Being a grown up...

Well, here we are in February 2011! In some ways it's amazing how quickly time flies - scary even, when you consider that once, you sat there thinking that there were so many decades in front of you to pursue any opportunities you might want to. Now it's all about thinking ahead and planning a little so that things don't totally fall apart at a moment's notice. It's all "grown up" stuff now.

So, what is being a grown up all about anyway? It's a difficult thing to really capture succinctly in a sentence or two. Actually I'm not going far enough there - it's impossible! That's probably why I keep a blog and not a spreadsheet of little quotes...

I suppose the easiest way to quantify it would be to compare me now with me at the age of eighteen and see what fits, and what doesn't. Like clothing. I weigh about 17lb more than I did at eighteen; thankfully some of that is in the "good" places... So needless to say, most of the pants from back then are now being worn by someone else or, probably more likely, decorating the inside of a landfill. Similarly, the contents of my brain are completely different now than they were then, so points of view, tolerance, understanding - it's all different.

At eighteen, I was still escaping from the primordial slime that accompanied me as a new person in the world. It had been rough so far - that is very true - but I'd only just picked myself up after shooting out into the brave new world at the age of sixteen. I ate pasta for pretty much six months straight - so much so that one day, I boiled a pot and sat looking at it because I just couldn't eat any more damn noodles! Thankfully my taste for Italian food has returned with a vengeance, but other things haven't.

Developmentally, things becomes more complex the longer you live - if you let them, though some people are afraid to learn and remain very much on the simpler sideline during their earthly existences. If you open up your mind, however, and let the fear flow in along with everything else then a myriad of meaning begins to reveal itself. Like an oil painting, the bare bones of the piece are there as you approach adulthood but it can take quite a while to get even the under-painting done. Then of course, you have the details and the many layers to go as well. Maybe the finishing touches would be Nirvana. I don't know.

People's lives can be so very different from one another though - some have the good fortune to coast through without a hitch (rare!) whereas others have a pretty normal mixture of ups and downs. You've got a sliding scale from the benign to the interesting. Some people spend years in a seemingly endless assault course being battered half to death by other people or themselves. Some completely give up and die at their own hands - I had a great friend who did this back in 2008, and the hole that event left was immeasurable. 

Others completely turn their lives around, no matter what's happened. I think they're probably some of the bravest people in the world because they're fighting a one-person battle against a number of different fronts, including their past deeds, their impulses, un-supportive people and often, tremendous guilt as well. To rise up like that takes a huge amount of positive strength, so in many ways it's got to be the ultimate indication of a good soul. The war takes place mostly internally, but it's an unwillingness to go down with the light that ultimately saves the day. 

In so many ways, perhaps being a grown up is the realization that we all have so much more power that we believe we have, to do good things. To change things around us for the better and create something incredible that will last so much longer than us. When we're young, it's night or it's day. As we grow into matriarchs and patriarchs, we slowly begin to realize that the dawn and the dusk have a huge effect on the passage of time and what is to come. So even if we are afraid, we sit down and watch. And we let the light open our hearts to love, since we're all delicate regardless of our defenses...

When reality is what it is...

I haven't written here for a while - not because I am forgetting, but because life has enveloped me like it sometimes does, casting its goose down over me at night as I dream of things I forget as soon as I wake, and sweeping me along like a feather in the daylight hours.

I feel I should write here more though, now, because there's something I never did tell you when it happened. It wasn't the right time, and for a while I was in denial of it. A long time. Then, I was in denial of being in denial. Now here I am, and I'm treading a path that is both new and a little bit frightening.

The thing is, people grieve differently. At the beginning of our journeys through this pain of losing a child, we all come together - we wounded parents and families. We stumble blindly ahead through the dark. Someone shut everything off - clinging to each other was all we had, so that's what we did. Groping blindly for the edge of a pit, we supported one another and sometimes even dragged one another along until we were in twilight and could continue on a little more steadily. We saw stars and imagined our little ones somewhere out there, beyond the reach of our aching arms and vacuum hearts.

Then of course, there were choices to be made. Sink into a mire of depression; start to administer blame; remain in a mentally vegetative state for an unspecified amount of time or begin to have hope that things would lift. People do, you know, throw things around in moments of terrible sadness - literally and figuratively. I remember on Halloween night of 2008, crying so uncontrollably that I went out into the living room and took two Percocet as a means of calming myself down. I passed out and woke up at four o'clock in the morning because the sound of my own breathing had awoken me.

Maybe I came through the way I did because I refused to become depressed. I'd been there before and never wanted to go there again. So I threw out shards of light - like missiles - everywhere I could - I roamed the world with every ounce of my available energy channeled into healing and hope. Others feel that is idealistic - I've been told to take my rose-tinted glasses off on more than one occasion. But who can say I'm wearing any, really? It's just a point of view - and it's even available to those who have lost a child.

Still others begin to hate the world and everything in it. They get angry with everything. They continue to apportion blame because for them, the grieving process has become stuck for one reason or another. I'm not talking about real blame - individual circumstances are different - but blame to try to heal their hearts when really, that won't help. Angry blame. Hateful feelings toward individuals - particularly positive individuals. Deep, huge pain within themselves. It's a double tragedy in so many ways.

Sometimes, the two halves of a couple who have lost a child end up at polar opposites of the grieving spectrum. Sometimes, everything breaks down.

It's not a lack or an over-abundance of God, or religion in general. It's no good going to church on a Sunday if you want to explode out of the roof at any given moment. It's useless, praying, if you are dreadfully angry with the entity you're praying to - peace is nowhere in sight.

It's very easy to rip your reality apart if you're angry - furious even. You can reach out with the hands that once stroked the heads of your wife and children and tear the fabric of your existence apart. You can fuel it all with alcohol. You can shout at the ones you love. You can hide away in a hole with a bottle of liquor, away from everyone, until they are all gone, your eyes glowing with tears and a raging, unbearably bitter fire. You can blame the woman you love, telling her things would have been different had she been in hospital, when both of you and the doctors know that isn't true.

She would have died no matter where I was, H. There would only have been three minutes to get her out if they'd even noticed. It took them eight minutes to get in there even under the emergency circumstances. I'm so sorry she died, H. It wasn't my fault. I wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. I'd give anything to have her back, H, but she's not coming back and everything else is sliding away like sand into the ocean. Please, stop now. Come back to your children, who need you.

The list goes on. The children cry. The woman co-exists. The situation is desperate. Long evenings are spent alone in separate places. Fear, terrible loneliness, darkness and desperate heartbreak coat all the surfaces in the house like thick, heavy dust. The scent of tragedy permeates everything, even when there's bread in the oven and perfume in the air. Both parents grieve, each differently. They are both hollowed out and dreadfully sad, but cannot reach one another across a deep chasm.

They don't understand each other any more. One cannot deal with the other. One on the attack; the other on the defense. One strives to die; the other to go on and survive. There are the children, in the middle of this tragedy of epic proportions, being subjected to the whole ordeal at the most formative time of their lives. So much love, but nobody knew what to do.

Something had to change. And it did - last April. All the good intentions had come pouring out across the garage floor, or been eaten up by the emotional rescue missions every day: the cleaning up of literal and proverbial messes. I'd shed enough tears to fill the Olympic Stadium by the time I left. I can't get any more specific really, since I don't want to deliberately cause other people pain, no matter how I have been treated. Two wrongs never make a right - except for in mathematical circumstances, of course...

So here I am, admitting to it all. I couldn't make it better. I could not control it; I could not rescue it; I could not mother it; I could not love it into healing. But I tried very hard, and my love was true.

In April, therefore, I will have been a single mother for a year. I've been very fortunate to have the support and the love of dear friends and family - and so, of course, has Bella. We're not the only family broken by a tragedy - we're just one of many, unfortunately.

I continue to hope for the best for all of us, and hope for healing and strength and joy - happy days ahead. Perhaps 2011 will show us a few new doors to tread through. A lifetime goes by very quickly, and you never know when your last day might be, so it's important to live as well as possible. It's all about the continuity of life. It's all about spreading a legacy that casts a glow around as big an area as possible.

I think we are all more interlinked than we imagine, not less.

H, if you ever want to know what you didn't want to know before, I've written it all down for you here. It's all here, every ounce of it - my heart and soul, split open and scattered across these posts. I hope that you read this, one day.

With that, I leave you a picture of my little rainbow girl, on her first birthday - what a milestone. I am grateful for every single second of every single day of her life. You can bet I am.

I need to post Josie's sunrise pictures...

...oh, it was the most beautiful sunrise last Sunday, on the 10th.  So many people got up for Josie's sunrise and I have been inundated with stunning photos that I must make into a beautiful photo montage.  Absolutely stunning. Here I sit, wondering how it is that so many people are willing - even enthusiastic - to get up before dawn to remember my little girl. It's never-endingly touching and you can be sure that as I watch the sun rise myself, I am thinking of every little baby who didn't make it, whether that be before or after birth. Thank you, thank you for remembering.

There are beautiful things in the world to see. Beautiful little eyes that would have loved it if they would have been able to see little grasshoppers on the ends of grasses, birds in the sky...fish jumping out of the water at sunset. The legacy left after child loss, to the parents of the children, is a ropey one at best. Problem is, not only does grief happen, but the grief can tear through the family unit and lead to some behaviours that often destroy the family as it was before the tragedy struck. Long-buried alcoholism rises to the surface; living children suffer; mothers cry themselves to sleep over the new tragedies that befall her family after the initial loss.

It's very, very hard, being left behind. There are moments of utter desolation even years later. The little people lost were very important, and their importance only grows. Which has led me to come to the following conclusion:

Life is fragile. Life is precious. The fact that we can all get up on any given morning and look outside is a bloody miracle. We're run by basically one muscle - our hearts - and if that should ever spontaneously stop, we are completely done for. So we should seize the day...every day... Don't give yourself the leeway to not try to see beautiful things. That would be a waste, when there's so much beauty to see which would otherwise go undetected, caught on a breeze...fluttering over the horizon unseen...

It's funny. I woke up when Josie died - which effectively means living on the edge of your seat almost all the time. Emotions become acutely felt in both extremes. Actually, I feel everything more - the cold; the heat; the wind... The elements blow through me as though I am made out of material... Really, I think it's only because my outer layers have all been ripped off. The joys of life are all revealed - along with the sadnesses and the dreadful atrocities and the lonelinesses...

It's been like drinking from the cup of ultimate knowledge and then standing alone, realizing that the power people think it bestows is quite different than what they might expect.

So, please forgive me if you find me suddenly bursting into tears at 2am for no apparent reason; sleeping with a light on; not being comfortable in complete silence sometimes; needing to change the scenery simply because I need new visual input to break up the occasional flashbacks... Life is beautiful...and it can all come to an end in a second. This realization is brought to the fore in incidents like last night, when I dreamt that Bella had stopped breathing and then woken in a fright, to find her so fast asleep that I freaked out, picked her up and actually jostled her awake because for far too long a moment, her stillness meant death.

Sometimes I barely sleep at all. I long for the days of peaceful slumber... Maybe they will return at some poiunt. For the moment, it is only important that Bella achieves them. In that vein, let me share with you a recent picture of my little love...

Please, don't be concerned about me - I'm perfectly alright and totally normal given everything that has happened. There are always going to be aspects of losing Josie that will haunt me - as there are aspects of any child's death that will haunt a parent. If I do have PTSD over some aspects of the experience (perfectly possible, considering the way it went down) then that is not a "curable thing" according to the beliefs of modern psychology - just something to manage as best we can.

The main thing though, is that Bella is well - she is standing with help, pulling herself up - and crawling - and has five teeth. Tooth number six is right under the gum... She babbles away beautifully, and her first word has ended up being "hello" - which I think is very fitting indeed!

That is where I'll leave it for now, with the promise of more to come in the following days and weeks. Lots of love to you all - I hold you in my heart.

The night before...

There are some days that I wish time machines were real. This is one of them.

It's almost been two years...

How bizarre. Two years ago I was running around madly packing and unpacking baby clothes, washing them, folding them into tiny little pink bundles and wondering with a smile whether this level of organization would be able to continue after I had my little baby girl. Up and down the stairs I went, sorting out the children's rooms as much as I could - though stair walking manic behaviour wasn't really within my ability too much, being so heavily pregnant.

Wait. Stop.

Two years ago. Two years ago on Sunday everything would shatter like a fish bowl dropped onto a marble floor. You can run around and try to pick up the fish in a panic, as they flop around, losing their lives... But it doesn't work, does it?

You have to lovingly sit there, rescue as many fish as you can - though some will die, then spread out the skirt of your young maidenhood on the floor in the sunshine. In the glass. In the water. And pick up remnants, remnants in sorrow, placing them on a collage in front of you. If you're lucky, eventually you can look at the collage of your new life and it can be beautiful.

Because the thing is, beauty isn't always happy, is it? It can be terribly sad. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the saddest things. Heart-achingly beautiful things can be so gutting. I think the word "gutting" is a very good way to describe some stages of grief, since they do feel like someone has come and taken your insides out. Inside your chest is a vacuum. A vacuum with a black hole inside it. Even light cannot escape... Amazing though, aren't they - these big feelings? A dual narration by David Attenborough and Stephen Hawking would be fitting: "See, the phenomenon of the broken heart there, spinning in the boundless void of space. She crumples in her agony as the pain threatens to overwhelm her every waking minute - but she knows she has to stumble on..."

Coming up to anniversaries is really...difficult. There's not too much else to say about that. I would have had a two year old running around, and I don't. It kind of takes your breath away at times... I hug Bella and try to assimilate her essence into me so that I can protect her forever. My eye sockets hurt. My throat feels tight and my head is like a balloon under pressure.

This Sunday it'll be it. Then it'll be over again and I won't feel quite as weak. A lot of people are coming out to watch the sun rise in memory of Josie, and I'm so grateful for the support. I have found that it's the people who continue to remember that I feel the most connected with. The people who continue to acknowledge her small life to have been worth something. It feels beautiful to know that she made an impression on the world. She certainly made a difference in my life - I wouldn't change having carried her for anything. She was worth it.

An ode to my beautiful brother, Finn, on his 24th birthday...

Today is September 22nd. This is the day, 24 years ago, when I excitedly jumped up and down because I knew my mum (who we call Mutti) was going into labour and would shortly be giving birth to a little brother or sister for me. My brother and I were packed off to a family friend's house with our sleeping bags - a sleeping bag I managed to avoid sleeping in by claiming it was a pyjama bag - and we waited in anticipation.

It's funny how, on the eve of something tragic, your memories get etched into your brain. It's like your mind is desperately trying to hang on to the last shreds of a normal life, before something massive came through and tore the fabric of it completely apart. So I write this entry with the memories of a child in my mind, the subsequent information having been added later on. I don't mean to make anybody sad, so I hope that instead it can be an ode to my little brother, who I love still.

________________

I remember the dinner we ate with the family there, and their two children, one of whom had been born with his organs reversed - a condition that had been deemed life threatening for him, but which he survived.

At that time, my little brother lost his fight inside my mother's womb. He died, his last heartbeats recorded on the output in the hospital. Nobody knew why. At that time, they decided they wanted him to be born naturally.

We were given a bath and prepared for bed at our friends' house.

At that time, my mother was giving birth to my brother. He arrived at 8pm. Unfortunately, so did the realization that a huge placental abruption had happened (like with Josie) and therefore out came most of my mother's blood supply. She tumbled over sideways drinking tea...

We were tucked in, excitedly, into a big bunk bed in our night clothes.

My father sat outside the hospital room as they worked on my mother, whose heart had stopped beating. His son lay beside him in a little hospital crib. A priest sat beside him - a priest who had no idea what to say (and therefore stayed silent) to the young man who stared ahead, his entire life shattered and his wife in cardiac arrest just a few feet away. The young man, who looked at his wife, beautiful as she was, and felt unable to comprehend the waste of such beauty. The young man who wasn't really encouraged to hold his son, and whose life had just shattered. 


I know the feeling, daddy. I know that feeling very well.

We were sleeping, awaiting the good news, in warm beds and loving company.

My Mutti was being read the last rites. She would, in total, be shocked back to life three times.

The night passed away as my little brother had. We awoke in the morning, and the last thing I remember was running up to my daddy, who had knelt near the doorway, asking if it had been a boy or a girl. I don't remember his answer... Mutti survived, thank goodness. We have her in our lives today and are so thankful for that, because she is a deeply special person: warm and generous and loving.

That was the last I remember until his funeral, with a tiny little white coffin that we lowered into the ground on a crisp day at the end of September. I watched it from the path as we left. Afterwards I asked my mum why she hadn't taken proper care of him... Ah, the confused minds of sad children - thankfully she had been prepared by the hospital for the very literal ways in which children grieve.

Now of course, time has moved forward twenty four years. Some of us talk about Finn more than others. Some don't talk about him much at all because it is still extremely painful - all of these views must be respected and embraced. Here we are, spread out as a family across the UK - things have changed and sometimes it hasn't been easy, but I tell you one thing - we love one another, all of us, honestly and purely. As I've grown older, I have come to realize the true value of family - that unbreakable bond that is so undeniably precious. Our family is a good family. There is respect, admiration, support, friendship and adoration in our family.

Every member of my family is wonderful to me - they all glow in their respective lights. All members, those alive and those that have passed beyond the veil that really is such a thin separation between the worlds. Every one is precious. Every one is equally important. Every one is held gently in the soft embrace of the other members.

So, happy birthday, my brother, who is important. He may not have been here for long, but his soul's spark was conjured from the universe and it glowed brightly for a little while, before going back to that great pool of life again. Somewhere in the universe, as with starlight, it's only just being seen. If the universe is infinite, then by definition, his life, and the lives of others, will continue making a difference - and mattering - forever.

Meanderings...

Well, it's been a while - and for that I apologize. We've been running around madly from place to place here and have come over to my homeland, England, for two months (well strictly speaking, "Europe" - since we're going to Germany by car and staying with my father in Scotland as well...). So I bring you this posting from England, which seems to have become populated with a whole host of very sweet little babies.

Mind you, it's been five years since I've spent any kind of meaningful time here in the old UK. Things have certainly changed a lot... For the better, in many ways - lots of recyclable plastic bags floating about; "green" cars; very wonderful buggies; bigger Cadbury's chocolate buttons... In other ways, they are the same: decent pies; excellent shopping; not-overbearingly-hot weather; scenic railway rides and beautiful coastlines. Since I am a foodie, I can always appreciate a nice pub lunch as well. I do love my homeland.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides of the pond, I suppose.

Mind you, the whole trip-thing had me thinking. I know now for certain that I have definitively drifted into "ex-pat-land" - I'm no longer so finely enmeshed in British society (I seem to have lost my way, fashionably speaking, for sure); no longer so familiar with prices and places and people. On the other hand, I am still "the British girl" in America - accepted and even loved by many (for which I am so grateful and thankful) but a bit out of place there as well. But I have been bound to one side of the ocean by a single thing - a little girl actually - my Josie.

She is buried in Minnesota, so that is where my heart, literally speaking, lies.

It's hard to know what I am, nowadays. At least in terms of belonging to any place or another. I suppose it's just easier to sit on the ground, with hands in the soil or the sand or the grass and feel the planet Earth, because she is universal and we are all connected to her, no matter where we walk. I am in limbo now; a bit of a social refugee. It's interesting and leaves me thinking hard, sometimes.

At least I know who I am. I think in the end, that is the most important thing. To know one's own reaction to events; one's morals; whether one can be bought and so on. In many ways I do believe Josie's death brought me to a place in which I could really know myself - everything was shattered, and I chose to put the pieces back properly this time, instead of throwing them about like I had in other major (though of course not tragic in even the slightest similarity) life 'events.' That choice, I owe to two lots of previous counselling and a determination not to die - either mentally or physically. Both would have been plausible ends, of course.

But, the world it too beautiful, and now I have Isobella to make it even more so.

Every day she continues to bring the most gorgeous pleasure to my life! I cannot tell you how blessed I am. Really, the alternative would have been much less pleasant than this life - this loving of my little daughter in whose eyes I see the future of the world. She makes me believe it might not be as dreadful as the predictions I keep hearing on the news or in the movies...

So off I wander in my quest to figure everything out, just like all the other people in the world. Well, within reason of course: there are those who prefer not to spend time on such things. And more power to them. I however, am destined to spend late nights in thought.

Anyway, here she is in her gorgeousness - growing more independent and energetic every day; increasing in length and weight and determination all the while! At the last check up she weighed 16lb 5oz and was 20...something inches long (she wiggled).

My little darling: