stress

last year i bought a tree from the church lot up the block. i dried the roses from nathaniel's service and put the petals in clear ornaments, and decorated the tree with these. we put lights on the house. the energy of the grief pushed me forward. nathaniel was gone five months christmas day.

this year, the living room is full of boxes. empty and flattened, most of them right now. we've spent most nights these past months at the farm. i commute about 40 minutes to and from the city now.

i honestly don't know how i feel about it. most days i just feel confused and overwhelmed. we bought a farm. i moved my city chickens out there. the dogs. the cat. we have some furniture at the farm house. books. my art supplies. i bought and have been raising 10 ducklings. i bought 4 geese.

i like the birds. i hate the commute.

i'm trying to get the city house packed up but every time i try i get so stressed out. i don't know if it's going to happen. there's a deeper sense of inertia now - some leaden force that binds me in place.

i try to motivate my world by imagining some beautiful life that probably would have never been had nathaniel lived. 11 acres on an island. my own studio. but it feels like someone else's life that i'm trying to put on, like a jacket that looks great on the model but might not fit me. like some shitty consolation prize.

i don't know if it's just because of the holidays or if it's something else. if my body reacts to the moving with anxiety and pain, do i just then stay put? or do i push forward through the pain and try to imagine a different life? try to invent myself again?

i am still grieving in my body intensely. the pain is back in my breath today. i've actually had some success working with my breath for about the past month, which is amazing because i couldn't work with my breath for more than a year after nathaniel died, and my breath had been my number one coping skill for years. i've had some success with just slowing waaaaay down. walking very slowly. bringing mindfulness to my movements. but some days the anxiety just picks up and shakes my being, and it feels like my world could come apart with one or two sentences.

i know the stress is not good for my fertility. i know the stress is not good for me at all. but i can't seem to get away from it.

what do you do to manage the stress of grief?

mom face

recent conversations about faking it inspired this piece


mom face

nose to nose with a living baby
baby smiles
baby kisses
baby gurgles
baby face and mom face reflected together
this is how we both learn
love

raising a living child
face to face
smile
instruct
encourage
my son knows this mom face
is his mom's face

when my baby died
my mom face still
expected connection
first eye contact

but
absent
contorted

muscles involuntarily
twisted in a mask of pain

this revealed a new story
in my mom face


black eyes
broken teeth
swollen, beaten down


my living son witnesses his mom's face
confused
by his own brother face
wounded

*****

i try to smile

remember my mom face
the unbroken story
of childhood
and motherhood

i hide

can he see me? what does he see?
my body takes over and i cry out

stop.

i cannot be lost.
i am completely lost.

*****

peer closely and see
my own little girl face
wailing
her baby is gone

peer closer and see
his little boy face
lost without his little
brother

two lost children
playing mom face
son face
searching for baby brother's face

run

i have a five minute break in the middle of drawing class. the coffee shop is a block away. i left class quickly and started a very slow jog, quick walk, down the hall. a toddler coming the other way saw me with my silly run and grinned. as i passed her, she turned around and copied my run, chasing after me. the *before nathaniel* brain kicked in, smiled at her, and said, come on! and we ran down the hall together, giggling.

my *after nathaniel* brain said don't ask. you don't want to know.

"how old is she?" i asked anyway.

"15 months."

i'm an idiot.

"cute."

i didn't get through the front doors before the tears hit and i was plotting to never leave my house again.

***

"get a goose," she said. "cut it up into 20 pieces, wrap each piece separately, and put the pieces in the freezer. use the whole goose. head, feet, everything. every day, make a little soup. put one piece of goose in the pot with some water, cook it up, and then drink the juice from the bottom. don't drink the top - that's all fat, and you don't need that part. drink it up from the bottom. just a little soup. you'll have a healthy baby. one month, two months."

this, in response to the sentence, "we're going to try to have a baby." a sentence i had never uttered before. words like marbles in my mouth. a new language.

i don't know if i believe it. i try to sense how i feel when i say the words.

we didn't really try, but we didn't prevent. i'm not pregnant, and that's okay right now. i think i have to wade slowly into the land of maybe baby. this month, i drank more coffee, more wine, and consumed more sugar than i've had in the last year. which isn't much, but i surprised myself with my behavior. what am i doing?

it's so complicated. so many layers of this and that. yes, i'd love to have a baby. i haven't held a baby since nathaniel. i've never been in a better position to parent a child. i've travelled the road from birth through high school already. but there are so many risks. many other factors to consider.

two living children graduating high school this year.

one of my closest friends from jr high and high school just became a grandmother. i'm 39. three of my older siblings are grandparents.

if we had a baby, he or she would have only one living grandparent.

i bought the goose. it did not come with either a head or feet. i took it apart with a big knife. i started making the soup every day - my family called it my goose juice. i made it for six days in a row. it was disgusting.

and then i stopped.

have you seen him?

this is a picture of my baby, nathaniel. i've put photos here before, but i wanted to share his little face again.

baby stuff

we're packing up stuff in the city and moving out to the farm. slowly. a friend came over today to help pack for a couple of hours, and she ended up putting all of nathaniel's things in boxes.

all of his stuff from the corner of the basement. after he died, i lugged it all from the living room to the basement and draped baby blankets over everything so i wouldn't have to look at it.

the stuff out of his drawers. onesies, night clothes, diapers. hand-me downs we got from friends who are out of the baby phase themselves. i walked in the room and it just felt so different. i don't know why - the drawers are always closed anyway. but the energy of the room is different now.

my heart is so heavy. i know that at some point, i'm going to have to decide what to do with  it all. if we have another baby, whether or not to use it. if we don't have another baby, what to do with it all then?

generally speaking, i'm not really attached to material things. i don't have a problem getting rid of clothes or household things that we no longer need. i don't know why i'm so attached to nathaniel's stuff, and why it brings up so many emotions for me.

maybe by putting everything in boxes it's admitting that he's not coming home. and that is truth that i still can't wrap my head around, and i don't think that my heart can ever come to terms with that.

13 months

had he lived, i'd say that he is 13 months old. 13 months tomorrow.

his one year angelversary was as peaceful as it could have been. he was born at 12:55am on july 25th, 2011, and he died about a half an hour later. this year, we went and sat on the beach during that time. i needed to be by the water in order to breathe through it and try to feel close to nathaniel. my living son sat on my left side, my husband on my right. the moon reflected off of the ocean, and we watched the stars. i breathed in the air and listened to the waves. it was warm outside.

a bit before his time of birth, i started crying, remembering labor, my experience of childbirth, and having him placed into my arms. but then i stopped, and i tried to remember him before he was born.

what came to me was how much he loved chanting. when i taught yoga during my pregnancy, we would chant at the beginning of every class, and i had the distinct impression that nathaniel liked the chanting. i would bring my breath deeply into my lungs, and allow the vibration of my voice to resonate through my whole body, especially through my chest cavity and my abdomen. nathaniel's little body would resonate as well, and my whole body would fill with a sense of pleasure.

during my pregnancy, my chanting took on a deeper quality. more resonant without being louder. another teacher asked me to lead the chants in her class, and i was happy to do it. before i was pregnant, i was always a little nervous when i led chanting. but with nathaniel in my belly, for some reason, i had a sense of confidence and pleasure when chanting.

when i have thought about certain chants or tried to chant since nathaniel died, i have immediately started to cry because of the pain of missing him. but in that window of time - around 12:55am - 1:30am pst this year - i chanted in my mind and i remembered how much it pleased nathaniel, and how his little body resonated with my voice.

when we left the beach, i went almost directly to bed. and then the day of the 25th was very low key. we spent most of it on the beach, just sitting there.

i made it through. my only intention was to just breathe through the day, and i did.

For sunset, we went to Polihale Beach, which is where the ancient Hawaiians would send off the souls of those who died.

My big boy. But he's still my little boy.

***

but a month has passed since then already, and there have been good days and there have been bad days. i've been on a stretch of bad days.

yesterday i was bawling for a couple of hours. i just miss him so much.

i am having a really hard time imagining what my life is going to be like now. i left my career teaching high school 3 years ago and i don't really want to go back. we bought this farm in january, and i thought at the time that i would love it. i drive out there now and think about how beautiful it is - the light, the agricultural space - but my heart is just not into it and i don't know why.

i can't plan for the future. i can't decide if we should try to have another baby or not. some days i think we should and then other days i'm not sure. both my living son and my stepdaughter are going to be seniors in high school this year, so it's not like we're starting our reproductive lives together. if we have another baby we would really be starting over. if we don't have another baby, i don't want to be a farmer, and i wonder if i could ever heal in certain ways. i know women lose a baby and they don't have another and their lives move forward anyway. but i'm stuck and i don't know if having another baby is the answer. i don't think i could survive losing another baby, and isn't that the risk you carry by getting pregnant?

i'm trying to see my life both ways and i'm having a really hard time with it.

i'm still just lost. 

on the bright side. . .hmmm. i've been making a lot of jams from the fruit on our farm: plum, peach, and wild blackberry. i also made a plum gewurztraminer vanilla confiture that is pure bliss - it's one of those things that you put in your mouth and your toes curl. we've harvested figs and eaten every single one. i pick figs by putting two in the bowl and then one in my mouth, and that is heaven.

my dogs are sweet and need baths. my living boy is hilarious. my chickens lay beautiful eggs.

upcoming first birthday

i don't know exactly where to start with this post.

in april i told my dh that i was going to hawaii for nathaniel's birthday. he was welcome to come with me, but he didn't have to. i gave that same message to my living son. they both ended up coming with me.

so here we are for the week, on the island of kauai. when we arrived yesterday, i was tired and hungry and ready for the world to end. but then i ate and had a nap. it's probably good that we came.

for the past couple of weeks, people would say things like "are you *excited* for your trip to hawaii?" and i couldn't fake it. i couldn't say "yes (exclamation point smiley face)" so i would just say no. when they asked me in person and my face would contort into grief, i wouldn't have to say anything. i'm not here on vacation. i'm here because i needed to get away, and i know myself well enough to know that i needed to get away.

i was talking to a dear friend and fellow blm the day before we left, and i told her how i was feeling a little bit anxious about the fact that i wasn't *doing* anything for nathaniel. like, some people take toys to the local hospital on their child's birthday. other people i know have had the memorial service on their child's first angelversary. she told me that since i've already had nathaniel's service, and i've done other "external" things in his memory, maybe this week i can just focus on my relationship with nathaniel.

when she suggested that i started crying, and i told her that it's just so painful. but it resonated like good advice. 


when i've lost other people in my life, like my dad, it was hard, and it continues to be hard, but i always felt like he was there, just beyond the fabric of the material world, and whenever i needed him i could just "tune in" to his presence. and then i could talk to him and ask him questions. i used to say that i felt like i had more of my father after he had died than i had while he was alive. 

but with nathaniel it was different. it is different. i had a *very* distinct sense that he was *here* and then he was *gone*. gone gone. i could get a feel for him once in a while, but not very often, and i had to try really hard. and it was just so painful. there were several months this summer when i would meditate with the mantra: in breath - nathaniel is inside of me, out breath - i am inside of nathaniel. and for many weeks, this was one of the only thoughts that would soothe my nerves.

so much of my faith and my felt "knowing" of the world has been completely called into question over the past year, and that has undoubtedly impacted my relationship with nathaniel. also, i have so much guilt and shame that it's hard for me to look him in the eye.

so i guess that's my task - to bring myself more wholly and more honestly into my relationship with nathaniel, if i can. but how to start?    

*****

there was a little girl on the beach today - about 14 or 15 months old - not much older than nathaniel. i watched her for a while. she wore a red pocka-dotted sunhat and had sand all over her legs, arms, and belly. i watched her toddle all around. my dh caught my eye shortly after that and smiled. i felt like i was caught trying to be brave, trying to look at a baby without getting upset. And this made me crumble into sobs.