Suzanne: Right Where I Am 2017: 3 years

Dear Lucia,

Happy birthday to you, my missing one. It is hard to imagine us with a 3 year old but that is what you would be, full of spunk and spitfire like your sisters, I imagine. As I have each year so far, I'm taking today off work to be with myself and to think of you. I found a meditation garden today, which happened to be more full of tourists than I had anticipated, but it gave me a place to slow down for a beat.

There is so much life commotion this year. C is getting ready to start kindergarten. We got a new dog. G is 18 months old and busy with all the new things 18 month olds do. In past years, your birthday has had more lead up and anticipation. It had a looming about it. But this year, it almost snuck up. I was so distracted by so many other things and then one day looked at my calendar and went "oh" when I saw it coming. This sneaking up gave me more than a few moments of pause (with a splash of worry mixed in), wondering if this is where I start forgetting. If this is the beginning of you getting lost in the shuffle, of you losing your place in our family.

In my more reflective moments, I know that isn't true. You will not be an afterthought or a footnote or an asterisk attached to our family story. You are etched in all the places that matter; forgetting you is just not possible. But the intensity of the grief is slipping away and I guess it is natural for the looming element to slip away with it.

So much has changed about the grief. In the early days, I felt like I could hardly breathe most of the time. My brain was consumed by thoughts of you. I was regularly preoccupied with what ifs and they made my heart race, as if just thinking about what could have been done differently would have erased and changed something. Back then, everything hurt and everything was hard and it was like that for so long.

But as these things do, as everyone told me it would, it evolved. It transitioned into a less panicked state that was more just continual longing. Then the longing faded to a dull missing. And now - I don't know. I guess now is something in the neighborhood of moving forward. There are less sharp and griefy edges poking at me, which is nice. I don't randomly cry at work or the grocery store - also nice. Right now feels like deep acceptance lightly stained by both gratitude and sadness. Moving forward means that your birthday can sneak up because I'm not dreading or anticipating or holding my breath for it.

When tears come now, I often feel like I'm crying more for us than for you, for that other version of us that a really crappy thing happened to. Watching it back feels, I imagine, like what it must been like for our close family and friends. Heartbreaking. Powerless. I try to avoid getting too caught up in the replay of what surrounded your birth and death by reminding myself that this limited slice of your life and ours was only, as one therapist said early on, the middle. There was so much before and there has been so much after that is tremendously more beautiful and that is what I would rather remember. So when I feel like you are slipping further away, I tell myself that maybe the only thing that is slipping away is the painful part. We are tethered together, you and I. Interwoven in the ways mothers and babies are. We can wander from each other but not far.

So tonight, we ate the cake C and I baked for you this morning. We didn't have a number '3' candle and C, for some reason, didn't want 3 individual candles so we used a number '2' candle plus a single candle to make 3. We sang a happy birthday to you. We went outside and let ladybugs out in the yard, as we've done each year. Your summer birthday means it's light and warm out until bedtime so we let the girls play outside until then. G laughed excitedly watching the new dog. C chattered to the freed ladybugs and tried to coax them onto various surfaces. G did this funny thing where she took the ladybug container when C wasn't watching and ran away with it yelling "noooo!", like a preview of C chasing her and shouting no at her (which is exactly what happened). Your dad and I sat and quietly watched. To me, it felt sad and peaceful and, quite honestly, amazing too. I'm some ways, our family (you included) feels just right.

So, little love, I hope you heard us singing for you tonight. I hope you know I think of you daily. I hope you are somewhere, some wise little soul fluttering around us, sprinkling us with little gentle whispers. As always and until my last breath, I love you very fiercely.

Mom

~~~~~

You can read Suzanne’s previous post here:

Right Where I Am 2014: 3 weeks 3 days

Suzanne: Right Where I Am 2014: 3 weeks 3 days

My baby was born dead 3 weeks and 3 days ago.  Lucia Jane was her name from the moment I knew she existed in the form of a "she".  She died sometime before then. I guess I don't know exactly when she died. I feel very sure it was on Thursday, July 31 at some point in the day. I was probably eating lunch or typing on the computer or naively thinking about wrapping up work so I could be on maternity leave (sleepless nights....eye roll) as her little heart just stopped, completely unbeknownst to me.

But she's dead. I have a dead baby. This is what runs through my head almost every waking second of every day. My friends talk to me and I think "my baby is dead".  At the grocery store, shopping for celery. Still have a dead baby.  It is the record player that runs constantly.

I have this weird impulse now to know who else has a dead baby.  An impulse I would never act on but think about regularly.  I want to lean out the car window as we drive by a lady pushing a stroller and shout "did you have another baby who died?".  Twisted, I know.  But I mean - other people have them. There are other people just like me walking around, seeming completely normal and average on the outside, who have held their dead children in their arms.

Where I am today is peeking through the haze of confusion that this really horrible, sad, terrible thing happened to my little family. My baby died, it's true.  She died way past the point when we should have worried about that. I was 37 weeks and 3 days pregnant.  The end stages of a very smooth ride.  Car seat installed, hospital bag packed, doctor's office joking that she could come any day so be ready! And then she was gone.

I don't cry every day, at least not the obvious, open sobs that found me in those first weeks (and still find me, just not as frequently).  But quiet, private tears show up daily, quiet enough that I can breathe through them, wipe them away, and keep going.

For the first time since Lucia died, I can think about what I'm having for dinner or what I'll do tomorrow.  I can think more than 30 seconds ahead and make decisions.  I'm not paralysed by the grief anymore. It's still quite present but it's not suffocating me anymore.  I'm coming to accept that my grief is a life partner who has come to live with me forever.  I don't want it but it's not leaving anytime soon so we're getting used to each other.

Thankfully, I've stopped blaming myself, for the most part. Stopped the relentless, haunting idea that I could have saved her "if only I had....".  That was the pits.  It helped to know that blame is just part of the process and completely normal.  Expected, even.  "Don't fight it", our therapist said. It's horrible to think about but it needs to come so let it come and then let it go.

I'm working towards acceptance, processing that this thing happened and it's not fair and it majorly sucks but it's not changing, which means I need to figure out how to march on.  I've had a hard time getting here, I've felt like accepting it means somehow saying I'm glad it happened, which I most certainly am not. Or maybe acceptance has felt like letting go, which I am also most certainly not ready to do.  But no, acceptance just means finding a way to shoulder the burden and keep going.

I find the most peace being alone, getting time to myself to think and feel in my own space. I'm blessed to be surrounded by the most well-intentioned people who are amazingly supportive.  I have to remind myself that this grief is theirs too. It doesn't look like mine, it doesn't feel like mine (who's can feel worse than mine??) but it still exists for them and their desire to support me and be with me is them processing grief too.  One day, I'll be able to share more with them, be more of an interactive companion.  But for now, about what I can handle most of the time in the company of others is sitting and staring, not wanting to talk about it but not able to be distracted from it. Or wanting to be asked about it but not knowing what I want someone to ask.  Grief makes you a terrible conversationalist.

One day, I was talking to a wise friend, sharing about a bad day I had.  And she said something that stuck with me, which was "That must have been awful. But you lived, you did it."  And she was right.  What I've learned in the last 3 weeks and 3 days is that I've survived a lot of moments that seemed terrifying to me. I lived. It was hard but I did it. I cried but I did it. I ached and wanted to throw up. But I did it.  And that's about as much comfort as I can give myself right now as I look ahead to all the things that I still dread.  They might be terrible but I can do them.  I can wake up every day. I can figure out how to be a good mom to the child I am blessed to already have. I can find a way to be a wife and partner to the world's awesomest husband, who does nothing but love me to pieces. I can move forward, walk on, "sit in the shit" as another good friend said to me just yesterday, and I will be okay.