As the days go by, I realize over and over again that Maddie is gone forever. She's not coming back, I'm not going to get to watch her grow up.
Forever is a long time to live without your child.
I have found some passages by different authors, anthologized in the book A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies.
The first is the beginning of a poem by Sydney Lea, called "After Labor Day." She describes so perfectly in the second stanza how fresh and acute the pain is now, and always will be:
Your son is seven years dead.
"But it seems," I said, seeing your face
buckle in mid-conversation
as over the fields come winging the trebles
of children at holiday play -
I said, "But it seems like yesterday."
"No," you said,
"Like today."
The other is a single line from John Irving's novel The World According to Garp. I have never read the book or seen the movie, but this line describes so precisely how everything is measured "before" and "after":
"Ever since Walt died," wrote T.S. Garp, "my life has felt like an epilogue."
The only sentiment that I haven't seen expressed is this: In the precise moment that Maddie was born, she was both taken from me and given to me for forever.
Physically - 6.5 Mentally - 8
Emotionally - 4.5 Spiritually - 7
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
9 weeks 1 day - Lullabies
One of the most special moments of my life, and one that I will never forget, was being alone in my hospital room with my Maddie, rocking her and singing her a lullaby. I will likely never share what lullaby it was or many details of that moment with anyone (other than my husband if he wants to hear it), but it's one of the most treasured moments of my entire life.
It made me think of some of the most common lullabies out there, however... and how terrifying they are when you actually listen to them. They seem so cruel to those of us who have lost our babies:
Hush little baby, don't say a word...
Any mother who has held her stillborn or deceased infant knows how the last thing you ever want is for your baby to never say a word. The delivery room is supposed to be loud, active, joyous - when your baby is born silent, the silence of that room echoes and pierces your soul. I can never wish it upon any parent that their baby doesn't say a word.
...[W]hen the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.
This is such a horrible mental image - and it leaves me with such a sense of helplessness. It illustrates how we can't completely protect these little bundles - a feeling any mother who has lost her child knows all too well.
If God blesses me with another child, I want to make that child feel safe and secure in any way possible. I know that an infant isn't going to take these lyrics the way I do, but part of making the baby feel safe would be for me to also feel good.
Physically - 8 Mentally - 8.5
Emotionally - 7.5 Spiritually - 8
It made me think of some of the most common lullabies out there, however... and how terrifying they are when you actually listen to them. They seem so cruel to those of us who have lost our babies:
Hush little baby, don't say a word...
Any mother who has held her stillborn or deceased infant knows how the last thing you ever want is for your baby to never say a word. The delivery room is supposed to be loud, active, joyous - when your baby is born silent, the silence of that room echoes and pierces your soul. I can never wish it upon any parent that their baby doesn't say a word.
...[W]hen the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.
This is such a horrible mental image - and it leaves me with such a sense of helplessness. It illustrates how we can't completely protect these little bundles - a feeling any mother who has lost her child knows all too well.
If God blesses me with another child, I want to make that child feel safe and secure in any way possible. I know that an infant isn't going to take these lyrics the way I do, but part of making the baby feel safe would be for me to also feel good.
Physically - 8 Mentally - 8.5
Emotionally - 7.5 Spiritually - 8
Monday, August 31, 2009
7 weeks and 6 days - Temporary Insanity
About four days before I went into labor with Maddie, my watch stopped. The battery simply died. In the time following Maddie's delivery, I somehow decided that was incredibly, I don't know, symbolic and poignant since my life stopped on that day. As the next week and a half or so wore on and I was trying to find some way to make this better, I decided that it would be equally symbolic to get the battery replaced. As the second hand started moving again, I felt some sense of disappointment - I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but nothing happened. I think I had hoped that somehow I could move time backwards and change things, or could move it forward to a time when this might possibly hurt less.
As everyone who has suffered a deep loss likely knows, there are all kinds of incredibly irrational thoughts that go through your mind to try and "fix" things. One of my most recurring thoughts over the past almost-8 weeks has been that if I could somehow concentrate all of my focus and energy into one point in space and time, I could somehow travel back through time and have my baby back, have my happiness back. Part of the grief process is just learning that it's okay to have these lapses, I think.
As everyone who has suffered a deep loss likely knows, there are all kinds of incredibly irrational thoughts that go through your mind to try and "fix" things. One of my most recurring thoughts over the past almost-8 weeks has been that if I could somehow concentrate all of my focus and energy into one point in space and time, I could somehow travel back through time and have my baby back, have my happiness back. Part of the grief process is just learning that it's okay to have these lapses, I think.
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