Is the price too much?

"Life is both pain and pleasure.  If this is the price you must pay for the hours you enjoy, is it too much?"  -Paolini (Eldest)

We are TTC...again.  In February my DH quietly, and with an overwhelming look of fear in his eyes, relented.  I won.  I guess.  If being granted the right to proceed into horrifying territory where monsters lurk, waiting to trample our hearts again, can be considered a win.

I thought I'd be happier.  I thought I knew what I wanted.  I thought I had it all figured out and under control.  You see though, now that the reigns have been passed to me, I am frozen with fear.  How much of a price am I willing to pay to find that elusive happy place?  How much am I willing to sacrifice, to forgo?  Who am I willing to sacrifice?  Myself?  Absolutely.  Not a question.  I'd do it again and again and again.  Been there, done that, survived...twice, if you can consider what I've done as surviving...I didn't off myself, so...  I know that in the end, if I get a healthy, living baby, its all worth it.  But what if a hundred die and not one ever lives again?  What if the child is so ill that I find myself wishing that the baby would have died.  [GASP!!]  But in reality I know that my two dead babies never suffered, never felt pain.  Is not my wish for their life, even with horrific handicaps and deformations, pure selfishness?  I struggle with this notion.  But, I have learned to disconnect myself from the reality of the horrors.  My husband?  Not so much.  Then there is the Muffin to consider now.  How will by daughter, who is 4 1/2, handle another dead sibling?  She knows of the other two.  It affects her more than I like to admit.  She mourns for them, cries for them, misses them.  She knows they should be here, and she knows she should have living siblings to fight with and to play with.  She knows of the still birth of another very close friend's child.  She was 3 1/2 when he died, she cried.  I believe she understood.  Am I willing to put her through another trauma because maybe, just maybe, this one will work out?

Most days I feel like a selfish bitch.

This past cycle was our first try.  Immediately I got sick.  I had a fever for 3 days.  I was freaked!  A week later my daughter breaks out in this weird rash, Molluscum is going around.  It can last for 4 years.  I freaked again!  Freaked so bad that I had my baby biopsied.  The spots have faded, Molluscum doesn't do that.  The derm is almost certain it was an allergic response.  Almost.  So, I'm still freaked.  Yesterday I started my cycle, 3 negative pregnancy tests later and one day early.  And get this, I was relieved!  Relieved!!  What?!

And I wonder.  Do I really want another baby, or do I just want control over the decision?  Was that the bigger issue, that I didn't have control over whether there would be another baby or not?  Am I ready for sleepless nights, screaming, diapers and toddlerhood all over again?  With the Muffin knocking on the door of five, we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  The old argument that she needs a playmate is invalid at this point, its been too long, the gap too wide.  They will not be playmates.  But I stand firm that people need siblings  (I have 6).  They need someone to go complain to about their parents, and who better to understand than a sibling?  They need someone they can turn to when they don't feel like they can turn to friends or parents.  They need someone to have when we are dead and gone.  And yet, some siblings hate each other.  Some siblings rarely speak and are like strangers passing bye.  Some siblings die earlier than their parents.  My argument is losing its water...

This is it.  My husband said he can't do it again after this.  Frankly, I wouldn't put him through it a 4th time anyhow.  So, if we don't naturally conceive (and soon), or if another baby dies, I'm done.  We're done.  My DH seems to be in a constant state of panic.  Making babies isn't the innocent fun it used to be.  Fear lays there in the bed next to you, stares at you from the corner of the room.  Anxiety screaming in your ear.  Its a wonder either of us can even perform.  Sexy, eh?  Romantic, eh?  No.  Its not.  Its terrifying when you take that leap of faith.  Its terrifying when you put yourself out there on the limb again, waiting to be knocked off of it again.  Waiting for what surely must be the inevitable.  Outsiders don't get that.  "Try again, surely it won't happen again."  Surely.  But we know, don't we?  How many of us have lost multiple times?  Too many to count.  But the outsiders like their ignorance, and why shouldn't they?  But its huge, and its scary.  And each day of those two weeks are spent in a constant state of anxiety.  Am I?  Could this be it?  Please God, let me keep this one!  The turmoil and anxiety that engulfs us during those two weeks of not knowing is insane.  Then the huge let down when we are not.  The weird twisted and conflicting emotions if we are.  Yeah.  Its scary.  You see, even though this is our first official cycle TTC, there have been a few other times...  Times when I prayed one way and he prayed another.  Times when I tried to hide the anger and frustration and disappointment while he tried to hide his relief.  How are we a comfort to each other?  Luckily I am married to a patient, understanding man.  Luckily he can put aside his fears and comfort me in my disappointment.  Because even though he desperately does not want to go through this again, he wants me to have a shot at happiness, or at least contentment.

Though, we all know, one living baby just does not replace the dead one.  If only it were that easy.

How high of a price are you willing to pay?  How many dead babies can you suffer?  In the end, is all of the anxiety worth it?  Have you had another child post dead baby?  What did you do if you and your spouse were on separate pages (or even books)?

We create the illusions we need to go on...

"We create the illusions we need to go on.  And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty.  The light is liberating, necessary, terrifying.  We stand naked and emptied before it.  And when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to sheild us from it's relentless truth."  -Libba Bray "The Sweet Far Thing"

We do don't we?  We build illusions to help us cope, to forget, to move on.  My illusion, or dillusion perhaps, is that one day I will feel whole and complete, that my family will be complete and that I won't forever feel the gapping holes of the children who never came home to us.  I hold tight to this hope, and when it slips, I feel like I am drowning in that forever sorrow of missing children I didn't get to keep.  Building the illusion that "next time" it will be different, better.  It won't happen again, not three times.  The world isn't that cruel...but it is just an illusion.

I fight to go back to the blissful ignorance...

I fight to go back to the blissful ignorance, but it is too late.  The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.  -Libba Bray "The Sweet Far Thing"

Oh, how much I miss that ignorance!!

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.

Tears and tears and more tears!

Two years and seven months later one might think that I'd have moved on, gotten over, healed...

And maybe its being in the wake of the stillbirth of my friends son that has brought everything back up front and center. Remembering things I forced myself to forget. Watching her pain is a kin to what it must've been like watching me from afar. Seeing her sorrow and grief reminds me of the sorrow and grief I had for so long, the sorrow that remains still. Knowing what's ahead of her, the horrors she will encounter that she has no clue are coming her way.

Yesterday, in preparation for our garage sale, my husband asked me to go through the baby stuff we saved from my living daughter. Sigh. It was just bad timing. This past week and a half was already filled with sorrow. Sorrow for what I have lost, sorrow or another dead baby, sorrow for the life my friend has watched go up in smoke. I tackled the chore with a margarita in hand (since my DD was at G'ma's) and forced myself to look through the baby paraphernalia, stone faced, detached and under the guise that it didn't matter anymore. Logan was a boy, Rudy a question mark (but I've worked it into my head somehow that he must've been a boy also), so ridding my home of baby girl clothes shouldn't bother me. It didn't mean I wasn't going to have another baby (my DH assured me!), it just meant that the new baby would get his or her own clothing. Like I'd ever be able to put a new baby in the few outfits that I bought specifically for Logan anyhow. I did ok, saving the last 3 bags of "neutral" clothing that I put aside before Logan died for last. There was one bag of all boy clothing, and in that bag were four very special little outfits that I bought for Logan just before he died.

I kept those.

They hang in the closet in the empty spare room...the room we dubbed "the baby room" in our new home because that is where we put all of the baby stuff when we moved in. In the end I kept very few things. A few really special dresses of my dd, Logan's clothes, and some other odds and ends. About a tenth of what was there. I did not cry. I sat there and I stared a lot. I listened to an audio book to help keep my mind busy.

Unfortunately it took me catching my brand new grill on fire and destroying it at dinner time to bring me to tears. And cry I did! I cried loudly and with everything in me. I cried for my grill, for Logan, for Rudy, for my friend and her baby, for babies everywhere, for the ghosts that haunt me, for the loss of future children...I cried and I cried and I cried.

I guess I needed to.

The Pioneer, the Harbor and the Land Mine

So, another one of my closest friends in now part of "The Club". She is in process now and will deliver a stillborn baby boy sometime in the next day or so. She was 33 weeks along with out any signs of trouble. Oh, and her birthday is this week.

It gets easier. But there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of Logan, and now Rudy, and wonder what they would have been like. How our lives would have been. And each time another friend looses their baby I feel it all over again. I feel their pain, I feel my own. And I wonder how it could be that my life is so full of dead babies, when just a few short years ago a dead baby seemed more like a horror film than my reality. Now my horror film has sequels and spin-offs.

"They" say that God puts people in your life for a reason, and you in theirs. Now here I sit with my two newest friends, also being on my list of closest, and I will have walked this path with the both of them with in the past two and a half years, while losing another of my own in the mean time. I feel like the pioneer. And though I find some odd comfort having friends in real life who are in my boat, it sickens me. It makes me angry. It confounds me. I just keep asking how and why. And part of me feels like I'm supposed to be thankful that God put me in the lives of others who would all end up with this common bond, and part of me would rather just say "no thanks!" I'd rather have my innocence and ignorance back than to ever know that babies die, and they do it all the time.

Oddly enough I am able to be at the hospital with her and to talk her through the basics and the facts. The "what to expect when you're suddenly NOT expecting" if you will. Although I think I've removed my heart for the time being. Sort of like the wall you put up when you're holding some one elses newborn. It wouldn't do for me to sit there and be in hysterics. I felt like I talked her ear off while I was there. Nerves mostly, I'm sure. But as I left I felt like there were so many things I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to have a list of everything to expect from the hatred for the newborn's cry down the hall she'll be hearing after her baby's been silenced, to the gut wrenching feeling the first time she's realized she's forgotten she's not pregnant anymore, to the phantom kicks and the cruel joke that comes on day three when her milk comes in for a baby that didn't. I wish I could walk in front of her for the next year and warn her of all the canyons before she falls in them, before she encounters each and every idiot who's going to tell her that her baby is in a better place, and that God has a plan and that it was for the best. To be her neon sign, the one that I wanted so badly that shouted that I had a baby too, and it died, and damn it you'd better not forget it!

But all I get to be is a safe harbor, and then, maybe not. Maybe I will be a land mine. Maybe every time she sees me I'll just be a reminder that babies die.

We were pregnant together too. And it took her so long to get pregnant, and she wanted this baby so bad... And I was thrilled to death for her. And I know she felt terrible for me and helpless in May when Rudy died. Know I feel like I'm just a witness to a really cruel prank, or somehow even in on it.

There aren't enough Margarita's in the world for this.

Round two; Saying goodbye to Rudy.

Here I am, pacing another hospital room, trying to come to terms with another dead baby. Two dead babies now. Logan ia now joined by a sibling we long ago nicknamed Rudy. A sibling only in existance a mere five and a half weeks.

Rudy was Ectopic. Located half way down my right falopian tube. A tiny, miniscule, actively beating heart pulled mercilessly from my shocked body by a robot.

I am supposed to be happy that I am alive. Lucky, they say.

Guess I'm not there just yet.

Waves & Stages...There and back again.

Grief comes in waves and stages. We all know that. I've been there, and back again.

If nothing else has been proven in the past year and a half, this has; I am hypersensitive to everything these days. It doesn't take much to make me blue anymore. My mom used to say that things rolled off me like water on a ducks back. These days I absorb it. I store it up in little bottles and stick them on a shelf. I collect sorrow and grief in all its forms anymore.

This has been one crappy week. My emotions have been spun tight, unraveled and tangled together, only to be sifted through each night while I lay awake and obsess on things that can not be, things that might be, and things that are. Lately it is making me physically ill again. Between the mess of thinking and hoping and being so sure that I was pregnant, only to start my cycle...my house sitting stagnant on a stagnant market, with teasers dangling and nothing coming to fruition...to finally finding a new home for my dog, only to be saddled with so much guilt and sorrow over the decision that I can not sleep, and am trying to drown my sorrows in food to which point it actually hurts...and then reinforcing the issues I have with myself and my complete lack of ability to stick to my diet.

They say not to do anything major for a year after the loss of a baby. Don't move, don't quit your job, don't get a new pet...or get rid of one. Right around the time I got pregnant with Logan I started getting very disillusioned with my dog. When Logan died...well, she took the brunt of it. Some people turn to their pets for comfort. For me, Kaida was just one more thing I couldn't deal with. She stressed me out on a level I couldn't handle and I begged my husband to let me get rid of her. It took a year and a half to find a new home for Kaida, well past the "recommended" time frame, home that I thought was good enough for her. I didn't want to place her in a home where she wouldn't get anymore love or attention than we were giving her. This past Friday I found such a home. Its perfect really. Its everything we hoped for. And now that she is gone I find myself feeling as though I failed her. She counted on me to love her and give her a good home, and I let her down. I broke my husbands heart in the process. I took away my daughters puppy. I did it because I didn't think I could cope, and now I feel like a whiny selfish bitch. I keep trying to remind myself that its for the best. In the long run it will be better for everyone. Kaida deserved a home where she would get the attention she so craved and deserved. She is a great dog. She is sweet as can be, and the problem laid with me. I couldn't be the "mommy" she needed, and damn it if that doesn't ring deep into my soul on a level I can barely comprehend. But here I am once again feeling as though I failed my baby. The guilt has crept into my belly and is sitting there like a stone. I failed. Again.

Logan's death changed everything. I'm just beginning to really see this, how deeply it all runs. Just how much has changed. Things I never considered, things that are still being revealed to me. It scares me. This event that I couldn't control, couldn't stop, couldn't prevent, couldn't fix will hold a power over me that I will not ever be able to reconcile. It makes me feel broken. A deep down sort of broken. Irreparable. Scared. Sad.

Will I never be me again? Will I forever feel like the shell of the woman I was?

Fourteen months later and I'm tired of explaining.

It's almost April. APRIL! Don't get me wrong, I'm ready for Spring and the inevitable Summer (please hurry!!) but when I take a step back and look...I just can't believe it. Fourteen months have passed since Logan died. His first birthday would have been knocking on the door in May. Fourteen months. Feels like a lifetime, feels like yesterday, feels like someone else's life. And I mean, I'm better...right? These last fourteen months have been documented here in this blog and this blog is nothing else if not proof to what life was like and is like now. And though I know that I must have survived, and I must've gotten through it...I don't know how, and I don't know when it happened. I mean, I guess I'm not really through it yet. I think that will take a lifetime. But here I am. I wake up, I live what my life is now, I enjoy my daughter (among other things) and for the most part...I'm okay. There are moments, days, even several days at times when things are ugly and tough and I want to pack it all in and head for the hills. And when those times hit, they hit hard and fast. The part that I really feel like I have a hard time coping with is the "outsiders". People who just can't fathom what a wrecking ball loosing a baby can be. How it just seems to hang around forever and change everything about you. How you view the world, other parents, your own parents, your friends, your self... Its all changed. And the "outsiders"...well, I guess its just that it doesn't occur to them, the fact that everything is different. That I'm different. My mother comment something about me not being this bubbly person anymore. I mean, what do you say to that? Duh? It seems appropriate enough. But I guess its not her fault. She had five kids, not one complication. She has her own "tragedies and hurts" that I guess make her feel like she can connect with me on some level, but I don't see the similarities. I guess that's a fault I have to work on. I dunno. How can I be this bubbly person anymore? Though I can not relate, and this is probably a very insensitive comparison, I kind of feel like maybe its similar to what happens to people who have been in the middle of a war. They go in naive and ignorant to the horrors, they come out very changed, shell shocked and very aware that life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and that no, life doesn't always get better. And no one can get that unless they were there too. I just get tired of defending myself (or feeling defensive, I don't know how much active defending I've been doing) or trying to explain myself. She said that I should go out and celebrate my birthday, do something really special this year since I've been through a lot. In theory this sounds great. But in reality, I don't want to celebrate. The coming of my birthday (or any holiday or milestone for that matter) is just a reminder of the time that has passed. One more [insert event] further from my son's life. One more event that he isn't present for. One more event where I can't overlook the enormous elephant in the room, the fact that he was planned on, and isn't present. I can't help it. Believe me, if I could escape those thoughts I gladly would. I'd love to have an event go down where the thought of his absence wasn't bouncing around in my head like a Mexican Jumping Bean. Its tiresome to remember, and exhausting trying not to. I can't win. But my birthday, my 33rd birthday, is one more year (2 in total, if you were counting like I was) since the "bad egg" was brought to life. And if there was a bad egg two years ago...well then, how many are there now? And another birthday means I'm that much older. If I was old at 31... If I expired two years ago... If time was up then... Well, where does that leave me now? I just don't want another birthday. I don't want this time to keep trudging past, pulling me further and further away from the reality that Logan used to be. Those feelings are fading. I have to almost fight to remember what it was like while I was pregnant with Logan, especially since I took it all for granted. You know, because well, my baby won't die. The memory of his precious little face is starting to blur around the edges now... And I don't remember him looking the way he did in those photos, so they don't help. He's starting to feel like a vague dream these days, and I hate that because the ugly memories are still crystal clear. How I felt being wheeled down the hall from the uber-OB's office to the birthing room, like everyone was staring at me, like they all knew. Sitting there knowing that I had a dead baby inside of my body, but not fully grasping it because I could still feel him. Sitting there feeling a baby inside of my stomach who was dead. Being wheeled by some stranger while my husband walked a few steps behind...just out of reach when I was screaming inside and never felt a stronger desire to hide behind him as I felt in those few hours. Wondering how his face looked, what he felt. Was he crying too? Was he as devastated and dazed as I was? The memory of being in that bathroom in my birthing room where I was supposed to be changing (I think) and all I did was stand in the furthest spot from the door I could get in and cry and cry and cry. The sheer terror of what birthing a dead baby was going to be like. The terror that I knew would come the next day when I would wake up and it would really hit me. The annoyance I had of having to communicate with the outside world, to let my family know what was happening to us, when I didn't even want to admit it to myself. The horror I felt as his lifeless tiny body slid out of me onto the table while my husband watched in horror...and no one caught him. The way it felt when they handed him to me and I made the sad joke "it's a boy!" because hey, that's what they're supposed to say when a baby is born. I remember that horrible walk to our car just a few hours later. The longest walk I've ever taken. I remember those moments, those feelings, like they just happened. But Logan...his actual little face, the way he felt, his little life...its fading, and it scares me. And how fair is that anyhow? Isn't it bad enough that I lost him, can't I have the sweet memories remain and those horrible ugly ones fade? Is it that I hang onto those memories tighter because they felt more tangible, more real?

I'm tired of this roll. The one of a dead baby mom. The one who can't watch a stupid movie or TV show with out thinking things like "well at least he's alive" or see another parent trying to parent with out thinking that they're taking their kids for granted, that they don't love them enough. Its an exhausting way to be. And I wish I didn't yearn for the days "before". I wish I could just accept this role my life has taken on and live it to its fullest. I feel whinny and selfish and like I'm refusing to let go. Like this role defines who I am now, and with out it that I wouldn't know how to be anymore. But I can't. I can't think of myself as Heather, mother of one. Because I can't let it go. I have pictures. I have memories. It was real. For six months I was Heather, mother of two. And that reality is too much for me to overlook and go back to being Heather, mother of one. But no one outside of this circle sees me as Heather, mother of two. And I get funny looks to comments that I make that seem perfectly coherent to me, but obviously must fall into that crazy lady realm. Like people want to say "No, no Heather. You're mistaken. You have one child." and anymore its just easier to agree, to not try to explain it to people. Like this Sunday, being Easter and all. This would have been Logan's first Easter. Logan would be almost eleven months, maybe walking by now. Maybe Logan would have been able to hunt for eggs next to his big sister. There would be two Easter Baskets on the table. Two children on the bunny's lap. A family of four in all of the pictures. How many of the "outsiders" are thinking about this stuff? Who do you think actually thought to themselves that Logan will be missing, that Logan should have been here to experience this with us? And come Sunday I'm sure there will be a moment when I look distant, lost, or sad and someone will notice and someone will mention it...and they will have never thought it would have had something to do with a baby that never quite made it to this life. And how would I explain it to them? How fourteen months later it still feels like a ton of bricks slamming into me every time I stroll down that lane? How after fourteen months, well, I'm just not quite over it yet. And if I did chance an explanation... Well how could it possibly be that I'm still mourning? There must be something wrong with me. Because its not normal right? People die, we move on. That's the way its supposed to be. That's the way it is most of the time when someone dies. But not when a baby dies. Not when the story ends before it was ever written. It all leads back to that same old feeling, I shouldn't be doing this, any of it. So, its too hard to explain. Its easier to just smile and shrug it off like that person was imaging something ridiculous. Its easier to let people think that you "got over it" and "moved on" and that you're still okay in the head and that it wasn't that big of a deal and that it didn't really change you. It's just easier that way, and these days, I'm all about doing what's easiest.

You know, I asked a question over on The Dead Baby Club Blog about how loosing a baby has affected your relationship with your parents (go add your own thoughts if you'd like). A few people commented on how its affected other relationships, and I've been thinking a lot about my husband. Not so much about how its affected us as a couple, because I think its still too early to know for sure, but how its affected him as a person. I know the ways that I've changed, ways that others can't even begin to understand, even ways that I may not even be noticing. But what about David? David's different. Not good or bad, just different. I can't quite explain it, or even single anything out in particular, but the question has gotten me to obsessing about him. How he's doing, how he's coping...is he coping? What he thinks about, what he feels about it. For the most part I splash myself out across these pages with out a whole lot of editing. He reads my blog (Hi babe!) he knows how I feel, who I've become, what I fear. But most men are so private. Men don't like to talk about their feelings. Especially my man. Its left me feeling like I wish it was mandatory for men to blog after something like this occurs. I wonder how many times I was off my rocker and David read my blog and was like "oh, I get why she's acting that way!". I don't have that. I mean, we used to talk about it, in the beginning. He used to be real up front about what was going on with him, but that's gone by the way side now. I ask on occasion how he is, but for the most part I get the same generic answer. I don't want to fix it, I don't know how. I just want to know where he's at. From what I've tried to figure out, he's about six months behind me in the grieving process. Like he took the first six months to keep me from going over the edge, and then took time to start his grieving. But its hard for me to remember where I was six months ago. I don't know. I just don't know what to say to him anymore with out sounding like a broken record, or like I'm prying or something. And no one wants to talk when they're having a bad day, and I don't want to bring it up on a good day and make it bad. It leaves me feeling lost about the whole thing. And I just want to know where he is, and where I am, so that we can try to work together and try to figure this mess out. Life was complicated enough beforehand, now its even more complicated and weird. And I can't help but have this nagging feeling that something isn't right, when deep down I know that its that damn elephant again.

I feel like I could talk for hours tonight. I have a lot racing around in my head, but I've so very tired and well...the Muffin doesn't like to sleep till noon the way I desire too. Hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep with out laying there staring into the darkness obsessing about things I can't change and fearing the ones I can.

Courage at the keyboard

Maybe its the year mark. Maybe people feel like enough time has passed now and that they should be granted the freedom to speak their mind, regardless of how it rips open my (very shoddily patched up) broken heart. Maybe people are just that thoughtless. Maybe people find courage at their keyboard the way so many find it in a bottle. I do not know.


I do know this...


It has been a year (almost 13 months to be exact). And no, enough time has not passed for comments such as:


"...not let the loss of Logan be wasted, a missed lesson & understanding, in vain. There's a reason, and God wanted you to find Him in it! God...the Author of life."


There's no point into going into the rest of the argument, and I am not taking this opportunity to bash the person who wrote this, or their beliefs. I will clarify that I do not believe that my anger at God (mind you, not for my son's death, but because he was created using a bad egg knowing full well his demise) will cause the loss of my son to be a waste. I do not believe that God allowed/caused/didn't prevent my sons demise because he wanted to teach me a lesson or understanding, thus I am not sure how his death would be in vain. In vain of what exactly? I do not believe that there is a reason, and I do not believe that God was using this to prompt me to "find" him, and since he is all knowing...he would've known this and that it would have been a waste of time.

The point here is, more or less, a big fat WTF?? I am grappling with the understanding as to why some find it their duty to explain God's mission. Why they are the self appointed ambassador's of his great wisdom. I know that so many turn to faith in the midst of their grief, and I think that it is a wonderful thing...for them. I wish I had the sort of faith that prompted me to run to God for comfort. But I don't. And I really am struggling with why there are so many people out there who are so quick to condemn and shame grieving people when those who are grieving falter in their faith, blame God and are honest in their anger. I could have worn a mask of false faith. I could have pretended to "run to God" or "give it to the Lord" as so many have suggested. I didn't. I have been up front and honest about my lack of faith, anger and questioning of faith. And yes I scoff and roll my eyes at the simple idiocy so many paint God into. I believe and accept the basic principles of Christianity, I just question its ambassadors and their self important need to "comfort" those who are ear deep in a pain that so few can begin to fathom.


Someone said the following to me once. It helps to feel like there are believers out there who aren't all gung-ho trying to argue God's case for him and accept that grief can not be argued out of. I found the words to be profound, and felt like for once an outsider might have actually gotten it.

People really upset me when they don't have enough knowledge to explain things, and they try to make up crappy excuses as to why God "does" something. Who says God "does" everything? And really? Do we have God all figured out to know Him so well as to know what He's thinking and if He's blessing somebody to say these "words of comfort"? People shouldn't preach and try to say something if they don't know enough of what they're talking about. It sours everything, it's NOT the order in which things are supposed to be handled. I'm sorry that you have become the receiver of this kind of treatment, that would get real old, real fast. I am sure, they were talking out of frustration in the argument and not even thinking about everything they were saying, using God to prove that they are right. That you shouldn't be mad at them for what they said, since it was of God. Sure, they believe in and love God, and in their heart they have the faith to put certain situations in His hands. But that's them, and it's a childlike faith. Which of course we are supposed to
have. But for heavens sake, there is a lack of wisdom in trying to win over one who is heart-broken in the middle of an argument and for the benefit of sticking up for God. Sometimes I wish I could get that through people's heads. God doesn't need us to "stick up" for Him. He'll deal with things in His own time and in His own way. WE need to quit getting in the way.

Anyhow...

I have been feeling very attacked lately, on several fronts. And I don't get it. The only thing I can conclude is that the general population must think I am "milkin' it" and that after thirteen months I should be well on my way to creating that replacement baby, forgiving God, and moving on. And in my own ways I am. Life is much different for me now than it was even 6 months ago, three months ago. But I still feel the pulsating emptiness that is my son's spot every waking moment of my life. The thing is, I haven't asked for anything from anyone. And all I've really desired in this whole mess is to be left alone by those who can't find it in their selfishness to step aside and let me be. Why is it that I feel like it is expected of me to comfort them? Especially when I never asked comfort of them, only space, and a request that has been denied time and again. I don't know, maybe its selfish of me to not have the time, space or desire to handle or care of the (what I now feel to be) mundane idiocy of those around me. When Logan died it became very apparent to me that I had to use every ounce of energy and strength I possessed to not fall off of the deep end, and I stopped caring how that affected anyone else. And, call me selfish if you will but, I still do not have the strength, desire or will to tolerate or empathize with the drama and chaos of the lives of those around me. Its like I feel as though I am using all of my available resources to keep it all together, to hold myself intact so that I do not explode into a million pieces of sorrow and disappear into the inviting depths of my despair. And if I let one of those resources slip, then all will be lost. The hardest part is that so often the majority of the insult has come directly from those closest to me. Those I depended on to hold on to me, prop me up, save me. This is where I feel the most let down. The few people who should be on my side, are the ones attacking. And the ones on my side, the ones who ended up being the ones who truly held me up, they are all complete strangers. Strangers who relate and "get it" because they've felt this pain, they've stuck around to say "Hey, its ok. You're normal, this is all normal. You'll survive, I did." It adds a new dimension to my pain. Its become so obvious to me why so many become reclusive and alienate themselves after a great loss. I feel that I can only handle so much. I feel as though I am skittish of that final straw. It makes me angry and loathsome and gives me the desire to lash out at people who must feel as though they are being thoughtful and well meaning. It leaves me confused, flabbergasted and appalled. It leaves me just a little sadder than I already was. A little more frightened. A little more fragile, and a whole lot more likely to close myself off from a world that wants to injur my heart further.

These dreary days.

I've been feeling dreary lately. Could be the cloudy/snowy weather, it always seems to provoke the blues in me. I dunno. I feel disconnected again and out of sorts. I've let my diet slide for the last few weeks, started drinking loads of pop again (running for comfort perhaps??) and not wanting to clean or shower. This used to be common place for me, earlier this year. But the last couple of months I've managed to stay afloat and breathing normal. But I feel blue these days, impatient and irritated by the mundane things in life.

My new friend, the one who had a miscarriage recently, is so sad. The thing is I like her, a lot. Stalkeresque liking. And it breaks my heart to know she feels such sadness, sadness that I can relate too. And I have this overwhelming urge to comfort her, to protect her, to shield her from this devastation...and I feel helpless and clueless about how to do that. And I guess its because I know that I really can't. Baby loss trauma is one that each person has to wade through in their own way, on their own schedule and no one can fix it, or make it go away. Grief has to be dealt with, it can not be sugar coated or ignored. It can not be fixed with soup or margaritas (believe me, I tried). But I can't help myself. I am obsessed with how she is doing, how she's feeling, what can I do to help? And I feel like maybe I'm being overbearing or weird and freaking her out. And I struggle with knowing where the line is. Am I calling too much, not enough? Am I pushing her to handle her grief like I handled mine? Am I being a pest, or does she want me to call/come by and is too reserved to ask? I get the feeling that she feels like she is an annoyance or a bother to others. And all I want to do is stand in front of her and protect her from the crap that is flying her way. To be a "force field" for her and help her through the most horrific thing the average person will ever go through. But the thing is, we're new friends. I've known her for a year and only recently been a friend to her outside of our children's playgroup. And I don't want to come across as overbearing or needy or smothering or whatever. But if anyones gonna understand her pain, isn't it me? I don't feel like I'm doing enough, or doing too much and its a weird spot to be in. I suck at making new friends.

My other friend, the one with the newborn who has colic... I need to call her. Selfishly I can't seem to work up the umph to do it. She's a compulsive complainer, I love her anyway. I complain an awful lot myself, so who am I to judge? But the thing is, lately I've been feeling weird about her. I know it must suck in a way that I can not imagine to have a baby with colic. To never get peace or rest or feel like you can comfort your child. It must be heartbreaking. And get this, she NEVER complains about it (at least not to me). I'm sure a lot of people feel weird about complaining about their kids to me now days. But I know she wants to, and who could blame her? And I feel guilty about it. I told her having a baby is the most incredible thing ever, that there is nothing but sheer joy! I was wrong. I assumed because my first born was sheer joy, that hers would be too. But its so hard for me to hear that she's miserable, that she isn't enjoying these early days with her daughter and I can't help but think of the alternative (dead baby, not happy one!! Go figure!) and it makes me sad. I want her to be happy no matter what. To know that she is so lucky, because these few bad months will pass and she'll outgrow the colic and then it will be better...her baby lived. And I hate that I feel those things. Hate it. I hate that it is so hard for me to empathize and feel compassion for anyone who has a hardship, because hey, at least they don't have a dead baby. I know how it sounds, I do. I know I sound selfish and bordering on loony. And I know I should suck it up and be a good friend and listen to her hardships without thinking she's ungrateful for her gift. But, like I said, I'm feeling blue these days. I'm missing my son and I'm sad that I know another mother who's baby died and I can't help her. And right now that just seems so much bigger than colic.

Counting Down, God and the Holidays

I feel like I'm counting down.

38 days...

Thirty-eight more days and it will be a whole blasted year. 365 days. Gone. Things aren't that different, not really. Christmas is still coming. Its still winter. I still get up every morning and go about my day. Except now I think about the box of ashes still sitting on the top of my armoire where I put them so many months ago, trying to forget about them. That didn't work. I think about how different life would've been. I think about what I'm missing. I think about the life that he should have been living. I'm not much different to look at I suppose. I'm ten pounds heavier, my eyes are perhaps a little clouded, distant, sad. You wouldn't know it, unless I told you. You wouldn't know that there is love for two children in my heart. You wouldn't know there are two realities to my life. The one everyone sees, and the one that has Logan in it.

I got my hair done today. I've just really been needing a change, some improvement, something different. For the love of my husband (and the unrealistic fear of him not wanting me anymore) I didn't hack my hair off. But I changed it. I've always done that. Something bad happens in my life that I can't control and I hack off all of my hair. Like its the one thing I can control, so I do. Seems insignificant and pathetic, but pain and confusion and helplessness manifests itself in weird ways. The stylist ask me about my daughter. I've stopped telling most strangers about Logan. I never thought I would, but I have. Early on I took pleasure in seeing the shock and horror. Like maybe they felt a fraction of what I did. And early on I was so scared of loosing his memory, his proof of existence that I wanted to voice him constantly. I wanted to scream "Hey!! There was a child here!! He was real!" But mostly now days I feel like its a cheap way of whoring him around. Like he is too special to me to put out on display. He is mine. My private memory. No one deserves to see my love for him. No one deserves to know him. He was mine, mine alone. And no one could love him like I do. Obviously my husband does, but random people do not get that privilege these days.

I keep thinking about that ornament. I want to go buy it, but I keep putting it off. Part of me thinks I need to let go. Ornaments and trees and knick nacks are not going to keep him here. Part of me is afraid that I'll forget about the ornament and next year I'll be sitting around decorating my tree, feeling jolly about the holiday...and BAM! I'll find that one. And I'll remember it all over again. Humph. Like I'll ever forget this. Like I'll ever forget him. And then part of me wonders, will it just make me sad every year to look at it? Like I won't be sad enough, and this will just be more salt. But part of me thinks Logan deserves a spot on my tree just as much as Aubrey. And that ornament just fits. It says "Rest in Heavenly Peace" and not "Baby's first Christmas" because, after all, it is not and I'm hoping he is. Its astounding the amount of emotions that a dumb little piece of plastic can bring forth.

Tonight I am sad, and I am not sleepy. A bad bedtime combo around here. My dh starts his 16 day vacation tomorrow. And we're making room in the basement for a pool table. And we're turning what was supposed to have been Logan's room into a shipping center for my eBay crap. And I desperately wanted change, and yet it makes me sick to my stomach to go through with it. Like if I left it a half torn up guest room, and never changed it into anything. Not a little boys nursery with little blue and green fishies, not a shipping center...than maybe it'll be like nothing happened. "There never was a baby, see!! Its just a guest room." Damn that room that sucks the wind out of me every time I walk through its wretched door. Tonight I just want to lock the door and pretend that room was never even there. That stupid room that I stood in so many times and considered how I would set it up. That I would put the crib in the far corner like I did in Aubrey's room. That the built in shelves would have nice little baskets stuffed full of all of the baby needs. Green walls, blue curtains...little comical fishies floating across the far wall. I hate that room. I should paint the walls black.

I've never seen the time 10:07 on a clock since that day. Maybe its the single ounce of kindness God is tossing down at me, maybe its my subconscious being fearful around that time every day, so I just don't look. Who knows? My mom would say its God. He loves me. He doesn't want me to be sad. Someone posted on a friends wall on Facebook today (on an unrelated topic) "Its like praying for God to take away someone’s hurt when maybe its the hurt that will bring them closer to him." Why do people even begin to think they understand God? Why do people feel like they have the right to interpret God. Why do people assume they know what God wants, feels, thinks? I don't get it. And I hate it. I hate that people preach to me, at me, about how God feels about me, what he has in store for me. To be honest, when people around me even mention the name God, it makes me recoil. It makes me shut my ears. It makes me want to punch them in the face. Maybe its not about God at all. Maybe nothing is. Maybe its just the way it goes sometimes and it sucks and it hurts and its ugly and it is what it is. Maybe its not part of God's plan. Maybe God didn't have a thing to do with it. As a protestant I grew up believing that God's hand is in everything. My husband, as a Catholic, grew up believing that God's hand is in the big stuff, but not the day to day menial stuff. That used to blow my mind. Why would he plant a garden and then not tend it? Now I just think that people try too hard to find God in everything and that maybe he created us, and created life, and let us have our way with it. I mean, that's free will and all. If my having created a baby was anything, it was a result of sex. A consequence. There's an egg, the sperm finds it, bam! There's a baby. Mine didn't work. Throw it out, try again later. Sigh. But the thing is, I don't even buy it. Only God can breathe life into existence. How many women try and try and try for a pregnancy only to get nothing? God chooses when life happens and when it does not. An he CHOSE to create life using an egg that he KNEW wasn't suitable. And he did it anyway. That's what I can't get my head around. I know why Logan died. I accept it. Not compatible with life. Fine. Got it. He wasn't compatible because the egg didn't split right. Fine. Got it. But why life that month? Why not the month before? Why then? A year later and I still can't get my head around it. And I hate that people say that God uses all things for good. All things?? How is this good? Because I wrote a blog that might have helped someone else cope? No offense but I could give a crap. I mean, I'm sorry for your pain, but I wouldn't have volunteered for this or anything. Given a choice, you'd have lost. How can you take a rape, or child molestation and make it into something good? How can you take these horrible sick cases of these grown men raping and torturing and mutilating a young child and make it good?? HOW?? Where is the good in any of that?? And why? What's the point? Why give me something that brings me an unbearable sadness so that he can make something good out of it? Why couldn't me make something good out of nothing? He's God after all. My questions go unanswered. And you know why? Because NO ONE has these answers. I get responses like "well we can't understand God" or whatever. But that's the lame answer you get when people don't want to look the horrible stuff in the face and call it what it is. It sucks. Its ugly and there is no answer. The human interpretation of God is not the answer, not to this. Sure, he might help me to learn to cope, learn to heal, learn to move on...but it will always still be there. The big black gaping hole that contains the minuscule memories of my sons very short life. He can't take that away. Or at least he won't. It makes me miss my Gramma. She always seemed to have the right kind of answers when it came to God, or anything. She is in a nursing home, 200 miles away, and incoherent. Alzheimer's. Explain that one to me too while you're at it. On second thought, no, don't. I'm tired of explanations. I'm tired of ignorant people yammering at me about their insignificant knowledge about God.

I don't realize how angry with God I am until I start typing these posts. And I'm not trying to start some theological debate, and I don't want anyone witnessing to me, I get enough of that already. I grew up Christian. I already know. Doesn't change what I feel. Doesn't change the facts.

I miss the desire to celebrate. Birthdays and holidays come and go and I find that for the most part I just drift through them and try to get past them. I yearn for that old care free innocence of celebration. Not that I don't think I deserve to celebrate. Not that I don't think I deserve happiness, smiles and good times. I just don't care about them anymore. It doesn't feel right. Like there's something just a little bit off. Like when there's a dinner after a funeral and everyone's hanging out and chatting like nothing happened. Like its just some big reunion, and that they’re not all there because someone died. That always felt weird to me. Someone died. "HEY! I know, let's go eat!" Weird. Christmas Eve marks 11 months. Its like a mile marker in a marathon. One mile to go. Seems so dramatic doesn't it? And I know it will be like every other milestone I've encountered thus far. The hype and build up to the day is far worse than the day itself. I've had several weeks of numbness and being able to hide and this week I feel like its coming front and center again.

I just get so bummed out. Life isn't supposed to have been like this! I should have the house decorated to the nines. I should have pictures of my two kids with Santa. I should be shopping for a little boy. We should be taking great home movies and laughing and building nice memories. But we're not. I don't want to decorate. I don't want to celebrate. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to remember. I don't want to think about what isn't happening, what's missing, what went wrong, what life has become or hasn't. And for some reason the holidays are really kicking my butt about it all. I hate it. I want it to go away. I want to feel the sun on my face again.

Memorials

Yesterday U of M held a memorial service for the babies who get donated for study. Logan was included in that. I didn't go. Part of me thinks I should have, but the biggest part of me is tired of trudging through these swamp like waters of baby loss. I'm tired of being reminded and I'm tired of dealing with it. I feel like the more time I spend in dead baby land, the more sucked under I get. The more depressed, the more lonely, the sadder I become. So, lately I've tried to steer clear of anything that might pull me back down. I don't know if that's healthy or not. Frankly I don't care. I just need a break from the glum. I need a break and fresh air.

I talked to the Forestry Supervisor (which is a funny title since I live in the suburbs and not Montana or something) yesterday and he told me they will be planting Logan's tree on Friday, or sometime next week (weather permitting). David and I have agreed not to drive by and look with out the other. I'm anxious and it will be very hard for me not to be obsessive and go look every ten minutes. My mom is coming this weekend and David will be up north, so we're going to wait until next week to go look at it, together. I'm happy, nervous and sad all at the same time. I'm happy it's finally getting done, 4 months after the initial start of the plan. I'm nervous about how it will affect each of us to have to see this tree all of the time. I am planting it at the park where I would have taken Logan to play...the same park I take my daughter to play at now. The same park that my husband drives past everyday to and from work. I didn't really think that through before I decided to plant it there. I just assumed I would want it there, I assumed David would want it there, but I think it will be very hard for him to drive by and see that reminder everyday...at least for a while. I wanted it to be on public land so that if we ever moved we could still see his tree, visit his tree. Its the closest thing we have to a grave marker at the moment. But I never thought about what it would be like to see his grave marker every day. I just wanted the world to see it. I want the world to know that there was a little boy, and he made a huge impact on our lives. A weeping willow in the park seemed the perfect way to do that. But again, it makes me sad. Sad that I am planting a stupid tree for my son instead of taking him to the park to play.

Last night was a tearful night here. I feel so helpless and useless when I see my husband grieve. I just assume that's how it must be for everyone else. What can you do? Nothing. So I sit there and try not to cry too. Tears are contagious for me. Lately I keep thinking about how I never saw it coming. This wasn't ever anything I ever thought possible for my future. I mean who does? But I often sit around and think how I live in the house that 14 years ago my husband and I (who had only been dating for a month) took our 2 younger siblings trick or treating at, and never once did we ever think we'd live in that house a few years later. Or how 14 years ago I tried to imagine what life would be like married with children. I assumed I'd have 3, and well before I was 32 years old. But I do not. I have 1. And never in a million years did I ever imagine myself to have a child die. And now it makes it very hard for me to look forward and not see calamity. Because I experienced a very horrible unexpected reality, I can not even venture out to see my future. Maybe its because its too painful. I'm scared to think of myself with three children now. I'm scared to hope for more. Because now, no matter what, I'll always be plagued with the "what if" scenario. We talked about DS when we decided to have kids. We talked about Spina Biffada too, since that is a very real threat in my family. But honestly I guess I never thought it would really happen to us. That's scary stuff that happens to other people, not us. Our baby wouldn't die. God isn't that cruel. But now that I know the reality, now that I know that no matter how great the odds are in our favor...it's always possible. And that is the scariest reality.

I've also been thinking a lot about why David's son died. I mean, my life is filled with unpleasant things. My parents divorced when I was a baby. My dad is a jerk. My brothers have all had there fair share of devestation. My grandparents and mother too. So to be honest I can see how and why having my child die would fit into the equation...but not David's. David has always been such a good person. His family is well built and functions well. David has always strived for the best, done his best and is an honest good man. I can find no reason what so ever for his baby to have died. You can look at my life and see how it could have happened, but not David's. Which leaves me with the blame. If he'd have married better. If he'd have dated around and found a different option than me. If I had been content with an only child as he was. If I had really thought it through and agreed with him that we were pushing our luck with having another baby at our age. His son is dead because I am never content. Perhaps that's the "lesson" or "reason" every one keeps telling me God has. Maybe it's that I was never content with what I had, and now I will never know real contentness, because something will always be missing.

I've been thinking about my son's ashes a lot lately. We need to get the urn. Need to. We've been avoiding that for too long. We need to put the proverbial lid on it. The thing is, what if I like the one I get, but then change my mind later? And I don't know that I can pour my son's burnt up tiny remains into a new container. I mean, there must be dust left behind in the bag or bowel that he is in. I can't just toss that into the trash, that's my son!! I thought I would take it to the funeral home here and let them do it, that way I won't ever really know what happened. I'm not stupid. I know that when they put his ashes in the container they didn't get every last speck out of the furnace or whatever. But I didn't have to be there, and I didn't have to see it. I can't just throw his dust into the trash can like it's garbage. And the other thing, I don't know where I want to put the urn. I'm thinking of getting an urn that looks like a statue. That way I don't have to answer questions or make people feel weird if they see it. They won't even know. Having someone cremated in my family just isn't accepted. I didn't want Logan cremated, it was the only option I had if I wanted U of M to do the autopsy, and at the time that seemed the most important thing. And I'm not sure I want it stuffed into my closet. Even now I can not bare the thought of putting his ashes into my chest or my closet. That is why they continue to sit in that wretched box on top of my armour. He needs a place in this home. A place that is all his. Not a shrine or anything, just a spot for Logan to be. I've contemplated a place at a cemetery, or burying him with my grandmother or David's...but at the moment I don't want him anywhere but with me. And frankly I'd carry him in my pocket if I didn't think David would commit me. I've thought about dividing his ashes up, but the thought of having a vial that contains maybe a piece of his toe and a piece of his ear...its just wrong. I can't do it. And I know that its because this is not a natural process in life that it is so hard to rectify it. You can not come to terms with something that is so beyond reason. I just wish I could stop trying so hard to come to terms with it.

Incoherent ramblings about why packing things away makes me cry.

The summer before my daughter was born I bought a bunch of infant clothes from this young mom at her garage sale. I think I bought most of what she had. Everything was so pretty and clean and in such nice shape...and cheap, I just couldn't not buy them. I was pregnant for the first time. I'm sure I showed. Her daughter looked to be about 18 months or so at the time. I remember as she was putting everything in the bag she started to cry. Her mom made mention of how it's hard to watch your babies grow from babies to toddlers. I just remember feeling weird and uncomfortable. I mean seriously...they're were just clothes...nothing to cry over. I thought. Thoughts of a naive mommy-to-be who didn't have a clue of what she'd eventually loose.

:::

We're having a garage sale at our home here on Saturday. So I have found myself going through my daughters things, deciding what to hang onto "just in case" and what to part with. And oddly enough I'm doing it with a lump in my throat. An unexpected lump. My baby isn't a baby anymore, she's a toddler. She's growing up and having her own personality, her own likes and wants. And there it is...that pang. The pang that says that one of my babies is growing up faster than I can comprehend...and one never will. I put the two events together. I put aside so many baby items for Logan knowing that they would be used in just a few short months...and there they sit. Packed up. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Hoping. Just-in-case. Hoping because surely there will be another baby in this house someday. Surely this can not be the end of such a wonderful and short period of time. We live for 80+ years. And I get less than 18 months? 18 months to rock and hold my "baby" before she is no longer a baby. It wasn't long enough. I didn't know I would have such a desire to be a mommy. I didn't know how much I would love it. And now I do. And now I want as many babies as I can get my hands on. But as I look through Aubrey's stuff and I realize that there isn't a second baby here like was planned, and expected, and that there isn't one in my near future...how long do I hang on to this stuff...just-in-case?? Forever. I want all of it forever. I want to keep it because I KNOW that there is another baby in my future. Because I can just not accept that it has all been stolen from me. It was a mistake. There will be another little boy. Otherwise its all just a cruel reminder that we had hopes of a little boy, and those hopes have been smashed into a million slivers that have driven themselves down so deep into my heart I will never get them out!

:::

I know why that young mom cried now. It's such a short window and I didn't know. I didn't savor it maybe as much as I should have. I didn't know. And now I do. I took for granted that I would be doing it all over again sooner than I could comprehend. Sooner than maybe I was ready for. But none the less, I was going to get to do it all over again. Logan should have been turning 3 months right about now. He'd be in a new size. 3-6 months. I'd have been a shopping fool all summer looking for baby clothes. He'd have been wearing those jumpers I bought from Kohl's two days before I found out that my world was crashing in on me. Green and Blue. Little lizards. I can see them clear as day in my minds eye. There, packed up with everything else. Shoved into the top of the closet that was supposed to be his nursery. I hate those memories. I hate what they remind me of. That gleeful innocence. Damn it. We were having a son!! A boy. And now it's just the three of us again and here I am almost 7 months later and I still can't get a grip on this new reality. I still can't believe this happened to us! I can't believe my baby died! My baby boy.

:::

Today I feel the loss of two babies. Different losses, but a loss just the same. I have sadness for my daughter growing so fast while I wallow around in the misery that was thrust upon me three days before she turned a year old. I have tremendous grief for a little boy I never saw enter this world alive. He will forever be a baby, just not one I get to hold and rock and feed. Not one I get to worry over, fret over, get annoyed with. Not one that will ever grow out of his own set of clothes. Not one that I'll have baby memories of and get to complain and cry about how fast it all went. They say it goes by in the blink of an eye. Logan, his went before I could even think about blinking. And what do I do with his stuff? Will I ever be able to place those clothes on another little boy? Will I be able to look past the face that should have been there into the one who really is? Will I even get the chance to make a concerted effort not to worry about having to try to do that?

:::

I don't like the loss of control I feel. Control over my own life and destiny. Shouldn't I be the one who gets to decide how many children I want to raise? Shouldn't I be the one to say weather or not there will be another baby in this house? Shouldn't I get to decide my future? How is it free will if I can will another baby all I want, and have none appear? I don't like being forced into the roll of a grieving mom for a baby that was never even born. I took it for granted. I took for granted how fast I got pregnant. And I did it when I wanted. We said, let's have a baby...and we did. We thought, lets maybe have another, and before we could really decide if it was the right time...BAM, baby! Getting pregnant was easy. I just did it when I wanted. And I took for granted that Aubrey's pregnancy and birth were so perfect. All babies, who are lucky enough to grow in the womb of a mommy who really wants them, are born perfect. Bad stuff happens to idiotic women who don't take care of their bodies and their babies. Bad stuff happens to bad people. Not to us. We're good people. We're good parents. We wanted that baby. We wanted our little boy and were overjoyed by his imminent birth. We missed something. Took it all for granted. Something. We just assumed. Assumed that babies are born healthy and alive and grow up when you love them. So what the hell happened? What did we do wrong? Assume? Take for granted? I just don't understand why our babies die. Why they're are created imperfect, why they get ill, why they aren't compatible with life? Why life isn't compatible for with them? I did everything right, and I failed. FAILED. LOST. STRUCK OUT.

:::

6 months, 2 weeks & 6 days later I am still reeling. Still trying to figure it all out, piece it all together. Accept it. Move on. Forget. Remember. Breathe. Not curl up and give in to the darkness that is so much more inviting than this reality.

:::

Guess I should get back to digging through memories and figuring out which ones I'm going to toss out for random strangers, who don't have a clue, to riffle through and pay pennies for. And I'll probably cry too. I'll probably stand there and remember the day I bought this or that for my daughter, how she looked playing with it, and how fast it all happened and how I thought I'd store it for Logan's use next year...and how it all came smashing down around me. And the day I realized it was ridiculous to hold on to so many things for a baby that IS NO MORE!! Or maybe I'll box it all up and just let it sit in the corner, with all of the other should've been items. Because in the end I'll try to hoard every minuscule memory I have of my babies...even the ones I fabricated. If memories are all I'll have left...

Another rough day

Today was another rough day. Another one. I'm not sure why I seem to have found my way back into the pit. Usually I can blame my hormones or something, but this is just good old fashioned, kick me in the gut, grief coming to pull me under yet again. I can't lie, these days seem to be less frequent, and I'm not sure why I always seem so surprised when I have a bad day, or in this case...a bad few days. I guess, just like the general population, I feel like it's been long enough (you know, the logical part of my brain) and I need to start to move on. But, every other part of me disagrees. So... Here I am, crying again today. My DH came home early today, and brought me a Slurpee, a back up pop that he knew I'd spike later in the evening, and a jar of peanut butter. I cried then too. I cried over a jar of Peanut Butter. Seems silly I guess. But really I just got overwhelmed. I don't feel lucky. I don't feel blessed. But I am, and I should. It's just hard. I have a great husband, and that jar of PB was just a nudge of a reminder. I mentioned the other day that I was out of PB. I hate being out of PB. It's a staple for me, I like it, it makes me happy, and I've been out for a couple of weeks. And at the 7-Eleven, he remembered, and he bought me a jar, and a Slurpee and a Sunkist for later. It's those stupid little things. I am lucky, I am blessed. But, sometimes I get so blinded by my sorrow for my son that I can not see the sunshine and rainbows in my life.

I've gotten to the point where I feel obsessed to move. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't just mean here, in my home, though I'll start there. I mean here! I want to go away. I want to find a new life, a new culture, a new everything. I want to start over, I want a second chance. I know that moving away and getting a new life won't change a stinkin' thing. I know that, in my logical brain. But the illogical side of me seems to be the one in charge nowadays. I don't want to be here. It makes me unhappy. It makes me sad. That room, it was meant for my little boy. This couch, this is the one I should be sitting on nursing my son while I watch my daughter tare up my house. These floors, these are the floors I should be fussing about the dog hair over, like I did before. Everything in this house reminds me that the plans and hopes and dreams I had are ridiculous now. Irrelevant. I want to leave, and I don't want to take anything with me (ok, maybe my scrapbook room and my laptop...let's not be crazy!). I want new furniture, I want new clothes, I want new decor, or different. I want different everything. I want to live in someone else's home, or someone else's life perhaps. It feels weird to be sad all of the time, to want to avoid my home...that should be my sanctuary. The one place I used to feel safe and comfortable against the crazies in the world. Not anymore. These days I try to think of reasons not to be home. Unfortunately their aren't many, which leaves me to sit here. Here! Here on this God forsaken couch, in this God forsaken living room, staring at the same God forsaken window where I used to sit and dream and wonder and plan. I don't want to be here anymore. Logan was a chapter of my life that God tore the pages from, I just want to start writing a new one. A sequel. But I want it from a new location, a clean perspective. It's not gonna happen, and I think that makes me feel hopeless, and a little more sad. I know I can't run. I know I can't hide. Trust me, I've tried. But grief seems to have taken the spot where my shadow once was. Attached to me, following me where ever I go. I just wonder if grief would look a little different under a different sky. If I would be so consumed with moving and starting over that maybe, perhaps, I wouldn't be so consumed with the truth. The reality that just won't go away. The reality that doesn't seem to want to give me a moments peace. I just don't understand. I've accepted that he's gone, that he's never coming back... So what is this that I am dealing with? They say the truth hurts. People run from it and hide from it and deny it all the time. So what is this then if I stand here and shout at the top of my lungs that I've accepted it? And yet, I am still being drug under by forces I do not understand, a sorrow that I still can not comprehend, and a grief that will not go away. What am I to do but stand here and let it beat me down until there is nothing left of me. I can not sit idly bye with buckets of tears and no hope for relief. Sure, time is the salve, but it won't be the healer this time. I don't want salve. I don't want to have this hurt camouflaged and covered up, just to resurface time and again. I want to be healed. But there will be no healing. Nore should there be I guess. My baby died. I'm not sure I ever want to "get over" that. I'm not sure I don't want it to hurt. I'm just back to saying what I've been saying for the past six months...I don't want a dead baby.

Days like THIS??

Momma said there'd be days like this??

No, my momma didn't tell me.

In fact, I was pretty clueless that there was this kind of pain in the world. Pain that doesn't really have a face. Pain that is so multifaceted that it inflicts itself upon me for seemingly random reasons. Why is it that some days (and this is one of those none hormonal ones, this is supposed to be my one week of peace) I feel the overwhelming urge to stuff Peanut M&M's into my mouth, just after I'd eaten lunch and am feeling rather full? And why is it that there are days that I become obsessed with getting something to drink (we're talking pop here!!) so much so that I actually get dressed (just enough not to have people stare) and go to 7-Eleven?? I've become a comfort eater/drinker. I gained 10lbs this month. TEN!! And get this, I'm trying to LOOSE weight. I don't recognize myself anymore, my brain. It's like I'm two different people. The person I was before Logan died, and the person I am now (who is trying to fake that she's still the old me!). I think I'm depressed. Seems obvious, almost expected. To be honest, I don't really know what real depression looks like. You know, when you're past the blues and you start looking for alternative methods to feel good. I cry for reasons I can't explain. I know, I know. I'm the mother to a dead baby. I should be depressed. I should cry. But at what point does it go too far? I'm too logical to kill myself. At least I'm with it that much. But getting out of bed (and it's getting later and later) is a chore like none other. And getting off the couch, well other that to do what is absolutely necessary (and frankly, the bare minimum), just seems pointless. I know I'm supposed to function, and I do what I have to, but I don't want to. I don't see the point anymore. And days when my daughter is not home...well...those days are pathetic. Makes me wonder who I'd be if she wasn't here to keep me from sliding all the way under. I have an appt. so don't freak out about me or anything. It's just one of those days. A day when I can't describe the hollow hole in my chest, days where I feel like I am literally suffocating, days when I am quite willing to curl up and drift away into oblivion. Days when the Vodka in my cabinet calls to me, and my brain argues not to go down that path. So I don't, most of the time.

I don't want to know anymore.

I don't want to know my son is dead. I don't want to know that I should have a two month old laying in that empty room. That the room should be painted blue and green with little fishies (like this one). I don't want to know that I should be stressed to the max and flipping out because I have two babies. I don't want to know this reality any more. I don't want to know this kind of heart break, this enormous amount of pain that I can't explain to anyone I know. I don't want to stand by helpless watching the pain drag my husband under. I don't want such a wonderful man to have to experience such sorrow, and to know he experiences it because he chose me. I don't want to wonder what to tell people. I don't want people remembering I was pregnant, and not being sure where the baby went. I don't want people to know. I don't want people to look at me like that. I don't want to look at myself like that. I don't want every intimate encounter I have with my husband to be laced with fear, and remorse, and longing, and memories, and sorrow, and hope for something we can't have back. I don't want to search for ways to fill the void. I don't want to long for a different life. I had/have a great life. I have an awesome husband that I don't deserve who is as perfect for me as I could have ever dreamed to hope for, and a daughter who is such sunshine and rainbows you'd wonder how anyone could find a teardrop with in a hundred miles of her. I don't want to hide my life away. I don't want to spend my free time in tears. I don't want this sorrow in my home anymore. I don't want to miss a child I never got to know. I can't mourn someone I never met. It's unreal. I don't know how to do it and it has worn me down and split my chest wide open. How am I to heal? How am I to get over, to move on from an enigma? I'm tired. I ache all over. I'm spent and I don't know how it is physically possible to still be crying after six horrible months.

I've thought about a shrink. I have, a lot. But I keep coming back to the same point...how can they help me if they can't fathom what I'm going through? How can they tell me if I'm normal, or appropriate if they haven't walked in these shoes? All they can do is pat me on the back, ask me stupid questions about how I feel when I already know how I feel, and then give me drugs. The drugs don't sound so bad. A pill? All I have to do is take a pill and then poof, the tears will go away? I'm in! But we all know it doesn't work that way, or we'd all have that pill!

My favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's a horribly tragic movie, or at least that's how I see it. The point of the movie, if you don't know, is that this man is so heartbroken over a girl that he goes in to have his memory of her erased. And the entire time they are going through the process of erasing her memory, his mind keeps trying to hide her, because though the pain is unbearable for him, in reality...in his subconscious, he doesn't really want to forget her. That's how I feel. I would give my right arm to not know what I know. To not feel the sorrow that is engulfing my heart. But really, in all of my blinding pain, I still want Logan. I still want to know he was there, even if for a little while. And though I would have given anything at all to have my son be born and grow up (there's that qualifier for you), Down Syndrome and all, I'll take this pain of knowing he was here, that I had a son...even if he died.

I'm just tired of knowing that he died. Tired seems like a weird word to use. Weary. Spent. Exhausted. Drained. Empty. I feel all used up.

Is this what it's like when a spouse dies? A parent? Do I have to go through this again? Does Logan's death hurt this bad because he was a baby? Or because he was my child? It makes me fearful for the future. I am affraid that I can not survive out-living my daughter. I can not imagine that I could survive out-living my husband. It makes me hope that my death is first, and that makes me sad, and scares me. I am a coward. I have seen that kind of darkness and I am afraid to touch it again. I don't care how that makes me look.

I can't shake it

I guess it's just one of those days. I hate hormones. I can't shake the crap that has crept in today. I was watching the 2nd episode of TNT's HawthoRNe this evening (which I think is pretty good), and of course it had a baby in it that they thought the mother was poisoning. Turns out she was just being too protective and washing her baby too much. She loved her baby so much she was hurting her. It made my heart want to scream. To feel that desperate. To scream and fight for your baby. I didn't get to fight. I didn't even get to know there was a problem. He just died, and I didn't even know it when it happened. And blast it if I don't feel like punching a hole in my wall again.

I just want to be left alone.

Maybe it's hormones. I dunno. I always seem to find dark days when I'm more hormonal. Not that I need a reason to cry for my son. I don't understand why hormones would play a roll in my grieving process. Not that I need more to add to it. I know on my "stable" days that life will go on, that it is going on, and that I'll survive and maybe I will go on to have more children...but then maybe I won't...but either way I'll be ok. The way I figure it, I have 7 "stable" days a month. Woman spend a week hanging with Aunt Flo, a week pre-menstrual, and about a week around the ovulatory time. So, that leaves me a week to not be bombarded with emotions and hormone induced lunacy. And in that week, I have to be careful not to run across any newborns, baby shower crap, movies or TV shows involving having a baby (or even worse, someone loosing a baby)...which seems to be more prevalent after your own child dies. So, that leaves me a few good days a month. Because when I'm pre-men all I can think about is how bad I want a baby, and that it's not fair that mine was taken away. When I'm ovo, all I can think about is making a baby. And when I am menstrual...well, that week just sucks anyway. But I have come to realize that no matter how much I'd like to move on, to feel better...there are about 21 days a month that are working against that. I'm tired. I'm tired of these tears that seem to come out of no where. The ones that make me wonder if maybe I'm not really coping as well as I'd like to believe, and that maybe I'm just ignoring or stuffing the sorrow down. And I don't like not knowing what causes the tears. Obviously they're rooted in my son, but why today? Why this afternoon more so than any other time? I wasn't watching anything, I wasn't listening to anything, I wasn't doing anything that would provoke my heart. It makes me mad. I just want to be left alone. I want the sorrow to go away. I want to feel normal and whole again. I don't want to feel like something is missing. I don't want to feel like I have to fix something, or like something is unfinished.

I had ice cream for lunch. You can laugh. My diet has been one failure and disappointment after the next and these past couple of weeks I just can't deal with it anymore. But I had a mini 1/2 fat ice cream, it's not like it was Haggan Das or anything. Anyhow, as I stood there peeling the cover off the tiny tub and arguing with myself that this isn't an appropriate lunch and that maybe I ought to go pick something else up, the ugly mean spirited side of my heart said to me, and I quote "It doesn't matter anyhow. You don't have any reason to take care of your body any more!" at which point I burst into sobs for the umpteenth time today. Odd, the things the dark side will whisper in ones ear. The horrible malicious thoughts that drive us to the guilt and self loathing we experience, as if the pain of your baby dying isn't enough, we must add to it. We are more cruel to ourselves than anyone else is. But, I don't find that knowledge to be comforting. I don't care if my hormones, or emotions or the dark side of my heart is what encapsulates me into a weeping mound of sadness. The fact remains that I still feel such sorrow. My dh says that he is sad everyday. And I realized that though I try like hell to pretend otherwise, I am too. Everyday I know my son is dead. I can't even say that I remember everyday, because there hasn't seemed to be a moment where I have forgotten. But nowadays I just feel worn down. Like how you feel after a crazy busy day. Too tired to fall asleep, to achy not to think about it, but too drained to cry or talk. And there seems to be a permanent lump in my throat.

My friends baby shower is in a month. She's having a boy. I don't know why that matters to me, that it's a boy, but it does. I wish it didn't. And I find that I am hurt, or mad or ambivalent towards her and her pregnancy because I tried so hard to reach out in the beginning and to help her not feel weird towards me, but in the end she shied away from me at every turn. And now I think I'm bitter at her for that. I don't know. My other friend, the other pregnant one, suggested us going in on a gift. I agreed, that way I wouldn't have to go shop for little boy things (not that there aren't other things to buy). But I don't even know if I am going or not. I should go. It's the grown up, right thing to do, and I don't think I'll have a melt down (although hopefully it'll be during my stable 7 days!). But what if I do? It scares me to go. It scares me to know that a little blue onesie could push me into hysterics. It scares me that she might feel weird if I'm there, and only invited me out of politeness. I hear she's huge. I haven't seen here since Logan died. I was supposed to meet up with her on Sunday and I found myself really not wanting to. I can't now anyhow, but I'm not disappointed.

Why is it that after our bodies betray us in such a horrible fashion do we still have such an overwhelming urge to do it again? We learn at a very young age that if it burns, we don't touch it again, ever. Why do I still want to run head first into producing another baby? Why am I counting down the days till we are cleared to try again (8, if your curious) when I know that I can't do it by myself? Why am I so freaked out about asking my DH how he feels about it? Actually, I think I know that answer, I just don't like it. He's been very honest from the get go that he's not ready...but I think that's what scares me the most. Having to rely on another person for their consent. And I wish there was something I could do to convince the both of us that it would work out, a dozen times over. That Logan's condition is a fluke. I keep reading that lately, how DS is just a fluke. Oooh, that makes me so mad! A fluke killed my baby! And why at 6 months gestated? Why not right away? Why not before I even knew I was pregnant? Why would he have to die when he was old enough to be delivered, to be seen, to be held, to be felt and heard? Still, at almost 6 months into my grief, I still have so many questions that scream for answers, when clearly there are none. But my heart wants answers, it wants to understand. It wants facts, and reasons.

Me? I just want to find peace. I want the lump in my throat to go away, and I want the knowledge that I had a son, and now he is dead to go away. I want the ache and the fear and the guilt and the sorrow...I want it all to go away. I just want to be left alone.

I want to have genuine happiness with out the shadow of sorrow.

Carry on...

I saw this in my SIL's bathroom on one of those daily quotes things.

Carry on. It is not easy. But it is what we have to do...

Says who?

A million thoughts at midnight.

I have too much on my mind. I can't sleep. I don't think I do that much, sleep. I don't remember not sleeping, but in the morning (and through out the day) I feel exhausted and like I got ran over by a truck. Almost like a hangover. A grief hangover maybe. Like how it is after a crazy holiday and you feel wiped out and emotionally and physically exhausted for a time after. Maybe that's what is happening. Maybe I'm to that stage where I am just wiped out.

Kubler-Ross says there are 5 stages to grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance. A friend of mine said there are 6, the sixth one being Repeat. I've repeated this cycle over and over and over again. Some stages more than others. I seem to like to hang out in stage two; anger, the most. I've done a lot of bargaining too. But, God doesn't accept bribes. Trust me, I tried. I tried a lot. But here I am, shuffling into stage 5. I say shuffling because I'm not sure I want to be here yet. I'm not sure I want to accept that my son is dead. It's been so hard to be told he's dead, then to feel it, then to see it, then to talk about it, then to know it and now to accept it? It doesn't seem appropriate. I don't want to accept it. It feels like I'm just laying down and taking it with out a fight. And though I know that I can fight and scream till I'm blue in the face, he will not be coming back...I guess it makes me feel like I tried and did my best...just in case by some fluke God reverses the rules of the universe and gives him back to me. I mean, his death was a fluke...couldn't I experience more of those? No. I know that it won't happen. But to accept it seems like more than I am capable of. Seems like. But, I guess it's not though, is it? Because, horror of horrors...here I stand on the cusp of stage five; acceptance. With part of me still hanging out in stage two, because YES...I am still very pissed. I just am not sure at who, or for what anymore. I just know that I am so very angry still, and I still can't believe it, and I'd still trade every second of my life for him, and it still makes me want to sleep all day and pretend it didn't happen...even if I am starting to accept it. Which leads me to believe that you never really get past the stages of grief. Won't I always still be just a little in denial that such a horrible thing happened to me? Won't I always be a little angry (or a lot) and still try to barter for his return...or at least to take this breath taking ache away? Won't there always be a corner of my heart (at the very least) that wants to hide from the rest of the world? How is it then that I am to get PAST the stages of grief? No. I think I will forever cycle through each stage, again and again and again. Maybe in varying degrees, maybe in different ways, but none the less.

6 months. Logan has been dead for 6 months. Dead for as long as he was alive. This is me in stage 1. Denial. I still can't believe he was here...and now gone. But I see this milestone in an odd way. No longer do I feel like I am standing on the tracks with a freight train barreling down at me at an incomprehensible speed ready to splatter what's left of my guts out for the world to see. Nowadays I feel more like I am sitting in my car, the first person in line...waiting. Annoyed, impatient, distracted but still dazed as I watch this enormous freight train come barreling down the tracks at a speed that leaves me awe struck. Six months flying up on me so fast, while I'm going on with the rest of my life, seemingly unaware. But I'm aware of it's approach the same as I would be aware of the ground shaking, the sounds, the smells, the vibrations in my body of an approaching freight train. Have you ever stood next to a train that was moving? The power will blow your mind. You are such an insignificant force by comparison. That's how I feel now. An insignificant force standing beside an enormous freight train that is no longer going to run me down, but one that is going to pass me bye...leaving me shaken, awe struck and significantly aware of just how fragile I really am, but one that will leave me standing in the end. Survival. Isn't that what I begged God for? Let me survive this breath taking, gut wrenching, mind blowing, heart shattering event. I guess I survived. I'm still breathing, but...it still hurts, when I allow my thoughts to wander down the path with my little boy.

This past weekends was one of those times I wandered down that path a few times more than my current normal. Independence Day. BBQ's and family get togethers for so many, my family not excluded. This event would have been when I would have introduced Logan to my extended family back home. He would have been about 6 weeks old or so. Instead, I went to the BBQ with my DH and the Muffin and it was just like last year. Well, except for a few conversations here and there about the autopsy papers and other stupid stuff. Although, I did have an ironic encounter. It's encounters like this, seemingly random things that really are just inappropriate face punches from the universe, that still take my breath away. My cousins new beau was wearing one of those rubber bracelets made popular by that Cyclist dude. It was white with green letters. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because from where I sat I could swear it said LOGAN. I asked the boy and sure enough, it did indeed say Logan's name. When I asked him about it he said that he just liked the color of it and thought it looked nice. My cousin got it from my uncle and gave it to him. No significance whatsoever. He thought it stood for The Logan Center. When I asked what that was he turned to ask my aunt if she knew. The Logan Center is a home for the mentally retarded. Nice. Thank you universe. Even more ironic since my son was retarded, having had Down Syndrome (which I've come to find is a syndrome of mental and physical retardation). What are the odds? What are the odds that I would notice a name on a random bracelet on a kid I didn't know for a home of MR folks on the day that I was consumed with thinking that it should have been my sons coming out party? What are the freakin' odds of that? Well, if you haven't noticed...odds, the ones that no body wants, have managed to find there way to my door step quite a bit lately. I digress. You win universe. I just don't have the mental stamina to keep up anymore. I wish I would have asked him for the bracelet.

Six months also marks the end of our medically demanded infertility. On the 24th we will be cleared, physically, not necessarily emotionally, to start trying to have another baby. We won't be. Not now anyway. I haven't even brought it up in a few weeks. I know. My DH is so not ready. And believe it or not, I find that on days where I am thinking logically and not ovulating or mucking around in the empty arm blues I'm not ready either. Today I even found myself wondering if I would ever be ready again. Wondering if the Muffin was going to be enough for me and my mommy desires. Wondering if I thought it would be worth it or not. Of course it would be. Having a child is worth every ounce of pain you can get, and I'd cut off my own leg if I had to. Maybe wondering more so if I wanted to put my heart out there again with the chance that it might get obliterated again. Maybe convinced that I wouldn't be able to birth a healthy child again. Maybe convinced that Logan was a warning to knock it off. Wondering if I was being punished, rewarded or warned. Wondering if it mattered. Hoping that I wouldn't crust over with a bitterness that could never be penetrated. I think I'd like to have more children. I hate feeling like it isn't a good idea, that there is a time limit, that it might not happen even if I wanted it to.

Anyhow, so being in this acceptance stage...or at least tip-toeing around it, had me laying in bed tonight thinking of all of these things. Which invariably led to my thinking of an urn again. My son needs to be in an urn. Having this open end, just leaves things unfinished, fresh, raw and still bleeding. We need to tie up this loose end. But urn shopping makes me nauseous. And I have been having some relatively grief free days as of late and frankly I enjoy them. And I don't want to cry anymore. And I don't want to think about his dead little body. And I don't want to have to pick out a freakin' urn for my son!!! And every time I think about it I get really, really, really mad all over again. And I keep saying the same thing, I shouldn't be doing this! This isn't natural, it isn't normal, it isn't right! And yet, it still has to get done and prolonging the inevitable just means that I have to continually pick at the scab. Which, as everyone knows...makes for a worse scar. Sigh. I know I have to. And I know I'll have to drag my DH down with me when it's time. And that makes me leery too because he's had a rough time too and I don't want to induce any more tears for either of us and sadly I think that for the most part the white box on top of my armoir has become a fixture that is easy to let blend in with the rest of the clutter in my home...and though I know that is my son, it's easy to pretend otherwise...most of the time.

I've been thinking about God a lot lately. I'm Christian. I think I've mentioned that before. I'm back slidden, or a prodigal daughter or a fence sitter or what ever you want to call it. But the fact remains that though I believe there is a God, he makes me nervous. My mom said once that she pictured me hiding behind a bush hoping God wouldn't notice me and would just leave me alone. I guess I'd have to say that I picture it more like I'm waiting for God to jump out from behind a bush and yell BOO! Because, quite honestly, as I have looked around me over the years at those I thought were good Christians, those are the people who've had their lives yanked out from under them like a rug. I know, I know...there are a million earthly reasons and God isn't out to get us. Sure. I hear ya. I might even believe you on most days. But my faith was shaky before this, and now I find myself more leery of God than ever. Having said that, I know that I need to get back in church regardless. I want to raise my daughter with those beliefs, and sadly I don't know how to teach them to her when I am having such a hard time believing the most fundamental things. I don't doubt there is a God. I can not look at creation, at the human body, at science, at any of it and come up with a better explanation. My logic tells me that there must be a God. But knowing this God. Understanding this God...that's where I fall flat on my face. I can not comprehend this God. It is beyond me. I have no faith, so I can't rely on that anymore. So, I have to trust my gut and my logic. And if there is a God, and there is a Heaven and my sons there...then I want to do everything I can to get there to meet him. Sigh. And I miss the comfort or peace or whatever it is I used to have. And I am hoping that God will reveal to me the why's of my son's death...or more so the illness that made it impossible for him to live. I am hoping for peace, or understanding, or something to go along with the facts and acceptance. Sadly though, one can not be argued into a belief, so don't bother sending me notes trying to convince me or preach to me...thanks for the thought and effort but my family and friends IRL do that already...I really can't take any more of it. I'm just hoping, and on occasion praying, that I find my way back. That my beliefs come back, that my faith comes back. That I can teach my daughter the truths that I know exist, even if my heart rejects them right now. I wonder how many people pray and ask God to help them believe...I do. I want to believe. I miss believing.

Why is it at night when I am exhausted, and seemingly on the days when I am most exhausted do I think about my son? Why is it that I become so overwhelmed with thoughts about him and the terror that my life has become these last 6 months that I feel so compelled to get up out of bed and blog my fingers off until the wee hours of the morning? I do good all day, stuffing those thoughts, ignoring those memories, but at night they sneak up on me and try to suffocate me. Some days I wish they would. Anything to make the ache go away. Admittedly the days and the nights are far better than they were a few months ago. I'm progressing through this grief crap. I guess that's something. This blog does that for me. Some place to let it all out. Everyone needs an outlet I suppose. The thoughts and feelings easily flow from my finger tips even though I choke on them if I try to speak them. I guess it's probably a good thing that I don't blog as often as I used to. Like it's a measure of my progress. Time. It's a force to be reckoned with. I'll take it. These days I take anything that helps move me along. Impatient as always. But life goes on does it not? A thousand years ago some woman's baby died...yesterday, some woman's baby died. And life goes on. More babies will die, and life will still go on.