Dusty Ovaries

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

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

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

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

Death Barged In

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

Death Barged In
by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thousands (a poem for my children)

Thousands

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

Written by H. Westphal

And now there is proof!

Trolling blogland today I came across a link on Beauty from Ashes to an article published on Yahoo! about the higher risk of death among parents of stillbirth and neonatal deaths with in the first ten years of their child's death. I copied it below for your edification:

From Yahoo! News (that's a link to the original article)

Parents who lose a new baby run a high risk themselves of dying prematurely,
according to a British study published on Thursday.

Investigators delved
into a random sample of national death registrations for the years 1971 to
2006.

They compared deaths among parents who had been bereaved in the
first year of a child's life or whose child had been stillborn, against deaths
among parents whose baby had survived beyond the first year.

Bereaved
parents were between two and four times likelier to die or become widowed in the
first 10 years of the child's death compared with non-bereaved counterparts.

Mothers in particular were at threat.

Bereaved mothers in England
and Wales were four times likelier to die prematurely, and bereaved mothers in
Scotland six times likelier, than women whose child had survived beyond the
first year of life.

The risk for mothers lessened slightly over time,
but was still significant -- 50 percent higher -- after 25 years. After 35
years, it was 20 percent higher.

The reasons for the mortality are
unclear because the data do not give the details.

The authors speculate
there could be a link with alcohol abuse among bereaved parents, and suicide,
too, may be a factor.

Alternatively, stillbirth and infant deaths could
be more common among parents who themselves are in poor health.

The
research, headed by Mairi Harper of the University of York in northern England,
appears in the specialist journal BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care.

:::

So, there you have it. As if being the parent of a dead baby wasn't bad enough, now we have to fear our own premature deaths! Sigh.

"Look out!!"

I didn't realize how much watching someone else go through this would knock the wind right out of me. Its like watching a car wreck in motion. You wanna reach out your hand a scream "Look out!!" But the disaster in inevitable and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.


And making food seems so trite.

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.

Knocked Up, Knocked Down - Monica Murphy LeMoine

This is Monica's book. She blogs about her miscarriages/stillbirth and subsequent real live take home baby over at Knocked Up, Knocked Down. Which is where you can also order her book by the same name. Its a great read, full of her typical satire and foul mouthed outlook on the land of dead babies and what it means to be a "Half-Mom". Seriously, check it out.

My marriage

Brittany contacted me on Facebook and asked me how the tragedy of Logan’s death affected my marriage. This is what I came up with.


Prior to Logan's death my husband and I had a solid relationship of about 13 years or so. We also had a daughter a year prior to Logan's death, which I think changes things considerably. With out those two things in play, I can not say how our marriage would have fared. My husband has ventured so far as to say that had Logan been our first baby, he doesn't think I would still be around. Though I played with the idea of escaping, and though yes, having a baby living at home to help me "snap out of it" and focus on my responsibilities to raising her kept me intact at home, I think I yearned for the companionship of someone who knew what the heartbreak felt like. I doubt that I would have wandered far, or for very long since the safest most comforting place I found was in my husbands arms. They say “Misery loves company”, and David knew my brand of misery, and we could wallow in it together, and often did in those early days. But now, a year and a half later, I look back and I think that the biggest changes for my marriage were two things. First and foremost I became terrified of loosing my husband (and daughter) either through him leaving me or their death. Know one ever said that “this” would leave one feeling rational and sane. But I was terrified (and I still struggle with this) that God was gonna swoop down and take them too! Or Karma, or the Devil or just plain old fate! But that they were going to be snatched from me, and that in turn I would die of sheer misery and broken heartedness. On my more sane days I tended to cling to change number two. That change being that if my marriage could survive something so gut wrenchingly terrible and come out on the other side still in love with each other, still able to cling to each other, still able to look to the other for comfort…well then, we could survive absolutely anything. I remember a nurse saying something to me when I was in labor with Logan (whom I already knew was dead) to the gist of, “This is the worse thing that could ever happen to you, and you’ve already done it!” And I remember thinking at the time it was an odd thing for her to have said, but I so agreed with her. Because after all nothing could ever be worse than this, right? Well 18 months of time between the horror and now have taught me that no, in fact it is not the worse thing that could ever happen. Far worse things could have happened, and could still happen. But at the time I needed to hear that, and I held on to that with every ounce of energy I had in me. And somewhere along the line it became my mantra for my marriage. Nothing can happen in this marriage now that we can not survive, together. Because nothing, not even infidelity, will destroy me the way that my son’s death did, and if that didn’t destroy my marriage…well then nothing can.


However, communication is the key, in my unprofessional opinion anyhow. David and I don’t “talk” much. David’s not much of a “sit and share” kind of guy, and I tend to monopolize conversations. However, very soon after Logan died I started blogging, and I told David that if he wanted to know how I was feeling he should read my blogs. And if you’ve ready my early posts you’d know that I didn’t hold anything back, and I was about as bare as I could get. We never talked about my blog posts, but he knew where I was, that I wasn’t crazy, that others felt the same way…and that perhaps the way he was feeling might be like I was and that he wasn’t crazy either. Every now and again I’ll ask “How are you DOING?” Not really code or anything, but he knows what I mean. And he also tries to own up to his feelings as much as he can at the time. Most of the time I just accept it for what it is and know that however I am feeling, he is feeling whatever it is he is feeling. And early on I knew that I wasn’t okay and he wasn’t okay and that was okay too. Eventually we’d be okay, or we’d get help. I think we’re okay these days, for the most part. We grieved differently and tried to accept each others differences. In the end I think we’re surviving, since I think it’s a daily process, and though we’ve come out on the other side changed and with many a scars, we’re still mostly okay. We’re trying to find our new normal. We’re trying to live with the shadow that is Logan, trying to carry on life not as though he didn’t exist but as though his existence was something special meant for only the two of us to have enjoyed, even if for such a short time.

I guess in all reality I don’t really know how Logan’s death affected my marriage. I also don’t know how it affected me as a parent. Do I treat my daughter differently because I lost a son and maybe I value her life just a little more than I would have? Is the crazed fear for her life because I lost a child, or is every parent crazed out of their mind with fear when it comes to thier kids? Maybe I’m a little more tolerant to my husband’s flaws than I was before. Maybe I think he’s an extra special dad because I witnessed what he went through, and how he stood up, knocked the dirt off and picked up his daughter when I know he would have rather curled up in a ball and died. Maybe seeing my husband hold his dead son in his arms with tears streaming down his face, and not an ounce of shame for those tears, offered me a deeper connection with him. Because no matter what else goes down in our lives, and no matter who else comes and goes, we will always have that day that only the two of us will know on the level that we know it. Because no one else will hear that someone’s baby weighed 1lb 7oz, or hear the name Logan, or see a blond haired blue eyed boy, or see a child with Downs and look at me with eyes that will reflect the tremendous pain and knowledge that his will hold. Maybe he’s my war buddy. We witnessed it together, we trudged through it together, we survived it together and we came out on the other side…together. Knowing that makes everything else seem so insignificant in its light. Together we created life, and if went perfect. Then we created life and it all went wrong. We saw both ends of the spectrum together. We have our own sadistic horrible jokes that no one else would ever get. We have our shared sorrow, our shared delight. We have a life that we have built together that, though at times has been south of Hell, its our common ground, its what kept us together when grief and depression tried to rip us apart. Knowing now that not even the worse possible thing that could have happened could tear us apart, what is there left for us to conquer? If our marriage goes south at this point, well then, I guess it will be because we quit trying to survive the little things.

And I hope I never quit trying to survive.

Crap! Where'd I put that armor!!

I've been feeling very attacked lately. By people who are close to me. People who ought to know better, be softer, love me more, catch me, take a bullet...you know, those people. But lately those are the ones I want to run from, hide from, close myself off from. I "see them coming" and my first instinct is to flinch, put my hands up, protect myself. It seems off to me, when I sit and I think about it. It makes me bitter. It makes me hateful and angry. And again I feel myself withdrawing, turning in, turning away. And I start to feel like I let my guard down, didn't put my armor on. Its my fault really. I have always kept everyone at an arms length, don't get too close, don't know too much. I don't feel comfortable in intimacy. I often recoil and shrink back when people touch me, I don't like it. I feel a sense of insincerity about it all. Like a snake coiling around its prey whilst singing a pretty song. I haven't always been that way. Its something I've picked up as an adult. But years upon years of feeling kicked around, stepped on and beaten down by the ones who are supposed to protect you will leave one feeling very defensive, skittish and distant. When Logan died I wanted to disappear. I wanted to fade away. I didn't want to die. I didn't want that kind of attention. I just wanted to not be noticed as I faded. I wanted to be left alone. And because I was so raw and angry early on, I was able to shut down and ignore and run and not many thought too much of it. These days I feel like that is not possible anymore. Like I am being sought out intentionally. Called to reconcile, called to state my case, defend myself, account for the behavior that is found unacceptable by people who can't fathom. And these days I feel like I am frantic in my search for where I stashed my armor. When I started to let the defenses down, when I started to "fade in" and people thought it ok to share their view of me, with me. I need that sign back. I need a T-Shirt, maybe even my baseball bat again.

And all of that leaves me feeling like all I've managed in my adult life is to let people down. My mother cries for a relationship with a fictitious daughter. I say fictitious because I will never be, could never be, the daughter she so desires. It leaves me feeling not good enough and alienated. My father, humph! There are not enough words in all the languages of the world for that mess... But it has left me asking why? And it has left me feeling ugly, shoved aside, overlooked, abandoned and so many other feelings that I don't even know the words for. [think scene from Hope Floats where her daddy drives away and leaves her screaming in the drive] My stepmother likes to remind me. Likes to send me hateful letters that make me feel as though I am to blame. Likes to make me feel as though I am the delusional one, the childish one, the selfish hateful one. The same woman who hasn't spoken to me in almost two years. The same woman who didn't acknowledge my son's death and chose, instead, to scream hateful things at me from the background, through the phone. This leaves me feeling like my head may start spinning, fangs may be produced and horns will shoot forth from my skull all while a demon-like guttural scream rises up from the depths of the darkest parts of my soul. And in the midst of such things I feel repulsive and disgusting to my beloved. Which leaves me feeling unsexy, undesired and gross. Not what a woman wants to feel, not to mention the affects it has on our intimacy.

Now I feel as though I have come full circle. I feel like I am back to feeling like I was better off locked away. And I yearn for the permission to fade away. I yearn for the acknowledgment that its normal, expected and okay to run and hide from the real world when I find it so difficult to accept my new reality. One that will always have one child less than should be present. And regardless of how many people, in their numerous ways, try to convince me that because they know loss and pain that they understand mine, when I can not begin to think they do. I do not try for a moment to understand what it would be like to loose a spouse, a parent or to have had cancer. I can not comprehend the pain of wanting to bear children and not having my body cooperate and get pregnant in the first place. I do not understand the pain of infertility because I have not been infertile. Those are different pains, different losses, ones I can not comprehend. But I hear it all the time. Loss is loss, pain is pain, and I say it myself. But the reality is that divorce and rejection are different realities then parenting a dead baby. Having your parents die, or your spouse is not the same has having a child die, nor is having a child die the same as a parent or spouse passing. I can not explain it. I do not try to put them in the same category. Its like saying the love for your child is like that of the love for your spouse. I can not try to reason with people that no, my loss is not the same as their loss. I am stymied as to why people want so desperately to find that common ground with me. Why people want to say to me "I've known loss and pain in my life also, so I understand." No! No, you don't understand. You may understand that I'm in pain, that I'm sad. But you can not possibly begin to understand the sadness that comes with loosing a child, anymore than I can understand the pain of divorce. I don't pretend to understand. I don't yearn to get on that level with those who do. My first thought is always, "Wow, that really sucks! I can't imagine." I don't know, maybe that makes me a cold person. But for me to sit here and say that I understand the pain of having my child die from cancer at 5 years old, after I've had a chance to get to know this child, their personalities and have made countless memories with them is misleading and grandstanding. I do not know that pain. I only know mine. I only know the pain of having what I understood to be a healthy and uncomplicated pregnancy for six oblivious months that turned into a stillborn little boy who died from complications with Down Syndrome. And I can not assume to know what it is to have a child with Down Syndrome, mine died before I ever got to know him. Another DBM blogger (and I am so sorry I can not remember who it was) compared the understanding of the pain of a baby dying with someone who tried to assume that they could understand based on the fact that their child almost died something in the form of this: "It would be like looking over the edge of the cliff at the churning murky waters and imagining what it would be like to drown. I don't imagine what it is like, I know what it is like." Thinking of how you would feel in that situation is so far from the reality of what it is that it becomes and insult, at least to me, for people to tell me that they understand...because they have known pain? I sprained my back once, but I can not fathom how it would feel to break it. I have been burned, but I can not fathom what it is to be on fire. I have been dumped by boyfriends in the past, but I can not begin to fathom the pain and rejection that comes with divorce. I just wish people would stop trying to understand and spend more time listening, nodding and admitting that they have no idea what I am going through, how I must feel, or this kind of pain. So much more pain could be avoided, I could stop feeling like I need to cower in the corner and protect my already damaged heart from those who love me. I didn't just loose a baby. When Logan died, everything that is ever connected with a child, with a person, died also. My hopes and dreams for him. The plans I made as a mother with a 16 month old and a newborn. The thoughts I had of my son and his daddy fishing, playing ball, building Lego castles. The thoughts I had of my daughter being a big sister, of my son being the first grandson to my mother, the first nephew to my brothers. The day dreams of my son learning and growing beside his grandfather. Thoughts of him as he grew, the person he would become, the life he would lead. The idea that there was this little man who I was in charge of forming and shaping and molding into a loving man, husband and father. That maybe I could somehow get retributions for the hole that my father put in my chest by helping to mold this young man into a great man. Do people think about those things when they tell me they understand? And not just say they understand but actually try to argue and convince me that they really do understand. Do they know that each and every time I see my husband holding a little boy, talking to a little boy or even looking, himself, at a little boy that my heart shatters again and again? That my heart shatters for the pain that is my husbands. Pain that I feel responsible for. Pain for not being able to understand what it is like for him, as a man, to have lost his son, and all of the hopes, thoughts and dreams that he possessed? Do not fool yourselves into thinking that you understand. Though pain and sorrow may be comprehensible to many, the pain and sorrow of loosing a child is beyond the understanding of anyone who has not walked this lonely heartbreaking path.

The problem with me though, maybe I'm being too judgy. I leave little room for others to make mistakes and hold people to the same standards of which I try to hold myself and I know that is a serious fault that I have. I know that, mostly, people are trying to find their own way, that they are sad and confused also. There is little else in this world that is more confusing and heartbreaking than the death of a baby. I understand that people falter because of this. And for the general population I will usually let it slide. People say stupid things when they are nervous. Anyone who knows me in person knows that I am the queen of this fault. I suffer from foot in mouth disease. My issue is more personal. My issue stems from holding to those standards the people who love me. Love me. I am aghast that anyone would want to argue about my sorrow with me, much less those who are supposed to love me. I can not help but to be judgy of those people. I did not realize that I was so judgy until recently. I've always been boastful about the way that I am not in denial of who I am, the faults that I have. Up until a few days ago no one would dare call me judgy (probably because they're afraid of being attacked). My new friend called me judgy one day. The thing is, I actually like her more because of it. I am so tired of fluff. I'm tired of asking people how I look only to hear that I look fine when I know that I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe and lipstick on my teeth. Why is it that people find it so hard to be honest? The fear of rejection perhaps. If I tell you what I really think, will you still like me? Anyhow, my new friend (coincidentally, a fellow mom in the pits) has right to think me a stalker, since I behave more like an obsessed school girl than anything (much to my husbands amusement). The thing is, she has a confidence in me that those who truly know me, wouldn't bother with. Its nice to be with someone who is so full of optimism for you that hasn't been tainted by years of recognition. She is my consolation prize. Don't get me wrong, knowing that I wouldn't have met her acquaintance had Logan survived, the circumstances of our friendship does not make me begrudge the gift that I see it as. Its refreshing to be with someone who is such an intrigue, who seems so mysterious and brilliant, someone who seems enthusiastic about life even in the wake of losing her own children. Its comforting to have someone in your corner who's foundation holds similar stones as your own foundation, and yet their structure is so completely different you find your self staring in awe. If I were asked about the good that has come from Logan's death, it would be making a new friend. A normal, not loony friend. Be advised though, it is not wise of you to point that out for me. I do well in finding what little good I can in the death of my son and I will be damned if someone else points it out for me.

This post was really long. I didn't realize I had so much pent up inside these days. I try to empty the "bottle" often so that I don't explode. However, lately I find more comfort in denying that I am being affected. It is easier to not deal with all of the crap that I feel pushing down on me than it is to stand up and call it out. It is easier to not admit when someone hurts you, than to show them your cards. My mother said that I keep my cards close to my heart. Isn't that the golden rule? Never let them see you sweat? Never let them see you cry? Don't wear your heart on your sleeve for someone to come along and knock off. Its easier that way. At this point in my life, I have enough going on with out trying to wade through the muddled mess that is the psychobabble and ignorant bible thumping that seems to want to come my way on a fairly regular basis.

Now, get off your lazy bum and help me find that armor. I know its around here somewhere...

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.

Too many thoughts on Thursdays

Music speaks to me. It always has. I have always found solace and comfort in the words that other people write. I find a sense of peace in knowing that everyone has these deep emotions that they can't express with out the shield of music. I used to be a poet. I used to write song lyrics. I didn't share them with many. I have thousands. Thousands of pages of unheard words brought forth by a broken heart, a new love, feelings of insanity. I've always needed to get them out. I talk a lot. I talk too much. I talk in circles, I repeat myself and worse of all I have a terrible memory...so the stories change, get tangled and take on a life of their own, sometimes with a form that is far from the original. I loath this about myself, and am not in denial about it. But I have always been comforted by the fact that I can express how I feel through symbolism and story telling, even if at times it doesn't make sense or sounds corny. It is what it is and sometimes people express themselves in odd form. I mean, look at Picaso. Sorry but no. He was not a good painter. BUT, he was good at expressing himself and a lot of people were provoked by his work, that made him great! We are all artists in our own ways. Through words, through tangible media, through food, through decorating...and the list goes on. I don't compose poetry or song lyrics anymore. In fact, the last poem I wrote was for Logan. It's buried somewhere in this blog. I'm not sure when I stopped writing. I think it has been in the last 5 years or so, when life took on a comfortable and protected feeling. I married my long time love, we had a nice home, cars, toys...everything I could want or need (short of a child). Eventually I had a daughter. Things were perfect. How many poems can one write that are coated in bubble gum? The urge to write faded until I realized that I don't need to write anymore. I don't have these awful emotions to get out anymore. Life was just the way I wanted it and I couldn't have asked for anything more. Then Logan died. And suddenly I found myself so far over that chasm that I couldn't form a coherent thought. I didn't have the urge to make rhymes or even sublime thoughts. I just sat and stared. Any desire to produce anything was gone. Except the urge to write in this blog. I think this blog saved me. I still needed to talk, to get it out, but somehow the thoughts and heartache I had for my son seemed so much more substantial and important than any I'd had before. I couldn't degrade his memory with a hokey poem that no one would read. I wanted to be heard this time. I wanted people to know my devastation. I wanted people to know that my heart was irrevocably broken. And anyone who reads this blog, they know. My husband knows. But most importantly, I know. And in the end that's the only thing that really mattered anyhow. Admitting that my heart was broken. That this tiny little soul, with a blink of an eye life span, took a huge chunk of my heart with him when he went.


I don't know what it is about certain days. Why some days, even now a year later, I feel trapped, lethargic and inconsolable. Why I wake up and have him on my mind in that instance, and why it hangs over me like a storm cloud all day, pressing me down. Maybe its because its Thursday and my dd is at Grandma's. Thursday's are quiet and leave a lot of room for shadows to creep in. It usually starts with a song (this is where I go back to the whole music thing from earlier). I'm driving the Muffin to Grandma's and some song comes on the radio, presses me down. I drop her off, I drive home, thoughts churning, more music playing, more pressing down. It is easy for me to find Logan in almost anything. Someones words, a little blond haired boy, a break-up song, a monkey, food... I hate to say he haunts me, because that just makes it seem ugly and scary. I think its my mind that haunts me. My mind always whispering terrible thoughts into my proverbial ear. Thoughts I have no business allowing to stake claim and plant them selves deep in my subconscious, letting their roots dig deep and torturing me. I'm an avoider. I hate tense situations, drama and confrontation. I'd rather ignore it. Pretend it didn't happen. But I can't avoid what happened to me. I can't avoid that there was this little life churning away in side of me for six months with out a lick of problems and then BAM!! Dead. Down Syndrome is detectable, and we had no warning. I don't know, maybe its better that way. Maybe in my ignorance I would have wished him dead rather than to have a crippled child coming in and "messing up" my perfect little bubble gum world. Wishing, because I wouldn't have had a clue about the pain of loosing a baby. Because maybe a lot of people don't really think of a fetus as a person until they're here. I mean, I always thought a baby was a baby from conception...but it wasn't a person. It didn't have a life, or a personality or face. It was an enigma. I had trouble with that with my first pregnancy with my daughter. I couldn't connect. It never felt real. After her birth I was overcome with emotion and a love I couldn't fathom before. The months following her birth I was in awe of how I just loved her with every fiber of my being and that nothing else mattered. But while I was pregnant, I just didn't get it. When I got pregnant with Logan I was still nursing a 6 month old. I was exhausted. I was sick. I didn't have any energy to be concerned with anything other than the current moment and situation. I feel like I missed a lot with Logan during those six months. I took for granted that I'd have all the time in the world to get to know him and right now my very young daughter was my main focus. Oh the things I would change if given the opportunity.


These are just too many thoughts for a Thursday of little consequence.


So the song that sent me spiraling today was "Nothing Compares to You". You remember that song don't you? Late 80's early 90's? Sinead O'Conner in black with that stark white bald head and the single tear on her cheek. I loved the song then and found out years later that Prince actually wrote that song, and recorded it himself. But this part:

"It's been so lonely without you here. Like a bird without a song. Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling. Tell me baby where did I go wrong?"

That was the one that got my head spinning like the chic in Poltergeist. Because that paragraph brought with it a million dreaded thoughts that I couldn't shake. It is lonely here. Even with my dh and the Muffin, its lonely. There is a missing life. There is a missing face, a missing voice, a missing personality that I wanted so badly to get to know. Would he have been like his sister, or a force unto himself that I can only guess at? And it leaves an eerie feeling in its wake. Silence, even in the midst of the noise and chaos that is my two year old, there is an eerie silence that should have been filled with his voice, his chaos and noise. And I can't help but to go back to the same old question, what did I do wrong? What did I do that would warrant not being able to mother Logan outside of the womb? Was I going to fail at it? Was having 2 kids so young and close together going to cause me to be a bad mother, so he was spared? And I feel like if I had that answer, even if it was one I didn't want to hear or know, would I be better able to accept this? The pathetic part is that I just assumed that by the time the year mark passed that I would have this greater knowledge. That I would have begun to accept that I have a dead child. Don't get me wrong, time has controlled the bleeding. I don't "lay here on the couch with my heart hanging out" (Garth Brooks) anymore. But its still very tender, and sometimes it still bleeds. I know I'm an impatient person. I expect fast results, and I want them now. And you can't rush grief. And if you ask around, these parents who went before us...years ago, when they're being honest and they don't think anyone is looking...it still hurts for them too. And I think that scares me. To know that I will always feel this ache. And in a way it comforts me and brings me some element of peace to know that this ache, this ache means that I had a little boy and my time with him was not enough.

Here it comes...

So, here it comes. Today, a year ago, our horror began. Today is the day they told us there was something wrong. By the 23rd we knew he had died, the 24th he was stillborn.

Today I coped. Today I thought a lot about him, but it didn't pull me under. I thought a lot about what happened and the way I felt, but the day progressed in a "normal" fashion. I didn't cry, yet.

Last night...well... Here's the thing. I realized last night, after a small rift with my dh, that I feel like I have no control over much in my life. And that really bothered me. It came out wrong, and I took it out on my dh and was in a desperate search to reason that my thoughts were normal "wife" thoughts. But they quickly turned into Logan thoughts. And I realized that's what the issue really was about. Oh, not that I didn't really want what I was asking my dh for, but that the reason I got so angry (and later so sad) was really just because I struggle with control more so this past year than I used to. There have been so many things in the past year that have happened to me, that I had no control over, that it has really left a scar, or more realistically an open wound. Not that there haven't always been elements of fear of loss of control, and the actual inability to control everything around me (I once haunted myself in my sleep because I felt so out of control), and not that there won't always be that. No one can control everything around them all of the time. Other's free will is often involved (divorce, job loss), or circumstances beyond ones immediate control that make it impossible to control a situation. But after Logan died, it became very real, and very obvious to me that there is actually little in this life that one can control. I couldn't control what happened to Logan. I couldn't control the pain I felt from it. I couldn't control my husband and force him to have another baby right away, or move, or so many other things. I couldn't control the reaction of other people. I couldn't control my response to them (ok, this might be debatable). I couldn't control so many things that seemed so life altering, anymore than I could control the weather. Which has left me feeling so very insecure and vulnerable. Two feelings I despise. I miss the illusion of control I thought I once possessed. I miss the prospect of a new life in this home. I miss the dreams I had for Logan, the plans I made, the big sister I saw in Aubrey, the Mommy and Daddy I saw in us. I miss the family I framed in my head, the way it was going to be. And because of things I could not control, those dreams and hopes and plans are gone. I miss being able to relate to other women on a natural level with out them second guessing my words, thoughts or intents. I miss being able to think innocent thoughts about babies and being pregnant and frankly, sex, with out the constant sad reminder of what no longer is.

I miss the innocence and the comfortable naivety that used to be mine.

And I would gladly have given all of those up and so much more if I would have been able to have had a healthy Logan, or even, selfishly, one not so healthy Logan.

I miss him.

I miss you baby boy.

Feeling surprisingly OK

I'm feeling surprisingly OK these days. That seems weird to me, given that Logan's angelversary is a mere 2 weeks away. I've been thinking about him and what happened in the days surrounding his death a little more than I usually do. Like today, a bright, sunny and bitterly cold day...just like the day that Logan was born dead. And I remember walking through the parking garage at the hospital just a few short hours after birthing Logan, walking away numb and empty and shocked and confused. I remember thinking how far away the car seemed and how long the walk felt. I remember thinking that I would never forget those few moments there in that garage. Leaving, un-pregnant, whip lashed, disconnected...and with a strange feeling like I was in a dream or like the last several hours hadn't really happened. Today I remember that like I was just there. This morning I had the strange thought that a year ago right around this time my son probably started dying. I was so unaware, so clueless. I was sitting around, tired, happy, fat, and thinking that though I was miserable (I was never a gracious pregnant lady) that my life was pretty darn great. I was planning my daughters first birthday (just three short days after Logan died) and feeling Logan's faint kicks (which even then seemed odd to me, but hey, every pregnancy is different, and the doctor had just taken a peek at him and he was fine). I remember being afraid of how I was going to have a newborn and a 16 month old. I remember wondering if my daughter would notice, if it would affect her not being the "baby" anymore. I remember hating the winter cold and looking forward to May when Logan would be born and the three (or four if my dh came along) of us would be out in the new double stroller we had just bought that week (or were about to go buy in a few days) walkinf in the sunshine. I remember planning days at the park (where his tree is now planted), and wondering how on earth I was going to grocery shop, go out of town to visit my family, go to the bathroom...

But these days life just seems to be going forward. We live our lives around the giant elephant in the room. It's still there, but it isn't the main focus anymore. A very common subject, but not the only one. Time marches on, and I guess I'm marching on with it, instead of standing still and looking around in horror the way I used to. I'm starting to feel in this life how I felt in my life before Logan was conceived...aside from the fact that he was conceived and its now a gaping hole. But I try to focus on my life now, even if he is still in my peripheral vision. I feel like "Ok, there's your year. I let you take a whole year and wallow and excuse and cry and deal and feel and heal and avoid and be lazy, but now its time to start looking forward, planning, doing and living." So, that's where I'm at right now, today. I'm ok. It still makes me horribly sad, but I am positive the worse sadness is now behind me and that perhaps I am coming out of my depression. Of course, I'm keeping in mind that this all comes in waves and lulls. And I'm still going to allow myself to feel the lulls if/when they arrive. But for now, today, I'm feeling like a survivor. And I'm feeling like there might actually be a life for me beyond Logan, with out Logan.

Having said that, I still seem to have baby fever. I look at babies when we are out and about and I miss that stage with every fiber of my body. And I am still having a hard time accepting that Aubrey may be my only child, and that perhaps my child bearing days are over. I'm having a hard time accepting that perhaps its been taken out of my hands, when I wasn't ready for that to happen. I'm trying to be. I know that it isn't set in stone, not yet anyhow. But I am really struggling with being content as we are now. I still want a larger family. Not a huge one, but a few kids have always been where I wanted to be.

Someone asked my mother on Facebook the other day how many grand kids she had. I answered for her. Four granddaughters and a grandson in Heaven. Part of me answered because I was afraid she'd leave Logan out. And I know that technically she has 4 grandchildren. But Logan was here. He counted. And I still want everyone to know. I don't know if it was the appropriate thing to do, the appropriate place to say it, or even the appropriate person to say it to...but its done. Sometimes it still takes my breath away how adamant I feel about his existence. How quickly I am to tell people that he was here. How quick I am to get angry if he isn't acknowledged.

I'm fearing the next couple of weeks. I'm fearing what I'll feel, or what I won't. What I'll do or not, and if I'll regret the decisions I'm making about how to acknowledge this horrible day. I've read so many nice stories about those who have celebrated the "First Birthday" with various styles; releasing balloons, planting tree's, hosting parties, donating their time or money to worthy causes... But the thing is, January 24th wasn't Logan's Birthday. It wasn't even close to what was supposed to have been his birthday (May 19th). I didn't go into natural labor prematurely. Logan just slipped away, and I happen to have gotten "lucky" enough to have had a misdiagnosis of previa that prompted an extra ultrasound appointment that alerted the doctor of Logan's condition and prompted a visit to the pro's at the hospital. I carried Logan around in my belly dead for about two days. The uber-doc determined that Logan had probably died the night of the 21st, the night of my ultrasound. The ultrasound that wouldn't have even happened had it not been for a misdiagnosis. And I often wonder what would have happened if they hadn't induced me. Forced me to give birth to my dead son. The doc said that I would have probably gone into labor on my own within a few days or weeks. Probably. Or they wouldn't have been able to find a heartbeat at the next months appointment... Or... I'm glad it was fast. I'm glad I didn't have to walk around knowing he was dead. I'm glad that I didn't go full term thinking I was having a healthy baby boy, and then be slammed in the face with that horror. But, I wish I would have known that Wednesday of my ultrasound that he was dying. I would have liked to have been able to say goodbye, to have held him a little tighter in my belly while he slipped away. To have been aware, and not sitting around ignorant. But maybe knowing would have been even more excruciating... Anyhow, back to his angelversary. I just can't come up with anything that feels right. Its not a day I want to celebrate. I don't have any interest in visiting his tree that I see on a regular basis as I drive by the park. I have no desire to have a party, or a memorial, or a rememberance ceremony. There is no grave. He still sits in that stupid box on my armoir, where he has been for months. I don't really want to "do" anything to "remember" the day. It was a horrible day. I'd rather forget it. But since that won't happen... My dh feels the same way. It wasn't his birthday, it wasn't supposed to be, it shouldn't have been and it wouldn't have been had he lived. We don't celebrate the days our other loved ones die. Why celebrate Logan's? Because he was our son. And that's where I'm stuck. Part of me wants to do something, the other part doesn't. I don't want the time of my daughters birthday to forever be surrounded by a time of grief for a brother she was never aware of. That doesn't seem fair to her. But it seems odd to just treat it like any other day. When I think about that day, the vision I have is of me writing to him in his book. I have a journal where I used to track my pregnancy, then his death and have now written a few letters to him in. And maybe that will be enough, I don't know. But I'm afraid that I'll regret not doing anything more, and I'm affraid that doing anything will seem forced and weird. Last year I had so many ideas, things I wanted to do. One thing was to buy a star and have it named for him. But I don't even have that desire anymore. Now I just feel like maybe I'm wanting to commemorate the day because its what I've read so many others do. Its ok to do your own thing and no one should pressure themselves into following some status quo for The Dead Baby Club. I'm not sure why I feel weird about this.

So, we're in the home stretch. The horrible first year is coming to a close. By this time next month things should start feeling... feeling what exactly? All I know is that a year was supposed to be the magic number. I'm not expecting to wake up on the 28th and feel magically better or anything, but I'm hoping for days filled with more peace and acceptance now that we will be beyond all of the "firsts". Time heals all wounds, they say. Guess we'll find out.

I've added a few new songs to Logan's play list that I've been collecting for a few months. I've linked them to their lyrics in case you thought they might also be fitting for you.

They are as follows:

My Immortal - Evanescence

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Bee Gee's

Glory Baby - Watermark (about a stillborn baby)

Don't Wanna Cry - Pete Yorn

and the most fitting for me right now...

I Still Miss You - Keith Anderson

I also wanted to add these two, but I couldn't get them on www.playlist.com so...

Living for the Night - George Straight

What's Up Lonely - Kelly Clarkson

Thanks for being there for this past year. I can honestly say with all confidence that if I didn't have this blog and the support and love of my readers all through the horror that loosing a baby is, I'm not sure I would have survived, or at least have come out on the other end with out being a total nut job. This blog has saved me, at least a little.

Alone...listless

I keep hearing that song over and over. Pearl Jam. Daughter.

Alone...listless...breakfast table in an otherwise empty room
Young girl...violins...center of her own attention
The mother reads aloud, child tries to understand it
Tries to make her proud

The shades go down, its in her head
Painted room...can't deny there's something wrong...

Its odd, even to me, how I place myself in the most obscure places. This song doesn't have a thing to do with my "situation". Maybe its the odd pain I feel from the song. Maybe it's Eddie's voice. I dunno.

David is up north. He left today. My mother is coming in tomorrow. I just wanted a normal weekend. I don't want visitors. I don't want to entertain, to clean, to talk, to relate, to defend, to perform, to hide... I want to just be here with my tiny little family safe in the cocoon of my deceptively "normal" home. I go out, I perform, I interact with the "others" because I know its what's supposed to be done. What's normal in the real world. I do what I am supposed to do, in hopes of moving on, getting over...forgetting. Whoever wrote those rules don't have a clue. Sadly, I think it was me. Is isolation a stage of grief? First we feel isolated by our "freskishness" and then we resort to isolating ourselves, because really who understands you better than the evil voices in your head? I'm quite content to hang out alone these days. I used to be very social. But now, now I just want to hide away (Hey look at that! Another PJ song!!). Sadly I don't want my mother to visit. Its not her, its not personal. And I want her to see her granddaughter, I do. Its just that... I don't have the energy. That seems to be the common theme these days. I don't have the energy for much of anything. Energy, motivation, desire...whatever. They say its part of depression. Why is there no cure for depression? Something so prevalent in our society and the only thing they have a drugs that mask it, but none that eliminate it. The mind is a tricky place I suppose. And I fight with myself daily, wanting the drugs, not wanting the drugs. Wanting relief, but what if?? What if David announces that he's ready for another baby and then I have to wait another 6 months to rid my body of the poisons that are masking the pain? What if I could find relief in those pills? What if he never wants to have another baby because I won't "snap out of it"? Then there are always the thoughts about the head shrinker. I guess I'm just afraid I'll hear more of the same "these things happen" or "your grieving, you should be depressed". Maybe I'm afraid he'll tell me to buck up and stop wallowing in self pity. Maybe I'm afraid he'll make me cry. I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of such an overwhelming sorrow. I'm not sure I want to pay someone to tell me I'm normal and then make me cry. I can get that for free anywhere I like. My thoughts follow me around closer than my shadow. I try to convince myself that its best if I stay away from the sadness of others, if I stay away from my own sadness. But I guess the reality of it all is that I'm just avoiding the truth that has so confidently perched itself upon my heart. I'm sad. I'm so achingly sad that if the world stopped spinning, I might not notice. I swear it, if my daughter wasn't here I would easily allow myself to slip under. And what an enormous burden to place on the tiny shoulders of a 19 month old child. She wasn't intended to be a buoy, but how she has turned into one. Keeping momma afloat. It breaks my heart all over again. I look at her and I think how lucky she is to not be old enough to even realize there is something to be grieving for. And then I look at her and am saddened to know that her baby brother died, and she doesn't even know it yet. Will she ever know it? Will I lock him away like a dirty little precious secret? Everything in this "reality" contradicts itself. Oh how I want her to know that we did want her to have a little brother, a playmate, a partner in crime. Someone she could go to and complain about her parents to, like a sibling can only relate. Baby, Momma tried!! I desperately want her to know. But when she is old enough to process this information, will I still be willing to relive it, to pass the sadness on?

I've been hiding a lot, if only mentally. I've been hanging out in Forks, Wa. with Bella and Edward (Twilight) on audiobook. I walk around with my earbuds in listening to my iPod all day long, trying to escape my own life. Trying to be immersed in someone else's elation and tragedy, if only fiction. I've discovered that I can't sit around and watch TV or movies all day, so this is my alternative. I began to wonder today how rude it would be to walk around listening while my mother was here this weekend.

My mother. She has no clue. How can she? She had 5 children, they were all surprises and they all lived. I don't think she even knows how to handle me. I think my darkness frightens her. God is the solution to everything. Take your pain to God. Give it to the lord. I scoff. He gave it to me, why would I give it back? God is not my solution. At least not right now. And I think that scares my family. I am hostile, and I am bitter, and I do not want to hear about God and how they think he is the answer to my sorrow. He is the reason, at least in my book. At least for now. So, most of the time they go on as if my life didn't stop. Which is good, for the most part. At least until they start really wanting to know how I'm really doing. I try not to hide too much of it. If I have a total breakdown I want them to not be completely shocked, I think. The other day my older brother asked me how I'm doing, to which I replied "some days are bad, some days are not so bad" to which he replied "Why? What's wrong?" I simply stated "Logan". He went on to say he figured but wanted to make sure it wasn't anything else. I really have to restrain myself from saying DUH!! and smacking people in the forehead (like the V-8 commercials). I hate that people ask me how I am doing because really we all know that most of the time it's in a cashier-esque fashion. No one wants to hear the truth, they want to hear you say "fine" and move on. "I'm fine, unless you consider the GAPING HOLE in my heart where my little boy hangs out". I mean really, how do you answer that question? "Hey Heather, how's it going?" "Oh fine, I didn't cry or kill myself today, so I must be having a great day!" People don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that. What the hell do you say to that? "Oh, well that's good?!" Seriously. I struggle intensely with the random social politeness I'm supposed to display.

I've gotten really paranoid lately. Its weird. It makes me feel weird. I feel like they're all looking at me, talking about me. I wonder if people can tell. The other day when I left the OB's office and those two pregnant chics were in the waiting area, I couldn't look at them, but I felt like they were staring at me, like they knew! I wonder if people think about it all the time (I'm guessing this is just a narcissistic feeling). I wonder if people try to think about what it would feel like if one of their babies had died in the womb; what they're lives would be like with out that child.

David is up north hunting with his dad and some friends. I'm glad. He so needs to get out of this house and away from me. It was hard letting him leave. I really had to struggle to keep myself from begging him not to leave me. Don't leave me alone in the silence with these wretched thoughts!! But I wanted him to go. I want him to feel "normal" again and be with other men, and not surrounded by child bearing woman (at work). My daughter wailed when he left. I thought it was a good idea for her to see that he was leaving. When he walked away and got into the truck she bawled. My heart broke. His heart broke. And I realised that I couldn't explain to her that he was coming back. And I realised maybe we should have just let her think he was at work. And I was afraid that her outburst tainted his weekend. Gramma will be here tomorrow, she won't have time to think about her daddy.

I sit here on my couch and obsess about whether or not Logan's tree went into the ground tonight. David and I decided to wait to go see it until we could both go at the same time, together, as a family. Its made me very restless today. I even found myself drawn to that area during my walk this morning. Not to see the tree, but in hopes that I would see a truck or something. Some sign that they were indeed planting it. I saw nothing. I'm hoping I don't accidentally drive by it this weekend. I'm hoping that I keep my wits about me enough to avoid that area. Its on a common route home. I pass that park quite often.

Well, its almost midnight. I'm tired, I'm roasting for some stupid unknown reason (since apparently my hormones are FINE!), and I know I need to get up early to straighten the house before my mother arrives in the morning. So, with that... I'm off, and hoping for a restful night and easy sleep...in a very dark and quite house...alone. (She shivers because yes, she is afraid of the dark and things that go bump in the night!)

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...

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 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.

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.