About 45 minutes ago, four years ago, I handed Josie to a tall, kind man from the funeral home and said, "please take care of my baby." He took her, all wrapped up in a Winnie the Pooh sleeper and hospital baby blanket, and his face just crumpled as he looked at her. Since my condition was listed critical and my own survival was not guaranteed by a long shot, I think he thought he might have to return later for me, too.

I hope this post doesn't come across self-centered. It's an attempt to explain what happened to "me" after Josie died. I know that many other people in the family felt horrendous as well, but I can't speak for them and for the experiences they had - only for myself. So here's my experience.

Today, four years ago, was meant to be her baby shower. I think it was supposed to be held at 1pm. There were bars made for the shower, which sat uneaten until after her funeral on Monday. Good representation of the ultimate nightmare, I suppose, having the cakes for her shower eaten at her funeral. Almost inconceivably horrible to this day, actually.

It would be another whole day until I could make it to the bathroom, and have a shower. The only thing they had on the ward to shower with were samples of Johnson's Baby Shampoo, which were given away with the new baby "kits." So there I stood, in this other world I simply could not comprehend, going through the numb motions of cleaning up after a major operation, without the little passenger I had carried for 9 months in my belly. There I stood, doing this normal task, which was the most horrible thing in the world - like the ultimate torture - washing with baby shampoo.

I can't remember any time in my life (and that includes some pretty negative personal experiences prior to Josie's death) that I felt more stripped of everything that made me, me. I'd watched my life blood come out on the floor of the ER, been taken, flattened out on an operating table, catheterized, pumped full of drugs and oxygen, torn open and c-sectioned in just under eight minutes. My baby girl had been hooked to an IV, shot full of adrenaline and worked on for almost half an hour before being declared dead. I'd held her for about 27 hours; the only way she got warm was through my body heat and the only way she opened her eyes was if I opened them.

My life was just...over. It was. Everything I'd known until that point was null and void, and would never return. The person I had been was gone. I had died. Nothing made sense any more. And it would never make sense again - at least not in the way it had previously.

Other experiences - even very bad ones - had left scars, sure. Some of the scars were deep. But I was still "me." I was just "me with scars." This time though, the "me" was gone. Totally gone. Exploded. Nothing left.The "me with scars" I'd come to accept was just obliterated. I had to rebuild.

I died on the way into hospital, watching the sun come up over the horizon, as I felt Josie's final turn in my tummy and knew she was gone. I was gone too. I was dead. That person is still dead. This person writing here now is someone new.

The person writing here now awoke in October 2008, alone and incomplete at the bottom of a meteor crater filled with wreckage and debris. Picture frames and torn paper, wood, rubble, weeds, tiny flowers hidden between broken pots and half-trashed pieces of furniture. The person here now trod on all the broken shards of glass as she went around, gathering pieces to add to herself. A makeshift leg out of a chair part. A torso out of pillow stuffing. Memories out of torn pieces of photograph and dust, swept up off the floor.

Beautiful new things too, found in scattered shafts of sunlight. I picked them up and made them parts of me. Eventually, I was functional in a rudimentary way, the bits of me held together in a body shape by clay soil, rainwater and tears - shed by other people as well as by me.  That was the beginning of the ascent out of the pit and into a different world.

The thing is, I don't mind this new person, made out of parts. Everything is very "now." I am very mindful and aware, a lot of the time. Sometimes I switch off, but when I am switched on, I am very grounded. So life is very tangible, almost all the time.

The End of the Summer Light...

Four years ago today was a Wednesday. The blue sky was covered in a layer of lightly-broken white cloud. The fall leaves were swirling in eddies outside the fire station, a light breeze picking them up every now and again.

I spent the afternoon alone in the house unti the two older kids needed collection from school. It was very quiet and I didn't turn any music or TV on, as for some reason I was really enjoying the stillness. I folded some baby clothes and drank some tea. I talked to my mother on Skype, on the laptop I owned at the time. I thought about going to the store, but then decided against it.

I'd nested. I'd packed. I was waiting now, 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant with Josie. She moved around vigorously even then - such an active baby, and got more wriggly when I listened to ACDC (and other rock of that type) in the car...

She'd been head-up until 29 weeks, but with the held of the cat-and-cow maneuver, I'd encouraged her rotation to head-down in about 3 minutes: she never left that spot, instead choosing to rotate and stretch her legs out, pushing against my backbone. That move would cause her little butt to stuck out of my tummy quite clearly - usually on the right. It made me laugh every time! There's her little butt again - naughty sillyhead!

That Wednesday, I set my laptop up to play music out of its speaker, in the upstairs bathroom, on the floor. I grabbed a couple of towels and about five small scented candles from various spots in the home, and went up there thinking, "this might be the last time I get to enjoy a relaxing bath before Josie comes out!"

I really relaxed and put Clannad on Windows Media Player. I think I must have listened to three albums or so. All I could hear was the music (which wasn't on very loudly), the bathwater, my heartbeat and the breeze, which came in little gusts and wrapped itself around the outside of the house, flicking leaves against the windowpane and the siding. They sounded dry, and I pictured them, orange and brown, the footnote of a beautiful summer I had very much enjoyed.

I had what I thought was a labor wave in the bath, which as very uncomfortable. Now I know that was the first indication of something going wrong: it was constant, and lasted perhaps three minutes. But as a first time mother, I had no idea. I just practiced my breathing and assumed it was a cramp, combined with prodromal activity. It went away, and I soon put it to the back of my mind.

I continued on with my day, collected Aurora and Devin from school, and spoke to one of their teachers briefly about how far along I was. They were both really excited to have a new sibling. Devin, who had taken a long time to come out of his shell as a little one, was very enthusiastic about becoming a big brother. Aurora was all set, fully in "little mama mode" and ready with a mental list of ways to help. She had been given a life-sized baby girl doll for her birthday the previous month and had been practicing her baby moves on it.

*******

Later on, after Josie died, Devin could barely speak about it. When I found out Bella was coming, he took about ten weeks to acknowledge even the slightest possibility of actually becoming a big brother again. He just assumed Bella would die too. He was really angry and hurt about it...

Aurora was too, of course, but being Aurora and so big and self-sufficient, it came out in different ways: she'd cry over things she couldn't pinpoint, and on more than one occasion, I held her in a snuggle and really let her bawl. She held a lot in; Devin threw things down the stairs instead.

I so wish they hadn't had to live through that. They also lost an older sister, Alauna Marie, who was born at around 20-21 weeks on May 30th 2000 - about 16 months before Aurora was born. They may not have been there, but their father was and it affected him enormously and permanently. When Josie was lost, I think it broke him. Something cracked apart inside him right there in front of me that day and I saw it in his eyes.

It was just...a terminal loss of hope, there, in his eyes. I can't even describe it in a sentence. Someone "in the know," who knew where they were headed and knew they were powerless to stop it. Staring back at their home and the life they'd led with a shadow of a smile, and the last vestiges of light reflected in their pupils.

That look. It stayed on for about half a day. Then came the drop off. The falling off the cliff. The light went out and it was horrible to watch it happen; I was powerless to do anything about it. Autopilot reigned through the weekend, through the funeral, through the busy wake at our house, where I sat in the corner of the living room with my friend Em and her boyfriend, who shielded me from some of the mayhem.

Questions like "where's the big coffee pot?" and "do you have any sugar?" and "wow - look at all those beautiful flowers!" flew through the air. I sat there, bruised from bottom to breastbone, holding in position strategically to avoid moving my newly-babyless tummy and the dreadful emergency cesarean aftermath that was my torso. I wore a black wool sleeveless top that I had to be helped in and out of. I could barely dress myself, and bent over when I walked, even with narcotics and ibuprofen in my system.

I stared blankly into space and tried to remember what to say at appropriate times. Sometimes I just couldn't say anything at all. I was able to hold a conversation about virtually anything for about two minutes, before becoming overwhelmed and breaking down into tears. I couldn't remember how to do the laundry or load the dishwasher.

The contents of my brain had been permanently scrambled by the gigantic, soul sucking magnet of death that didn't quite keep its grip on me. It sucked me up to the point of entry into the next world, but didn't have a proper hold to pull me through the opening. So I fell and fell, and the impact with the solid surface of life below knocked loose every mental fixture, fitting, adornment and other decorative  element in my brain.

I'm still finding things four years later, but mostly I abandoned my old mind-blueprint and rebuilt as I went along, using the debris, which I combined with new things I noticed in the world. It's an ongoing story, still now. I don't suppose the journey will ever end. I'm so lucky to have some amazing people in my life, some of whom know child-loss from the inside, too. Without them I'd probably feel much more disconnected and much less sociable.

Thank you, my friends and my family, for your wonderful and continual support and willingness to listen to the things I need to express. Your careful nurturing and genuine caring never, ever go unnoticed, and I think of all of you with warmth in my heart every day.

Life after Death....

After the death of your child, you keep living. After a while, after the main "grieving period," you find yourself able to laugh and smile, make conversation etc, on a fairly normal basis most of the time. New nuggets of happiness comes into being; new babies are born; new places are visited. A new kind of life starts and in some ways, it's a more aware life.

You're more aware of the value of what you have in your life, and can experience things in a very mindful way. Colors are brighter, lines are sharper, noises are clearer. The relationships between people are more interesting. In some ways, it's like being born again. You re-learn everything from scratch. It's like being a brand new baby faun in a forest in springtime.

But then you have the awareness of something else - and some days, it's more acute than others. You have this overwhelming sense of living, after death.

In some ways, you see, you're actually a ghost. I know I am. Life is strange now, really. I am a ghost, living in my own life, watching life after the death of my old self. I almost died when Josie died, and often, I am conscious of the fact that I'm still straddling the fence between this world and the next. I really do have one foot in the grave; a leg in the afterlife. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And how can I not? I am a big believer in talk therapy - in fact, I am going back to university in January to complete my degree in Psychology - but I don't know if any amount of psychotherapy will ever help clear the residual effects of experiencing death occur within my body.

Someone else died inside me.

I can't see any way back from that. I think that on a fundamental, primal level, that has changed the hardware inside my soul.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that losing a child - particularly when you're already considered an unusual or hard-to-figure-out person - makes you quite inaccessible to many people forever after. Your friendship circle inevitably changes because of that, and it's an important thing actually. Your friendship circle has to change, into one you will forever be more compatible with. It's such a major life change that retaining the status quo just isn't an option.

So yes, I do feel like I am living after death, sometimes. On really bad days, I feel somewhat like it's all been a mistake, like I should actually have died on October 10th, 2008, and that somewhere along the line, something went wrong and I survived. That now, nobody is sure what to do with me and I am therefore stuck in a perpetual waiting area, while they decide what the next steps will be, and where I might now fit into the human race. It's a strange feeling.

Thing is, I'm not the only one. There are other people in that proverbial waiting area - other parents who've lost children. So with each other, we form a new corner of the world population. We are strong, resilient, empathetic, kind, understanding, open minded, mindful, loving people because we've been broken open and don't have a choice in the matter. We can move mountains. We have gained the power to survive and accomplish incredibly beautiful things. What you see is what you get; we have to live mostly on the surface, since we don't have much of an outer shell left. But if you get to know us and accept us for the very unusual people we now are, we'll bring you all the wonders of the universe, heaped on a plate, over and over again.

Life is most important...

When I think about it, I often wonder why people spend so much of their time wondering what the meaning of life is. To me, it's so simple. The meaning of life...is life.

I think I knew Josie was on her way even before the test turned positive. I just instinctively knew there was life there. All those months spent planning and looking forward to her birth, marveling at the incredible nature of life growing inside me. Then all of a sudden, that life was extinguished.

And it hit me. That was it. Life was the point of it all. That spark; that little fire within. It starts at the moment of conception and grows...and grows. It just...does. I knew that life was there from the word go - I knew it in the deepest part of myself.

So after it all, I think I have actually been a little bit blessed by the aftermath of the situation - I know the meaning of Bella's worth so sharply. The perspective I've gained by losing Josie has honed my absolute knowledge of how precious and sensitive Bella is. If I could go back in time, I would save Josie somehow - that will never change - but since that is impossible, I have to look at how she has continued to change my life.

It is because of Josie that I value every life brought into the world.

No child "should never have been born."

No child should ever feel unwanted.

No single mother should ever be made to feel less adequate because she doesn't have a man. The same goes for single fathers. Love is love and a child grows from beautiful experience, not from the semblance of a nuclear family.

No child should ever have to grow up in an environment without compassion.

No child should ever have to endure the horrible loneliness of no physical contact.

Every child should feel loved. Because they are lovable. And worthy. And sweet. And smart. And beautiful.

Happy third birthday...

Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday dear Josie,
Happy birthday to you...

I wish you were still alive.

Click for original sizes of the following panoramas... This is where she is buried and this was the sunrise this morning...

I wish...

I'm having a bad day. Tomorrow will be worse and for some stupid reason I made a doctor's appointment right smack in the middle of it. I'll probably walk in there and they'll want to know my medical history (first appointment with a new primary caregiver) which of course will include Josie, and I'll lose it.

So here I vent in an attempt to get some of this stuff out of my head...

Back in the glorious days of childhood; back in the days of magical thinking; back in the days of believing that people could come back to life; that bad things wouldn't happen if you just behaved well; that there were far-away fantasy lands in which giants roamed through the autumn leaves and everyone grew up...

I remember confidently telling my dad that if I grew up to be beautiful like Marilyn Monroe, then no bad guys would shoot me because I'd be too pretty to kill. I was about nine - he told me that no, bad guys would kill me regardless. He was right, of course. One of many push-pins that attached my psyche firmly to the walls of reality.

In so many ways, losing Josie threw me back to childhood myself. Back to the time of wonderment at everything, simply because I survived too. I'd been reborn and had to re-learn everything I'd ever known. In many ways, that is magical, that survival and the ensuing "different" that it makes you. In other ways it's alienating though.

This year will be the first year I've ever spent alone since Josie died. I will drive, alone, out to her grave before dawn and get out of the car and sit on the ground and cry. And watch the sun come up.

In one aspect, Josie's third birthday makes me want to crumple into a heap. In another, it makes me so angry that I want to smash everything up into thousands of pieces. This time of year is always bad. I want to shout "it's so f*cking unfair - I've had it!" It makes me want to say the following things, selfish or pedantic as they might be:

"All I ever wanted was a family, but then she dies and absolutely everything fall apart irreconcilably. Nothing happens for any friggin' reason. It's all bullsh*t."

"I was hard to understand before, already had enough to tell people that would put them off me completely. Now this too? Don't want to re-tell my story any more, want to live in a damn cave for the rest of my life. It's all crap and I'm so tired. So tired. So exhausted. So weak. So done."

"I don't want this burden any more; don't want to hold it up by myself and can't ask anyone else to help me. So lonely. Everything is useless. Alone, inside the high walls of my mind which have doors I won't come near enough to open because I'm too scared of the stuff people will see inside...so what's the point?"

"Everything just goes away. Emotions are poured out, hearts are opened and still, everything just goes away. Sometimes, I hate loving."

"I want to smash all the cups and the plates in my house and throw everything I own out of the window but instead, here I sit because I can't scare my beautiful living daughter. I have to pretend to be a normal person so that she will be okay."

"I'm so angry. I'm so hurt. I'm so hurt. I'm so hurt. I'm so hurt."

"When will I wake up? Please can I wake up now. This is a really long bad dream now. I've had enough now. I want to wake up and be four again, when everything was okay."

I'm broken, glad nobody else is here because I'm sure they wouldn't be able to handle me like this. No makeup, no airs and graces, just a woman in a puddle of tears. I wouldn't go near me if I were anyone else.

Now the tiredness has set in. I'll be really really glad when tomorrow is done. I feel really sick. Sorry if this entry sounds self-centered - I suppose it is really, since it's all about how I'm feeling. Bella is sweetly sleeping, looking like a little angel so it's just me here. I'm so glad she's alive - I'm so blessed with her.

It was only one hour ago, it was all so different...

"It was only one hour ago, it was all so different..."

The first line from Peter Gabriel's "I Grieve" to which a link is below. I remember thinking that after Josie died. Racing into the sunrise, knowing in my heart she was gone and unable to do anything about it. Leaving the shreds of youthful innocence behind us as we sped down the freeway. All gone; never to be recaptured.

I think we hang on to the hours, the days, the minutes...since...because they make that event, that life, everything real. A few tiny bones in the ground that we can't see any more doesn't help. A big piece of stone over them, and soil - these things don't help, but remembering in minutes, hours, days, months, years - like a thread... That's all we have now. It's almost obsessive compulsive but it's a part of me that won't go away - and probably shouldn't. I map the passage of time after each of my children was born; one living here with me, the other stardust, as Joni Mitchell so beautifully puts it.

"We are stardust...we are golden...and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden..."

The day of the bath, today. That day I decided to have a relaxing bath in the fall sunshine because I knew it would be the last time I'd get the opportunity to do that. The day sticks out in my memory because it was also the first time I felt what I thought was a contraction but really wasn't - that pain that comes when something is going wrong with the placenta. I had no idea. I think I told people I'd had a strong contraction. There I was in the bath with Clannad playing on the laptop, candles burning and so on...

(Incidentally, I spent a lot of time in labor with Bella in the bath both at home and in the hospital. Funny how I threw myself into conquering my fears by repeating what had happened, in a similar fashion.)

You know that feeling you always got when you were little and you broke something valuable? That sinking feeling - you knew you were in trouble? Times that by about a thousand and it's one facet of how it feels to be the parent left behind.

I am going to curl up on the sofa now with a blanket and some hot chocolate...Bella is already sleeping. Down into the underworld I go for the third year - but not alone, because there are parents out there who know or can empathize with this. Thank you for remaining with me in my tired, aching, exhausted state that I get into this time of year.

It's that time of year again...

Warning: there may be a little profanity here. I'm just going to write it as I think it, so hopefully you'll understand and won't be offended.

It's that time of year again - the run up to what would have been Josie's third birthday. When people said this wouldn't get any easier year after year, they weren't wrong. My mum - or Mutti, as we call her - still cries every time she visits my brother Finn's grave. He would have been 25 on September 22nd.

This time three years ago, I would have been washing and folding baby clothes. I still have visions of them laying out on the floor in piles of tops; onesies; little pants; little tiny socks. I took pictures, which will of course now haunt me forever.

May I just take this opportunity to say how utterly crap it is to have a dead child? It just doesn't go away - not even slightly. Nothing can make it better really - you just have to tend to the wounds when they surface, which they frequently do. You have to adopt coping mechanisms for the sadness like someone with a heart condition who has to carry pills around. God, it's so frikken crippling, it really is.

The real kicker is the fact that so many people who lose children then get to watch their families fall apart at the seams afterward. They get to watch people previously doing well go back to the booze and lose everything in the process - their children too. Some days it's hard to get going even slightly. Some days I wish I could just win a little on the lottery, even though I don't play it - just so that I could sit completely still on bad days and do nothing at all. Nothing at all.

The messed up thing is that after you lose a child, about 97% of the world's population doesn't understand you any more. I'm so aware of my own mortality nowadays that it's stupid - maybe long ago when infant death rates were higher, the support would be there - the understanding. With the advent of wonderful new medical procedures and interventions that understanding and the willingness to talk about babies and children dying has gone away. So you end up as this person just floating free of all the rest of the people, utterly knowing that everything could be taken away at any given moment. If people found you hard to "get" before, trust me, you'll really be a mystery after you lose a child. It's really fucking lonely in here.

Like I've said before, dying isn't hard - it's easy. It's not as painful as you might think either because the body takes over and pumps all this pain relieving stuff through your veins. Even when you're bleeding to death, you can comfortably remain in denial until the blood all comes out on the floor and then you just look, surprised, thinking "gosh, that was all inside me a minute ago - I'm probably fucked now." So don't be afraid, people - don't be afraid to die. To quote Kevin Kline from the wonderful French Kiss, "I promise you, if we crash, you won't feel a thing."

It's that time of year I find myself transported back in time to the weeks before Josie died. In stunning clarity, I sit behind the wheel of a Dodge Magnum thinking "I really shouldn't be driving this pregnant - it's so uncomfortable!" Frank Sinatra is playing on the stereo and I have McDonalds on the passenger seat because it's the most frequently found restaurant up and down I-35 and I was too hungry to wait. They have a special going on with the Chicken Tenders. I'm wearing a maternity top with a tie at the waist - it's very pretty and made out of some slippery artificial material which slides around on my belly. My feet are hot and a bit swollen in my flat shoes. Endless phone calls stress me out; I'm fighting a losing battle at work.

Sure, I could go and be diagnosed with PTSD - after all, the flashbacks are extremely upsetting, random and interfere with my life. But what good would that do? I'd be labeled incurable. I'll just stick with what I have: an intense desire to go back in time and pull the car over, stop, somehow change everything.

I miss you, Josie. I wanted you. I love you still. I wish you weren't dead. I will never forget holding you in my arms, all 6lb 6oz of you - you were so beautiful. If I could have died instead of you, I would have - in a heartbeat. You would have done a better job at life than me - of that I have no doubt.

Fragmented...

Bits of my heart, little pieces
Are traveling a path up my body
And leaking from the corners of my eyes

Wandering are they, hit by a meteorite
Fragmented into the space
That exists within me like a starry blackness

Not made of stone, am I
Nor shielded in armor
But my stronghold shudders in the aftermath

And time keeps moving on
Toward a light in the far distance
Toward the explosion and the flowering
Toward the dawn
And things I cannot yet see

Emotions and intent...

It's been two and a half years now since Josie left. She died, and the "me" I am today was born out of a completely annihilated wasteland of psyche into what I can only describe as a shell of a body, bereft of its former soul and its child. If that sounds harsh, so be it - I felt like a useless bag of flesh and bones after Josie died. My mind was in pieces on the floor and there I was, scrabbling like a mortally wounded animal, trying to scoop up pieces of myself from muddy, bloody substrate. It was useless of course. I sat there psychologically against a wall, gathering up the ingredients of wits out of the air. People rolled helpful things toward me as I waited in the quarantine of despair and madness.

What that experience did to me was cut me to the quick. Even after I'd stuck myself back together again, there were huge pieces I never found. I stuffed the holes with plastic bags and paper, taping the gaps shut in an effort to keep the wind out of my bones until new parts of me formed to fill the spaces. The layers of pretense that covered me before were gone. They never came back either. 

Nowadays I am a raw human being. Take me to the deep forest and dump me there: I'd find a way to survive. I've slowed down. My eyes are open to everything; my ears hear it all. I'm fifty percent prey, fifty percent predator and one hundred percent alive. Through the monotony of a boring day, I find things I've never seen before like a little child. 

All my life, I've felt things deeply - strongly: that's been me, all along. But now I admit the emotions I feel to myself and let myself really feel them rather than trying to escape or distract myself with other things. Pain is like a huge crevasse in the earth to me: sometimes it's like being carved in half length ways. My fibers strain for one another across the gap, trying to protect the heart inside. Joy is like a bubble in which I float, full up with laughter and magnificence. Exuberance takes flight and I'm flung across vast distances like an eagle.

The love I have for my child is fierce and without limit - I would die for her in a second without a thought and I've felt this way since well before she was born. It's a wonderful feeling.

Falling in love with another person is different: it is like a dance between the two people, alternating between coyness and pursuing, one to the other. One steps up - the other steps away with a choreographed grace older than the sands of time. They play, snatching little pieces of armor off each other as they go - distracting with glances and smiles. But one day, under the right circumstances, one person turns in the dance to find the other standing directly in front of them. The defenses are down: it's go time. And as they look into each other's eyes, which really are the doorways to the soul, neither one looks away and a mutual realization strikes. Hearts stop beating for a moment...then they both fall off that high place into a completely new world.

They're big, these emotions. But how exciting this is: to be alive. I'm glad I am alive. We may all be made of stardust, but we're certainly lucky incarnations of it to be able to exist like this, in a sensory state. We are like the fingers of the universe, reaching out. What is the meaning of life? Maybe it's what you make it, when you let go and stop worrying about what the meaning of life is...

Fresh from the kiln...

Attempting to work effectively today has been hampered by a number of things within me that I feel I need to write first. I think the writers among you know what I mean when I say that there are times where you can't push out the "official" stuff because there are a bunch of proverbial sheep scattered about the proverbial road.

You're trying to get the car of work down the road.

There are sheep in the way.

They say "bbaaaaaaah!"

You say "Oh come on, move - MOVE!"

But, they're there, demanding to be recognized: demanding to be carried off the road one by one - daring you to ignore them (running over them would simply damage the proverbial car and cause work to suffer so that wouldn't be an option). Translating of course, can be difficult. Some days, all I want to do is sit there and say "bbaaaaah" like some semi-vegetative, over-sized, half dead sea slug. Some days, all the watery optimism in me is pressed out, as though I am a sponge. Then it's all hands on deck, trying to soak it back up before too much is permanently lost and has to be gleaned once more from other sources...

Lately though, I've felt alternately hopeful for new beginnings and then completely incompatible with everything, including myself. It's an extremely confusing state to be in, I can tell you. I crave stability. I can do all sorts of crazy, interesting things from a stable "base" but without one, I feel a little bit like one of those thin creepers that wind around trees and fences and other little plants. I need to change forms - evolve.

Bella is evolving too - thickly caught in the stranger anxiety that'll keep her safe; cutting teeth all over the place; beginning to walk more and more; discovering independence but worried that mama will run away and leave... It's got to be confusing for her as well. I muddle through each day trying to do my best to be a good mom, not really knowing if what I'm doing is "by the book" - just mostly instinctive. Instinctive and progressively more introverted, too, as I am aware that the responsibility will probably always just rest with me. I try not to think about that too much, because it makes me sad.

Sometimes, I sit here with my elbow on the table and stare through the screen, letting everything just slide for perhaps five, maybe ten minutes. I hear the cars go by on the road outside and the noise of the house settling; icicles falling off the roof; floorboards cracking as they move over long-placed nails in joints and timbers. I let my consciousness drift over to the other side of my desk and it sits there, regrading me with curiosity as if to say "are you a sad person, Jay? Are you that sad person sitting there?"

I'm not a sad person though. It's much more complex than that. Underneath, I am the long scar left after a potentially fatal wound has healed - the one people look at and whisper about because they're taken aback by it. When you peel the layers off, that's what I am. My optimism is only part of me - it's real, but it's like veneer. I choose to wear it on the outside because it's just better that way. I think I'm okay with it for the most part.

The thing is, I suppose, what bothers me is the possibility that what has happened in the course of my life has left me too...complicated (?) to really love. The outside is just fine, but it's not the whole of me, nor would I be happy with anyone ever assuming it was. I do wonder though, whether it's just too much trouble - too much to ask of anyone to actually deal with all of me. I wouldn't even know where to start anyway. Without trying to sound insecure (this is a different kettle of fish) perhaps what has changed is that before, as anyone with self esteem, I felt that doing my best would be enough and that I could give someone else a gift, of me. Now I almost feel as though that gift has changed into a burden.

As though I've been fired and am sitting here alone little a piece of hot pottery on a board, fresh from the kiln.

If that makes it sound as though I am completely depressed, don't be fooled - that I am not! I'm just doing a little soul searching. A little thinking out loud. I'm not the only one with these kinds of thoughts, I know. It's nice to write them down sometimes: get those sheep out of the road.

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:

Without

Without my Child,
I wander and weave, meander and ponder
The ways of life, and what lies yonder
Over the hilltop, the horizon, the edge
Of the sea, will you be together, with me?

Without my Love,
I discover and read, fall and recover
The woman I was, the girl-shell cast off
Sailing my boat, with the fruit of my womb
In my affection: one who grows, the other apart.

Without my Baby,
I will and I wait, walk on, but stand still
By myself, I forge a different path
And nurture my new embodiment of soul
Her glow in the dark is the light in my woe.

My heart has sprung open, casting petals about
The illumination of motherhood surrounding it's throne.
My love flows as water to bathe the children
They're running together; we're never alone.
Within.

Memories and Memorial Day...

I remember this time last year, being very bummed out about Memorial Day and other's wishes for me to decorate Josie's grave "because" it was Memorial Day. I felt I remembered Josie EVERY day, not just Memorial Day. And I do still feel that way. I really do.

This year however I did walk up to the cemetery...at dusk. I put Bella in the buggy and walked up the streets, up the sidewalks, to the place where the sidewalk ends...out of town and up to where the graves are. There weren't many people there - just headstones and flowers in the dimming daylight. The sunset settling on the horizon, and all the buried people standing, looking at it, invisibly and peacefully at the end of the day.

I walked on to "BabyLand" - the slightly twisted (in my view...I just can't shake the weird connotation) name for where the babies are all buried together. There they were, all the babies. Mine, Josie, still the newest one. Still no headstone. Which is depressing, but then again none of us has had the hundreds of dollars needed to throw at a headstone lately, so there she sits, with her grave marker and her iron pot for flowers. Just a little way back, the patch of earth, still cut out beneath the grass in a little oblong shape where they lowered her coffin into the ground. The headstone will come: we never did have insurance in case our baby died, you know? People don't. Whens it does come, when it gets put in, I want it to be meaningful.

So there we stand, and sit, respectively - Bella and I. I got the flowers out that I would be putting on Josie's grave, and gave them to Bella to look at - I thought it'd be nice to get a picture of her with the flowers. Of course, she immediately tried to eat them:

...and I was reminded of the continuity of life, once again. My first biological daughter lies in the ground beneath my feet. My second biological daughter is eating the flowers of my first daughter.

Sisters, together. A baby doing what she ought to be doing. I'd like to think Josie might have liked those flowers as well. She might have wanted to eat them too. Isobella certainly jabbered when we picked them out - jabbered and cooed and talked up a storm in the store, like a baby ought to. And you know, it was nice, sitting there on the ground, chuckling at my baby daughter drolling all over her sister's flowers. It was normal.

(I love my Bella. She makes my life so much better, every day. She makes everything twenty shades brighter: when I'm having a rough day, all I have to do is look in her direction and she lifts up my heart and allows me to live in the moment. Thank you, Bella - you are so beautiful.)

So, once I'd managed to uncurl her little fingers from the tissue paper, we put the flowers on Josie's grave. Here they are, in their place of honor...

Here is Bella, by her sister's grave. Significantly, this is the first time both of my children have been at the same place, at the same time. Poignant truths sometimes make up the fabric of my life... But I do remember though, walking back from the cemetery being quite angry with the decorating "rules." Grief doesn't have any damn rules - it does what it pleases. People ought to be allowed to decorate the graves of their loved ones just the way they like, stuff those rules. They can mow around the flowers I want to plant. One day, I am going to utterly flood every square inch of the cemetery that they can't get to, to mow, with wildflower seeds. Wildflower seeds for my baby.

My heart overflows with the love I have for them both. I'm so grateful to be a mother.