Who is she? Who am I?

This time last year, I thought I knew.

Now, I don't think I'll ever know.

Gifts

I am blessed to have such amazing, generous, thoughtful women in my life. I will burn the candle they sent for William's first birthday on April 1... to honor them remembering him... 

Thank you for not forgetting. 

Thank you for holding him in your hearts, even if I can't hold him in my arms. 

It means more than I could ever possibly say.

Unfolding

I should be planning a first birthday party.

Instead, I'm planning a memorial/remembrance day of sorts. It's hard for me to call it a "birthday party." Birthdays are celebrations. I'm not celebrating. I'm mourning. Still, nearly a year later, still mourning. Forever-mourning, I imagine. I never wanted to be this woman.

My children, even the older ones, want to take part, so on April 1, the day William was born, we will go the park and do a balloon release. I'm bringing helium balloons and Sharpies - we can each write a message (or for the littles, draw a picture).

Then it's on to get our memorial tattoos. We are both getting his handprint - mine will be actual size, in black, over my heart. Just where his little hand would have rested when he was nursing. Just where I hope another little future-baby's hand will rest again some day. I fantasize about that image a lot, and hope I'm not just dreaming. M's will be his own handprint, in black, on his forearm, and William's handprint, in blue, in the center.

After that, it's dinner and cake. Yes, I know, it's not a birthday party, but I ordered a cake anyway. The tattoo place is an hour away - but fortuitously, it's right around the corner from the bakery that made our wedding cake. I am ordering a mini replica of our wedding cake for our 10 year anniversary (coming up this July) and decided to get a cake for William.

He should be smashing frosting in his hair on that day... I wonder if all that dark hair would have stayed? So many things I'll never know.

The woman who took my cake order had tears in her eyes when I handed her the copy of his little handprint, the one I wanted on the cake. They had just celebrated her daughter's first birthday. "You never know, do you?" she said, shaking her head. I used to be on that side of motherhood, I thought. I remember. How sad. How awful. How can you cope? I would just die...

Why did her daughter live and my son die? More useless questions with no real answers.

M. is making a memorial shelf for William's things - his picture, the cedar box with his ashes, etc.

And we have started trying again, after a two month break getting my body back to some sort of balance. I hope we have succeeded. I can feasibly take a test on what would have been William's first birthday. It would be so apropos... what a beautiful gift, to know I was carrying new life on that day.

And of course, a cruel joke if things go the other way. April Fool's. Again.

And as usual, there's nothing to do but let it unfold. 

Simple Question

The U.S. Census.

"How many people were living in your house on April 1, 2010?"

It's a simple question.

And it reduced me to tears.

April 1, 2010 would have been William's first birthday.

There's a little "Dora the Explorer" ad on the census website that says, "Children count too!"

But I can't write my son's name and birthdate down.

He doesn't count.

He was never counted.

Beautiful Damned

It never ends.

One mama puts her sweet, funny, healthy three-year-old boy with a little cold to bed one night only to wake up and find him dead in his bed. Another mama rocks and sings to her nine month-old baby girl and watches her die of leukemia in her arms.

They're never safe. It's never okay. They fall. They get run over by cars. They start driving cars and get into accidents. Every single baby that we mamas birth is going to die. We're all dying, every single moment.

The potential for tragedy is endless.

If life weren't so damned beautiful, I'd really question the point of it all. 

Stuck

Years ago, I went to see a rather unconventional sort of therapist - she was a mind-body sort, and I was trying to get more in touch with my body (and less involved in my head...) It was all very crunchy and woo-woo for me, but I did it anyway, as strange and uncomfortable as it all felt.

During one of those sessions, we did a "guided imagination" where I discovered a golden ball of light literally lodged in my throat. I couldn't speak around it, swallow around it. It was decidedly stuck. She tried every which way to get it UNstuck, but my mind wouldn't go there. I couldn't even IMAGINE it gone. Sounds silly - you should be able to imagine or unimagine anything you want. But I couldn't.

I've recently been reading up on my thyroid issues, which are in part keeping me from conceiving again, I'm sure. I've done everything I can think of to help - getting tested often, changing meds, having them adjusted, switching to an all-organic diet (including hormone-free meat and dairy), cutting out xenoestrogens in my environment. The list is huge, and it's been an enormous (and expensive!) change in our lifestyle.

And still, we're not pregnant. 

This morning I came out of a dream about William (I used to dread them, dreams about him - they made me so sad. Now I love them. I'm still sad, but I like feeling close to him again. As time passes, he can feel so far away...) and I remembered my dream about the golden egg. And that made me remember the session with the therapist.

Of course, when I read this quote today, I realized why I'd remembered it: 

"In many women thyroid dysfunction develops because of an energy blockage in the throat region, the result of a lifetime of "swallowing" words one is aching to say. In the name of preserving harmony, or because these women have learned to live as relatively helpless members of their families or social groups, they have learned to stifle their self-expression. These women may, in fact, have struggled to have their say, only to discover that it doesn’t make any difference — because in their closest relationships they have been defined as insignificant. In order for this complex, entangled state of affairs to be resolved, a woman might need to take not only supplemental progesterone and thyroid hormone, but also an unblinking look at what parts of her life and interpersonal relationships need to change."

Universe trying to tell me something?

I think I need to go for a long walk and do a lot of screaming...