Easter, Then and Now

Easter three years ago, I was still waiting to meet Henry, still naive, still happy.

Easter two years ago, Henry missed his first Easter. I was newly pregnant again and anxious.

Easter last year, Henry missed his second Easter. Kathleen was toothless, sitting supported.
I was a jumble of happy and sad.

Easter, this year, this day, Henry is still absent from the egg hunt*. Kathleen is toothy grins alternating with fussing, wanting her mama to hold her. Most of the day I was okay, tears welled in church and at his grave. Most of the day, I marveled at how my baby girl has changed in this last year, how different, toddling around, picking up eggs, dropping them to pick up a leaf. She gave me kisses today. This is brand new today, and so sweet.


*(He was in the picture with all the grandchildren though. My mother-in-law had Brian run in and get a picture of Henry to hold, so he would be part of "all the kids.")

Pansies

For the first day of spring,

for my boy who never knew March

Three six-packs of pansies:

blue because he's my boy

yellow because he's my sunshine

red because it's his color. 

Three blue, three yellow, three red

planted for him at his grave, 

where I'll see them when I visit

or when I just drive by.

Three blue, three yellow, three red

planted for me by the back door,

where I'll see them when I come in

or go out every day. 

Two bright spots of pansies, 

linked in my mind. 

Vestiges

The CD player in Kathleen's room wasn't working right. While I was fiddling with it, I noticed the tape across the top, white tape borrowed from the nurse's supplies, name scrawled in blue magic marker: Henry Barry. The tape has been there since part way through Henry's hospital stay when I had the CD player that I got as a shower gift brought to me there. Mostly I don't notice the tape anymore, but when I do, I can't seem to peel it off.

After I saw it, I started seeing the other vestiges of Henry in our house, not the photos and mementos I've purposefully placed, but the things that are just there, a reminder that he was once here.

There's the file on the desktop of my computer: heartquotes. I never sent a birth announcement for Henry. Things were so crazy after he was born I couldn't pull one together. Then, when I felt like I could do it, we were so close to his surgery, I thought I'd send a post-surgery update (and have a no-oxygen picture!). Because Henry was my heart boy, I wanted a heart quote for the card. I started collecting them in this file. None of them were ever right, yet I have trouble trashing the file.

A "Congratulations" sign a neighbor stuck in a pie is now stuck in a plant. A bow with a ribbon printed with blue teddies found a home in another plant.

A tube of ointment for an eye infection still sits in the bathroom drawer.

These things will probably continue to sit where they are, until somebody else throws them away, because even though they aren't the things I choose to keep of Henry, they still are off him, of his time with us, little traces showing he was here, and I can't seem to get rid of them.

Stress

My last two posts are really about stress, what it's done to me physically, how I tried to respond the other day by stepping back, but I am not doing such a good job of it. I can't seem to find balance between having focused time with Kathleen and getting my work done and getting some semblance of almost enough sleep. I'm trying to run and walk and meditate and breathe. I said to my sister tonight that it bothered me, that after all I've been through, that I am this stressed about the day to day, about making dinner with Kathleen screaming at my feet, about trying to find enough hours in the day to get my work done. None of it is life or death. I should be able to handle it.

"You know this isn't separate from the last couple of years," she said.

And she's right. It's just not as obvious now that I'm more than two years out. It's not as obvious as I feel more and more distance and as I do this dance of holding tight and letting go. It's not as obvious as home is very present and the CICU fades slowly into memory. It's not as obvious as I focus on a healthy living child, but it's all still there. And December, and it's aftermath in January, showed me that I'm not as far removed from grief or safe from its clutches as I'd like to think I am.

In the earliest days of my grief I wanted a fast-forward button to get myself to a point where things were, what better? bearable? liveable? But now, I want a pause button. I want to stop the world that spins around me so I can put aside the work projects for a day or a week or a month. I want the bills to stop pouring in so I can take a nap. I want to wake up in the morning and be able to focus on my family and maybe take a little time for me.

But there's no pause button, so I keep trudging along, sneaking time with my girl, doing my best to piece in the work that needs to be done, and trying to breathe

What I should have done

I should have spent the evening editing most of a chapter for a computer certification book or written grammar exercises for an online course, but instead I reread old blog posts. I watched my unfolding over the last year and a quarter, the ways I have changed, the ways I have not, the themes that have ebbed and those that continue to resurface, the pieces of Henry I've reclaimed, the things I've tried to let go of.

Sometimes what you should do isn't what you need to do.

I meant to do some work earlier today, but instead I sat on the floor read book after book, or rather part of a book after part of a book, and then that part over again and again. . . . I watched Kathleen play with her pop up toy. (You press a button or turn a knob or slide a lever and and animal pops up. Then you slam shut the top to hide the animal again.) She didn't want me to open any of them, so I sat and watched her press the big green button, the only one she can do, point with delight at panda, then close him up so she could make him pop up again and again and again . . . I lay down on the floor and she towered over me and then leaned her round little face in close to mine, giggling, putting her cheek against mine, again and again and again.

And despite the chapters and lessons piling up on my desk, all this was exactly what I should have done and what I needed to do today.

And now, I should go to bed, get some rest, get ready to spend some time tomorrow with the work that waited and the girl who will deserve my attention again and again and again.