The Monkey's Paw

I used to love the story, The Monkey's Paw. One of my all time favorites. Nothing so creepy as the thought of something dead coming to the door. Something you invited yourself.

It isn't so much creepy to me anymore as sad. And I get it. I understand that mother's wish. If she had just wished BETTER, I think. If she had just been more specific, more clear in her magical thinking...

I understand more than ever the wish for a real monkey's paw, to have the power over life and death, to be the one in control. Would I make the wish? In a heartbeat. Would I die to do it? In a heartbeat.

In the end, the mother who made the wish says to the horrified father, "You're afraid of your own son? I'm coming! I'm coming!" as she runs to answer the door.

But I get it.

It's insane, it's twisted, it's wrong beyond any natural order of things, and yet, I know her pain, her longing to see her son, to hold him in her arms just one more time, dead, alive, undead, who the hell cares?

Today another mother who lost her child lamented that she didn't have a handprint of her baby. I lamented that I didn't have a picture of William's little feet. Or his whole little body, without all the coverings. We don't have a monkey's paw, we can't wish them back. And yet we're still left wishing for little things we can't have because the cruelty of time has now passed - a handprint, a photo we forgot, a bit of their umbilical cord.

Today, mothers with live babies wished for a full night's sleep.
Today, I slept until noon.
Today, mothers with live babies wished for time to take a shower.
Today, I could care less how I smell.
Today, mothers with live babies wished for time to eat a meal in peace.
Today, I forgot to eat.

Today William would have been three weeks old, if I'd pushed him out alive.

Death Dream

I dreamed he died.

The night before we lost his heartbeat, I woke up from a dream that William was born dead.

I dreamed I was in the birthing tub, in our bathroom, and I pulled the baby up and knew he wasn't breathing. The midwife reached for him, but the cord was still attached and I couldn't hand him to her. It was a very short cord. He was lifeless in my hands, floppy, and I knew he was dead, and she wouldn't be able to save him.

I woke up shaking and got up to pee. Just a dream, I told myself. Just a dream.

Now I'm dreaming the nightmare onward - wide awake.

Missing Migraines

You don't know what you've got until it's gone. That's the phrase, right?

Well, sometimes you don't know what you've been missing, until it comes back, and you realized why you weren't really missing it so much...

William gave me the gift of being migraine-free for nine months. 

Thank you, baby.   

Today, the migraines are back - with a vengeance. I can barely move my head.

Might be the weather. Horribly dark and rainy here. But probably the hormone shift.

And crying - either from grief or physical pain - so does not help a migraine. I can't win.

So now I'm in a dark, quiet room, waiting for the meds to work. It's been an hour and if I could remove my head and hand it over to someone else at the moment, I would. Just to stop the pain. I forgot how bad it could get. And I forgot to appreciate being migraine-free when I had that time, in the three seasons I spent with William, and to thank him for the lovely hormone shift that left me blissfully without that horrible pain.

I miss being pregnant and pain-free (at least, in the migraine department...) 

But I would give my head on a platter to have him back again.