Layers

A few months after Henry died, Brian and I drove to Boston every other week  for a grief group. One of the images that stuck with was the layers of the onion. We kept peeling away those layers of grief—all the little letting goes, the fears, the traumas one after another after another, all the hurts that piled up afterward—layer after layer after layer I peeled it away. And like an onion, all those layers all made me cry.

That image came back to me today at church. We were sitting up front for a change and I kept looking at the baptismal font right in front of us. Before Kathleen was born, I would well up just looking at it, remembering that he had been here and now he's not. Today, I remembered Henry's baptism. And Kathleen's. And Elizabeth's. I did not cry. Time healing old wounds? New skin grown over the sensitive spot in my heart? Perhaps. But today, what it felt like was that I have been adding layers to our story instead of just peeling them away, new layers that soften the jagged edges.

His birthday is Wednesday, and I may find that I don't have as many layers as I think I do or that they all fall away too easily. I may find myself crying over my onion again. Or I may grow another layer on my story.

Falling

I'm falling
or falling apart.
these last two days.

An ambulance, lights and siren on, on a certain stretch of road—it is the route we traveled, Henry and I, that day in September. Seeing the ambulance, I am not there, not in the back with Henry and the oxygen and my bag jammed under my feet. I'm not there, but the terror grips my heart for a moment and I cry out.

State-insurance paperwork, poorly worded confusing questions, like the reams I filled out to get Henry enrolled in services when he was in the hospital. It took me a month or more. I was thick-headed, uncertain about how to fill out to forms. When is says you does it mean me or him? Here it means you. There it is him. Pages to determine what he can do or can't do. Dress himself, feed himself, walk, speak . . . he's 6 months old. I don't know the numbers, don't have the paperwork I need. I went back to the financial aid office again and again and again. He was finally approved. The letter was sent the day he died. Today I filled out some of the same paperwork to get assistance with our insurance premiums. All that came flooding back with a stack of paper today.

Last night, Kathleen woke and would not settle. I rocked and rocked her. She would almost fall asleep and then jerk herself up. She grabbed hold of my pajamas. "You can let go," I told her, wanting her to give in to the sleep she so needed. But I have said those words before, and the memory gripped me. And I spiraled down, down, down.

I said those words in October 2007, the night we thought Henry might die. I looked at his pale little body, laid out under the lights, covered with more tube and wires and equipment than I had seen even right after his surgery. He had already been through so much. "If you've had enough, you can let go. You can stop." Did I mean it? I wanted him to go if he was ready, not wait for me, for I would never really be ready, no matter what I told him. "You can let go. But please, wait until Daddy gets here." And he did. Brian arrived, my sisters, my in-laws, my parents were already there. They set aside a room for our family to wait in. Henry started to look just a wee bit pinker. His numbers looked better. To hear my mom tell the story now, she was foolish to call and worry everyone. But he almost died that night. He did, and I tried to let him go if he needed to.

In December I said it again as I felt him slipping from me, as I sang to him the names of all the people who loved him, I was trying so hard to hold on to him. My mom heard my singing, but didn't understand. "I can't hear you. I don't know what you are saying." And I shushed her away, my song the last thread between me and my baby.

Twice I told my baby he could let go, he could go, he could be free from all his little body had put him through.
Twice I tried to mean it, but couldn't really.
You can let go.

He finally did.
And then I had to.
Had to let go.
Let go of the thread of song.
Let go eventually of his body.
And now I struggle:
How do I hold on to him and let him go at the same time?

I'm falling apart
falling into deep waters, flailing, drowning.
Just two days ago, I wrote to Sally about healing.
Just over a week ago, I wrote of the lifting that came with the passing of December.
And today, I sat on my kitchen floor and wept.
I sat and could do nothing else.

And now, I have pulled the pieces together again
and I sit with the drained, weary feeling that comes
after the sobbing and the memories.
And I wonder if the sun will shine tomorrow
or if I'll fall a little more.

The lifting

A new year, a new month and already things feel a little lighter. I am glad to leave December behind.

These words from one of the songs on Henry's CD keep coming to mind:

Oh little red bird
Come to my window sill
Been so lonesome
Shaking that morning chill
Oh little red bird
Open your mouth and say
Been so lonesome
Just about flown away

So long now I've been out
In the rain and snow
But winter's come and gone
A little bird told me so
—Gillian Welch


It is cold here, too bitter to even go for a walk, and yet it does feel like winter has come and gone with the another December behind me.

It will come again, but for now I am back out of the rain and snow. And every now and then I see one of the red birds that remind me of my Henry.

How it hits

Two years ago today a buried a baby, my son, my love, my Henry.
And yet this morning I got up with my baby girl, ate breakfast, laughed, played.
I wrote Christmas cards and packed up gifts. 
It was any other day.

At 9:15 I was out the door for Christmas shopping.
A stop at the post-office, a package dropped off at a friends house.
The first strip of stores, running through my list, waiting in lines,
Gathering the things I was looking for.

It was the bank that did me in.
I went to the drive through, sent my request up through a tube
I was starting to tire of my errands and was staring blankly across two lanes of cars,
There in the window. Today is December 22.

The 22 was so big. My baby was so small.
We had four pall bearers, which was perhaps overkill.
Two grandfathers, his godfather, and my uncle (who knows too what it is to bury a son)
And his grandmothers read the eulogy that I wrote.

Today is December 22.
My chest tightened and my arms and legs got both heavy and light:
almost too much to lift and yet feeling as if they might float right off my body.
This is how it happens for me. How it comes on.

I thought about heading right home.
Lying on the bed, wrapped in his blanket. Retreating yet again
But there are nieces and nephews who deserve something to open on Thursday night
So I pressed on, but my steps were heavier, my mind distracted.

I buried my baby today. Two short and endless years ago.
I was rushing on the way home.
I had been gone longer than I expected. There was traffic when I just wanted to get back.
And I drove right by the cemetery.

The cemetery where two years ago I buried my baby.
Drove right by, distracted by the falling down house that is finally being torn down.
I didn't stop, didn't look to see if the wreath I left on the 17th was still there.
Didn't even throw out an I love you, I miss you as I passed.

But I know he is there underneath the snow
Too close to the road, still unmarked with stone. He is there whether I look or not
And yet he is not really there at all, and he doesn't care if I stop or wave or leave trinkets.
But I wish I had stopped, just for a moment and left my handprint in the snow ever him.

Two years ago I buried my baby boy.
I know this, have known this, will always know this.
And yet still it hits me suddenly, unexpectedly, this reminder of what I cannot forget,
what I carry with me always. It hits me and leaves me drained.

December

We are two days into December and I already I can feel it. There is a darkness to this month that has nothing to do with our winter short days. There is a weight that drags along with me. 

December 17 looms ahead. It will be two years. Two years since Henry left us.

But in this darkness, my light—Kathleen turns one. Her smile dimpled, different than her brother's, adds brightness. Her laugh makes me smile—even in this dark month.

I have been holding deep sorrow and great joy together, give each its due, knowing that each can stand on its own without muddying the other, but this month tests me.

December, my time to weep and my time to laugh; my time to mourn and my time to dance.

Drained and Refilling

Yesterday, Brian and I spent the day in Boston for Children's program for bereaved parents. I knew it would be an exhausting day, but I underestimated how completely and utterly drained I would feel. I ran into the burrito place across the street from the hospital to get us a snack for the road home and found I could hardly stand.
 
It was hard being back there. The program itself was not at the main hospital, but in a building down the street. But we were there passing the same streets and buildings I walked by so many times during the fall of 2007. We were stuck in traffic on Huntington where we sat in a snowstorm trying to get back to the hospital as Henry's oxygen ran low after we were discharged into a snowstorm. We waited for a light in front of the building where I waited in my parents car when the nurse called to find out where we were because Henry "wasn't doing well" the night he almost died. We were back in this place where Henry got three months of life he might not have had otherwise, where he got a chance at many more months and years, this place where I worried and waited, this place were he and I lived for three months with Brian visiting as much as he could. Two years ago I had been living in Boston with Henry for almost two months with no sense of when we might go home. This was where we were yesterday, even though I did not walk through the door of the hospital, enter the barren garden, or ride the elevator to the 8th floor. 

There were familiar faces: the psychologist from the floor who had known Henry and checked in on me periodically, one of the women from the center for families who had renewed my key card every morning so that I could have my little room to sleep in each night, a couple from our grief group, one of the facilitators from that group. It is always so odd to go to events at the hospital now a happy-sad reunion of sorts. I'm glad to see these people I know and yet the reason for gathering is not a happy one at all.

We spent the day talking about our children. Brian and I were on a parent panel. I was glad to have a chance to tell our story, Henry's story. The speaking to a group, which I usually hate, was not an issue, but what to say, where to start. I'm not sure what I finally did say— a little about what happened to Henry, a little about losing my first baby and figuring out what being a mom meant after that, a little about where I am now . . .

Much of the day was spent talking with other parents in small groups, our group was made up of people who had lost infants. We shared stories and pictures, how we dealt with different situations, the horrible things people had said, the wonderful things people had done.


It is hard but necessary to go back there, hard but necessary to listen to these stories that are unique but sound so familiar. I went to this program because I needed to take time out, to pause to think about Henry and this journey we're on. I went because I think going back from time to time is part of this process for me.

***
At the end of the day, we went to my sisters and picked up Kathleen. Hugs and kisses for my girl, glowing reports of the day she had had with her nana and grampy and aunt and cousin. We got her ready for bed and bundled her in the car. We got home around 7:30 and it felt like the middle of the night. I was in bed by 9:30, unheard of around here, but my mind was shutting down, my body demanded that I do nothing else. I was fully drained.
***
So today, I refill and replenish. Eight and a half hours of sleep (6.5 + 2) did wonders. I worked my body in ways that felt good—a long run, raking leaves. I treated myself to banana bread with chocolate chips. I soaked up sunshine on an unseasonably warm November day. And I reveled in baby giggles as Kathleen played in my leaf piles. I'm still tired, but slowly restoring myself

To live in this world

A friend emailed last night to invite me to a reading by Mary Oliver, and immediately I thought of these lines that I love, these lines that arrived in one of the very first cards after Henry died: 

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
    —Mary Oliver , "In Blackwater Woods"

                   You can read the whole poem here.