Right Where I Am: 4 Year, 5 Months, 7 Days

His pictures are dusty, like everything else in the house. Some nights I forget to turn the memory lamps on until I find myself stumbling in the dark. His garden needs weeding, mulching, tending, though I’ve purposefully put that off until his birthday next week.

He feels far away. Distant. Separate. Sometimes he feels unreal.

When Henry was born and diagnosed and taken away and sent home with oxygen and sheets of follow up appointments, all I wanted was normal, a normal baby, a normal life. My life is normal now, ordinary, full of figuring out what to have for dinner and running errands and defusing or waiting out tantrums. It’s filled with snuggles and reading stories and early morning (and middle of the night) wake ups. It’s normal, but he’s gone. I laugh. I watch my girls grow and change and amaze me. I notice the beauty around me and the abundance and the fullness of my life. And he is gone.

In this month of May, as his birthday looms close, I am wound tightly. The missing bubbles more to the surface, needing more attention. May is still tender; December still a month of apprehension.

On Tuesday, he will (would) turn five. He should start kindergarten this fall. Friends announce kindergarten screenings and open house on Facebook, and I remember watching with him as our neighbor started kindergarten, remember telling him how she would help him on the bus his first day. It seems so long ago that I was doing that. It seems so strange he will never get on that bus.

I’m still working on letting go of baby stuff he used (or never got to use). I'm still working on letting go of jealousy and resentment. I’m realizing how much his death affected my ability to talk to other moms when my oldest daughter was born, how that still affects me today.

Where am I right now? I’m here in this blossoming spring, here with my garden filling up, here with two little girls who get out in the dirt and should have tubbies every day. I’m here trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. I’m here trying to find balance between being with my girls and making space for me. I’m here still sorting out with my husband who we are now as individuals and how we work as a couple. I’m here, uncertain how much some of this has to do with losing a baby and how much it has to do with having a baby at all or having two little ones running around.

I am here, where from the outside it may look like I "got through it", and maybe this is what getting through it is, getting to this point where the missing is part of the ordinary, where the missing becomes almost like breathing, something your body does with out thought or excess energy. There are moments and days that still sear and sting and wipe me out, but they become rarer. And I bounce back more quickly, either because I’ve had practice or because my well has refilled some and I have reserves again.   

I am here, 4 years, 5 months, 7 days since I held him for the last time. That he is not here can never be normal, but that he is not here is part of my normal. I feel this, though it still confounds my brain sometimes. 

—part of Angie's Right Where I Am 2012 project
—Right Where I Was (2011)

Another Piece

This photo of Henry is one of my favorites. No oxygen, no cannula hiding his face. He's so alert and focused. So healthy.

He's in his car seat, the Graco Snugride in neutral colors that I registered for. He's in his car seat ready to go. Truth be told, he didn't like the car seat much. He wailed on most car rides. He cried when we tried to take a walk with the car seat as part of a stroller. Here, though, he looks content, with a tease of a smile.

All three of my babies came home in that car seat. They went in it to visit family, take walks, go to appointments. The cried in it and slept in it and spit up in it.

Five minutes ago, a young women showed up at my doorstep looking for the car seat I had offered to Freecycle. I handed it to her with a smile, told her I was glad it would get another use, but as she walked down the steps and I watched the familiar green, blue, and tan plaid move away from me, this image of Henry grabbed me and I wanted to snatch it back.

I remind myself that there is now a little more room in the barn and the attic, that we won't have to pay to get rid of the car seat, that somebody else will extend it's life before it gets relegated to a landfill. It's not something I can hold tight, nor something I can save to pass on to my girls. It makes sense to let it go. Rationally, I know this, but still, sometimes I find myself wanting to hold on to the things he touched and used, as if by doing so I could better hold on to him.

To all the mothers I've met

I walked today with our local support group to remember Henry and all the babies gone too soon. I walked to remember the babies I've come to know through their mother's words. I walked to honor their mothers. I have met so many wonderful, amazing women on this journey, and I'm so grateful for them (and if you are reading this, that likely means you). Wishing you a peaceful, gentle mother's day.

Stumbling Gratitude

I should know better what to do, what to say. I should be clear on what not to say. I should know there is no right thing, no magic thing, nothing that will really help. And yet, I want to say the right thing, the magic thing, the thing that really helps. And I worry about saying the thing that comes out wrong that hurts where it means to help. I want so much to help and feel helpless.

As I stumble through my friend's loss gracelessly, I think back to all the friends who stumbled through with me, all the people who didn't know what to say or do who offered words and hugs and silence for me to fill or not. I think of the people who sent cards and made donations and brought meals, the people who let me talk and cry after, long after, years after, who didn't shy away or change the subject, the ones who still remember his birthday and when he died. It's been almost five years since Henry was born, four and half since he died, and I'm welling with gratitude for the many people in my life who stood in the uncomfortable place of not knowing what to do and simply tried, because there are no right words, no magic things, because nothing really helps, but doing nothing at all surely hurts.

Hope and Hugs

Life here has felt mundane lately, which is not a complaint. Struggles over bedtime and early morning wake ups. Figuring out a new work schedule. What to have for dinner. Easy, every day stuff. This is where we are.

But my heart is so full for friends right now: full of hope for a baby to be born healthy and go home healthy, full of hope for succesful treatment, full of sorrow and love for a friend and her baby and the shitty (non)choices she has.

They are not my stories to tell, but they are the stories I am holding these days, sending love and hope and positive energy from afar, and when I can't do much else, hugs.