Because even if you think everyone has forgotten...

...There is usually someone out there who remembers. Crystal over at Calvin's Cupcakes remembered Logan's third anniversary on January 24th and made this for us.

So many times we go around feeling like we are alone in our misery. No one remembers that you were pregnant, that there was a living being here on this earth that looked just like you or your beloved. People forget that every day you pine for that tiny soul. People forget that shoving their big bellies in your face, or their newborns reminds you of how broken and lost you really are, what you've lost, what you may never have again... Its human nature to forget, maybe God's grace. I dunno. Out of sight, out of mind. We can't begrudge them [even if secretly we want to poke them in their perfect world, everything functions as it should, ignorant and blissful little eye!] and just when you think that every last soul on this earth (except maybe your beloved) has forgotten that you had a precious baby once too, someone comes along with a nudge to tell you they remember.

Thanks Crystal.

Blasted Holidays!

I hate Christmas time.  I mean, if I were honest, I would say that I have hated it since early childhood.  My parents are divorced.  I hated that it was always about them, who got us when...for how long, where we would be...know one ever asked me what I wanted to do on Christmas, where I wanted to be.  And my mom was always a screaming mess of stress, Christmas morning we were ripped out of our house to go be with my dad and his family...and here I am 34 years later and I still spend every Christmas on the road.  I hate it.  Now we can factor in Logan and Rudy, or rather the lack there of.  And its so hard for me to get outside of those facts.  And everything happened this time of year.  My first child, my living child, was born January 27th...Logan died the following January 24th...and now Rudy should have been born this coming January 21st.  I should be standing here with a huge belly.  Aching, starving, excited...  And here I am again...angry, sad, confounded.  And I stand here bewildered at what has happened to us.  Like its all this really cruel jape and I'm the dumb blond who isn't catching on.  I think that most of the time I must have this stricken look on my face.  Or the "duh" look.  And its narcissistic, I know, but I swear people still stare at me.  Like they KNOW.  Sometimes I feel like I have this weird appendage on my face or something.

I think as much as I still can not seem to grasp, much less accept, that I have children who are not with me, I think that I am starting to accept that I will be sad forever.  It is my destiny to grieve.  I mean shouldn't I?  I have two children who are dead.  Should I not be sad until the day that I die?  And it [stupidly] is just starting to dawn on me.  I should be sad.  I should be sad every moment of every day.  How weird would it be if I wasn't sad for my dead children?  How cold and heartless would I be?  Instead of worrying that I'm still sad, I should worry that some day I might not be sad...as much as I desperately want the sadness to go away, the sadness means that they were real, and that they mattered.

Yesterday my husband said that this year he is trying to live in the moment, to enjoy what we have and not to dwell on what we don't.  To enjoy our 4 year old daughter who is going to really come alive this Christmas.  It seems like a nice thing.  I'm going to work on that.  It seems like such a far stretch away for me.  I mean we can't avoid the elephant in the room, especially now that there are two here, but we live each day living around them, with them.

I thought I was pregnant last week.  I had convinced myself that I was.  Funny, the things your body will do if you believe hard enough.  By the time my cycle rolled around, and 4 pee sticks later, I had pretty much accepted that I was not.  But I wanted it so bad.  And I know that another pregnancy won't fix anything, and in fact may make things worse.  None the less, I wanted it to be true with every breath that I took.  My husband is not ready for another pregnancy.  I know he wants more children, hoards of them, but pregnancy is such a scary prospect in this house anymore.  Who can blame him?  The Ectopic episode in May took a real toll on him.  Most of the time I just pretend it wasn't as serious as it was, or that it didn't really happen, or that I wouldn't have died because well...I just wouldn't have.  But he feels very differently about it.  The heartache in this house is so great.  Its breathtaking.

My 35th birthday is in April.  That scares me too.  How fast life has gone.  When you are young you are ignorant to how fast time goes.  And it has flown by for us.  We thought we had all the time in the world...even at 30 when my daughter was born.  But then having a baby with Down Syndrome at 31, when society tells us that it only happens to old women, will age you pretty fast.  The doctors seem convinced that my turning 35 doesn't make our odds of having another child with DS any greater than they were at 32.  Our odds are pretty high, in my opinion 1 in 100 is pretty high, regardless of my age.

I guess I am having a bad day.  I'm not sure why today is so much worse than the others, but today is definitely a bad day.  And its raining...which is always pleasant. :(  Sigh.

Just when you think you've risen above it.

Today I am hateful and angry. I mean really hateful and really angry! I thought I was past that now, but it keeps rearing its ugly head. I'm at the zoo. Its a gorgeous day, so we're not the only ones. And not that I begrudge all of these ladies with their tiny babies, and not that I hate the pregnant bellies that waddle by me. Its just that I should be close to 6 months along now. I should be waddling. I should have another toddler running ahead with his big sister to get a good look at the new baby elephant here at the zoo. I think its wearing me down again. For a time I was hopeful for another baby, because surely I wouldn't lose another... Lately I am keenly aware of how empty those hopes are. It leaves me feeling empty, hopeless and saddened on a whole new level. Fighting a fight I have no hope of ever winning. Trying to find contentment in a life with such missing pieces, when all I want to do is pound my fist against the walls that keep me from getting to the other side. And I hate it. I hate what has happened to us, and I hate what it has done to us. I hate that its everywhere I go, in everything I do and in everything I see. And its so hard not to feel like I deserved better, that my daughter and my husband deserved better. That it isn't fair for us to have to live in this shadow. And there are so often times when I feel like throwing my self on the ground, kicking and screaming and crying. Throwing a temper tantrum in the style that my daughter so often does. Because it isn't fair, and I want to scream "NO!" too!
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Death Barged In

I came across a recommendation for this poem while reading a post on Glow In The Woods this evening. I couldn't have said this better! I thought it was such a poignant way of describing this monster known as grief!

Death Barged In
by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

In his Russian greatcoat
slamming open the door
with an unpardonable bang,
and he has been here ever since.

He changes everything,
rearranges the furniture,
his hand hovers by the phone;
he will answer now, he says;
he will be the answer.

Tonight he sits down to dinner
at the head of the table as we eat, mute;
later, he climbs into bed between us.

Even as I sit here, he stands behind me
clamping two colossal hands on my shoulders
and bends down and whispers to my neck,
From now on, you write about me.

From Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheedar Bonanno. Copyright © 2009 by Kathleen Sheedar Bonanno.

You can find the original posting on Poetry.org by clicking here.

Thousands (a poem for my children)

Thousands

Without their smiles, I will die with a thousand pleas and asking why. The sorrow that has come our way with the toll it takes and the price we pay. For the thousandth day that looms so near, our lives now ruled with mostly fear. These tears that don’t seem quite enough with trinkets to honor that are mostly fluff. Grief changes you in unknown ways. I’ve a patched up heart with seams that fray. Do I recognize you there in the mirror? Do I know the one who calls me “Dear”? This hole, this chasm, this missing piece; will consume me, I know, there’ll be no release. So a thousand days later. Oh, how much has changed! Our once perfect life has been rearranged. These children of ours, ashes now left behind, the others try hard to push from their minds. For who wants to remember a sorrow so deep, and the thousands of tears the parents still weep? They linger here still, amidst us, you know; these tiny lives with their big shadows. Dead before they ever were born. Is it not still my right should I choose to mourn? A thousand days or a thousand years, all I’ve left are uncountable tears. For who am I now, but the grief that I bear and the shattered bits of a life that’s unfair?

Written by H. Westphal