gills?

Approaching eight months. Nathaniel would have been eight months on the 25th. 

About three weeks ago I started having heart palpitations. It happened, for the first time, when I was laying in bed. My heart made one large thunk, then a series of little tink, tink, tinks, and then paused for a long time. It kept going erratically like this for a little while longer, and finally settled down into a normal rhythm. 

It was scary. This has never happened to me before. But I know Kate said something about having heart palpitations. 

I started having these episodes several times a day. My heart would just start beating erratically, and my arms and hands would numb. My mind would start to race, trying to figure out what to do, if I should go to the emergency room. 

David's birthday party came and went. It was *beyond* stressful leading up to it. But once it was over it was a success and the guests, and David, had a good time. 

The following morning we went to a Bar Mitzvah. I'd never been to one, and I cried several times during the ceremony. The worst part was seeing my friend's baby, born only a few months before Nathaniel. We would walk together when we were pregnant. I held and cuddled her baby while I was still pregnant, before we knew about Nathaniel's condition. I thought our babies would be friends. 

And when I saw this nearly one-year-old, I entered into that white tunnel of searing pain. 

At the luncheon, the baby was sleeping in her car seat. My friend came up to me and held my hand across the table. I buried my face with my other hand and sobbed. I hate public displays of emotion. Hate. Hate. Hate. Humiliated. 

She asked if I wanted her to take her baby and sit at another table. I said no, that's ridiculous. I am ready for things to be okay. I need things to be okay. 

They're not okay. 

At our table, we had two other babyloss families (with many years between now and their losses), and then the friend with her nearly one-year old and her older boy. I don't think it helped to know that the other babyloss mamas knew exactly what I was going through. I think it made it harder for me to perform being okay. I felt transparent.  

And then I felt like that crazy woman whose baby died and who cries all of the time.  

I should have stayed at home. 

That night, I had a three hour long episode of irregular heart beats. I honestly thought that I might die, and David and I talked about going to the ER, but then what? They hook me up to all of the monitoring devices, try to figure out what is wrong, and then find something that is wrong? Or find nothing that is wrong? Which would be worse? I know the irregular heart beats are about Nathaniel. And then I'd be a crazy woman hooked up to machines in an emergency room with my heart beating erratically and there is really nothing that they can do.  

And I figured if I was destined to die I was probably going to die. 

After that night, Saturday the 10th, I surrendered. I gave in.

I've been trying trying trying to do my part to make sure everything is okay. And it's not. 

My current working metaphor is that the grief has been like something holding me under water, and I have been fighting and fighting and fighting to come up for air. And there have been days where I have felt like I could breathe - Nathaniel flavored air, but air. But after the stress and the party and the Bar Mitzvah and the heart palpitations, I just gave up. 

And it's okay. 

So, for the last 10 days, I haven't left the house much. I thought I was grieving well and taking good care of myself by getting regular massage and acupuncture and exercise and going to therapy and the groups and processing and talking and writing. 

But now I'm not going anywhere. 

I'm crawling the line between grief and depression on my belly and elbows. 

I'm trying to stay out of bed during the day. I will sit or lay on the couch. I drink tea. I draw. I eat when I'm hungry. 

Allowing myself to do less. Nothing, if possible. 

Being held under water and not fighting it. Making the effort to not fight it.

The heart palpitations have stopped for now. The leader of my support group said that the palpitations are anxiety. 

And that's where I am. Not knowing whether the loss is going to kill me, or if I'm going to grow some gills. 

 

 

where is he now?

nathaniel died on a monday.

he was cremated wednesday morning. i know because i felt it. david was out of the house. i was alone. i writhed and howled and cried on the bed because he was being cremated and i could feel it.

the funeral director called david wednesday afternoon to tell him he could come and pick up the ashes.

he was gone. my sweet boy was gone. his little voice, his little presence, his little body i held in my arms and saw for only a few hours.

on friday he came back to me - burning in my mind's eye - about 4 or 5 years old. energetic. playful. with dark curly hair and 4 or 5 year-old teeth. we ran together and laughed and played tickle. i sobbed while i drove the car over a bridge. he was right there.

he was skinny like his dad - i put my hands on either side of david's stomach now, his shape, nathaniel's shape, right here.

the distance between shoulder and nipple like my (living) son. he's right here.  

i don't always have him with me in my mind's eye. i can't always feel his presence. i don't entirely understand the heaviness of the grief in relationship to *him*. who is he, where is he, how is he now?

do you imagine your baby? how old is he or she in your mind? what is your relationship like?  

Broody

This is kind of a silly post, I admit it. But it's relevant to me right now.

One of my hens, Cluck Norris, has gone broody. When a hen goes broody, she stops laying eggs, and she sits and sits and sits trying to hatch eggs. She's grumpy, has only one thing on her mind, and does not want to leave the nest for any reason.

Cluck is a beautiful bird. She has black feathers with a green sheen in the right light. She's an Australorp by breed, and a reliable layer (when she's not broody).

One day last week, she collected all five eggs laid that day from five hens, and she collected the five golf balls we use as "sucker eggs" to show the hens where to lay, and she plopped herself down on all of them and went broody. She put together a full clutch of 10 "eggs" - only one of them was hers - and decided it was time to become a mother.

But we don't have a rooster. She can sit on those eggs (and golf balls) all she wants and none of them will never hatch.

So I took the eggs and removed the golf balls from the nesting boxes, but she's still broody. She just sits there, all day, in an empty nest box. If another hen lays an egg in another box, she'll go and sit on that egg. When I approach her to remove her from the nest, her feathers hackle out. All she wants to do right now is just sit. She prefers to sit on eggs, but if there are no eggs there, she'll just pretend that there are, and still sit.

This morning I picked her up to move her off of the nest, and I noticed that she has plucked all of the feathers from between her legs, and so her soft chicken skin can be directly next to the eggs, and she can keep the eggs, and baby chicks, warm. I do not delude myself in thinking that she's aware, at all, of this process. It's all in a very basic part of her very basic brain. But feeling her soft, warm chicken skin, and seeing the few feathers still there, I thought of the pain I've endured to carry and birth a baby, only to have no baby to raise. And of the mothering hormones and instincts that snap in to place whether the baby lives or not.

In my 10 minutes of facetime with my partner today, where it was nearly 9 pm in Italy and not even noon here, I told him about Cluck's chicken skin, and that it makes me sad. He told me that she's just a stupid chicken and I should stop anthropomorphizing her.

My hackles went up.  

Cluck's feathers hackling up. 

Ready to keep baby chicks warm. I did bring her in the house to take the photo. She plucked herself so clean for the task. It reminded me of a bikini wax. 

One of today's eggs. I love the color. 

seven months today

we woke up this morning before 5am. i had to drive my husband to the airport, so he could fly to southern italy to teach for the week. i wish i could have made him take me this time. he's only been home for five days. i need a vacation.

i'm grounded at home with: 2 dogs, 1 cat here, 3 cats at the farm, my 16 year-old son, eight chickens in the yard, one chicken at the farm, seeds sprouting, tiny starts growing under lights. i'm not going anywhere right now.

i have a list of projects to distract me while he's away. today, i've accomplished none.  

i've cried a few times. not torrentially. partly cloudy with cloud bursts?  

undoubtedly the worst event of the week was learning that a close friend had her baby, and seeing pictures of the baby on fb. the baby she told me about the week nathaniel died. the baby was sweet and pink with a head full of dark hair.

i went to bed and wailed because my sweet baby died.

i miss him.

this is a picture of me and nathaniel right after he was born. 

this is a picture of the test announcing that nathaniel was coming! 

this is a picture i drew of nathaniel during our first trimester while i was traveling with my husband. i was trying to imagine what nathaniel might look like. 

perpetuum mobile

there are things that i have to do most every day. meals - prep, serve, clean. errands. appointments. laundry. 
drive the car in the rain.
the best chance for a shower is if i take a yoga class.
hygiene has taken on a new, changed standard in grief.

moving my family forward with the calendar and clock.  

the wallpaper of the world peels.

*************

My husband is turning 50 next month. I did not want to throw a party, but my mom encouraged me. Told me it was important to celebrate and mark his 50th.

So I'm planning it. Striving to be a good wife and all. Trying to put on a good face and create a memorable event for my partner. 

talking about it with a friend:

friend: "I was glad to get the invitation to David's party and see that you're celebrating life again."

me: "I want people to come to David's birthday party, and I want them to dance and have fun, and not be completely sad."

friend: "Quit projecting. No one else is going to be sad. Everyone else is over it."   

me: silently scratching the name of this friend off of my ever-shrinking friend list. suuuch a bitch!

***************

i feel like my body moves forward in time, but moves through the grief, sometimes, by sobs. sometimes i sob so hard i can't breathe. my lungs exhale completely and my diaphragm spasms and my whole body just shakes for a long time.

the only other time in my life that i remember sobbing like this was when i was very little, and it was frightening when i would cry so hard i couldn't inhale or breathe. i sob like that now, but i'm not afraid. 

***************

how does your body grieve? what do you notice about your body and grief?

Theme song for the week.

Wild Geese

This poem by Mary Oliver comes up for me again and again. . .

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the praries and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I've loved this poem for years. I came to it a thousand times before Nathaniel to find a sense of freedom. I do not have to be good.  I only have to allow the soft animal part of my body love what it loves.

Now I come from it troubled.


What if the soft animal part of me is bloodied and battered? What if the soft animal part of me has been taken behind a back street and beaten? What if the soft animal part of me is not alive, but not entirely dead? 


The soft animal part of me loves my baby. That's the truest thing.

Themes of the day

how does the human spirit survive this loss?
will i?
madness. 
negative space.
the world of the lost.
torture.
survival.
wisdom i never wanted.