Dusty Ovaries

I'm turning 35 this weekend.  Sigh.  I hate my birthday.  I don't know why Logan's death has had such a profound impact on the way I feel about my birthday, but it has.  Maybe its that whole getting older thing.  Three plus years ago, when Logan was conceived, my ovaries spit out a dry shriveled up egg that let my son down.  And here I sit, 35 looming like the biggest freight train you have ever imagined, and its barreling down the tracks at me...carrying my dusty ovaries.

That's what my friends husband calls them.  Dusty ovaries.  He said this, a few beers loose, to my friend (who is a few months younger than me) the other night.  Bastard.  And anyways, who's he to talk...more than a decade older than us with his wrinkly old balls!! [Enter Adam Sandler]

So every year, around this time, I get ugly.  I stomp around and snap at everyone.  I hate everything.  I overindulge on everything from sugar and fat to booze and TV.  Coincidently this turns me into a real bear the week after my birthday when I jump on the scale and see that, YUP, I'm still fat!  I guess that the only difference this year makes is that I am now aware of why I am being such a jerk to everyone around me.

Sigh.  I hate the time that has lapsed.  I hate the years that continue to move me further away from the memory of my son.  The faint, dream of a son, that I had so briefly.

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.

What is it about birthdays?

Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. The thing is, I wasn't all that keen on celebrating. The night before I cried like a dork. Cause I'm not old or anything, right? Well, that's what everyone keeps telling me. That doesn't change the facts that two years ago was old enough. And here I am, even older. Man, time just slips away and leaves me feeling like I am grasping at empty air. So yesterday was weird. The Muffin was at grandma's, so I spent most of the morning chasing away stray tears that threatened to ruin the rare occasion of make-up that I vainly applied for my license picture. Go ahead and laugh, but I want my drivers license picture to not look stupid, and I went to get it renewed yesterday. I also went to a funeral. That's fun birthday stuff. Oddly enough though it seemed appropriate and didn't bother me. I didn't know the person anyhow, so it made it easier to go. That evening David took me to Carrabba's, my favorite place. That was great. Then I watched The Timetraveler's Wife (which is full of dead baby stuff FYI). It was a pleasant enough day, except that all day I felt the nagging urge to go sit by my sons tree. Its weird that I feel more of a pull to that tree than I do to the box of ashes sitting in my room.


Yes. Logan is still sitting in that horrid box that they shipped him to me in about a year ago. Sad I know. David and I talked about that fact today. I told him that I wanted to have Logan in an Urn before Mother's Day. He suggested that we pick up an Alpaca Fur Bear from the local Alpaca farm. The bears are made from stillborn Alpaca fur, so when I first learned that last summer I was immediately drawn to them. The current plan is to get a bear and put Logan's ashes into a heart shaped urn and have the urn sewn into the bear. I'm liking this idea. I think I might go buy the bear this week.


So here's the morbid question of the year...for those of you who had your child's ashes returned to you, (and keeping in mind that Logan was 1lb7oz) about how much ash is there? I've yet to bring myself to look at the actual ashes, and I really have no idea how much is in there. I'm afraid to look. But I don't want there to be extra ash for the urn. I don't want them to throw him away. I'd rather put the extra in a small vile or something. So, I'm hoping some of you can give me a heads up.


Logan's tree is looking so nice. It survived the winter and has nice, new, feathery leaves on it. I am so happy about that, and my heart swells every time I drive by it.


Anyhow, what is it about birthdays and holidays that I hate so much? I just don't want to celebrate. I don't want to acknowledge the passing of time. I don't want to smile and pretend I don't feel the gaping hole. I'm not sure why I feel the hole more on those days, but I do. My birthday was no exception. Mother's Day ought to be a real joy too. It would be easier if people would let me be. I get tired of people telling me to do something nice, to make sure I celebrate and have a good time. I don't want to. I just don't. Its not the guilt. I think its just that I'm sad, I notice the absence and I just don't want to pretend that I don't.


Driving home the other day I was struck by the wonderment of what life would have been like right at that moment. Driving home from playgroup, two child seats in the back. A two year old on the right, an eleven month old on the left. He was sleeping, my daughter yakking about "mo cycles" and "ruffs". I saw it plain as day. I don't do that much. Part of it made me smile, but most of it just feels achy.


A friend of mine asked my mother how many grandkids she had the other day. My mom said four. I couldn't help but notice that she didn't say five. Not that she should have. I tell people I have one child, most of the time. But I noticed. That was the part that bothered me. I noticed. And David noticed too.


The night before my birthday, while I was allowing myself to wallow in self pity and cry for my broken heart, I kept hearing this thought echoing in my head...


"I will never be normal again!"


And I know it to be true. I will never be able to celebrate my birthday, Mother's Day or any other holiday without always, always, always thinking about what should've been, what's missing. There will never be a time where Logan's absence isn't a shadow on my heart and in my mind. I will never escape the knowledge that I should have this little boy, but I don't. And I will always think about it. And I will never feel like I did before.


Misfitzita had a birthday this week too. She turned forty, and said "I'm not a girl anymore. The 30s beat that out of me. Soundly." and I couldn't help but to relate. I spent my twenties growing up. I got my career, bought a house, got married, built a home, became a wife and at 29 got pregnant with my first child, a daughter. At 31 my son died. And from that point on I have felt like my thirties will always be defined by this huge event. I will spend my thirties mourning for a life that I perfectly planned...and watched blow up in my face. My thirties were my baby making years, that's the way it was planned. This fact makes me angry too. Its like starting off the new year bad (which by the way is exactly what happened!!), it just sets the tone for the rest of the year. So, my thirties aren't looking so great, and I really don't feel like celebrating.