Sometimes

Sometimes, there is nothing to say, even when the grief is fresh and raw.

Some days, it is enough to sit with sorrow, let it wash over you until it smooths the rough places, much as the ocean does to the rocks and shells it pushes up on shore.

Some days, the sorrow is more of an ache, a presence, always there, but manageable, while other days it is a sharp blow to the gut causing you to double over with pain so intense you feel you might not manage it.

It can take years to process the grief, years to learn to live with it, years to realize that though it is part of you every day, not every day will be like the early months of learning to be without. The days when the sorrow was so intense it carved your insides out of your body, leaving you a hollow, aching shell collapsing inward.

It gets better, I promise you. The grief will lessen, and you will learn to keep moving despite it. You will begin to see the flowers again, notice the warmth of the sunshine on your skin. Even the guilt you feel for noticing the flowers and the sun will subside as you learn that life is still beautiful, still worth living for.

Yes, it gets better. But it will never be the same.

One Day

One day, you will wake up and realize you are still breathing, though moments before it seemed impossible.

One day, you will hear yourself laugh, then catch yourself, stopping short, gasping in sorrow. How could you laugh, after this? But laugh you will, and you will say a silent thank you to whatever gods there be, that such a thing is still possible.

One day, you will make a decision about the future of your life and know that it includes the sorrow you feel now, not that you have moved through, moved on, or gotten over it--simply that life includes all that you now know. That happiness and missing someone aren't mutually exclusive. The two can be combined, bittersweet, the knowledge of one tamping down the vitality of the other.

One day, you will realize that you have done the impossible: you have survived, simply because you are still here.

All This Time

After all this time, six years, I thought I might feel differently. I thought that maybe I wouldn't think of him every day, maybe I wouldn't still cry on his death day and birth day. But what did I know, back then? Not much, quite obviously.

I'm feeling very sad today, sadder than I could have imagined once upon a time. It's ok, I know, but at times I am so tired of feeling sad, so tired of missing Ben. I don't feel sad every day, but this week - well, this week is different, as I remember what we so nearly had. The Christmas songs don't help, the lights, the ornaments, all of it. Those things have always made me feel melancholy, long before my child died, and now, viewed through the lens of my loss, make me feel even worse.

In six years, what have I learned? That I will always miss him, every day, for as long as I live, or at least until Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia takes my memories of him away. Missing him is forever. Sad is forever too, but not in the same way. That will come and go. And I have realized that I will forever be the mother of a baby; as the rest of us grow older, as my two other children will grow to adulthood, as my husband and I begin to go gray, Ben will always be as he was the day he died: an infant, full of potential and possibility. Is it any wonder, then, how I long for a baby in my life? Any wonder that my arms still ache, after all this time, for the chance to hold him again?

Son of My Sorrow

Some months after Ben died, I went online to look up the meaning of his name. Because he was the second child, I had not obsessed over his name as I had with my first child; we knew, more or less, what we would name a son, having decided during our first pregnancy.

The definition I found hit a little too close to home:

"A biblical name borne by the youngest of the twelve sons of Jacob. His mother Rachel died in giving birth to him, and in her last moments she named him Benoni, meaning 'son of my sorrow'. His father, however, did not wish him to bear such an ill-omened name, and renamed him Benyamin. ... In the middle ages the name was often given to young boys whose mothers had passed away during childbirth."

Five Years

Today, five years ago. I sat in my living room, trying to eat some lunch my friend kindly made me, waiting for 6 p.m., waiting to return to the hospital I'd only just left, to deliver my first son. Preparing--as if you could ever prepare--to come home without him.

The poem below doesn't relate to stillborn babies, but the last line slides through my mind from time to time, as it has done for the last 15 years or so, since I first heard of (and briefly met), the poet, Seamus Heaney. He's Irish and has a way with words I envy. This poem gripped me the first time I read it, wrapped a hand around my heart and squeezed. I couldn't imagine, then, the loss of which it spoke.

Last night, before sleep, I thought of a friend of mine, E., dead for nearly 18 years now, whose youngest son was killed at the age of 16 in a car accident, in the week between Christmas and New Year. His name was Thomas, which was--is--Ben's middle name. I had a crush on Tommy, harbored secret dreams of marrying him when we grew up. People have pointed out to me that maybe that first angel, Tommy, led me to give my own angel, Ben, his second name. I don't know. But the timing...of their deaths, and those memories. I don't know. But last night, I thought of his mother, who I loved dearly, and pictured me, now, going back through the years to her, hugging her, both of us crying, and telling her, "Now. Now I understand."

I'm rambling, I know, full of thoughts I can't complete. Today, I remember, like every day. And long for what I'll never have.

Watch out for the poem's last line - I think it will grab your heart, too, and clench it with a mighty fist.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

--Seamus Heaney

Oh, hey there. Hi. I'm still here.

I've been having that "fallen off the face of the earth" feeling lately, though I couldn't tell you why. Blog? What blog? Oh yes, the one about the dead baby. How uplifting, how perfectly springlike and warm and sunshine and flowers. Um, yeah. I've been thinking a lot about all of the friends from home dying, 3 women, 3 weeks in a row, all from cancer. One of them I didn't even know, but I grew up playing with her husband. She was 37, and now there are three little boys without a mom. And I feel for them so much, those boys, and my friend I haven't seen since I was 18 or 19 or 20, who used to play tag in my parent's backyard, who is a widower now, and has to grieve for his wife while trying to be okay enough to raise his sons on his own. And my heart aches for him, and for his wife who never intended to leave them, but who had no choice in the matter.

There's another young mother I've been thinking of, in Australia, whose blog I came upon through this one. Jen is a 39-year-old mother of two who is dying. She is fighting with all her might but preparing as well for the end. She has cancer of the bowel and has been told she has anywhere from 7 months to 3 years. If you want to be inspired, this woman will do it. She is courageous and beautiful and accepting of what she's been given, though not yet ready to give up. Some of her internet friends are holding an auction to raise money to help Jen pay for some of the medical care she needs that insurance will not cover and to set up a trust fund for her son. Jen's blog can be found here; the link to the auction on ebay, which will run until May 1st, can be found here. Visit one, or both, and send Jen good thoughts for whatever time she has left in this journey.