This Is Not a Fairy Tale

It's a bit like a fairy tale, this story of mine. Not in the "happily ever after" sense, for we all know how my story ends. It's like the original tales, by the Brothers Grimm, where the stepsisters cut off their toes to try to make the shoe fit. Mine begins, 'Once upon a time...' just as all the modern tales do; 'Once upon a time, there was a happy couple with a beautiful daughter, a beautiful home, everything they could ever wish for, except a son. Then one day, the happy couple found out they were to have a son, their perfect family, and they had nothing left to wish for, for their happily ever after was about to come true.'

Except it didn't. And in the aftermath of death, we tried to sort out 'ever after.' For no matter how stark the real stories by Grimm, Cinderella still got her man; Rapunzel, after years of wandering, found her prince; and Hansel and Gretel escaped the witch, who burned to death. The bad met their just end; the righteous prevailed. And in my story, in your story, the righteous don't prevail, though we are left trying to learn how to live with it for the rest of our lives.

I was told by someone very wise, when I asked her how I live with this unimaginable sorrow for the rest of my life, that, one day, Ben's death would become a part of me, like my blue eyes are a part of me. Something I carry with me, always, in every moment. I clung to those words, waiting for the time when that would be true, as it is for me now. But anyone can look at me and see that I have blue eyes; only those I've told can look at me and see Ben's death etched across my face.

His death has become a part of who I am, as that wise woman said, though I wish that part of me wasn't so hard to share with those who don't know. What she didn't tell me - and perhaps what she herself did not know - was that the biggest part of me, my son's death, is the biggest secret I keep. There are no conversations that include, "I'm from Pennsylvania originally, I'm home with my kids right now, been married for 12 years, and have a dead son."

And I pretend I have the fairy tale, the happily ever after. I hide the biggest part of me from all but a select few and wonder how anyone could miss seeing the hollow emptiness I carry with me always.

A Tiny Part of Me

Yep, I'm still here. I haven't known what to say this month; I've been tired, cranky, sick of the very cold semi-Midwestern weather. And oh, the snow. I'm really not a cold-weather person. January is just not my month, for a number of reasons, the most obvious being Ben. The weather does, however, mirror a lot of what I felt (and feel) about that loss. I remember in the months after he died, when spring began to push its way through the snow and cold, and I wanted so desperately to stay in January because that bleakness, the gray skies, the cold - the deadness, really - were what I felt inside. So in some ways January suits me, gives me a chance to mope and mourn. A tiny part of me is forever stuck in January; I envision a little corner of my heart figuratively chipped off and left behind in that January, or perhaps left in the hospital and taken off to be cremated with Ben.

I find myself walking around, telling myself, "We're going to have a baby." (I have never told anyone that, not even my husband.) I told myself that through all of my pregnancies, I suppose to try to make myself believe it, and I can't seem to stop saying it. I am most definitely NOT pregnant; though it could certainly happen unexpectedly, it isn't anything we're planning. We're done. But I'm having a really hard time coming to terms (no pun intended) with that. My dreams for a family with three children came true, but not in the way I planned. And I am rapidly approaching the age where the statistics get really bad for safe and healthy pregnancies. In short, I'm getting old, and no more babies means I really have to face that. Perhaps that sounds shallow, I don't know. I can't believe it's over for me; I can't believe those babymaking years went so fast; I can't believe one of my children died.

Maybe I would be more comfortable with the end of my babymaking years if Ben had lived and we'd gone on to have child number three. I'm incomplete this way. Subconsciously, still being able to have babies ties me to Ben; the passage of time for me takes me further away from the time I had with him, and reminds me that I get the time he did not have. But I can't keep myself in those moments I had with him (and believe me, I've tried to not move on). I guess I'm still working on acceptance, of a lot of different things.

*Thanks, Monica, for checking in.*

Thank You

Wow. All of your comments on my last post were great - so insightful, so beautifully written. And they helped.

LouLou commented that "Grief conjures him (her son) up more solidly than anything else does." And she's so right - I'd forgotten that. The first year after Ben died, I remember saying to my therapist that I didn't want the tears to end - because the tears connected me to Ben. That overwhelming grief felt like my only connection to my son then. And after a while, I realized that I had to find other ways of connecting with him. And I have, and I carry him in my heart every day, but tears will always be about Ben somehow.

Niobe said in her comment, "Loss evokes loss. It's like when you pluck one string of a musical instrument and another string, one that you haven't plucked, begins to vibrate as well. You hear the sound of both strings, not just one that's actually been touched." Wow. That is just beautiful. Thank you.

I am still missing my little cat, and when I walk in the door from running an errand I wonder why he isn't there to greet me. We definitely have a kitten in our future; my daughter is desperate to get one, but her parents aren't quite ready. We'll get there.