Certainly Not Cool Enough To Blog

The unberable lightness of being

2012-01-10T12:18:00.001-05:00

It's not like I'm walking on sunshine and floating two feet off the ground or anything. But this morning it dawned on me that life is sort of good right now. Uncomplicated in a way it hasn't been in, well, in virtually my entire life, really.

We're not trying to have a baby anymore. So my body has ceased to be a science experiment/means to an end/poorly constructed baby-making machine. It's just my body again. Arms, legs, graying head and a busted uterus that can just fucking relax now, since it's not going to be called into action ever again.

If you listen closely, you can probably hear it sighing happily from all the way over there.

I pay little to no attention to bodily fluids. I have no idea what my temperature is on any given morning. I've stopped shelling out a fortune on sticks designed to be peed upon. I no longer mark the passage of time in 28-day units. I don't have to decide if just one more surgery or fertility treatment will do the trick. I no longer live in fear worrying about what one more loss would do to my already-fractured brain. And, perhaps best of all, the end of a cycle doesn't shatter me to my very core like it used to. Every single time.

People are no longer depending upon my body to produce a child, grandchild, cousin, niece/nephew. No one's crossing their fingers or praying or hoping or giving us knowing glances. The pressure cooker existence I once boiled away in has cooled to a lovely lukewarm bath.

The guilt is still there. It will always be there. I couldn't produce a living child, grandchild, niece/nephew. But at least the trying is over. We can all just agree that I failed and move on.

Or I can agree that I failed and everyone else can be mad at me for calling myself a failure.

Either way, we all move on.

And then there's the other shoe. The one that dropped on January 4, 2011 when I got the call that Dad had died. He got horribly sick (sicker than he'd ever been, which is saying a lot since he'd been in fragile health for 27 years), and after tenaciously battling a host of medical issues that would have immediately felled a lesser (or less stubborn) man, he quietly slipped away in the night.

I no longer panic when I hear the phone ring. I don't dwell on what it's going to be like "after" because I'm living it now. My stomach doesn't clench in anxiety when I pull up to their house. I don't have to wonder about what kind of day he's having - if he'll fall, if he'll die in front of me, if he'll be so confused he won't know who I am. I don't ache as I watch him suffer unthinkable fatigue, pain and indignities. Most of all, he is no longer suffering.

As I said yesterday, I am breathing these days. The good kind of breaths. Better than I've breathed in almost as long as I can remember.

My life is more about me than it has been in a very long time.

I'm not 100% carefree or without responsibility. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, here. But the fact is that I am living a more peaceful life right now. Work is plentiful enough, My Beloved is still beloved, my mom is in relatively good health, and I passed my annual physical with flying colours (which is astounding given the grief eating I did during 2011, not to mention all the stress).

Sorrow is still an ever present interloper, but it's a snarling beast I've mostly learned how to tame. I know to lure it into its cage when I need relief, and let it out to be walked when it needs to stretch its legs.

We have it mostly figured out, me and Sorrow.

So life is just...life these days. Quieter, less complicated and much prettier than I've seen it in a very long time.

I could get used to this.

The long goodbye

2012-01-09T15:10:00.000-05:00

The other day I read an article about the formalized mourning rituals observed by Jews. Being married to someone who is half Jewish, I'm familiar with some of those rituals - like sitting Shiva for 7 days, and the unveiling of the monument one year later.

But what I didn't know is that they understand that that grief takes a solid year to truly process. They figured this out, wrote it down, handed it out and now they all just know to treat each other a little more gently when the heart is healing post-loss. Imagine that.

It has now been one year and five days since my dad died.

Losing Thomas taught me that you don't get over a loss, you simply learn to live with it. So I knew I wouldn't magically feel like "the old me" when the sun rose on January 5th. I knew I would feel like the new me: the one who now lives in a world where my dad does not. The one who lost someone whose voice has been dear to her since before she was even born. But the one who is, nonetheless, still alive.

That's why I also knew I'd probably feel like I could take real breaths again on January 5th. Long, slow, deep ones - not just short, quick gasps designed to keep me alive.

And I did.

The hellish first year is behind me.

And I can breathe.

Friendship's wings

2011-09-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

My friend died on Saturday.

There are a million and one things to say about this, but the foggy swirl of grief and remembrance is making me nervous that I'll forget something important - that I won't eulogize her in the way she deserves.

So I will just say this:

She went to visit my dad one day while he was in dialysis. They were receiving treatment in the same hospital; one for kidney failure, one for cancer. She had never met him, but she wanted to stop in and say hello to the man I'd talked so much about.

Like everyone to whom I introduced Liz, he was instantly smitten. After their brief, and only, meeting, he asked about her constantly - even when he could finally no longer remember her name. And he prayed for her fervently. One of the last things he ever said to me was that he was praying for her, and that I was to tell her.

On my last visit to Liz, when she was so weakened that it was sometimes difficult to hear or understand what she was saying, she told me, through tears that threatened to shatter me, that she would look after my Thomas. Over and over again, she said she would look after my boy for me.

A mother leaving her own children here, pledging to take care of mine there.

She had acknowledged her death before. We both knew she was going to die - she was frank, was Liz. But this time I knew she could see it. It was both frightening and beautiful all at once. She was close enough to begin planning what she would do once she left us, and I was in grateful awe that she chose to make my boy part of it. And that, God bless her, she made sure I knew.

I've only known Liz as someone journeying with cancer. I met her shortly after her diagnosis in 2009. But cancer never defined her - she refused to let it. She lived fiercely and fully, and with more grace, courage and humour than I ever thought possible under such heartbreaking circumstances.

Someone who takes time to visit an old man they've never met in dialysis while on her way to chemotherapy? Well, that's just the best kind of person there is - and someone I'm so proud and honoured to have called my friend.

Love you, Liz. Godspeed, and thank you for watching over my boy.

Do as I say, not as I do. Obviously.

2011-07-29T17:06:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here's the thing about grief: it makes you sooooo tired. I'm sure it's that and not the nine zillion calories I eat every day in an attempt to smother the grief with Nutella and wine.

Because that's what I do. It's been my modus operandi since Thomas died. I try to kill grief with food, or somehow disable it with credit card transactions (like when I bought two pairs of shoes on the way home from errand-running this afternoon).

Both are effective, but only fleetingly. Somehow I'm still pretty sad. And kind of fat. Huh.

Oh, shopping and eating do work in the moment, of course. Spectacularly so. A big spoonful of Nutella completely eclipses EVERYTHING for the 4 seconds it stays on the spoon. And the rush of finding two cute pairs of sandals that actually fit my chubby feet? Bliss that repeated itself when I got home and tried them both on again.

The afterglow is pretty short-lived, unfortunately. But I'm no quitter. Eventually I'll find just the right combination of eating and spending to kill grief forever. I'm sure of it.

Right now I'm trying salami and beer. And later I'm planning to hit the cosmetics aisle at the drug store.

I'm nothing if not committed.

Of course, I kid. I know that what I'm doing is stupid and unhealthy and fruitless. But I figure since I know that it's a crap plan of action, it's totally okay to continue along this destructive path for at least a little while longer. Because knowing is half the battle and blah blah blah.

Shit continues to happen. I will self-medicate for as long as it takes me to not need to self-medicate. I'll get there. I have before and I will again.

But for now, beer and salami it is. And some new lipstick later.

Cheers!

From the "outside looking in" files:

2011-06-13T18:02:00.000-04:00

'Tis the season for graduations on Facebook. These days my wall is flooded with announcements about little ones saying goodbye to kindergarten, changing schools and getting bigger and bigger each day.

They tug at the heartstrings, these innocent posts from people who are lucky enough not to realize that a little boy growing up is actually something to celebrate, not mourn.

I would give just about anything to have been blessed with that kind of luck.

And so it goes.

Rapture

2011-05-19T10:37:00.001-04:00

I haven't been paying all that much attention to the alleged facts behind the claim that the world is going to end at 9:00pm on Saturday, but I have given a little thinking time to the concept itself.

Let me be clear: I have no wish to die. There are a lot more things I want to see and do here. I don't feel quite done.

But the truth is, when you've buried your only child and know there are no more coming, the idea of death - even at the relatively young age of 41 - isn't quite as daunting a prospect to consider. I am by no means sitting around waiting to die, and that's not how I'm living my life. But I'm also not living the same way people with children do. I'm not marking time with developmental milestones, birthday parties and school graduations. My child won't have a first date, first prom, first day of work. He won't get married. He won't call me, half out of his mind with excitement, fatigue, and relief, to tell me that I've become a grandmother.

People with children live for these things, and I can guarantee they've thought of half of them before changing that first diaper.

Those who are childless-by-choice are probably shifting uncomfortably in their seats right now, irritated that I'm suggesting that life is somehow less important, less interesting or less fulfilling without a child in it.

That's not what I'm saying. Well, not exactly.

What I'm saying is that when I was carrying a wriggling, healthy baby boy in my tummy, I looked out at the vast expanse that was rest of my life and expected him to be in it. You know, alive and everything.

But he's not. I'm passing time without him instead, and that's the difference between someone who wanted it and someone who didn't. I missing him, and all the future he was. It's not that my life isn't fulfilling and often very happy, it's that it always has that empty spot where Thomas - and his own big, full life - might have been.

So to me, life is less fulfilling, less interesting and less important than it would have been with my son in it. How on earth could it not be?

Which means that if I do die on Saturday - if those placard carrying doomsday enthusiasts are correct - I won't be leaving one of the people that I love most in the world, I'll be meeting him again. And sooner than I'd expected at that.

I have so much to live for - so many wonderful things I haven't done, seen, read, heard, and experienced. But I have a lot to die for too.

That's just the way it is.

81

2011-05-17T09:51:00.001-04:00

They want me to write about rental housing and life insurance and private home care for the elderly, but the only words that really matter today are: I miss you Dad. Happy birthday.

He was one of the best people I've ever known. And I'm almost positive I'm not being selectively blind about this, viewing him through a gauzy haze of grief and longing that's blurring out his rough edges. Because he had those. He totally did.

But he also taught me to notice things like a golden autumn leaf or a long dormant tulip bulb poking its way out of the earth in early spring. He saw small beauties everywhere, and the wonder he had for those everyday miracles radiated from him like summer heat off the sidewalk. He had a way of talking about the people he'd lost that somehow showed more of his love for them than his sorrow over losing them. He was joyous, relentlessly pursuing the things that made him smile and brought him comfort. He fully immersed himself in everything he loved: church, sacred music, sports memorabilia, and his family. He was settled, secure and confident about himself and the people and things that he believed in.

He also once hauled some guy halfway out of his car window and punched him, punishment for a driving offense of some sort that Dad felt wouldn't otherwise be properly meted out. In his much younger years he took to the streets of Toronto late one night looking for crimes in progress that he could bust up. Irish temper. He had that too.

But the Dad I knew best went to Christmas craft shows with me. Once he bought himself a tiny gingerbread house - something that still somehow makes me want to weep, because that's just the kind of person he was: a great big man with a great big laugh who won (and lost) bloody fights when he played hockey, and bought gingerbread houses with his daughter.

Last summer, as we sat on the deck while he ate an old person's snack of digestive cookies and water, he told me he'd had a good, happy life. He reminded me that he always managed to find joy, especially in simple pleasures. His eyes shone, looking beyond me into the past.

And oh, I miss him. I first knew I would lose him when I was a terrified 13-year old sitting in the emergency waiting room late one winter night. Twenty-seven years later I finally did. And it was every bit as awful as I'd been imagining it would be for all those years.

But I'm looking at spring buds, and taking solace in the simple pleasures that make me happy. Because that's what he taught me.

I miss you, Daddy.
oxox

A Widow's Story

2011-05-16T12:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I heard a portion of an interview with Joyce Carol Oates on the CBC radio. It was about her new book, A Widow's Story, which is a memoir based on the time after the sudden loss of her husband of 47 years in 2008.

I listened to it with the kind of rapt attention you probably shouldn't when you're driving. I can't remember getting to my destination.

It's just that she spoke so honestly and simply about loss. She was unapologetic about the ravages of grief and the toll it took on her after her beloved husband died. She didn't look on the bright side. She didn't claim to have learned anything from it. She didn't praise it for making her stronger, more empathetic or more patient with others. She didn't use it to find ways to do good.

She just endured it.

And coming from the world of babyloss where we're always trying to make sense of it and find something good to take away from it, this was a breath of fresh air.

Losing someone you love is bad. Period. It hurts, it isolates, and it scars.

I'm sure, like everyone who struggles to find meaning in loss, she has done some of the mental gymnastics the newly bereaved engage in to keep the ground from moving and shifting beneath them every moment of every day. She probably has tried to make sense of it and find lessons from it.

But she didn't say she did. At least not in the interview. She said she made a nest of her bed, taking refuge there through sleepless nights surrounded by books to comfort her. She admits she thought about, but then dismissed, suicide. She said she regularly impersonated the "old Carol" while she was working as a professor at Princeton, then returned home to be a grieving widow once again.

I haven't lost my husband so I have no idea what this particular of grief is like, but so much of what she said resonated deep within me. Especially the notion that we impersonate the person we used to be. I suppose it's some sort of ancient survival skill, not unlike the way cats can literally be dying but still successfully pretending to be a-okay.

I've done it. I still do it.

And then I come home and I can be the girl who lost all her babies and then her father.

I ordered A Widow's Story for my mom, and I'll read it when she's finished. There's something deeply necessary about people sharing the grief journey, and I'm so grateful that people who have walked this sad, lonely road do talk about it.

For us, and for themselves.

What remains

2011-05-02T10:59:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I hosted a jewelry party - a fabulous girly event attended by some of my closest friends and lady family. I put out a little cookie spread while my incredibly talented friend (accompanied by her helpermom) arranged her gorgeous handmade pieces in my dining room. She works in stone and sterling silver, and oh my - such loveliness my dining room table has never seen!

It was a too-quick sort of affair for me. I was, as it turns out, starved for this kind of joy. The house rang with the sort of raucous laughter that can only be generated when women are under the spell of lovely things and in the company of good friends.

I spent the evening buzzing in the afterglow of the happy energy that filled my house for those three perfect hours.

And what I realized, after thinking so much about each of the lovely people who flitted around the dining room table snatching up Donna's bracelets, earrings, and necklaces as they laughed and chatted; is that I love my life.

There are great holes in it. There are massive sorrows. There are missing people. There are scars that will never fade. But I love what's here. What's here now.

What I do have, as it turns out, I adore.

I watched my friends - people I have cared about and known for years - as they flooded my house with their joy, and found myself pulled in. I have danced on the periphery for so long. I have spent endless days, months, years; waiting, trying, struggling. I have pretended to be happy. I have lied about being happy. Even to myself. Often to myself.

But yesterday I really was happy. And it occurred to me for the first time that I love this life.

I love what remains.

This is not to say that I'm happy that this is how my life has turned out. This is not what I chose - it's not what My Beloved and I wanted or planned. But in the aftermath I've somehow managed to carve out a sweet and happy place, and I'm grateful for the peace. And for the friends who helped me realize that I have it.

(One of three (yeah, three) of my pretty new bracelets. Seriously, it was a good day all 'round.)

One moment

2011-04-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

About a month and a half before he died, I had a conversation with my dad about death. I didn't know if it was right or fair, given his incredibly frail health, but I desperately needed to talk to him. I wanted to tell him about the vision I had of Thomas pushing through crowds of family and friends to be the first to greet whichever one of us was to arrive next.

I said "whichever one of us". I knew it would be Dad.

He smiled. And got quiet.

To fill the silence I blathered on, making a vague reference to some pretty severe doubts that had been plaguing me since he'd gotten so sick, about whether or not there even was a heaven.

In hindsight this all seems so cruel - to try to seek spiritual solace from someone staring death in the face, someone getting weaker every day and fighting so hard to live. But I couldn't help myself. I knew I was losing him. I was watching him slip away right before my eyes. The enormity of that impending loss made me realize exactly how desperately I needed to know that this is not all there is. That I would see him again, even if he had to leave me for a while now.

It was easy when he was younger and healthier. It was theoretical, the separation.

But when you look at someone and see death staring back at you, sometimes you say things you might otherwise not. And I hope he has long forgiven me for forcing him to talk about dying in the dialysis waiting room that day.

He told me he wasn't afraid of death. He was a man of immense, unwavering faith. He said if he happened to be wrong, which I know he didn't think he was, he'd never know the difference so it didn't concern him.

He said the only thing he was afraid of was the moment of death.

And I didn't know what to say, except to agree. And to feel sick for making him reach in and poke at that one little weak chink in his armor.

And then he was gone.

He would have loved to tell me about the moment of death, once he finally experienced it. As weird as that sounds, I know he would have. He loved to tell stories, especially if they were funny, but also if he knew someone was really, really interested in what he had to say. And I am. Oh, I am.

He would lean forward in his chair and said, "Say, do you remember that day in the waiting room when we were talking about dying? WELL..." then he'd pause for emphasis, lean back, and proceed to tell me that it wasn't as bad as he'd feared. Or that it was worse. Or quick. Or agonizingly slow. Most likely he'd say it's not worth worrying about while you're still alive because there's all sorts of important living to do then. And if that was his message, he'd probably wag his finger at me with his head tilted and his stern face on while he was delivering it.

And I would listen to the sound of that lovely voice, taking in all the details, nodding and commenting and laughing at the funny bits I'm sure he'd have managed to find in it all. Just like always.

It's been so long.

Tired

2011-03-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

I'm so tired of being sad. Bone weary exhausted, really.

I'm not wallowing. Honest. I have newly-purchased cans of paint and two bathrooms ready and waiting. I have crochet projects on the go. I have work scheduled. I have a to-do list that I follow. I have lunch plans with a friend on Friday.

The thing is, when I'm in the midst of the busyness, it's all good. But when I pause to figure out what that nagging feeling is - that sense that someone is watching me, that something is wrong, that I've had a bad dream, that I'm late for something - I realize it's sadness quietly waiting to be acknowledged.

And so I cry. I cry for my dad - for all the pain and indignities he suffered in the months before he died. I cry for me, because I miss him so much. I cry because I haven't yet figured out what to do with this unplanned life. And I cry because that scares the bejeezus out of me.

Fate has been clever and methodical in the doling out of disaster. A miscarriage in 2003, a miscarriage in 2004, Thomas' birth and death in 2005, fertility treatments in 2006/7, a miscarriage in 2007, more fertility treatments in 2008, dad's illness in 2010, his death in 2011. These things seemed to have spaced themselves out, giving me juuuuuust enough time to recover from one disaster before tossing some new horror my way.

The cumulative effect is like sitting beneath a pile of elephants trying to smile while I'm being crushed to death.

This is life. I know that. No one escapes unscathed, and in the midst of the horror is unimaginable beauty. I know that. I know that. I know that. There are bigger disasters. There are crueler fates. There are harder lives.

But, still, this is mine.

The other day I was telling My Beloved that I barely remember the girl I was before that first loss in 2003. I miss her, I told him. She's like a brightly-coloured character in a book - happy and innocent. Not without worry or sorrow, but still buzzing with light and energy.

In his wisdom and kindness he acknowledged her loss, but told me that the girl he's now married to is not just a shadow of the one he once knew. I am better, he says, in some ways. I didn't ask for specifics. I was too stunned and overjoyed to care.

Better. At least in some ways. That's good to know.

I know the fatigue of sorrow will wane. And maybe I'm thinking too hard; worrying about it too much. It hasn't yet been three months since the most recent elephant, after all.

But it would be nice not to be so grief-weary. So very, very nice.

Missing

2011-03-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

Years ago, not long after Thomas died, I read a post by a fellow babyloss blogger who was struggling with an overwhelming desire to make herself look as outwardly grief-stricken as she felt inside. She wanted to cut her hair, tattoo her body, cut patterns into her empty stomach - do something radical and drastic so that people would know, just by looking at her, that she was broken on the inside. She wanted the mark of grief.

It scared me. But I understood.

I started thinking about her - and the strange need for grief to be known and recognized - this morning at Mass. I'd made small talk with one of the office staff on the way in - a woman who helps me organize the annual Mass of Remembrance for bereaved parents. We both hate the heat, but wished it was a little warmer today. And isn't that funny, because in a few months we'll both be wishing for a crisp day just like this one. And isn't it a shame that while it's going to be warmer tomorrow, it's going to be rainy too. Blah, blah, blah.

When I finally got into the church, I sat down and started thinking about my dad, as I often do when I'm alone and quiet with nothing proper to distract me. Driving is a particular hazard. It often ends in tears.

Anyway, I was thinking that I display no outward sings of grief. I'm clean, my hair is freshly cut, I wear makeup (a necessity to hide the circles and bags my 40s have gifted me), I smile when appropriate, I attend meetings, I work. I am functional in all the ways that matter.

But inside there is so much grief. And no one knows.

It makes me feel like I'm existing inside a plexiglass dome, visible, but somehow unreachable. And thoroughly unknowable. Most importantly, separate. Always separate.

I started wondering why exactly it is that we need to share grief with others. It's such a personal thing that no two people feel or experience the same way - even if they've lost the same person - and yet we're desperate to find people who will listen to us when we need to talk about the aching emptiness a loved one's loss has created in our lives. We want to share, in explicit detail, what it feels like to be without that person; what it's like not to hear their voice tell us we are loved, what it's like to see the empty chair they once sat in, what it's like to want to tell them a story and forget, for a split second, that they are no longer there to hear it.

I want everyone to know how much I miss my dad. How I still cry for him. How agonizing it is to be separated from him. How I still can't fathom that he's really gone and is never coming back.

How I feel like I'm once again hollow inside, waiting to be filled up with whatever it is that filled the empty space Thomas left behind.

And no one knows.

And I don't know why that matters. Except somehow it does.

Six

2011-03-09T00:14:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday my beautiful, beautiful boy.
I will love you always and forever. oxox

Universal mother

2011-02-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

"...The thing I have always wanted to say I have no right to and may be so unwanted and I never would wish that. And my greatest fear has always been that my words could possibly cause you further pain which I would never want.

But I am saying it today to you. Forgive me if this is upsetting, please please.

I have always seen you as a mother, to Thomas yes, but in my soul I have always felt you must become a mother to another child, no matter how, no matter from your body or not, from birth or not it has been so strong I have written friends to speak about you and ask their advice. I feel it achingly in my core that your life, that your joy and your path is this, is to find a way to make it happen for you. Through foster or adopt or any other means. And I know that is so easier said than done, I know what you have said about all of it. I do I truly do. I just want you to know I dream about this, it haunts me and I have never understood why it is so, with you, it has never done so with someone else from our land of IF."

I think about this sort of thing a lot. Even still.

I imagine the life I nearly had every time I see a mother lean in to her child to listen to a secret he wants to share, or watch her touch her child with that absent-minded mother-love that makes her need to stroke her daughter's hair without even realizing she's doing it. I feel the emptiness around me so acutely in those fleeting moments when I see so clearly what I'm missing. And I panic in those moments too, knowing that I won't have that kind of connection with anyone. Ever.

But I also believe that childlessness is the road some people walk - some by choice, some because the choice was made for them.

I'm not walking it to be noble or to take the bullet for someone else. I'm walking it because I have to - because this is where life has lead me and I can't turn around and go back to a different starting point. Not now. Not after everything. I tried to choose a different path, but I kept ending up back on this one - more bloodied and broken each time - and there finally came a moment when I decided to stop fighting against it and accept that this is what was meant to be.

I regret that I was ever put in a position where I had to choose. But I don't regret the choice I made. I have to trust that it was the right one for me and for My Beloved.

I admit that it haunts me too. It probably always will. But I do believe that for us this is how it is supposed to be.

So I've just decided that I'll be a mother in other ways to other people until I'm with my own children again. A universal mother, if you will.

I'll crochet for my friends' babies, I'll listen when someone needs to talk, I'll keep secrets, I'll send cookies to work with My Beloved so he can share them with his co-workers, I'll make homemade birthday cakes, I'll make spaghetti sauce from scratch, I'll dry tears, I'll soothe hurts, I'll offer advice, I'll make things better when I can. And I will always keep tissues, gum, hand sanitizer, and aspirin in my purse.

I can still be a mother in the little ways that mean so much. It's not the same, I know that. But walking this road doesn't mean that I can't still use the mothering instincts that I was born with, or pass the kindness and love that I was shown by my own mother on to others.

Making that choice is easy.

Bleu, thank you so much for your comment. I know it came from a place of love and respect, and so no, it didn't hurt me. In fact, I've been thinking a lot about this whole "universal mother" thing in the last few months, and your words helped. Truly.

Grief in 30

2011-02-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

What I know about grief:

1. When it moves in, it brings every piece of baggage it can along with it.
2. It steals your sleep, your concentration, your confidence, your energy, and your peace.
3. It feels endless.
4. It gets better.
5. It gets worse.
6. It's totally unpredictable.
7. It makes you feel desperate.
8. It makes you feel incomplete.
9. It makes you feel scattered, scared, and lonely.
10. It thrives on the chaos it creates.
11. It changes your priorities.
12. It alters your perception.
13. It lies in wait.
14. It attacks without warning.
15. It bleeds you dry.
16. It makes you more compassionate.
17. It makes you more paranoid.
18. It makes you need friends, crave comfort, and beg for mercy.
19. It is ruthless, relentless, and insatiable.
20. It makes you vulnerable.
21. It makes you weep.
22. It makes you scream.
23. It chokes off your words.
24. It strangles your joy.
25. It claws at your heart.
26. It rakes at your mind.
27. It thunders in your ears.
28. It blinds your eyes.
29. It cripples, maims, and scars for life.
30. It makes you wonder if the people you're missing would even recognize the person you are now.

And each day you survive living with it, you win the tiniest little piece of yourself back.

I want happy

2011-01-26T17:11:00.000-05:00

Slow work weeks for freelancers are distressing. Slow work weeks for grieving freelancers are dangerous.

With nothing pressing to occupy your mind, it's especially easy to get lost down an internet rabbit hole. Eat the wrong things. Dwell on what-ifs. Wander aimlessly. Bother sleeping cats. Then eat the wrong things and start the whole cycle all over again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Today I found myself curled up on the only cat-free spot on the bed begging my Dad - who I'm only partially convinced can even hear me now - to help me find happy again.

I want happy.

My Beloved and I lost our first baby a little over 7 years ago. I have spent almost all the time since that moment being afraid or sad. Desperately so in both cases. Sometimes at the same time. There were bits of hope and moments of happy sprinkled in, sure, lots of them. But mostly I feel like I've been sad for such a very long time.

I want happy.

So I sat up and made a mental list of things that make me happy, thinking that was a good start. But I cried the whole time. I am responsible for my own happiness, but that responsibility is so overwhelming right now that I don't even know where to start. It makes me tired and defeated just thinking about the effort of it all.

I want someone to walk in with happy on a silver platter. A great huge plate heaped full with more happy on it than I could ever possibly need or want. An excess of happy. Effortlessly won.

But that's not the way it works. So I'll press on as I have been; as best I know how.

I'll get lost online, eat crap, cry, move quietly from room to room, and pester the cats while I wait for work.

And while I try to figure out a way to find happy again.

The sweater

2011-01-21T21:37:00.000-05:00

I have my Dad's sweater hanging in the closet in the sitting room. It's the butter-yellow one with the faux wood buttons that my mom made so long ago that no one can remember exactly when; the one he wore to dialysis all summer long; the one that was finally deemed too raggedy and was replaced by a navy blue store-bought cardigan in the Fall.

But it slipped into rotation every now and again. And it's what he had on the last day he was alive. I found it at the bottom of their basement stairs, along with the shirt he'd worn to dialysis that Monday, hastily tossed away out of sight while my mom and sister waited for the coroner. And then, finally, the funeral parlor to come and take him away.

I brought it home and washed it. And I hung it in the closet that would have been Thomas'.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it - it's pilled and has a small blood stain on one arm caused by the ever-present itchy rash that plagued him. A side-effect of dialysis, we were told.

But I had to have it. I sat with him in the waiting room so many times as he wore that sweater. I watched him walk into the treatment room, slightly hunched and shuffling, with that butter-yellow sweater hanging off the shoulders that used to be broad and strong. I'd retrieve it from his bedroom when he'd forget to put it on. I'd help him into it. I hugged him hello and goodbye so many times while he was wearing it.

I needed it.

Maybe I'll wear it. Maybe I won't. But I need it here with me just the same.

I've only just started not needing to have lights on at dusk in rooms we're not using. When Thomas died, nightfall suffocated me, and I wanted to banish it before it had a chance to take a choke-hold this time.

But it's been a kinder sort of healing, and after not quite two and a half weeks the lights aren't necessary any longer. I've also stopped needing to have the TV on while I fall asleep. We still do it every once in a while, but I don't panic at the thought of falling asleep in the dark anymore. And my brain is quieter and lets me slip into sleep much easier now too.

So there's the sweater. And there's the darkness. And for now, I'm living comfortably enough with both of them.

11 Days

2011-01-15T20:18:00.002-05:00

My dad has been gone for 11 days.

Separation by death is agony. The new, awful distance between you rubs your soul raw, shredding you from the inside out as you push forward through the busyness of sleeping, eating, working.

I keep thinking of things I want to tell him. I used to stockpile bits and pieces to talk to him about while we were in the dialysis waiting room - things to distract him or amuse him. Sometimes they were things that were so exciting to me that I couldn't wait, and told him in the car on the way to the hospital.

He was the kind of person who you wanted to run to when you had something to say that you knew he'd want to hear. He lit up. He laughed from his toes. He pounded his fist with sympathetic rage.

Sometimes, for a fraction of a second, I forget. And then I am frozen with this thing I want to say sitting quietly unspoken in my head as I remember.

When my mom woke me that morning to tell me he'd died in his sleep, I didn't cry. I hung up the phone, looked out the window and thought, "So this is what it looks like without him here."

It looked the same. And I couldn't understand how that could possibly be.

I miss him in a way I can't miss Thomas - and in a way that confused me for the first few days. There's a hole where Thomas should have been, but there's a hole where my dad was. In those first, awful days it felt so much worse than when Thomas died.

Because I knew my dad.

I've finally decided that it's okay to miss them differently. I don't know why this preoccupied me so much, but I was worried about missing one more than the other. I was worried about what that might say about the love I had for each of them.

But as it turns out, I love them both and miss them both - for a million different reasons. And for two common reasons: because we three are a part of each other, and because they both belonged to me.

His hands are gone. He can't hold mine anymore. But I feel him guiding me through these sad, strange days - urging me onward and reminding me that life does go on. And that it can be wonderful, even still.

Because he led by example.

The night he died - before I even knew he was gone - I cried quietly in bed wondering how on earth I'd live without that love when the time came.

I now know that it's still there - that his love will always be with me.

And the friends who came to the visitation and the funeral - and who send cards, flowers, chocolates, food, messages and Mass cards, and left treats at my door - have demonstrated that there is abundant love to be had all around me. I'm once again in grateful awe of the way friends seem to find a way to fill the awful empty spaces with their concern, friendship and love.

I miss my daddy.

But I'm doing okay.

Godspeed

2011-01-08T16:29:00.000-05:00

On January 4th, sometime in the wee hours while he was tucked up in his bed, my dad's sweet and much-loved heart quietly stopped beating.

I'm sure I will be able to speak more eloquently about this in the days to come, but right now I'm spent. Yesterday afternoon, under cold but mercifully sunny skies, we laid him to rest in the same cemetery where our Thomas lies.

And I miss him like crazy. I can still feel the last hug I got from him on Sunday night after dinner. Tight, tight, tight, despite how incredibly weak and frail he was. And as he held me, he kissed me on the head as though I was a child again.

I lost my son - my only child. I know that putting one foot in front of the other is how you carry on despite the suffocating grief and sorrow's unrelenting fatigue.

But I miss my daddy. I miss him so very, very much.

2011

2011-01-01T23:53:00.000-05:00

Welcome, 2011!

I have high hopes for you, but also know that ultimately I am responsible for making my own happiness, cultivating my own good luck, and sewing up all those sow's ears I keep finding into enchanting little silk purses. I'm used to the drill.

How about this: I'll put 100% effort into it if you do too, 2011. Deal?

Deal.

P.S. be a pal and be nice to my peeps while you're at it, huh? Thanks, 2011.

P.S.S. I'm not still drunk from last night, 2011, I'm just really tired and a little worn out from the stress of the holidays. Once I've had a good night's sleep I'll probably stop talking to you...and writing to you in public. Don't be offended, m'k? M'k.

Happy enough

2010-12-15T17:47:00.000-05:00

Is this really the most wonderful time of the year?

In some ways, yes.

Two of my favourite food groups, chocolate and gravy, feature prominently during the Christmas season. Some of the most gorgeous sacred music ever written finds its way onto radio station playlists and my DVD player in November and December - along with Bing Crosby with his soothing brand of seasonal crooning.

And speaking of Bing, the coziest old movies and the best animated specials can be found on television stations 24/7 as the clock ticks down to Christmas day. And those you can't find on TV are almost always available on DVD to watch over and over again.

And cards - sparkly, lovely, mushy, happy cards - find their way into my mailbox almost every day, giving bills and junk mail a run for their money.

Christmas is a greeting card whore's dream come true.

And there really is a gentleness about the season. People, when they're not shopping or trying to find a parking spot, just seem nicer somehow.

So yes, it's a lovely time of year. And I love it.

But I think it's important not to over-glorify Christmas. Not because the other holidays will get jealous, but because it puts entirely too much pressure on everyone to actually feel as happy as we might be pretending to look; as happy as the songs and stories and televisions specials tell us we should be.

Sometimes happy isn't always there. But because Mariah Carey is shrieking at me about a silent night over the sound system at the mall, I feel like the world expects me to be happy, calm, and bright. Right now, dammit.

Like I used to be, back when I didn't know that babies died and fathers got sick.

It's not realistic to be happy all the time. And it's even less realistic at Christmas, where there's additional pressure to be the Norman Rockwellian picture of festive bliss - no matter what's going on in the rest of your life, it seems.

Divorced people, sick people, abused people, grieving people, depressed people, lonely people - they're feeling additional pressure to be festive and happy when circumstances in their lives make just regular old happy difficult some days. Maybe most days.

Spring is a wonderful time of year. Buds, blooms, balmy weather and an end to snow boots and winter tires makes it a perfectly lovely season. Summer, although I despise the heat, is nice simply because there's no chance of snow and a good chance of a cottage vacation. Fall - also known as pie season around here - is a delight, with crisp air, cozy sweaters, changing leaves and Thanksgiving.

All the seasons are nice.

It's just good to remember that when the joy of Christmas seems a little hard to find. Or when you think the amount of joy you have isn't enough.

One of my sweetest Christmas memories is sitting alone in bed, sick as a dog, eating canned chicken noodle soup and listening to Boris Karloff tell me how the Grinch stole Christmas, on CD.

By all accounts, it was a miserable Christmas. I was too sick to stay and have dinner with my family, so I went home after opening presents and crawled into bed with some soup. It was the very first Christmas My Beloved and I were together, and he'd given me the CD on Christmas Eve.

I was sad - I'd made my mother cry when I told her I had to leave - and in addition to being devastated that I was missing Christmas dinner for the first time ever, I felt like death warmed over. But I also felt loved as I listened to the CD and ate my soup. And by the time my sister got home with a turkey sandwich and some leftover pie, I was feeling marginally better. And even more loved.

Even a little joy is more than enough, especially during times when experiencing just a little smidgen of merry is a hard-fought victory.

It's important to remember that. It makes even the smallest amount of Christmas happy, happy enough.

The days leading up to Christmas...

2010-12-09T16:02:00.001-05:00

...look a little something like this at my house:

When the family cookie party detritus is all cleaned up and put away for another year, the dining room table is re-purposed, becoming the official home of the Christmas train. Once they're wrapped, I pile all the presents that are heading out of the house into the middle of the train, creating present mountain around which it chugs.

As Dibley watches.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Christmas is NOT just for kids (dammit!!). It's also for adults who love to revel in the simple joys of the season. And for cats who live for the excitement of watching things that go around and around and around in circles.

Christmas is for everyone who wants a little piece of it.

And I do.

This, that 'n the other

2010-12-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

On Saturday we had our 6th annual Family Christmas Tea, a tradition I started that first Christmas without Thomas when I was desperate to make new memories in place of the ones I'd imagined we'd be creating (with a 9-month old boy dressed in the santa suit his Grandma had knitted for him).

I've been baking and prepping for the last three weeks, and at 2:00pm on Saturday afternoon the plastic wrap came off the trays of goodies, and I scooped the whipped cream for the diabetic gingerbread cake into the candy cane bowl as my family walked in the front door.

The best moment of the day was when my dad, snuggled into the comfiest chair in the family room by the fire, smiled and said, "This is exactly where I wanted to be today."

The second best moment of the day was when my nephew, giggling and sticky with candy cane face, played charades with me in the kitchen.

It is possible, as it turns out, for your heart to both melt and break all at the same time.
___________________________________________
A few weeks ago my sister handed me a little round paper ornament. It was a copy of one that was going to be hung on the Christmas tree at the hospital where Thomas was born, in his memory.

By coincidence (one that has made my dad's health issues all the more emotionally complicated for me), it's the same hospital where my dad spent three months this winter/spring, and where he now receives dialysis three times a week.

On my way out of the dialysis waiting room on Friday, I spied the massive Chirstmas tree in the hospital's atrium covered in hundreds and hundreds of the little round paper ornaments purchased by family and friends in memory and honour.

I remembered the ornament that's now stuck on our fridge, and thought I might try to find its mate on the tree.

The tree has to be upwards of 20 feet tall and easily six feet wide. There are, as I said, hundreds of paper ornaments covering it from top to bottom.

And I found Thomas' almost instantly, about seven feet up and facing directly into the renal unit.

So I know he's watching over his Grandpa, at Christmas and always. Just like I asked him to.
__________________________________________
And speaking of Christmas, I got an early present the other day when I opened up my e-mail and found I'd been given a really sweet blog award by Lady Pumpkin! This is my very first one, and I have to say I was chuffed. I really was.

As per the instructions, I'm now passing the Cherry On Top award to the following five wonderful women who always manage to say something that makes me smile, cry, nod or laugh - sometimes all in the same post:

Mrs. Spit
Loribeth
Pamela at Silent Sorority
Emily
Justine at A Half Baked Life

Here are the rules: Link back to the person who awarded you, and then pick five blogs to pass the award along to. Make sure to comment on the awarded blogs so they know they’ve been picked.

Thank you again, Lady Pumpkin! I'm glad you think I'm deserving of a cherry on top!

Don't forget...

2010-12-02T22:51:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been carefully reminding myself to prepare for the emotional onslaught of Christmas Eve, which seems to catch me off guard every year.

The first one without Thomas I spent cleaning - manically cleaning - and sobbing. It has not gotten much better. But that's because I kept forgetting how shittastic Christmas Eve is, for some reason. It's fresh agony each year thanks to my surprising inability to retain useful information like: CHRISTMAS EVE SUCKED LAST YEAR BECAUSE I WAS VERY, VERY SAD.

As the years have passed there's been noticeably less frenzied cleaning activity on Christmas Eve (of course that would be the first thing to go...), but there's still a debilitating amount of very raw sorrow in my heart on the 24th.

It's such a little kid day - my most favourite day of the year when I was small. So much magic in the air. So much promise. So much to look forward to.

And now, of course, there's markedly less magic and promise in my life. And the sorts of things I look forward to are having a schooner of wine when I get home from taking my dad to the hospital, or knowing there's a chocolate bar My Beloved has stashed away in the freezer for me.

See? Wine and chocolate. And I was going to mention something about fleece sheets, but that's just too obvious.

So I've been reminding myself that Christmas Eve is coming, pain and all, because I think maybe if it doesn't sneak up on me, it might not be as bad as usual.

Plus this year I'll be spending some of it in dialysis with my dad - which isn't necessarily merrier, but, well, different. And different is good, I find. Even when the different is actually bad, different.

I don't know for sure if being prepared will help at all - but at least I'm doing something beside waiting to wake up on Christmas Eve to a crushing sadness I'd forgotten would come.

Yeah, it's just not fair

2010-11-25T15:45:00.000-05:00

Life is such a mental exercise sometimes.

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready to leave to take my dad to dialysis, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks, momentarily overwhelmed by what a seemingly constant struggle life has become.

I'm still trying to navigate my way through the muddy waters of childlessness (complete with new and dazzling special effects and stomach churning surprises at every turn), and at the same time I'm watching my dad slowly slip away, and desperately trying to cope with the grief that creeps into my weary head when I think of how little time I know he has left.

One of the older dialysis patients had his wife, daughter, granddaughter and two great-grandsons with him in the waiting room yesterday. The oldest boy, just big enough to be out of a stroller, was simply booming with little boy energy - something pretty foreign in a waiting room cluttered with wheelchairs, motor scooters, oxygen tanks, and tired patients.

I couldn't help but smile at them.

And then I couldn't help but feel empty as I watched the sweet scene unfold in front of me. My dad is easily as old as that great-great grandfather. I looked at their big, growing family, and I just felt so sad and defeated. And then, of course, guilty for not being able to give my family the extra light and life that two little boys - or even one little boy - can bring.

Light and life are markedly absent from our family right now.

I stared at the boys and their mom and her grandparents wondering what it must feel like to have so much pulsing, vibrant, loveliness surrounding you in such sad, desperate times. And I thought about how sweet it must be to live in a world where the proper order of things (with its tidy, A always follows B, reality) provides a measure of comfort and peace during difficult times. Old people get sick and die while babies are born, live, and nourish the family with fresh hope.

I couldn't take my eyes off the family. Watching them was an exquisite sort of agony, but I just couldn't look away. Mercifully, they left soon after their husband/father/grandfather/great-grandfather was called into dialysis.

And order returned to my world. Just me and my dad. No little boys trailing along behind to remind us that life does go on and that we will not be forgotten.

I've been trying, of late, to focus on my blessings - of which there are many - to keep myself from sinking into a self-pitying funk from which there is no return.

It works. Mostly.

But I'm still angry that this is my life right now. I'm angry that we're surviving more than we're living. I'm angry that joy has to be so hard won. I'm angry that my dad is suffering so much, and that we're all suffering the helpless agony of not being able to make him better.

It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair!!

But I know it's up to me to figure out a way to pry the good from all this and make my life about more than just the cumulative effects of its losses and sorrows and struggles.

I just hope I can muster the energy to do it. Again.

Of course it hurts. Yes, even still.

2010-11-22T14:37:00.001-05:00

The other day I read a blog post by someone who is much more willing to admit her brokenness than I am. She is not ashamed of it the way I am. She is not afraid of it, nor of what people think of it.

I'm not sure she even thinks of it as brokenness, as a matter of fact. Come to think of it she's probably right, dammit.

The gist of her post was that infertile women who claim to be okay with being around babies are lying to us - even to those of us in the same boat - and to themselves. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what she was saying - that those of us who are childless not by choice are never completely comfortable being surrounded by the things we wanted most in the world and can never have.

It makes sense, really. Say you want a drink of water really badly, and then say you can never have one ever again. Ignore the fact that this would, of course, eventually kill you, and just imagine how agonizing it would be to be surrounded by clean, crisp, cold water that you can never, ever have. Ever.

It would be difficult - painful even - to go to a cottage, or a beach, or do something as simple as wash your dishes or have a long, hot bath. Touching the water but never being able to drink it and quench your thirst would be absolute torture. Probably forever.

So it really does make sense that those of us who wanted children but haven't been able to either conceive them, carry them, or bring them home alive would find exposure to children painful on some level every time. Probably forever.

It makes perfect sense.

And if I'm honest (which I don't always like to be when it comes to this sort of thing because I want people to think I'm strong and lovely), it really does always hurt to be around children. It's not a life-threatening gunshot to the head kind of pain anymore. But it is still there. And it's uncomfortable.

I would disagree with the blogger's insistence that the infertile never want to be around children (and are lying if they say so) because there are times when I genuinely do want to be around the children I love, even though I know it will hurt at the same time. Because I love children, and I especially love the ones in my life.

So the pain is just a side effect of exposure. And I can live with that. I have no choice, of course, but I really can live with it - especially since I've learned coping mechanisms that help me deal with the lingering after effects.

Those coping mechanisms often involve chocolate, wine, and shopping - but still, they work.

But I do wish I'd had the wherewithal to say no back when the pain really was like a shot to the head. When newborns were thrust into my arms by well-meaning friends who obviously thought that it would be a salve on my broken heart, and when new mothers (inexplicably, under the circumstances) launched into birth stories and tales of breastfeeding that seemed positively endless. I wish I'd had the courage then to say, "I'm sorry, but as happy as I am for you, hearing this much detail is a little painful for me right now - and no, I can't hold your baby either."

I wish I'd cared more for my own feelings than the feelings of others back then. I wish I'd known that it would have been more than okay for me to retreat to the safety of my home (or my car, or a bathroom - or anywhere where there weren't mothers and babies) when all the babyness around me threatened to suffocate me. I wish I'd known it was okay to protect myself and my barely beating heart.

I'm sure the unsolicited immersion therapy can be at least partially credited for shoving me along to the place I'm at now. I can look forward to spending time with a child - and in some cases I'm the one who initiates it - knowing full well that it's also going to hurt, but enjoying it despite the ever-present ache.

But the point is, I do still hurt. And I need to stop being ashamed of admitting it. And I need to stop thinking I'm broken because of it. And I need to stop thinking I'm less of a woman for feeling it.

Surviving the holidays

2010-11-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, Christmas started as soon as Halloween was put away (which is the reason why I start playing Christmas music on November 1st now that I'm a grown-up and can make those sorts of executive decisions).

But back in the 70s when I didn't have quite as much power (but did have an alarming number of polyester pants), if the beginning of November was deemed too early to drag out the decorations, I just made my own to tide myself over. Construction paper chains and snowflakes worked well, although I callously tossed them aside for the breathtaking beauty of the plastic holly garland as soon as it made its glorious appearance above the fireplace hearth. It had multicoloured twinkle lights and everything - something no paper chain could ever hope to achieve.

My parents, whether they were conscious of doing it or not, created traditions that I still try to find a way to carry on today. The plastic garland melted in an overly-ambitious fire years ago - and our gas fireplace is too hot to allow a swag of garland anyway - but there are some things I cannot change. I will not change.

Christmas has an edge of sadness - I can't lie. I miss Thomas with an ache that sometimes threatens to double me over during the holiday season. And I miss my Grandparents, who were such a huge part of my life and of Christmases past.

But I love the season in all its tinseled glory, and I refuse to give in to the sorrow as much as humanly possible. It sits below my skin like a layer of winter fat, but I can hide it with big sweaters.

And I can ease it by indulging in the traditions that make me feel safe and cozy and loved.

I have a bourbon fruit cake in the oven right now, as a matter of fact, because my mom made it every year. She spent most of December trying to keep my dad from "taste-testing" it, but somehow enough managed to last through to the big day.

I tasted one batter-smothered, brandified raisin before I washed the mixing bowl, and it instantly transported me back to Christmas past. Kind of like my own personal Dickens-inspired time capsule.

The ornaments my Grandma gave me each year still find a way onto my tree - even the Santa Claus with the giant clown lips that we made together (I did the lips) - and I still get a brand new pair of Christmas jammies to wear on Christmas Eve.

There is comfort in ritual. And there is joy in creating new traditions, even if you don't have anyone to pass them down to.

Last year my niece said she'd visit me in the home if I promised to have my Christmas cookie party every year. It began as a distraction in 2005 when I needed to have something to do in the weeks leading up to what would have been Thomas' first Christmas - and when doing something "new" was critical to me, for reasons I can no longer really explain.

But now it's something that I know at least one little soul looks forward to. And the thought that it might become part of her cherished Christmas-past memories when she's all grown up means the world to me.

And so I bake. To distract, to comfort, to remember, to celebrate.

Eight years

2010-11-17T14:50:00.001-05:00

On November 16, 2002 I married My Beloved.
In October 2003 we lost our first child to miscarriage.
In March 2004 we lost our second child to miscarriage.
In March 2005 our beautiful boy was born and died 20 hours later.
In June 2006 we started fertility treatments.
In August 2007 we lost our twins to miscarriage.
In 2009 we decided to close this chapter of our lives and stop trying.

On November 16, 2010 we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the afternoon. We had a delicious lunch, and then window shopped our way up and down the town's main street until the rain got too heavy for proper strolling. We bought Christmas lights and an ornament for Thomas' wreath. We did a bit of Christmas shopping and bought some Irish tea (which we figured we'd need later once we were home and dry - and we did). We held hands. We laughed. We tried on hats. We marveled at the vast selection of jams Niagara-on-the-lake seems to produce - and bought some of that too. We talked. We drove home in the pouring rain to our quiet little house.

And then I took this:

And when I looked at it, I realized that no matter what has happened - no matter what unfathomable heartbreaks we've faced since we said "I do" eight years ago - I still always look happiest when I'm with my Sandy.

Some things never change.

oxox

Christmas List

2010-11-11T16:03:00.000-05:00

My Christmas list
By Kristin, age 40 & 1/2

1. I would like my Dad to be here for Christmas. Please.
2. I would like like them (whoever "they" are) to hurry the hell up and find a cure for cancer. For all cancers, and no matter at what stage. I would like that very much. Please.
3. I would like someone to invent a reasonably priced and 100% effective under eye cream that would make me look rested and relaxed, even when I'm exhausted and knotted up into a Kristin-shaped ball off anxiety.
4. I would like them (whoever "they" are) to make a fat-free chocolate substitute that tastes exactly like the real thing. But only after they're finished finding the cure for cancer.
5. I would like to be thin. Without trying...as if by magic.
6. I would like Justin Bieber to fix his hair. And then go away.
7. I would like our region to change its policy on backyard poultry so we could have a tiny flock of chickens in our yard, allowing us to bake and cook with farm fresh eggs. Every day, if we wanted.
8. I would like to find a comfortable pair of chubby-foot-flattering heels that don't make it appear as though I'm wearing cartoon pig hooves.
9. Oh hell, I would just like to have thin feet. And ankles that never swell.
10. I would like the fashion industry to pay more attention to round, short-waisted women so I could wear pants that aren't always two inches south of my cleavage.

But mostly I want #1 and #2. So Santa, go work your magic.

Love,
Kristin

Notes on a madwoman update

2010-11-04T15:08:00.002-04:00

I slept in, ate cookies and did not walk.

Siiiiiigh.

Notes on a madwoman

2010-11-03T23:05:00.000-04:00

I bought new sheets today - but not just regular old sheets. Fleece sheets. Fleeeeeeeece. I saw them somewhere last week and have been dreaming about them ever since. When I spotted a gorgeous set at Costco today for just $31, I grabbed them.

They're going to take up a stupid amount of room in the linen closet when we're not using them, but it'll be worth the annoyance during the warm months to be cuddled by a queen size mattress-shaped teddy bear all winter long.

I took my dad to dialysis today. We needed someone to be there to make sure the shot he was getting wasn't a duplicate flu shot. He has a lot of trouble hearing and even more trouble remembering, so he came home on Monday afternoon with sketchy information about the nature of the shot.

Always one to escalate the seriousness of a situation beyond reasonable levels (particularly if I have an entire night to think about it), I decided I needed to make sure he was okay myself.

And the sheets, they came later. A carefully planned reward.

I can't figure out if this is a healthy coping mechanism or just a crutch. But whatever. I have new sheets!!!

Fleeeeeeece.
___________________________________________________

I've been clenching my jaw like a madwoman on crack lately. Not that I know what a madwoman on crack would actually do with her jaw, but I suspect at least some of the time there'd be some vice grip action going on.

The last time I was at the dentist I was soundly chastized for my grinding activities. So much so that she actually took a picture of one of my more seriously worn teeth and blew it up on screen so I could get a really good look at it.

It was bigger than my head. Alarming for that reason alone, frankly.

She then proceeded to show me one of her own perfectly formed, pristine teeth - the same one as the mangled, head-size one still leering at me from the computer monitor.

It was horrifying and humiliating all at once.

God, I love doctors.

I'm kind of hoping I get a lecture on grinding at my next appointment (which I need to make soon so they'll stop leaving messages for me in that cheery, "it'll-be-quick-and-painless-and-really-fun-and-happy" dentist tone they use when they're trying to lure you in for a cleaning). I might need to explain to her - at length and in great detail - exactly why I'm a helpless slave to the grinding, especially now.

I bet that would be even more fun than taunting someone who grinds with your magical, perfect tooth.
__________________________

I neeeeeeeed to start getting some exercise. I need exercise way more than I needed those sheets. And probably more than I need to go to the dentist, truth be told.

The stress is killing me softly. And fattening me up nicely.

I reward myself a lot - with fleece sheets sometimes, but more often it's with chocolate. And I really must find a better way to cope with the stress of worrying about and caring for my parents - and then worrying about what bits of my own life are sliding while I'm preoccupied with them.

I worry all the time. Then when I do something hard, I reward myself with crap I shouldn't eat or stuff I don't need to buy. Then I feel guilty. Then I worry about that for a bit, then I go back to worrying about whatever it was that I was worried about before I decided I had to reward myself.

And so on, and so on.

I'm clearly in a downward spiral of chocolate eating and sheet buying and endless worrying.

Maybe I'll go for a walk tomorrow morning after a good night's sleep on my new fleece-y sheets. Which are, of course, chocolate-coloured. I'm nothing if not consistent.

The crazy cat lady

2010-11-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

Last Halloween we went all out. I was a mummy and My Beloved was a delightfully homemade Superman (I have photographic evidence, but I'm fairly certain I'd be served with divorce papers if said photos landed up on this blog...).

This year, however, we weren't able to muster up the energy to do much of anything. Worry makes you tired, was our conclusion yesterday. We put out a pumpkin and the sound-activated spider - and of course we had treats - but we were planning to be plainclothes Halloweenies for the night.

But by late in the day I found I couldn't completely resist Halloween's lure. So I came up with this...

The ponytail "cat ears" really show off my gray roots, which is an especially nice touch, I think.

I put on a Snoopy Halloween hoodie to complete the ensemble, then I poured a glass of wine and sat in the living room to wait for the trick-or-treaters.

Halfway through my glass of wine I realized how ridiculous it all was - a 40-year old childless woman in a Snoopy sweatshirt and cat makeup sitting in the front window with a beer glass full of wine.

Yeah, I'm way classy.

But you know, I think this is what would have made me a good mom. Minus the wine part. And maybe that makes it all the more pathetic that I still do this sort of thing, but I shall choose to think that it makes me charming instead.

As the years pass it will, I suppose, just make me look really crazy - but we'll cross that bridge to the asylum when we come to it.

Remembrance

2010-10-28T23:56:00.001-04:00

First thing this morning on Facebook, I found this.

I've been wanting to write about this very thing for a while; about how hard Facebook has the potential to be if you are on the outside looking in. The ultrasounds and baby photos subbing as profile pictures, the "offers" to sell naughty children, cute birthday/Halloween/Christmas/Thanksgiving stories, announcements about potty training successes, first teeth, and new pregnancies...

Facebook is rife with childcentric information.

And there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be. None whatsoever.

But because it is, it can be a dangerous place for someone trying to navigate the bloody waters of infertility and loss. And it can be torture for someone for whom all those lovely baby things will never be a reality.

The interesting thing is that we generally stay very quiet about all this. So much so that it likely never occurs to anyone but us that it might be painful. The landmines are invisible unless you see them as such. We are blown to smithereens every day by things others look at with wonder and joy.

That's just the way it is.

It's the way it has to be, in fact, because the world can't (and shouldn't) stop merely because we are sad. There is no reason our sorrow should trump another's joy.

But that's precisely why I was so shocked to see the link above; stunned that someone would actually dare to put it all out there - to demonstrate in a tangible way what it can sometimes feel like to be a childless person floating alone in a seemingly endless sea of fertility.

We, as a group, generally concentrate our efforts on making sure other people don't feel uncomfortable. The last thing we tend to do is point out our own discomfort. We might be broken, humiliated, and desperate - but we are usually silent.

And I'm not sure what I think about this phenomenon anymore, this strange code of silence.

I don't want to be the person who rains on everyone's parade, reminding people with my sad looks and pitiful sighs that I envy what they have. I don't want to be the needy girl from whom people flee in horror. And I certainly don't want to end up being a one-trick pony who can't talk about anything but the life she wishes she'd been able to have.

But sometimes I do crave a certain level of acknowledgment - a little something that lets me know you would smother my pain with a pillow if you had one big enough, or strangle cruel fate with your bare hands for denying me my joy. I am desperately struggling to co-exist in this fertile world, and that pain I feel is real. This life is hard - harder than I ever dreamed - and I'm not always okay. I probably look it most of the time - maybe all the time - but I am stuck together with tape, staples and prayers. And chocolate and wine.

I'm not looking for pity. I can't stress that enough. I think what we all want so much is simply for people to remember that we're here too.

So you think you can dance

2010-10-28T00:02:00.000-04:00

So tonight at dance class, My Beloved and I had to hijack the instructor (we'll call him Cliff because I can't remember his real name) to settle a disagreement about which leg we should each be using when starting the waltz. I always presume I'm right - which is, unfortunately, not always the case. Not that it stops me from steadfastly believing I'm right the next time a directional or foot placement issue comes up, of course.

I also, not surprisingly, have trouble letting My Beloved lead.

Anyway, after having the mystery of the starting-leg sorted out for us (yeah, I was wrong), Cliff then proceeded tell me that I'm one of the best dancers in the class.

I started laughing.

Incredibly, he waved off my laughter and insisted that I'm truly one of the best - something about the graceful way I move my body or something. I dunno - I stopped listening when I realized he wasn't taking the piss. Shocked into a stupor.

Something nice about my body? Wha...? Huh??

Me, people. There are impossibly tiny little women (in impossibly high heels and flirty little skirts) in our dance class. I'm 40, with easily that many pounds to lose, and always sweating withing minutes of the music starting.

I'm a sweaty hippo in a tutu, really.

And yet somehow, inexplicably, one of the best in the class.

Now I know it's not saying all that much - some people in that stuffy elementary school gym can barely walk, let alone dance - but I've never been good at anything requiring physical endurance and/or coordination. And my body has failed me (us, really) so many times since we lost our first baby seven years ago that I'm totally unaccustomed - and thoroughly unprepared - to hear it being praised by anyone. For anything.

But whaddaya know. It can dance.

Picture this

2010-10-21T18:01:00.001-04:00

On Saturday night, for no other reason that it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to, I posted an album of Thomas-related photos on Facebook.

I think the idea sparked to life after I saw a picture Loribeth posted there of the beautiful plaque on her sweet baby girl's niche. It was such an intimate and lovely thing to see, and it allowed me to know her just a little bit more than I had before, which is something so precious when you're talking about a baby that has died. There isn't much to know - that's the unfortunate truth. Every little thing is to be cherished.

So I set about digging through my photos with a strange sort of urgency and excitement. Having suddenly discovered that it was the right time to share all those sweet memories of my pregnancy and Thomas' short life, I couldn't wait to post the pictures.

I was, if you squinted and looked at just the right angle, going to be almost normal - just like any mom who posts pictures of her pregnancy, nursery, and the baby that followed on Facebook.

You know, normal but for the part in the photo essay where you see a grave marker - and stop seeing pictures of the baby.

Details, details, details.

It took an hour or so to choose, download and caption the photos.

Dozens of kind, loving thoughts now litter the comment section below the album - words I will carry in my heart forever because they are so heartfelt and so loving. That wasn't a surprise (I'm friends with some really, really great people) - it was my reaction that caught me off guard.

I was touched. Happy. Grateful.

And then, somehow, confused. Because in the midst of reveling in the joy of hearing people say what a lovely boy he was, and how much they appreciated the album, and how hard it must have been for me to post it, I started feeling a slow, creeping kind of sadness.

My boy - my story - disturbs people. It makes them uncomfortable and sorry and sad.

Which, I mean - duh. Of course it does. Of course.

But somehow in the midst of my photo posting frenzy, I kind of forgot that bit. I was thisclose to being normal - posting pictures of me pregnant and smiling, of My Beloved painting the nursery, of me cutting the cake at my shower - and my excitement at doing a regular old thing like sharing baby photos with friends made me forget that we aren't really regular people anymore.

My balloon didn't burst, exactly. But the slow leak did it in just the same.

I feel a bit foolish for having tricked myself the way I did. I look back and see a crazed woman madly scouring her photo archives with reckless abandon and unbridled glee, totally oblivious to the crash that was of course going to come - and I'm amazed at her naivete.

After more than five and a half years you'd think I'd know better. I mean, really.

But still, the brief feeling of normalcy was quite nice. And, in the end, totally worth it.

And besides, I'm glad that my friends might now feel that they know Thomas a tiny bit better than they did before - just like I feel a lovely sort of peace and closeness for knowing Loribeth's Katie just that much more now too.

This little light of mine...

2010-10-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

...I'm going to let it shine in memory of Thomas, his four wee sibilings,

and all their friends now playing together in God's garden.

With love forever, and ever, and ever.

Until we meet again. ox

Fire

2010-10-12T17:41:00.000-04:00

On Friday as I was leaving the dialysis waiting area after my dad was summoned in for his "oil change" (as he used to call it when his mind was still a little fuzzy), I stopped briefly to talk to one of the hospital volunteers.

She's an older lady herself - probably in her mid 60s - and I have long suspected that she has a tiny bit of a crush on my dad. She lights up when she sees him, teases him like a schoolgirl, and has also been known to pet him. Like, literally - she strokes his arm like she's petting a cat. Friday she went to far as to pat his face, cupping his chin in her hand for a brief moment.

Were it not for the fact that she's a very kind woman - and really no competition for my mom since my dad has only ever had eyes for her - I would probably have already issued a passive aggressive smackdown. But she's entirely too sweet for that sort of thing. And, really, why should I mind that someone shows my dad a little extra kindness?

There's often not enough to go around in this world. That he gets extra doses when she's on call is fine by me.

So on my way out on Friday, she asked me if I thought it upset him that she pokes fun at him. I smiled and told her no, that he eats that sort of thing up (he is a man, after all).

She then went on to say how sweet he is, and that he seems like a good, kind person who has lived a good, happy life. She sees a lot of old, broken people filing past her as she greets them and checks their names off the list. My dad is no exception, held together by spit and tape the way he is. But she has somehow managed to see beyond the old, sick man he's become so dreadfully quickly. I don't know what her gift is, but with just the briefest of contact each week, she was able to see right into his soul. And was kind enough to tell me what she saw.

It's what I see too, of course, but it made me feel so good to know that what I know isn't a secret - that it's still obvious, even in the hardest and saddest of circumstances. As beaten down and as sad as I know he sometimes feels, he still radiates an inner light that is visible for miles.

As I drove back to have lunch with my mom, I thought about how incredible it is to have someone see you that way; to have someone feel the goodness and kindness radiating from you like the heat from a bonfire on a chilly autumn night.

So along with learning the ukulele (which I'm still determined to do, despite evidence to the contrary in the form of a thick layer of dust on the poor little thing), my new life goal is to try to be the kind of person my dad is so that one day someone who doesn't know me - or anything about me - might feel that kind of warmth too.

Maybe this isn't something you can aspire to. Maybe it's just something you have to have without trying - or even knowing. But I will never forget that conversation with the hospital volunteer, or the light my dad manages to bring to her face with the power of his own.

Thanksgiving Day, 2010

2010-10-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

This, this is what I'm thankful for this year.

I love you, dad.

Perspective

2010-10-05T16:45:00.000-04:00

Time has given me the ability to understand that what I see - and the way I see it - is coloured by the lens of loss.

This notion is true for everyone, of course. We all see the world based on things that have happened to us: people we've met, jobs we've had, loves we've lost, struggles we've faced, triumphs we've celebrated - our life experiences make us see things in a way unique only to us.

So I'm biased, is what I'm saying.

I see a mother wishing away her weekend because she's tired of being with her kids and I want to scream. I hear conversations about how parenting is mostly joyless drudgery (at lot - it seems like a trendy opinion these days) and I reel with the force of a hand slap to the face.

I stand mute while these conversations swirl around me because I know that my opinion won't count. I am the one who sees motherhood through rose coloured glasses. They know that, and I know that. I can still conjure that dreamy, once-upon-a-time vision of a warm, sleepy baby tucked into my arms while I rock him gently back to sleep in the middle of the night, singing softly and marveling at his beauty while my heart bursts with love and pride.

Seriously, I can still see it, plain as day.

In that vision I am beautiful, love radiating from my glowing face in the dim light of the man-in-the-moon lamp, tendrils of hair cascading just so, my robe crisply white, my slippers fluffy and new. I am not haggard, half-asleep, dirty, disheveled, or vomited-upon. I'm not even in a bad mood. I'm happy to be up in the middle of the night. Happy.

Is that how it would have been? I'm guessing probably no. Not every time. Maybe not even once (except for the glowing with love bit - I'm sure that would always have been true).

But in the absence of any personal evidence to prove this vision fraudulent, that's the movie that plays in my head. And so to hear parenting so cruelly maligned is always a bit of a shock. Almost a personal affront to the life I wanted so very, very badly - and to that lovely vision I hold so dear. It flat out makes me angry to hear those who have it treat it like a head cold they wish they could medicate away.

But I understand it's not fair of me to judge. I really do, despite evidence to the contrary. And I understand that I can't help but see the experience of parenting in a way those with living children never will. It's just that all that annoying understanding creates such a war between my head and my heart.

The worst of it is that I can't say anything. Obviously I can't contribute to conversations about the difficulty of day-to-day parenting (although it's not like I don't have a clue how hard parenting can be; I had to take my child off life support. I get that it's hard). And if I chose to point out that parents should shut up and be grateful for the gifts they were lucky enough to be given every time someone within earshot complained about their kid, I'm sure I'd find my Christmas card list diminish rather quickly.

Parents who have living children see their lives through that lens. They aren't supposed to put on my glasses and see it my way. They can't. They have their perspective, I have mine.

So I stay quiet. Mostly. You know, except for blogging.

And I try - I really, really do try - to keep it all in perspective, knowing that my vision of motherhood is still, and always will be, just a lovely dream playing quietly in my head.

It's my world too

2010-10-05T00:45:00.001-04:00

Today I got trapped behind a woman with twins at the grocery store who seemed hellbent on telling me all about the apparent lack of two-seater shopping carts at stores in our town. She blocked my cart, then took her sweet time strapping her twins into hers as she blabbed on and on about the galling absence of the elusive two-seater. Her eyes waggled out of their sockets with outrage and disbelief at the magnitude of this horrible injustice. Like the universe somehow always owed her a convenient spot to stick her kids simply because she managed to have two of them at the same time (who, by the way, were totally old enough to walk nicely beside the cart, if you ask me).

My mistake was agreeing that the seat part on the new FreshCo carts is hard to open. But the thing is, that's where I put my purse, not my kids.

I started to explain that I use the area where you'd normally put a child as my handy purse-holder - that would have been my contribution to the conversation - but agreement was all she needed to assume that we had common ground. And she was off.

After the initial vent subsided, I learned how difficult twin wrangling is, and got a verbal map of all the stores in our area with two-seater carts. Which is all such useful information for me, isn't it?

I'm used to this sort of thing. It usually ends up being more amusing to me than anything else now - in that Murphy's Law/ Born Loser sort of way. Unless the person is particularly annoying, in which case I'd probably be irritated even if I had living children.

But there is still a little part of me that squirms under the weight of my history when this sort of thing happens.

Because, of course, in situations like this I'm a fraud. I nod in agreement, as though I know anything about things like putting kids in shopping carts or twin wrangling - or need directions to the stores with the best kind carts for multiple kids. But I nod just the same, and smile sympathetically.

Or, even worse, knowingly.

No one can tell I'm lying. No one can possibly imagine the internal dialogue I'm having at the same time - prepping my answers, absorbing landmines, concentrating on arranging my face into something that I think probably looks normal, relaxed, and appropriate. Acting, acting, acting.

And then I walk away feeling like I've just been sliced out of a picture. Neatly and with surgical precision, I lift right out of the "normal" world around me as soon as someone reminds me that I don't actually belong there - that I will always be different because I have this whole other life that people who worry about the lack of two-seater shopping carts can't begin to fathom even exists.

Of course I have the right to explain that my world looks different; that my purse is in the spot where children are intended to be because all my children happen to be dead. But most of the time this is simply impractical. It's easier to nod and agree than it is to tell my story in the fleeting snippet of time you generally give to strangers at the grocery store. My story isn't quick or easy. And, let's be honest, most people simply don't want to hear that kind of story anyway.

So I just carry on living my double life, being normal until I'm reminded I'm not. And being me until I'm required to play some other, more palatable and socially acceptable role.

Lucky for me I'm not half bad at faking it.

* CLICK *

2010-09-28T00:11:00.001-04:00

Ugh, I intended for this post to be a photo retrospective of sorts - a cool visual way to end ICLW week. But I just made the fatal error of spending a bit too much time looking at the photos we have of Thomas in the hospital. And now, well, I'm spent.

The very hospital-y shots we have of him are always so shocking. Precious, of course, but startling. In my mind, he's the peaceful, gorgeous baby in the pictures we have framed in our bedroom and living room. No tubes, no wires - no obvious evidence of a hospital. The ones in which the hospital is not disguised, however, always take my breath away. In a bad way.

So this is going to have to do, this funny shot of me covered in cats. It was late summer of 2004, and I was doing what I did best during the first 10 weeks or so of my pregnancy with Thomas. Tired? Who me?

Whilst I was making good use of the couch, I became a mattress for Lucy (our cat) and my sister's two kittens who we were cat-sitting that week.

Apparently cats dig you when you're pregnant. Like, a lot.

Luckily Lucy still digs me now, pregnant or not, which is pretty nice. Pretty nice indeed.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by for ICLW! It was so nice to "meet" you, and I appreciate your visits and your comments more than you know!

Acceptance

2010-09-26T17:48:00.002-04:00

I feel, for the most part, that I'm on the upswing in terms of accepting a childless life. I had some scary complications (both after Thomas was born and after I lost the twins) that made the idea of continuing to try less appealing than it otherwise would have been, and I love the life I've built with My Beloved in the last few years since my most recent loss. Plus an end to the crazed hamster wheel of shots, drugs, raging hormones, timed sex, and dildo cams? Well, that's been nice too. Very, very nice indeed.

I feel almost normal.

Actually, in truth, I probably now feel as normal as I ever will.

The big secret no one ever tells you is that sorrow doesn't go away. Time doesn't heal all wounds. It simply makes the scars less angry and harder for people to see. But the scars, they stay etched on your soul for the rest of your life. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, because there's nothing worse than thinking you should have to stop missing your baby - that that's the healthy thing to do.

I assume no mother with living children ever simply forgets they exist. And so just like those moms, I never forget my son. And I will never forget the other three times I found out I was pregnant, nor the hope and joy those positive tests brought to my life and to the lives of the people who couldn't wait for those children to be born.

But the thing is, that's all feeling more and more like a chapter I just finished reading. Trying to conceive, miscarriages, losing Thomas, fertility treatments - that all belongs to a different part of my life.

I've gently, quietly turned a page. Almost without noticing.

Maybe it's partly because I'm so focused on my mom & dad and the extra help they need right now, I don't know. But it really does feel like the time for children has well and truly passed, and the idea doesn't fill me with the same overwhelming grief it once did.

It's a decision we made about a year ago, but it's settling in with me in a comfortable sort of way now. And I'm as surprised as anyone that I'm making peace with the hand we were dealt. Because it was a fucking awful hand - right out of one of the most horrific nightmares imaginable.

It'll never be fair that we didn't get to be parents to living children. And I will always grieve for that beautiful life I thought we'd have. I want to scoop up those two silly kids who sat on my sister's patio and talked about having children on one of their first dates back in the summer of 1999. I want to scoop them up, hold them close and tell them how sorry I am that things turned out this way instead.

And then I want to tell them how proud and amazed I am of the way they're going to weather the shitstorms to come.

It shouldn't have been this way. But somehow we're making it work.

Imagine that.

Happy X2

2010-09-23T23:51:00.000-04:00

So, the dancing? In a word, Fabulous!

Not us, of course. We were mediocre at best, really. We stepped on each other (a lot), we lost concentration and laughed, we made stupid jokes and giggled when we should have been listening, our basic cha-cha looked more like a pot bellied pig and a giraffe having a synchronized seizure, the waltz made my right bum cheek ache (I don't think the waltz is supposed to hurt), and I was scolded by My Beloved more than once for leading (because apparently it's the man that leads. Hunh).

But still, fantastic. A solid hour in his arms - and no room in our dance-challenged brains for any of our cares or woes.

Perfection.

And then today, after paying for a cab ride back to the train station from a meeting, I was handed a toonie (Canadian for a $2.00 coin), and two caramels by the cab driver.

The toonie, he said, was for a cup of coffee. And the caramels? Something sweet to go with it.

In the history of cab rides has anyone ever been given money back at the end of the trip? AND candy, for heaven's sake?! I've been wracking my brain all afternoon trying to figure this out. But since there's no logical explanation for it, I'm just going to assume that he had a good reason for doing such an unexpected and kind thing for a total stranger.

And I'm going to remember how this feels, and pass it on.

Painting the town red-ish

2010-09-22T17:37:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I boldly proclaimed that my goal was to do at least one thing a month that we couldn't do if we had kids. Not to gloat, as you'll recall, just to try to make the best of a situation we never wanted to be in, in the first place.

It was my attempt at silver-lining hunting, driven by a deep desire not to waste the rest of my life wishing for what I've lost and pining for what I can't have. Clearly I'm going to wish and pine for the rest of my life (who are we kidding?!) - I just want to make sure I do other stuff too.

The thing is, in all honestly, I can't exactly figure out what we can do that babysitter-enabled people can't. Which is a bit of a pisser, really.

So, for the sake of argument, let's just assume that no parents can ever find babysitters. Like, ever. Or if they can, they find they have to cancel their fancy evening plans because the baby sitter gets sick. Or has a really important term paper she needs to work on. Or gets grounded for sneaking out of the house to go see a Justin Beiber concert or some such thing.

Let's just pretend.

Okay, so having said that - the thing we're doing this month that we clearly could never do if we had children is go dancin'! Yeah, that's right, I've persuaded My Beloved to take Ballroom dancing lessons at my church, and tonight is our first class.

This is probably akin to the agony of a root canal to most men, but My Beloved is awesome beyond all comprehension and won't refuse me the simple pleasure of dancing cheek to cheek.

Or cheek to teat, really. He's very tall.

Part of the lure is our ability to pay-as-we-go. If it's boring, bad or really, really embarrassing we need never return.

But I'm hoping we'll like it. And not fall down, and stuff.

We shall see.

In the meantime, I have my fingers crossed and my dancin' shoes on!

A wee bit about me for ICLW

2010-09-21T23:10:00.000-04:00

Oy, where to start.

I guess the beginning, which, for this blog, was January 2005. My internet adventure was inspired by a good friend's dad who wrote some of the sweetest, funniest things in the last few months of his life while he battled cancer. Yeah, while he battled cancer.

I wanted to do that. To write interesting, funny things about the ordinary bits of my very ordinary life.

I was pregnant with our first child at the time. Thomas. I had already had two miscarriages, one on October 25th, 2003 and a second in March 2004.

Thomas outlived them both. He slipped silently into the world at 5:30pm on March 9th, 2005. The only sound I ever heard him make was one little gasp as I held him while he lay dying.

He was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. He still is. I will die knowing there was nothing more beautiful on this earth than the face of my son.

I had a massive placental abruption during delivery. I lived. He died. He was perfect, healthy and strong, but 12 minutes without oxygen was too much for his tiny body. He passed away 20 hours after he was born.

My blog, which was never intended to be a blog about loss, infertility and, eventually, living without children, became anything but ordinary. It became therapy. Really, really fast.

I battled secondary infertility after a bout with septicemia post c-section left me riddled with scar tissue. Armed with nothing more than a severely damaged psyche, one blocked fallopian tube, a misshapen uterus, and the aforementioned scar tissue, I fought the good fight.

We almost won - twice, really - with twins, conceived in late spring 2007.

But they're gone too. Lost at 12 weeks.

And so it's still only the two of us. And that's just the way it's going to be.

My goal is to be living proof that sometimes that's okay. Sometimes the "happy ending" everyone desperately hope you'll get is one that looks just like ours. Because we are happy, in our own little way. We are sad too, of course. We miss what we almost had - every second of every day we miss that boy's sweet little face. But I think we're as happy as you can be with a history like ours.

Yeah, it's not exactly a fairy tale - but it is my story.

And, damn it, I'm writing is as best I can.

Help make October 15th Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day in Ontario!

2010-09-16T10:33:00.000-04:00

The Perinatal Bereavement Society of Ontario (PBSO) is working towards having October 15th officially recognized as Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day in Ontario. If you or someone you know has been touched by perinatal loss, please consider contacting your MPP and asking him/her to support this effort. It would mean a lot to bereaved parents in Ontario to have an official day during which to remember and honour our little souls.

The hope is that promoting awareness of pregnancy and infant loss will also increase the likelihood that bereaved parents will receive greater understanding and support from family, friends, co-workers, and health care providers as they face the challenges of this very complicated, life-altering and lifelong grief.

I've included a link to the PBSO website where you'll find sample letters (for bereaved parents or supporters) with all the information you'll need, including how to find and contact your MPP.

Please consider helping out by writing to your MPP.

Please?

Firth and Saunders

2010-09-12T18:16:00.001-04:00

I recently read that men have a preferred sex while women have a more preferred sex. Which totally explains how I currently have a crush on both Colin Firth and Jennifer Saunders.

I will swing both ways, apparently, as long as the object of my affection is English. And in show business. And attractive. And talented.

So anyway...

Colin and I went to the movies together on Friday night. We totally, totally did.

My absolutely fabulous sister snagged four tickets to the Toronto International Film Festival's premiere of The King's Speech on what was Mr. Firth's 50th birthday. He attended the gala premiere, of course, where I (and about two hundred other people) witnessed his utter and complete gloriousness on the red carpet.

I only caught a glimpse, really. I was rushing back from the ticket office with our tickets when I heard, "COLIN! COLIN! COLIN!", from the frenzied crowd on the red carpet just as he moved his way into the media tent.

But a glimpse of Colin Firth is nothing to sniff at.

Oooh, it would have been nice to actually sniff him...can you imagine?!

Anyway, Colin Firth, Geoffry Rush, and the film's director, writer and some other people (whose names and titles escape me because they were introduced to the audience after Colin Firth, thus rendering me completely incapable of paying any attention to them whatsoever) all sat in the theatre and watched the movie along with us.

It was a big theatre, and I didn't actually know they were in the audience until after the film ended, but it still totally counts.

I went to the movies with Colin Firth.

As for Jennifer Saunders, I've spent the last two weeks blowing through the entire 5 seasons of Absolutely Fabulous (including specials and extras). I can't believe it took me 40 years to discover the awesomeness of AbFab.

Where. Have. I. Been?!

I now want to be her. Not the charmingly amoral character she plays, but her. That career. I want that career.

Never mind that I'm nowhere near anything resembling an actress, have never taken any acting classes, and have no desire to actually be an actress. I just think it would be amazing to write something that clever; to put something so awesome out into the world that it has the power to inspire a 40-year old, musty-brained copywriter to want to do more with the words in her head.

So when I grow up I want to be Jennifer Saunders.

Failing that, I would also consider becoming Colin Firth's second wife when My Beloved chucks me after reading this post.

Stay tuned...

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk

2010-09-07T14:20:00.001-04:00

My book was talking to me last night.

Feeling wide awake and vaguely tense (which could have been all the sugar I ate at the CNE yesterday messing with me), I decided to read myself to sleep. It usually works like a Valium-induced charm, but it failed miserably last night. In part because the final 150 pages of the book were gripping, but also because it would not. shut. up.

Talking books are such a nocturnal buzz-kill.

"You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing", it said to me.

I hate when books are smarter than I am. And I hate when they get all up in my face, trying to teach me valuable life lessons when I'm just trying to get to sleep after a vegetable-less day of total crap eating.

Book was right, though. What was, rather miraculously, left standing in the bloody aftermath of my quest for a child is what I'm building my life upon. It doesn't mean that what (or who) is missing isn't important and hasn't changed me, forever altering the course of the life that remains. But what I snuggle up to each night, hold hands with in a crowded midway, and share my rocky road cheesecake with is what's here.

And my God, it's good.

So, that was nice. A bit of a slap upside the head, but I can't say it's terrible to be reminded that it's important to readjust one's focus every now and then. Book meant well.

"A lost child follows a mother all her life", came just a few pages later.

It screamed through my body and brain, that phrase, with its searing truth. The tears finally came when I read Book's final chapter, closed it, and turned out the light.

Thomas would have been starting Kindergarten today.

I lay on my back with my hands on my belly, the empty tomb where he once rolled and kicked and lived. I cried softly for him in the dark. I whispered his name.

Book was probably thoroughly disgusted with this wanton display of ingratitude for the life I have, especially after it had just reminded me that what I have is pretty sweet, all things considered. But Book can suck it.

I finally got up, took some deep breaths of cool night air at the window, and found a cat to cuddle. Sleep inducing solace eventually came from the Internets. The people inside my computer are as wise as Book, and infinitely more empathetic. Messages from four night owls in response to a pitiful Facebook status gave me the comfort I needed for sleep to come.

And it did. I curled up next to My Beloved, a toothless old cat tucked in beside us, and smiled as I dozed off. Because books are smart, friends are kind, and darkness makes you see the unfathomable beauty in the light.

Because sometimes we all need a little magic...

2010-09-02T22:02:00.000-04:00

Magic Cookie Bars

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup melted butter

1 1/2 cups sweetened, flaked coconut

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup pecan pieces

1 can sweetened condensed milk

Dump graham crumbs into a 9" X 13" pan. Pour melted butter over top of crumbs and mix until all the butter is thoroughly incorporated into the crumbs. Firmly press crumbs into the bottom of the pan to form a solid crust.

Evenly pour coconut over crust. Evenly pour chocolate chips over coconut. Evenly pour pecans over chocolate. Evenly pour entire can of sweetened condensed milk over everything.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25 - 30 minutes. Top should be golden brown around the edges, and starting to brown in the centre.

Remove and cool completely before cutting.

Visual inspiration courtesy of my first annual Family Christmas Tea, circa 2005

(that's them on the left!)

Now go. Off with you. Make sweets. That's an order.

Miscellaneous Monday

2010-08-30T18:34:00.000-04:00

I could not sleep last night. I used every last one of my special Jedi mind tricks to try to calm down and lull myself to sleep, but my stubborn brain fought off each and every attempt until well past 2:00am when I finally, mercifully, conked out.

As a result, I'm operating in a general haze of stupidness today.

Thus I am perfectly primed for The Bachelor Pad tonight.

Yeah, that's right - I watch crap reality TV that actually makes me stupider for having watched it. And I don't care. It will give my racing brain something else to digest tonight instead of my own worries. With any luck my noggin, thoroughly drunk on garbage-y TV, will burp, fart, and pass out early.
___________________

I'm going to the premiere of The King's Speech at the Toronto International Film Festival next week. Colin Firth - who owes me $40 for last year's The Picture of Dorian Gray premiere that I went to ONLY because he was going to there, except that he wasn't (!!!) - will be in attendance too.

Yeah, that's right - I'm going to the movies with Colin Firth.
____________________

I had a great idea this morning. Or maybe it was last night. I don't know, I'm too stupid to remember right now.

Anyway, I thought it would be excellent to make a point of doing something every month that we wouldn't be able to do if we had kids. Not to rub our flexibility and ability to be spontaneous in the faces of those who have to rely on babysitters and plan for early evenings, but to make sure we actually make good use of this life we were given.

We didn't choose it, but it's just sitting here, all wiiiiiide open. And it seems criminal not to use up every last drop of it.

And so that's my new plan.
____________________

Almost six months ago I thought for sure my dad was going to die. A few weeks later, he almost did. And a few weeks after that, he started to crash again while My Beloved and I stood in the hallway outside his hospital room staring stupidly at each other. Helpless.

Today I gave him a kiss on the cheek while he sat at the kitchen table eating his meatball sandwich before dialysis.

I remain in endlessly grateful awe that he's still here.
_____________________

I have an adoption post rattling about in my head that I will endeavor to spit out soon.

We are the circus freaks of the infertility world, we black sheep* who choose childlessness over adoption. At best we are objects of curiosity. At worst, we are harshly judged - usually by those who have never had to make these sorts of decisions under these kinds of extraordinary circumstances.

But there are reasons - really good, solid reasons - why we are walking this path instead of the one others may think we should have taken.

And one day I'll talk about it.

But not today. I'm too tired.

*Totally stole "black sheep" from Pamela over at Silent Sorority .

Sometimes when we get bored...

2010-08-29T18:29:00.000-04:00

...we put stuff (like furry toy mice) on the cats' heads.

They don't always like it.

Sucks to be them.

Life lessons

2010-08-26T15:51:00.001-04:00

When I take my dad to the hospital for dialysis I always go in and wait with him. He doesn't need it - he's perfectly capable of walking in on his own, getting registered and waiting in the outer lounge to be called in for treatment - but I enjoy spending that time with him, just the two of us.

We chat about all kinds of things while he chomps away on his ice chips. Sometimes I stare intently at his face, trying desperately to memorize every little feature while he talks, but I am listening closely too. Hearing the sound of his voice, now weak, but still full of fire and life.

For a hospital waiting area, the dialysis lounge is actually pretty nice. Comfy chairs, dark paneled cupboards, a great ice machine (so I'm told), and a TV, all tucked away from view of the hospital lobby. It's as cozy and as non-threatening as it can possibly be.

But, you know, it's still a hospital waiting room. And there are enough old, sweet faces in there to break your heart a million times over.

I focus on my dad, but when there are lulls in our conversation, my eyes wander to the other souls waiting in the room. And yesterday, I overheard enough of a conversation between one patient and a dietitian to change the way I view my own little world, tragedies and sorrow and all.

She's only in her late 40s, I'd say, and in addition to dealing with renal failure, she is obviously struggling with some form of mental illness - a fact that became very clear yesterday when I overheard part of her discussion with one of the renal dietitians.

As I watched her face register fear and sorrow - flicking back and forth between the two as she told her story - I thought about my own life. About what's going on right now.

I miss my son. With every single cell in my body, I miss that boy every moment of every day. And I ache for my dad, and for what he's going through - and for the awful toll it's taken on his mind and body over the last five months. And every day I worry that my mom will call and tell me he's gone. And I worry about her too - and my sister. And I wonder if I'm doing the right things, doing enough, saying enough, or maybe saying too little. Or saying too much.

And sometimes I find myself consumed with it all. Worried, sad, distracted. Swallowed whole.

But as I sat in the dialysis waiting room yesterday listening, I thought about the good bits. Dad is still here. There is a Kristin-shaped dent in my mattress next to a Sandy-shaped dent. I wake up to Dibley-the-Wonder-Cat kisses on a regular basis. I laugh until my stomach hurts. I can walk. I can see. I am loved. I love back.

I am still here.

And life, despite all its sorrow, is often so good I can barely breathe.

"Weird" - really?? Siiiiiiigh.

2010-08-20T10:23:00.000-04:00

The small matter of The Home...

2010-08-19T19:22:00.000-04:00

Lately I've lapsed back into my preoccupation with what will happen to me when I'm old. The other day, in the midst of a conversation that had nothing to do with either of us, I pointed out to My Beloved that he and I will likely end up in nursing homes at an earlier age than my parents will because we have no one to look after us.

It popped out of my mouth and crashed to the floor of our family room like a lead weight. The hard, real truth of the statement literally drowned out all other sound for a few moments as it clattered around, coming to rest right between us.

And we just sat and stared at each other, unblinking, until My Beloved made a joke (implying that I would be headed to Shady Acres long before him), and balance was restored.

'Cause that's what we do. We speak of big, scary, grown-up things and then immediately use jokes as brain bleach to wash those recklessly flung words away.

But in all seriousness, I really believe that my mom and dad would be in a nursing home right now were it not for my sister and me. We do what we do because we adore them, of course, but the fact remains that we are the reason they are still able to stay in their house. We drive, cook, clean, advocate, listen, soothe, support and entertain. They have us to rely on - and they always will.

My Beloved and I, on the other hand, have cats. Not quite as useful to the elderly, really.

Anyway, all this has been rolling about in my head again lately. And it reminded me of last Christmas Eve at my in-laws when, to my surprise and delight, a bottle of white wine appeared on the dinner table before me.

Wine. WINE! This never happens at their place. Like, ever. The drinkers, not surprisingly, are on my side of the family.

I waited an appropriate amount of time before grabbing the blessed bottle by the neck and strangling out a glass of liquid holiday Valium. And then another. And maybe a third, I can't remember.

I do remember I was tipsy by the time dessert rolled around. And the only one in the room who was, since the bottle of wine and I were apparently having an exclusive relationship that night.

And that's how I found myself slightly drunk on my mother-in-law's couch on Christmas Eve, begging my 10-year old niece to promise she'd visit me in the home.

Not really my proudest moment.

Fortunately she merely looked at me with a little grin - like I was a silly old aunt meant to be giggled at - and slyly told me that she would come visit me when I'm old as long as I continue to have my Christmas cookie party every year.

Clever girl.

I realize I'm only 40, and that with luck (and perhaps more exercise and less chocolate) I'll have a few decades to plan for the nursing home years. But closing the door to a life with children has opened the hatch to this new, alien place and I'm still having trouble finding shelves and closets for my brand new set of random thoughts and general concerns.

It's very strange to have gone from a mother-to-be to a woman planning her 80th birthday in just a handful of years.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzz

2010-08-18T21:17:00.000-04:00

Okay, there's this little bee in my bonnet, and if I don't let it out it's going to keep repeatedly stinging me...

A month or so ago I noticed an article floating about on Facebook that women were posting to their profiles by the dozens. Nosy - and always happy to procrastinate - I of course clicked on the article's thumbprint to see what it was all about.

In a nutshell, it was a "Dear Abby" style column. A reader had written in asking why her girlfriends with children always claimed to be so busy and were generally unavailable after having kids. She couldn't figure out why someone who works full time (as she does) who shares many of the same responsibilities as people with children (cooking, cleaning, errands, etc.) could manage to make time for friends, when those home caring for children couldn't.

Yes, it's ignorant (in the, "she has no idea what she's talking about", sense of the word).

But I think it is possible that someone young and childless might have absolutely no idea what motherhood entails - or that it is a 24/7 job, particularly when children are tiny - especially if she hasn't been around children all that much.

Before I started trying to get pregnant (and reading all the books and magazines that you read when you're preparing to raise a child), I really didn't know the full scope of the whole motherhood thing - the mechanics and details of it all, I mean. I didn't know how many times a newborn poops, or how often they feed, or how little they sometimes sleep during the night, or how often they need to be held, or how hard breastfeeding can be - or how much sleep is lost by new parents because of all this.

I just didn't know.

Some might argue this sort of stuff is common knowledge, and that all women should have absorbed most of it by the time they're in their 20s - but I would argue that it's not. Certainly not for someone like me who was the baby in my family until a cousin was born when I was 20, finally bumping me out of last spot.

The reader's fatal mistake, I think, was implying that mothers are somehow lying about how much time it actually takes to raise a child. She suggested they are simply fudging the facts in an effort to outdo childless working women on the, "my life is harder than your life", scale.

Because yeah, that's just stupid. I absolutely have more "me" time than every single mother I know, and I would never try to suggest otherwise. Someone with a live-in nanny (who also does light housework and cooking) might have more me time than I do. But that's it.

I suppose the reason the article popped up all over Facebook profiles was because of the artful smackdown delivered by the columnist. She wasn't especially kind, and opted not to presume the reader was simply woefully ignorant.

Apparently it all struck a chord with mothers who, I can only assume, have been challenged in the same way the reader obviously challenged her friends with children.

And they got to postin' it on Facebook with a vengeance.

I have no particular problem with the article, nor do I think it was wrong of the columnist to point out the challenges of raising small children. I'm all for educating the masses. But I do have a problem with the way it spread like wildfire all over FB, and the gleeful way in which women were posting it, complete with, "AMEN!" and "YOU SAID IT, SISTER!" descriptors.

It was awkward for me - uncomfortable and alienating. And I just think it was unnecessary. Not the article, but the repeated (and sometimes smug) re-posting of it - meant, one can only assume, as a passive aggressive way to make a point to every childless FB friend. And in a way that rendered us completely unable to respond, lest we look like a collective pack of whiny, defensive assholes.

Each time I saw it on someone's profile it made me cringe. I wanted, but resisted the urge, to write "duly noted" in the comment section.

There's more than enough "us vs. them" dynamic out there in the big wide world. To ignite a battle between those with and those without children in a social forum like FB just seems pointless at best, dangerous at worst.

Ahhhhhh. That's better. Bee's gone now.

Miscellany

2010-08-17T12:50:00.001-04:00

For everyone who commented on the multicoloured bedspread (pictured below in its infancy, complete with feline who thought for sure it was a cat bed), thank you. I still worry that it's a little wild and crazy, but it does brighten up our bedroom in the winter, and it's incredibly warm. Insanely cozy, really, which is critical in the dead of winter when bleakness is omnipresent and so wearying.

And since someone asked (which made me giddy because I love talking about yarn), I used Equinox Stripes by Nashua Handknits.

It's kind of pricey, but I was lucky enough to pick up enough skeins at the Coates & Clark warehouse outlet before it closed down and headed south (sob), so what would have cost me close to $600, was just a little over $100 instead - which is an excellent price for handmade item of that size, if I do say so myself.

___________________________

I watched Under the Tuscan Sun for the millionth time on the weekend. Chick flicks are an indulgence in which I partake when My Beloved heads up to the futon in the sitting room to sneak in a Sunday afternoon nap.

Win-win.

Anyway, without going into a complete plot synopsis (booooring), there's a part in the movie where one character tells another about the "empty shell people". They are, she says, people who experience some sort of personal trauma and eventually find themselves at a crossroads - a point where they could choose to remain empty shells or move forward into a new life.

Every time I watch the movie I hope I'm walking on the right road.

I don't think it's as simple as making one decision (oh that it were that easy). No, I believe living a life after trauma requires a constant, consistent effort to move in the direction of happy, even when happy seems like the farthest thing possible. As often it does.

There are always setbacks. Of course there are. But at the end of my life, I hope I won't look in the mirror and see an empty shell.

I know I'll at least see someone who tried very hard to be full of happy. I do know that for sure.
________________________

Speaking of the end of my life, lately I seem fixated on making sure that random, but personally critical, details about my funeral preparations are known to My Beloved.

I don't have a death wish, nor am I ill (as far as I know). So I'm assuming this preoccupation with my final arrangements has to do with seeing my dad who is, very obviously, approaching the end of his life.

It's interesting how your brain can trick you into dwelling on one thing to avoid thinking about another.

My Beloved is not especially happy with this particular party trick of mine.

________________________

Sneaking off to a matinee on a Monday with your sister on a hot summer day is a most fabulous thing to do. I highly recommend it.

I also recommend using a big purse to sneak in your own drinks so you can avoid paying $4.00 for a bottle of apple juice (which, if you're anything like me, is almost stroke-inducing).

________________________

I always feel guilty. Poor Therapist Lady tried to beat this out of me multiple times - and she's not the first or only one who's tried - but it remains. Solid. Steadfast. Clinging to me like stubborn grout mould.

I always feel guilty about something.

I have absolutely no idea how to rid myself of this affliction. I like to think it's charming - part of what makes me quirky and interesting - but I think it's probably just annoying.

And possibly life-shortening.

So it's a good thing My Beloved knows what I want included in my obituary, I suppose.

________________________

Dibley the Wonder Cat is sitting on my lap purring while absentmindedly licking the crook of my arm.

This, people, this is why cats are awesome.

More expensive than wine, but cheaper than therapy

2010-08-10T15:34:00.000-04:00

To say the last several months have been stressful is an understatement. I'm practically pooping diamonds, I'm in such a constant state of clench. In fact, on Saturday I finally succumbed to a nap (something I almost never do, for fear of missing something good), because after a week of looking after my mom and dad solo, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck then run over with a steam roller cartoon-style. My whole body ached. Slipping into blissful unconsciousness was such a welcome relief.

But since naps aren't always an option (really, I hate missing stuff), and vodka/wine/cocktails are (or should be) limited to happy hour, and I can't really afford therapy at the moment, I found something else...

First, there was Knitmap, a searchable yarn store directory I stumbled across one afternoon when I probably should have been doing something more productive.

And from there, Spun Fibre Arts, which is, incredibly, just minutes from home.

Minutes. From. Home. And I never knew.

My Beloved accompanied me on my maiden voyage to Spun a few weeks ago. He heard my contented sigh upon entering, and patiently followed me around the room while I touched everything I could put my little paws on, oohing and ahhing all the while.

I told him he could sit (there are couches in the middle of the store that are probably meant for knitting & crocheting class purposes, but certainly must frequently double as a man waiting area), but he said he wanted to watch me finger yarn.

Which sounds dirty, but really isn't. I swear.

I think it had just been that long since he'd seen me that content - lost in something that didn't involve old people on dialysis and my ever-present fear of the call.

I left the store with $40 worth of the most gorgeous baby llama yarn in soft lavender, and a buzz that I can only say rivaled a hit of Valium with a red wine chaser.

It was like they were pumping antidepressants in through the air system, the way they pump oxygen into casinos in Vegas.

I have simply not felt that relaxed in months. Months, people.

I have to think it actually had something to do with petting the yarns. It was almost meditative, moving slowly through the store from cubby to cubby, looking at all the delicious colours and touching each different flavour.

Yarn touch therapy. Is that a real thing?

If not, it should be.

Today I finally found a pattern worthy of my yarn, and started crocheting myself a rippled scarf. It's selfish to make something for myself out of the most gorgeous (and expensive) yarn I've ever bought, but it somehow feels right - like it's a continuation of the whole experience, which was so therapeutic, and so desperately needed.

So just for me.

Women don't do enough of this sort of thing. We're somehow biologically programed to look after others, and we spend an inordinate amount of time doing so, often at the expense of ourselves and our own precious peace.

So I'm telling you right now, go find your yarn store. Go find whatever it is that makes you feel the kind of contentment I felt that day at Spun, and do it - or eat it, or read it, or bake it, or sleep on it, or wear it. Whatever it is, just dooooo iiiiit.

Trust me.

What now?

2010-08-09T19:46:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this question endlessly lately.

What exactly should I do now? Where do I go from here? Now that we know there will be no more attempts at children, what happens next?

Isn't it lucky for me that my mid life crisis happened to coincide with the end of my six-year long trying to conceive catastrophe? It's so great to have all your crises collide in one huge clusterfuck so you can really sink your teeth into coping with them all at once.Yeah, that's real handy.

But seriously, what now?

I was always good at writing essays in university. Once I got going, I could write the most glorious bullshit with the greatest of ease.

But getting started was always agony. I'd stare at that menacing blank page for hours. Or, in truth, avoid staring at the menacing blank page by doing something else, anything else, until I was so pressed for time that I had absolutely no choice but to skulk back to the typewriter and start working.

I'm staring at a blank page again. Only this time it's the rest of my life instead of an essay.

And I don't have a big enough typewriter for that.

While I was mulling over what to do with the remaining 20 - 40 (God willing) years of my life recently, it dawned on me that my childless friends are among the most interesting people I know. One is a radio host who's working on her second book, another is taking acting classes and writing scripts in her spare time, a third teaches bellydancing, another is a comedienne who stages one-woman shows and takes clowning classes, and then there are the pair of singleton adventurers who sync up their vacation schedules and travel the world together once or twice a year.

These women are doing things, creating things, experiencing things - all without having procreated. And, more importantly, they seem happy doing it. They don't appear to be blindly searching for fulfillment - something to plug the kid-shaped holes in their lives.

They are an awesome assembly, with their assorted talents and hobbies and collective zest for life. Always doing, seeking, playing, learning, and moving.

And not a child amongst the lot of them.

Some are childless by choice, some never married, and others I've never actually asked. But regardless, They're all childless, just like me.

They're just kind of doing it better than I am at the moment.

They are my inspiration - my proof that there is a big, full, happy life out there for those of us without children. And even though we are often invisible in today's child-centric world - and occasionally misunderstood and sometimes even judged harshly - there is a place for us. Dammit, there is.

I have no idea where my place is, of course. That's my whole point. But I have faith that it's out there somewhere.

And as soon as I finish licking my wounds and cowering from the big, scary blank page, I'll have a look and see if I can find it.

(Mostly) Wordless Thursday...

2010-07-29T23:20:00.000-04:00

...Because really, I have no idea what to say about this picture of Dibley the wonder cat anyway.

My mother's kitchen

2010-07-28T00:34:00.000-04:00

I was standing at my mom & dad's kitchen sink this afternoon, washing up the dishes I'd used to make a meatloaf for their dinner, when the smell of browning meat and simmering chili sauce bubbling from the oven carried me back to another time. To the same place, my parents' kitchen, but to a time when I was a child and my parents were young - and they were looking after me.

And the warmth of that scent memory flowed through me, slowing my breathing, relaxing my body.

I inhaled deeply, trying to pull more comfort from the air in my mother's kitchen. I looked out into the yard where I used to skate on rinks my mom flooded every winter, where my grandma shoveled paths in the deep snow, where I played in the sandbox and lay on a blanket in the sun listening to 45s on my sister's Mickey Mouse record player.

I remember my dad with black hair, taking steps two at a time. I remember my mom wallpapering the stairway, standing on homemade scaffolding without a trace of fear.

And now they are old. And I have woken up 1964 times without Thomas. And life is so different than it was, and every day I find myself sorting through some sort of grief. Sometimes newly realized, sometimes familiar and worn.

There are moments of peace and moments of despair. Moments of joy and moments of sorrow. Always, there is light and dark.

And that's the way it is. Right now, in this aching time as I watch my parents failing and I look into my future and see just a handful of us left and no one following behind; that's the way it is.

This, as it turns out, is what it means to be a grown up: feeling pain, but taking strength from lovely memories and finding moments of comfort in my mother's kitchen.

One more time

2010-07-26T12:43:00.001-04:00

I used to think it was only me. Not surprisingly, given my penchant for catastrophizing, I'm pretty sure that I was the only one who routinely (as in every single time I walked away from him) wondered if the last goodbye I gave my dad would be the last goodbye.

I would watch him waving from the window as we'd pull out of the driveway, and want to curl up in a ball and cry, sick with worry and despair.

In my defense, he really is that sick. Has been for years. First a bum ticker (with a 1998 cardiac arrest thrown in for added excitement), then diabetes, and now end stage kidney disease on top of everything else.

But, by some miracle, he's still here.

In lighter moments I joke that he might be immortal. Because honest to God, I've never known anyone this sick to continually battle back from the brink. And there have been so many brinks over the past 26 years since his first heart attack; so many times the situation looked dire, only to be turned around by the smiling Irishman with the big laugh and twinkling eyes.

But this time it's different. He's fighting as hard as he can, but I know in my heart that there is well and truly not much time left.

And now, I think, so does he.

There is more weight in his hugs. They last a fraction longer. They are tighter, despite his frailty.

It startled me on Saturday. We had everyone over to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday, and as they piled out the door with presents and leftover dessert in hand, I hugged him goodbye and told him I loved him. And he held on. And squeezed.

And in that moment, I knew he knew it too.

I know what he was saying with that embrace, and I closed my eyes against the truth and hugged him back, willing it not to be our last goodbye.

Willing time to stop and love to cure and hope to best inevitability.

And then I did the only thing I could. I let him go. One more time.

Saving grace

2010-07-23T01:46:00.000-04:00

It's pouring rain - pounding on the roof and, thankfully, on my poor parched pie pumpkins which can't seem to get enough water these days.

But that's not what's keeping me up. Mostly it's all the cheese and chocolate. A fondue extravaganza, is what it was, with wine and friends. And way, way, way too much food. Seriously.

And then, A Single Man. Which, if you haven't seen it, is utterly fantastic. It so beautifully and artfully demonstrates what it's like seeing life through the lens of loss; how shades of gray dominate until a spark of beauty - a kind word, a lovely face, a selfless gesture - infuses a moment with colour. And in those moments, a fragment of the beauty that existed before loss returns. Shines. Saves.

It was truly stunning in its simplicity and power.

And it's all so true. Loss does alter the way you see the world, and there's nothing you can do to change that. You can't un-ring a bell, as they say. And so it follows that you can't be who or what you were before loss. That person is simply gone.

But there are moments that revive your soul, quench a thirst you didn't know you had, and keep you moving forward. Step by stubborn step.

Today it was a chance encounter in the parking lot of the grocery store. A voice calling my name, a hand gently touching my arm, a friend asking for news about my dad - caring so very much.

And in those few sweet moments, colour radiated from her and bathed me in its healing light.

And for that gentle, restorative energy I am so grateful.

Once again, I am saved.

I don't want to scare you...

2010-07-21T22:40:00.000-04:00

...but this dude clearly fears no one.

Toes have been known to get this very same treatment. In the dead of night. From beneath the covers. Which, in case you were wondering, IS terrifying.

Luckily he's not necessarily all that bright...

...so toes are often safe.

Thieves

2010-07-20T20:11:00.000-04:00

Someone rifled through our car the other night. I noticed that the glove compartment and ash tray were open when I got in to take my dad to the hospital for dialysis Friday morning.

I'm happy that since neither me nor My Beloved ever leave anything more valuable than change for Price Chopper shopping carts in the car, all they found were old receipts, extra napkins, one pink glove and an expired ferry ticket. And garbage.

We're so not car people...

But still, someone rifled through our car. Someone decided to walk onto our property, get into our car (which took us years to pay off), and poke about to see if they could take something from us.

From us.

Because yes, that was my first thought: How could anyone want to take more from us?!

I was aghast, staring stupidly at the open glove box spilling its contents onto the passenger side floor, quietly filling with rage. My baby died. In fact, I did nothing but lose babies for five straight years. And now, after all that, I am still childless.

How dare someone try to take more from me.

I realize that the teenager hunting for beer money in my ash tray had no idea whose care he was attempting to pilfer from. I know it was a totally random car on a totally random street to him. It wasn't personal.

Except that when the universe has fucked with you the way it has fucked me, everything kinda feels personal somehow.

Even when it isn't.

This inflated sense of entitlement - this belief that I should, nay, deserve to be spared any and all future suffering, persecution, toil, torment, sorrow, and general badness is only going to mess me up further. I know that too. Mostly because I know that no one - not even someone who has suffered the worst cruelties imaginable - is immune to experiencing still more. That's the way life works. There is an endless vault of crap for the universe to pull from, and random shit happens all the time to whoever finds themselves walking into the black cloud of a looming shitstorm.

But I can't help it. The injustice of having someone break into my car when life has spent so much time shitting in my general direction was just too much to swallow Friday morning. On the way to the hospital. Where Thomas died.

Fuck.

And while I'm at it, fuck you, stupid kid looking for beer money. I hope you never find yourself sitting speechless in your car wondering why on earth someone would want to take something from you when you've already lost so much.

I hope you never know the fatigue that comes with that kind of defeat.

It would be funny it was a character in a movie

2010-07-12T17:39:00.000-04:00

I'm not going to lie. I've always had a touch of OCD; a special penchant for re-checking the previously checked, worrying about catastrophes that never come, and just generally fretting needlessly.

Virtually no amount of calm reassurance from cooler minds is able to convince me that someone besides myself can check things properly - or, more importantly, will remember to check everything.

During stressful times it's worse. On Christmas Eve, for some odd reason, it's next to impossible to control. Leaving the house to go to my in-laws for dinner involves frantic racing in and out of rooms to ensure that everything is locked, turned off, unplugged, stored properly, sealed, closed, put away - that the whole house is thoroughly, unequivocally safe and sound.

Why I think some catastrophic event is going to happen on Christmas Eve is beyond me. But it sits in my brain and taunts me with its fiery, very un-Christmas like possibility.

In the years since Thomas died, I've noticed that while the OCD (which is self-diagnosed, thanks to my Internet degree in psychology - I also have one in reproductive endocrinology, by the way) isn't necessarily any worse, it has expanded in scope. Morphed into something new.

Now, it seems, I can turn even the most benign non-event into a catastrophe-in-the-making. If there's a way for someone to die because I dropped a stray elastic band in the living room and forgot to pick it up, I'll imagine it. And it will haunt me until I retrieve the elastic band and dispose of it properly.

Only then is peace restored. Only then are those around me safe. Until, of course, I misplace a paper clip.

Do you know the myriad ways you can be injured by a paper clip? Sweet Jesus, do you?

I know where this comes from. Of course I do. Five people died on my watch. I absolutely do not want to be responsible for any more deaths - I can't be. I just can't. So my spastic little brain spends its time calculating the probability of mortality of all those around me at any given moment as I wander through the day living, and checking. And re-checking. And pointing out dangers to others because it's my new responsibility to keep everyone safe - like I'm some middle-aged, chubby, neurotic little suburban superhero.

I've been quiet about this. I fully recognize the batshit craziness of it all, so it has always seemed best just to continue picking up elastics and keeping it all to myself.

But then, as is so often the case in this wonderful virtual world of gut-spilling, I found a blogger who does it too. A blogger who totally gets it.

She wisely pointed out that once you've seen death - once it has crashed in unannounced and violated you in the most horrific way imaginable - you know it's out there. You know the unthinkable is actually possible and that it can come when it is least expected. Like when a baby dies the day after it's just been born.

And you can't un-know it. You can never un-know it. And it taunts you, that knowledge. And it makes you think elastics can kill.

Long slow sigh. There is so much mind-fuckery in grief. So much endless work to soothe a mind so thoroughly and meticulously shattered.

Life

2010-07-08T18:58:00.002-04:00

This post made me think of this montage, which I created for My Beloved on Father's Day the year after Thomas died.

Thanks, Loribeth, for the reminder. And happy 25th anniversary.

ox

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Dusk

2010-07-05T09:53:00.000-04:00

After de-slugging the pepper patch on Saturday evening, My Beloved and I sat on our tiny patio (the lottery win I'm planning for this Friday will eliminate the "tiny" in that phrase) and watched the evening melt into dusk.

Everything seems to turn grayish-purple in the blue half-light of dusk - skin, grass, trees, fences. It's an ethereal and melancholic sort of time, I find. A time for fairies and gnomes and things hiding just out of sight.

And yes, I'm aware that almost every time is somehow a melancholic time for me. Dawn, noon, dusk, midnight - I can usually find a little melancholy in each of them if I look hard enough.

But you don't have to look hard at dusk. It's there in the deepening shadows, the blue pall, and the impossible stillness.

And in that half-light, as I stared out at the freshly watered lawn, I remembered a hazy, long-ago conversation My Beloved and I had back when we believed we would, I could, have children. He didn't want too many gardens. He wanted lawn - space to play with his children on the grass in our backyard. I agreed, picturing a chubby-legged toddler in a sun bonnet feeling grass on her toes for the first time.

The lawn still has space. Ample. There are gardens too, like our slug-ridden pepper patch. But nothing more.

So as my eyes fought against the dark on Saturday night, my mind drew a tousle-headed boy running in an arc across the lawn towards my chair, his arms thrown open in that glorious way that boys do when they're let loose on a patch of grass in the summer. He ran towards me, his mouth stretched into a crazy, wide open smile - and then he slipped quietly away into the shadows. Just before he reached me.

My mind will always be drawing pictures of the boy, I guess.

I know I'll see him no matter where I go, but I often wonder if a different place might hurt less. He was expected here. This house is missing him. I see where he should have been. I remember the plans I had and the pictures I drew when he was wriggling and kicking inside me.

Dusk falls everywhere. But it falls hard here.

Shut your pie-hole

2010-07-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

Dear Perky Young Thing sitting beside me at the hairdresser,

I understand (from the sounds of things) that you're probably blissfully unaware that not every single person can sneeze and get pregnant. And stay pregnant. And birth a live baby. I understand that you're pleased that you were able to have one child and, now, get pregnant with a second one while you're still young. I understand that in a perfect world this makes a lot of sense. You have energy, health and youth on your side.

I get that. I do. And the part of me that didn't want to jam a curling iron in your great gaping pie-hole is happy for you - happy that you get to be young and pregnant and blissfully unaware.

But the crusty, broken-down, 40-year old whose uterus has left a bloody path of destruction in its wake would like to respectfully tell you to keep your opinions about "old mothers" to yourself. She might patiently bite her bottom lip whilst you wax poetic about the joys of being a young mother, but she will come this close to beating you about the head with a full conditioner bottle when you effortlessly slide into an ugly conversation about how terrible it is that Kelly Preston is pregnant at 47.

Honestly, Perky Young Thing, you were dangerously close to getting a new one ripped for you. You are clearly unaware of how horribly insensitive your comments were, and how inappropriate it is to sit there on your pregnant pedestal judging older mothers with such open scorn and smugness oozing from your lips when you have no idea who is in earshot - or what struggles they might have endured to bring a child home. Or not, as the case may be.

My God, Perky Young Thing, what if I'd been pregnant??

You were saved by the hairdryer which finally drowned out your incessant prosthelytizing (which, in case you hadn't noticed, even your own hairdresser wasn't buying into. I should have tipped her too.).

One of the reasons we decided to stop trying was because we are now both in our 40s. After all we've been through we knew, at a certain point, that we simply didn't have the energy to continue and risk facing any additional hardships or loss.

We have become old before our time, Perky Young Thing. But it was OUR choice to make this incredibly difficult and personal decision based on what we've been through, and I will defend to my death every "old mother's" right to decide when she is finished adding to her family.

Now quit your yapping, keep your eyes on your own uterus - and, by the way, stop getting your hair dyed while you're pregnant.

Regards,
The barren, ferocious hag to your right

Now I lay me down to sleep

2010-06-30T22:55:00.000-04:00

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep offers remembrance photography - photographs taken by volunteer professional photographers - to parents suffering the loss of a baby. Their entire network of affiliated photographers graciously donate their time and talents so that NILMDTS can offer this invaluable service to grieving families at no cost. The heirloom photographs of these beautiful babies are an important part of the healing process.

That's why donations are greatly needed and so greatly appreciated.

In celebration of their 5th anniversary, they have started a $5 donation campaign and are asking people to donate $5 to this very worthy and important cause.

If you're so inclined, you can donate here.

NILMDTS wasn't around when Thomas died. I can only imagine the beautiful photographs we might have today if they were...

A bit of housekeeping...

2010-06-30T12:16:00.001-04:00

Dear bloggers,

Does anyone have any idea why I'm able to post comments to some Blogger blogs and not others? The blogs I'm having trouble with are ones that provide a list of "identities" to choose from (Google account, Open ID, TypePad, etc.) when commenting. The thing is, no matter which identity I choose - even if I opt for "anonymous" out of desperation - my comments just don't go through.

It's weird. And frustrating. And I have no idea how to remedy this situation...

Help!

Signed,
A confused simpleton

Two showers in June

2010-06-29T10:14:00.001-04:00

I'm just going to come right out and admit it: it's still an energy-sucking challenge to clear out a corner of space in my head to make way for happy for someone else. There's all kind of stuff to wade through to get all the way to some new post-Thomas, post-miscarriages, post-infertility version of being genuinely happy. I have to sort through sorrow, jealousy, and disbelief that it's not me (yeah, still - after all these years. How can it not be me?), and then run the memory gauntlet.

I had my own shower, you know. And I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the oohs and ahhs for little outfits, and jingly toys, and practical nursery items when I was the one sitting in the specially festooned chair.

So two showers in June. A challenge.

The funny thing is, I didn't hesitate to say yes to either. Okay, a fraction of a second maybe, but that's it. And the happiness for each of those new mothers is genuine too. A first child for one, a gorgeous little adopted daughter from China for the second.

Honestly. I'm absolutely thrilled for both of them, after two very hard-fought and incredibly well-deserved battles.

It's just that the post-apocalypse shower experience is not without a certain degree of mental gymnastics. Kind of like an out of body sort of situation where I float above the sorrowful self, join in the oohing and ahhing, and then plunk back down into the body with the aching heart and sink into a quiet, restorative stupor when I'm back home, safe and sound.

I'm also keenly aware that people know. Not everyone, of course, but some. And I wonder if I'm looking as happy as they think I should be, or if I'm reacting to the gifts with as much enthusiasm as they'd expect. Or if I'm overdoing it - making it look disingenuous and plastic.

I think too much. I know that. And eventually at both showers I relaxed and slipped into a protective comfort zone where I just didn't care what anyone thought, for the most part. I focused on the mothers-to-be and absorbed little fragments of their joy, making it my own.

Joy is like that. Which is useful for me, since I'm very susceptible to picking up other people's moods.

And then I came home, closed the door to the outside world and proceeded to unclench, uncork, and slowly relax.

I shouldn't be, I suppose, but I continue to be amazed by exactly how much mental energy it takes to navigate a child-centric world when you're childless not by choice. There are landmines everywhere, and while they usually don't blow me to pieces anymore, they do inflict some degree of injury. Every time.

But I'm glad I successfully navigated the showers - the first two I've felt strong enough to go to since Thomas died. I think I did okay. And I'm comforted that despite the work (which I have to assume is always going to be required), I really can come to a place where I feel absolute joy for someone else.

All the ugly gunk is still there - let's be clear, I'm not a saint or a magician or completely delusional - but I've figured out a way to drill through it and make a peephole of joy.

And sweet Jesus, a peephole, for someone like me, might as well be the Grand Canyon.

Brain drain

2010-06-28T09:51:00.000-04:00

The first morning at the cottage I spent a half hour on the dock watching a duck paddle along the shoreline preening himself and feeding on whatever it is ducks scoop up when their little white bums are pointing to the heavens.

A half hour, just sitting there.

I had a book in my lap - I was prepared to be mildly productive - but instead I sat in the sunshine and watched a duck.

For the next half hour I lay on my tummy with my head over the edge of the dock watching the fish while they watched me. I put my palms on the surface of the water, feeling the cool. I examined the strange, greeny-peach of my skin when submerged. I kept an eye out for dock spiders. I heard the whistling thrum of wing beats as birds flew above me.

I heard everything. Even the tiniest sounds were magnified by the absence of the constant ambient noise I'm so used to here in the suburb where careless sounds crash into me all day long.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

We made fire. And we used that fire to cook marshmallows which, of course, we paired with chocolate and graham crackers.

I cleaned my sticky fingers in the lake.

I marinated in bonfire smoke.

I listened to forest creatures scurry in the underbrush.

I trained my flashlight on the bush looking for bear eyes every now and then.

I waved to an old couple in a passing boat - the only people we ever saw.

I watched the sparks fly high into the dimming night sky.

I got eaten alive by mosquitoes who took the absence of bug spray as an invitation to dine on my exposed ankles and toes.

I used bonfire tending skills I learned from my grandpa, passing them on to My Beloved.

I thought about those bonfires of the 70s - at a cottage, now long gone, not far from this one - and about those who will never again sit by the shores of a lake listening to the cracks and pops of a roaring fire.

I resisted the melancholy.

I laughed at My Beloved while he put his camera and hair in mortal danger in an effort to capture the perfect fire shot.

I relaxed as much as it was humanly possible for me to relax after months of being tied up in knots worrying about my dad - who continues to defy the odds by being here.

I broke the silence. I called to check in every day but one.

It was necessary if I was to continue to breathe.

And I did. Fresh, clean, quiet air.

Too short. Too short.

Wish I was there.

Thank plinking you hear? It's me. And my mid-life crisis

2010-06-04T18:21:00.003-04:00

I think I may have officially started my mid-life crisis.

In a foggy haze of sleeplessness, my synapses firing on nothing more than nervous energy, I decided to teach myself the ukulele just days after my dad was finally (finally) released from the hospital. I'm not totally sure my sudden desire to master the uke has anything to do with his discharge, but historically I do seem to manage being in the throes of chaos and uncertainty a little better when I actively take control over something I can control.

Even if it is a funny little four-stringed instrument.

Right after Thomas died, it was redecorating the nursery - with a vengeance I can only describe as pathological. When we were 7 months into trying to conceive early the next year, it was Weight Watchers. When we decided to stop actively trying to get pregnant, officially forgoing more surgery and medical intervention, it was crochet (the great crochet square a day odyssey of 2009).

And now, the ukulele.

I'm such a tied up little knot of anxiety these days - worrying about my dad, worrying about my mom, worrying that I'm worrying about them too much at the expense of my poor, neglected Beloved - and so shutting that part of my brain off and focusing instead on how to twist my fingers into the (really unnatural feeling) positions needed to make sweet, plinky music sing from the belly of the ukulele for a little while just feels so, so good.

I suck at it, but I carry on.

Hmmm, that feels familiar...

We're heading up north to a rented cottage in a few weeks, and the ukulele and my brand new Teach Yourself Ukulele book are coming along for the ride. I'm dreaming of a sun dappled deck, early morning mist rising off the lake, the crackling of a bonfire, and mastery of the Dm7 chord.

I absolutely understand that this is a pretty useless skill to master. There's not much call for barren, angst-ridden, 40-year old ukulele players who drive old men to dialysis and write corporate communications by day and strum badly but determinedly into the night (something My Beloved has already pointed out is kind of annoying - no more ukulele in bed, apparently). But I just don't give a hairy rat's ass.

Some day this will come in handy. Some day I will amaze and astonish someone with my mad uke skills. Or bad uke skills, as the case may be. But still - I will astonish. Or at least amuse.

And it will all be worth it.

In the meantime, right now there's nothing better than this kind of mindless distraction. Or the feeling of once again having control over something. Anything.

And her reply...

2010-06-02T21:05:00.004-04:00

"Many thanks for taking the time to write this, for your kind way of expressing a disagreement, for your sharing of personal details, and for your very thoughtful advice of your own.

I did receive another well-expressed note like this and have already worked it into a future column.... by way of educating readers further about this sensitive topic, to show the deeper areas than those on which I touched.

May I say - not to excuse myself, but to explain - that anyone who is deeply grieving cannot possibly get enough solace from the 50-100 words of an answer in a general audience newspaper advice column.

I do try to show my compassion, which I genuinely feel....and I do try to offer some possible ways to bring new thinking to the situation, such as that the friends and family who don't mention a subject may actually be trying to be kind, not dismissive.

I thank you for understanding most of my approach, and for deepening my understanding."

I wholeheartedly agree that a 100-word column can't possibly provide enough solace for a woman grieving her lost children and her dreams of motherhood, which is why wasting a paragraph on the whole "filling the void" thing bothered me so much, I suspect.

Well, that and the fact that it was just atrocious advice.

But I give her endless credit for responding so kindly and promptly, and for deciding to tackle the subject again in an upcoming column now that she's heard from those of us on the inside.

This is such a quiet little world, this childless place, and it's nice to know that people are listening to our whispers and trying to do their best to understand.

It's all anyone can ask for, really.

Because if no one ever tells her...how will she know?

2010-06-01T11:14:00.000-04:00

I have become a bit of a letter writer in my advancing years. When something touches a nerve, I march up to my computer and pound out a missive. Most of which I send.

When I read a local advice columnist's piss-poor advice to an infertile woman struggling with Mother's Day blues the other day, I knew a letter was coming.

And this morning, this is what I sent:

Dear Ellie,

I absolutely understand that the advice you give comes from a place of goodness and a desire to help - an admirable thing in today’s “it’s all about me” sort of world.

But I found myself wincing when I read the advice you gave to the childless woman who struggles with her sorrow on Mother’s Day (May 31/10). You were right to point out that her friends and family care, and that they show it by continuing to invite her to events and making her part of their lives. And you were correct in suggesting that she continue to seek counseling to deal with the lifelong after-effects of a battle with infertility.

But oh Ellie, to suggest that she become a foster parent or volunteer with children as a means of “filling the void”? Really?!

I lost five babies during my long, bloody battle to become a mother, one 20 hours after he was born due to a birth injury. Now at 40, I am in the process of dealing with the reality that I will always be a childless mother – an invisible mother, if you will. With that knowledge and experience under my belt, I can tell you with absolute certainty that your “filling the void” suggestion is akin to telling a woman dying of dehydration that while she can’t have a drink, she should take solace in the knowledge that she can clean your pool. That, in fact, cleaning a pool is good for her and will help her “move past” her unquenchable thirst.

Other people’s children will never fill the void left by the five I lost. This is something I think it’s impossible for you to understand, having successfully brought children of your own into the world. And so I would urge you to be very careful when doling out advice about something you can’t possibly fully understand. Volunteering with children may not make this woman “thrive”, as you suggest. It might only exacerbate the feelings of loss and the trauma associated with it. Spending time with children is always challenging for an infertile person living in a fertile world. There is always a little pain (or sometimes a lot of pain) mixed in with the joy of being with children. It hasn’t helped me “thrive”. It has merely helped me learn coping mechanisms to protect my still tender heart.

We foster a child through World Vision and I am glad that we’re able to do so, but I rarely think about it. I do, however, think about my son every single day.

Better advice would have been to tell her that the seasonal Mother’s Day blues are a pretty normal event for an infertile woman who has the cumulative trauma of multiple losses making it worse – not to mention a failed marriage, poor thing. Telling her to be kind to herself – to treat herself well and not beat herself up over the feelings of loss that very naturally arise during the annual celebration of motherhood – would have been far more helpful than telling her to suck it up and go help someone else.

Avoiding all situations where children will be present is impractical and unhealthy. I agree. I happen to think a little immersion therapy every now and then is a good, healthy thing. But knowing it’s okay to feel some degree of sadness in those situations – and knowing it’s okay to politely say your good-byes when you’ve had enough – is also very important. It would have been nice if you’d told her that.

She asked how she can make people understand how much she wishes she was a mother. You might have told her to start writing a journal or a blog documenting her feelings, and to connect with other like-minded blogging women. There is strength in numbers. You also might have told her to look for childless-not-by-choice support groups online or in her community so she’d know she’s not alone. You might have told her to actually sit down and talk to the people closest to her and tell them what’s going on in her head so that they will, finally, understand how much she is hurting and how important it is to her that they know where she’s coming from. This is the only way they’ll truly know how to help and what to say – or, more importantly, what not to say.

Being understood by those around you is critical when you’re facing this kind of challenge. Believe me. Being told to find something to “fill the void” is thoughtless at best, cruel at worst.

As I said, I know you meant well, but you were way, way off the mark on this one. And I just needed you to know.

Regards,
Kristin Z.

80

2010-05-17T23:04:00.000-04:00

Last year, at your request, we made you barbecued leg of lamb and pineapple upside down cake for your birthday celebration; and we laughed all night long, stuffed and happy. This year I brought you coffee-from-the-outside to have with your afternoon snack of Digestive cookies in the hospital, your proper celebration - and release - delayed by frustratingly poor internal communication.

But you're still here. You're still here.

And maybe, just maybe, tomorrow you'll be home.

I love you. Happy birthday, dad.

oxox

Will wonders never cease?

2010-05-10T18:01:00.000-04:00

I spent close to a half an hour snuggling with my brand new nephew yesterday after meeting him for the very first time. Yeah, on Mother's Day.

And I didn't die.

Imagine that.

The haves and have nots

2010-05-05T19:37:00.071-04:00

Ahhhhhh. I'm sitting alone in my office with the (finally) cool breeze bringing in the earthy smell of new rain and damp pavement, and it's just so peaceful. If it weren't for the fact that I'm sitting in the office because I have a ton of work still left to do tonight, it would be perfection.

Except for the odd rumble of thunder and the chirp of spring birds, it's quiet. So, so blissfully quiet. I suppose the fact that it's nearly 8:00pm on a weeknight is part of the reason. All the little ones who are usually out in the street playing during the day are, I presume, getting read their bedtimes stories right about now. Snug in their jammies, fresh from the bath.

But it was a little less quiet a few minutes ago. The unmistakable sound of a most excellently delivered tantrum, Oscar-worthy in fact, came pealing in through the open window along with the evening breeze.

I stood at the screen listening to the fracas - sobs, angry screams, and "daddeeeee, daddeeeee, dadeeeeeeeee!!!" - and breathed a sight of relief as I turned to sit back down at the computer.

I sighed. I sighed because it's not me trying to cope with a 3 year-old who has just copped an, "I don't want to go to bed and you can't make me" attitude. I sighed because tonight my only responsibility, other than getting cat food and picking up My Beloved at the train, is to myself. I sighed because right now it seems easier to be me than them.

It was a happy sigh. And kind of a relieved one.

And this is a startling turn of events. Easier to be me than them? Huh?!

I don't know if this is some sort of a self defense mechanism at work, or just that magical ability humans have to adapt and accept and push on. But this has been happening quite a bit lately. I just haven't wanted to admit it because it seems, well, wrong. In fact it seems all kinds of wrong to be seeing the silver lining in such a dark and awful sky, doesn't it? I mean seriously, doesn't it??

I've become so accustomed to focusing on the negative - on what's missing - that it seems wrong to, every once in a while, actually be happy with my life. Just the way it is.

Not that it's wrong to be happy, but wrong to be happy about this.

This can't be right, can it? Is this even allowed?!

I'm not happy that my son is dead and I miscarried his four siblings. But sometimes I'm incredibly happy with the peaceful life we've managed to carve out since, and sometimes that happiness is directly related to the stress I know we don't - and will never have to - endure. Like bedtime tantrums, for example. Hell, any kind of tantrums. And messes too, dirty diapers included.

Of course it goes without saying that I would trade in all my new-found peace to have Thomas back. In a heartbeat. But since that isn't an option, I'm going to try to stop feeling guilty for enjoying the things our live has given us, even if we have them because of what was taken away.

Full up

2010-05-03T14:49:00.000-04:00

It seems like my dad is finally, finally, finally on the mend. He's been moved to the hospital's rehab unit and is receiving daily physiotherapy to regain the strength he lost while he was bedridden for nearly three weeks. He's lucid, getting stronger, and looking better each time I see him. Despite the rigors of dialysis on his frail body and the infection that still plagues it, he is fighting hard to get home to his chair in the window.

And I think he's going to make it. Maybe even by his 80th birthday on the 17th.

But still, I walk on eggshells. I'm haunted by the things I saw and heard when we thought he was going to die. I'm haunted by the way he looked and sounded when he didn't know who I was and couldn't stay awake long enough to figure it out. I'm haunted by the mumbled gibberish and the pieces of stories he told that made no sense.

I'm haunted each time I have to go back into the hospital where Thomas died.

I'm no longer quite as afraid of what I might find when I step into his room. But I barely breathe, just the same. I stare at him, willing him to stay alive while I nervously make small talk because I've long ago run out of things to say to a man who can't remember most of the last 8 weeks.

The fact that I have no life is a topic for another blog, but it would be useful if I did. I need more fodder for conversation.

In my eyes, he's like a tiny sheet of gold foil. Precious and fragile. Able to be swept from me by the smallest breeze. Gone in an instant. I hover around him, on full alert, like a parent with a toddler taking its first steps. I think he's going to choke. I think he's going to fall. I think his heart is going to stop, right there in front of me.

I'm trying to be here, present in my own life; a wife to my husband, a support to my friends, a competent writer to my clients, a keeper of house and home. But I'm trying to be there too, with him. With my mom. Doing what I can to help make all this a little easier, if possible.

I need two of me. Maybe three. And I need to sleep through the night and not be plagued by the kind of weird dream I had last night. I need to remember how to relax, decompress, and enjoy moments of peace.

There should be a special store for people who need these sorts of thing. Or, barring that, the universe needs to pony up and start being a little more equitable in its dishing out of random shit.

The universe is being an ass.

Thanks, random strangers

2010-05-02T15:06:00.000-04:00

I was feeling kind of blue last night, and found myself reaching out into the ether for some random stranger comfort. Not because my only sources of support that are connected to me by wires and keyboards, but because sometimes you just need a little random stranger comfort to carry you over the rough patches. There's nothing like knowing you're not alone to keep the crazies at bay. And your shoulders slightly less knotted up. And your jaw less clenched.

So anyway, there I was poking about looking for solace when I stumbled across a chat board for people just like me: childless not by choice.

I didn't stay long - sometimes I worry about indulging the hungry little part of my soul that wants to feed on every scrap of self pity it can find, getting fat and self-satisfied in the process. But I did stay and read for a little while.

Long enough to discover that maybe I've been a little too hard on myself. Just maybe.

I take out my invisible hittin' stick every time I feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy. Every time I feel sorry for myself. Every time I wish I was her instead of me. Every time I feel sorrow before I feel joy.

I'm hittin' myself all. the. time.

As for the ladies on the CNBC board? I didn't see a single stick in the bunch. They were out there, warts and all, talking about the unfairness of a life not chosen. About how much it hurts. About the insensitive things people have said to them. About the people who have not been careful with their still tender hearts. About how they're moving on as best they can with those un-chosen lives.

And I sat there dumbfounded.

Because, from what I read, it sounds like it's okay to feel the way I do. Or, at the very least, it's normal.

It's okay to sit in church and feel a dull ache in my heart when I see family after family after family filling up the pews around me. It's okay to feel lonely when I'm always the only "mother" who doesn't belong. It's okay to wish I was outside with the gaggle of parents and toddlers filling the street on a warm Saturday night. It's okay to feel sad before I feel happy when I hear that a friend or family member is pregnant. It's okay to need to look away when I see a round, baby-filled belly.

It's all, it seems, totally okay.

I know it could simply be a case of a group of like-minded people simply feeling safe enough to voice these thoughts within the confines of their own little board. But the simple fact that there is a board populated by people who feel these sorts of things is very validating, I think.

It's not okay to make people feel uncomfortable or guilty that they have and you don't. It's not okay to be cruel or hurtful out of some misguided sense of cosmic entitlement based on the shitstorms you've faced. But it's okay to hurt, in your own little heart. And it's okay to do what it takes to make that pain hurt a little less whenever you can.

Good to know.

Jam jars on the windowsill

2010-05-01T18:23:00.000-04:00

Oh, my heart.

My mom and dad still live in the same house they bought when they were first married; a little bungalow in a now all grown up neighbourhood just west of Toronto. I pass by my old elementary school every time I visit, as well as all the other haunts that make up the geographical landscape of my childhood.

The corner store, my (still) best friend Michelle's old street, my grandma and grandpa's house (which I never fully forgave them for selling since it meant I was no longer the only person I knew who had grandparents living on the very same block, less than two minutes away by foot), the church where I had my first communion, confirmation and grade 8 graduation. They're all still there, every time I come "home".

As I drove past my elementary school yesterday, on the way to the hospital by way of my ancestral home, I happened to catch sight of a tiny clumped-up bunch of kids squatting amidst the dandelions on the boulevard.

Little boys, about Kindergarten age. A whole flock of them, all furiously picking away, their little hands crammed full of the yellow weeds which were, of course, destined for empty jam jars on kitchen windowsills. After kisses and smiles and snuggles of thanks.

Its a right of passage, creating that first glorious dandelion bouquet. I remember doing it myself. And I remember how proud I was when I got the reaction I'd hoped for: a gasp of pure joy and a hug from my mom, who I would have done anything to please. I remember standing by the sink while she filled a jar with water and lovingly put that scraggly bunch of half dead weeds in the window, as though it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever been given. Maybe even better than the L'Eggs panty hose I gave her every Christmas, complete with the plastic egg container that she'd always give me back to play with.

Truly the gift that gave twice, those L'Eggs.

I've thought about my dandelion-less future before. I think I've even blogged about it. No, this wasn't the first time it had dawned on me that I would never have a jam jar filled with weeds on my own kitchen windowsill. I don't think there there are too many things I'll be missing that haven't already worn a deep groove in my brain, they've crossed it so many times in the last five years.

But it was the first time I saw a group of boys Thomas' age gathering dandelions. And it took my breath away. I literally gasped, and then did what you'd expect some steroetypical infertile, childless heroin from a bad Hallmark movie to do - I pressed my left hand into my chest above my heart, as if to stop the ache. And I held my breath, my mouth agape as I continued past the school and around the corner to my mom's house.

Loss is a strange sort of claustrophobia. I wanted Thomas back so badly in those first few moments after seeing the dandelion boys that I wanted to crawl out of my skin, scream, tear apart the steel on my car with my bare hands. Do something, anything, to get him back. To see him, touch him, talk to him.

But, of course, there was nothing to be done but pry my hand off my heart, close my mouth and drive on.

And so I did.

I still like dandelions. I still smile at the memory of picking them and marveling at the thought that there were hundreds of them available - as far as the eye could see - all free and all waiting to be collected and given to my mom.

Jam jars on the windowsill.

40. Whattaya know.

2010-04-20T11:08:00.000-04:00

What half drunk, whiny-ass attention whore wrote that post yesterday?

It couldn't have been me as I am perfect in every way.

So, as it turns out 40 doesn't feel any different than 39. Not a bit. I still have bags under my eyes and a disturbing amount of gray in my hair. I still love and am loved by my wonderful family and friends. I still play with yarn and dig in the dirt every chance I get. A fat, furry little black and white kitten and his fat old tabby striped sister both still purred for me this morning. A man I adore whispered that he loved me using the endearing nickname he gave me 11 years ago. I still miss my boy. I still find peace in the sound of the birds singing on a spring morning. I'm still neurotic with a dash of OCD. I'm still shy but experienced enough to hide it well. I still find Peter Boyle's song and dance number in Young Frankenstein fall-off-the-couch funny, even though My Beloved doesn't get it. I still wish I didn't have a busted uterus. I still secretly think that if someone important heard me singing in the shower or in my car I'd get a recording contract like that. I still like pancakes on Sunday morning. Orange and red autumn leaves still take my breath away. I still eat chocolate chips when I've run out of proper chocolate. And speaking of chocolate, sometimes I still have dessert after breakfast.

I'm not a girl anymore. The 30s beat that out of me. Soundly.

But I'm still here.

And so yeah, 40's not so bad. Not at all.

On the eve of 40

2010-04-19T17:55:00.001-04:00

Good Lord. 40 tomorrow - which seems wholly impossible since I was just 16 five minutes ago. I swear.

I've decided to start the celebration early. I'm finishing up a glass of baco noir (yeah, blogging whilst drinking) and enjoying the gentle wine-y buzz of a late afternoon tipple. Although I may have just swallowed a fruit fly. I don't care, but I might have.

And speaking of birthdays...

The thirties were, to be perfectly honest and rather blunt, one long and horrific bloodbath of a decade. Seriously, from 33 on. I'm glad to be rid of them. With the exception of marrying My Beloved, the 30s were the worst 10 years I've ever known. The 30s taught me that my body is thoroughly and completely inadequate - that it won't support life. The 30s brought me the greatest sorrow I have ever known, and with it the incurable and lifelong plague of endless guilt. And a crisis of confidence too. One that seems to leach into every area of my life.

The 30s were a bitch.

I became a mother, yes. And I am endlessly grateful for ever single second I had with Thomas. And I would do it all again for each one of those blissful moments.

But I am not the mother I intended to be. Let's not kid ourselves. This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not how it should have turned out, dammit.

Last night I got thinking about what it might be like if I find myself in my dad's situation one day: 80, hospitalized, desperately sick.

In the first few weeks of his illness, I kept saying how glad I was that our children would never worry the way I have - that they'd never find themselves lying prone on the floor, sobbing at the thought of me weak and confused in a hospital bed.

Because, of course, all our children are dead.

And still, I was comforted by the fact that they would be spared this anguish.

I know all the flaws in this logic. I do. Yeah sure, I won't be worrying my kids when I'm old and frail, but I also won't have had the benefit of all that extra love in my life. The extra life in my life.

Every time I go into the hospital I take my dad a coffee and a newspaper. Simple pleasures he can now, finally, enjoy. And I get him a fresh cup of ice water, clean up his room a bit and ask if there's anything else I can do. Anything else I can bring. Any other way I can make him more comfortable.

Last night it dawned on me that there will be no one who cares enough about me to do this when I'm old. We have nieces and nephews, of course, but they have parents. They are not obligated to act as surrogate children when we're old, and I would never expect them to.

And so I'm quietly tortured by the notion that I'm going to be all alone one day and no one will come to see me. No one will be there to get me a fresh drink or find me a warmer blanket or stroke my arm and tell me how much they love me.

This is what it means to have no children.

Fuck.

I realize people don't procreate in order to supply themselves with a nursing staff for later in life. But it's certainly one of the fringe benefits of growing people who love you - who would do anything for you, like I would do for my mom and dad. They will always love you, your children. They will always be there for you. Unless they're not. Unless they're dead.

So, friends, this is what the 30s brought me: fodder for my midlife crisis. Fueled by baco noir.

Niiiiiiiice.

Happy birthday to me.

It's all we can do

2010-04-14T17:46:00.000-04:00

I read a blog yesterday that has had me thinking ever since. No mean feat given how busted up my weary brain is these days.

The blogger was wondering aloud if she still belonged in the dead baby mama"club" since, after losing her first child, she has gone on to have a second, and is now pregnant with her third. Her concerns seemed to be for those of us who are still childless, who she believes may not think she belongs anymore because she is a live-child mother.

I'm not going to lie. I have thought a lot about the whole "us vs. them" situation over these last few years of childlessness. There are just a small handful of us left who have lost and not been able to gain. We are the minority, and not an especially vocal one, for the most part. We often just watch from the sidelines, unsure of what to say or do next. In life, not just in blogland.

It's part of the reason I quietly disappeared from the blogosphere last summer. We'd decided to stop trying, I wasn't parenting living children, and having lost the last of my babies two years earlier, I just didn't know what was left to say - or who was left to read any of it anyway.

We move on. It's what we do, we baby loss survivors.

So I faded away. Until I realized that there are still volumes left to speak. Of course there are.

Because, as it turns out, moving on doesn't mean you have nothing more to say. You just have different things to say instead - a whole different voice to go with your whole new life. And for me, it's all about coping with a life that looks nothing like I expected it would. It's about grieving for my lost children, sure, but it's also about grieving for my lost family. I constantly find myself contemplating what that loss will look like when I am old. When, maybe, I am well and truly alone.

We are not what you'd expect. We are two - not three, four or five as we might have been had things been different.

And yes, in many ways I do feel like I don't belong in the same category as the babyloss mothers who have gone on to have living children. I can't understand their new world anymore than they can understand mine. But I'm also uncomfortable with the notion of putting people into categories and neat little boxes. I feel different enough without actually defining and labeling myself as such.

We're all different. Even amongst those who have gone on to have living children there are differences. I'm sure this must be true.

We come from a common place of grief, but we fan out from there, moving along different paths, in different directions and on into different lives as we continue to cope with our loss and sorrow in the best ways we know how.

My road brought me here, to a childless existence with My Beloved and our motley collection of felines. Sometimes I limit my exposure to pregnancy, babies and children when my heart is feeling too tender. Sometimes I seek out ways to interact with the children around me whom I love when that same broken heart is aching for contact with wee ones. Because my soul still longs to mother, even after all this time.

I think it's about respecting each others' journeys and recognizing that we're all doing the best we can with the burden of sorrow we were handed. Until someone gives me a manual for this grief, all I can do is what feels right for me. And that's all I expect from my sisters in sorrow.

We do the best we can. All of us.

And finally...

2010-04-13T09:55:00.000-04:00

...some good news.

Although I'm hesitant to broadcast it, lest the spiteful gods hear me and snatch it all away again, it seems like my dad is finally on the mend. As mended as an almost 80-year who is patched together with spit and tape can be, that is.

He's still in that godforsaken hospital - 5 weeks today - but he's now lucid almost 100% of the time, receiving physiotherapy in preparation for leaving the hospital, and slowly but surely getting all his health issues sorted out. Including the new ones introduced by the stellar staff and the hospital's motley collection of germs and bacteria.

Don't get me started.

I can't even count the number of times I was sure this wouldn't end happily. I've never seen him look so old, frail or sick - some days so much so that I'm sure I physically recoiled at the sight of him. And the confusion (a result of the build-up of toxins in his body from the undiagnosed kidney failure) is something I hope never, ever, ever to have to see in him again.

It broke my heart when I'd say goodbye and he'd ask if he was coming home too, or when he was sure he was in an office building from his long ago working career, or when he was too weak and confused to feed himself, or when he thought I was his mother. And especially when I looked into his eyes and knew he had no idea who I was.

We are the lucky ones, my family and I, because he has come back to us. I can't imagine what it's like for the families of people with dementia for whom this is a permanent state. My good God, I don't know how they do it. Just a few weeks of this has left me utterly exhausted, body and mind. How people do this for years is absolutely beyond me, but I have a tremendous new respect for those caring for loved ones who are disappearing right before their eyes.

My birthday is next week. Time has a way of changing what you wish for. Five years ago, having just lost Thomas, I would have thought that my dearest wish upon turning 40 would be to have another child. Today, I just want my dad home. And I want him to stay there for as long as the gods can possibly spare him.

I've asked them for a lot of things over the past five years. I'm hoping they'll finally give me this one.

I never prepared for this

2010-03-29T11:35:00.000-04:00

But then again, who does? Who can?

My dad is in the hospital. Three weeks tomorrow. Last weekend he nearly died from septic shock after somehow contracting pneumonia, a blood infection, and a urinary tract infection.

He was this close to being released. This close to being back home in his chair in the window. In his own bed. In his little garden checking for spring buds.

Now sometimes he doesn't even know who I am. His blue eyes stare blankly back at me without so much as a flicker of recognition. This morning he thought he was talking to his mother on the phone. She's been dead for 44 years. He was talking to my mom.

I'm not prepared for this.

The staff seems nonplussed by his confusion. They brush it off and hint vaguely that it should go away once his body finishes fighting so hard.

His brief moments of lucidity keep me sane. But they're few and far between and until we get definitive word from his ever-elusive doctor that this will go away, I can barely breathe.

Three weeks ago tomorrow was Thomas' birthday. We spent it in the ER watching my dad gasp for breath in the morning, then cleaning up the mess the paramedics made of my mom and dad's house in the afternoon.

I'm not equipped for this.

I'm just not.

Missing

2010-03-10T21:33:00.000-05:00

To the moon and back, little one. To the moon and back.
oxox

Five years

2010-03-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

Close your eyes,
Have no fear,
The monsters gone,
He's on the run and your daddy's here,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

Before you go to sleep,
Say a little prayer,
Every day in every way,
It's getting better and better,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

Out on the ocean sailing away,
I can hardly wait,
To see you to come of age,
But I guess we'll both,
Just have to be patient,
Yes it's a long way to go,
But in the meantime,

Before you cross the street,
Take my hand,
Life is just what happens to you,
While your busy making other plans,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

~ John Lennon

With all the love my heart can hold, birthday kisses and hugs to heaven, my sweet, sweet little boy. I miss you and I'll love you forever and a day.

Love, Mommy

Happy

2010-03-08T15:28:00.000-05:00

I glanced up at the commercial and saw a family sitting on impossibly clean white couches. A child nestled up to her mother, the mother wearing a Mona Lisa smile of contentment. A Dad watched television across the room on an equally clean white couch with another child. Or maybe it was a dog.

I was fixated on the mother.

It was jut a commercial. She was paid to look serene. But it made me think about how different my life is than it could have been. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Not surprisingly.

I have a lot of joy in my life. But I am not who I was.

I recently read about a woman who was told, upon losing her child, that she would be okay again. She would be happy. But never like she was.

Truer words.

I will never be happy like I was. I will never, ever be able to see things the way I used to. Everything is filtered through a lens of loss.

And some days, particularly lovely sunny ones when I want to shed the weight of my sorrows like a child taking off its shoes and walking in spring grass for the first time after a long winter, it's hard to know I'll be fitted with this lens for the rest of my life.

It makes me tired. But also determined to continue to fight for whatever happiness is still left for me.

It's why I dug out my wedding tiara and an old fake pearl necklace and wore them to my sister's Oscar party last night. Along with a sweatshirt and jeans.

It's why I'm crocheting the world's largest, gaudiest afghan for our bed, which I'm aiming to have finished by tomorrow night. A little extra comfort is a good idea for tomorrow, I think.

It's why I have a shelf of seedlings basking in the sun by the sliding glass doors in the kitchen, and why I've been dreaming of digging in the dirt for weeks.

It's why I'm so grateful that more than 6400 people are signed up to do Random Acts of Kindness tomorrow.

I miss my boy. I miss the life we almost had. I miss being a mother to a living child and all the joys and sorrows that life would have held. Sticky kisses, crayon art, dandelion bouquets. I miss it all.

And I am not the same.

But I am fighting hard for happy.

It's like Monday all week long...

2010-03-05T19:24:00.000-05:00

Today at a light I found myself stopped behind some big brown minivan/SUV type thing with a cute little round bumper sticker that read, "I love my twins!" in happy red lettering.

And all I could do was shake my head, look to the sky, smile and admit defeat.

You go me, God. You got me good.

I'm so wracked with anxiety over my dad's health that I have to concentrate on remembering how to walk. Breathe. Blink. I'm hurting from missing my little boy so much that I'm surprised I'm not actually bleeding.

So, you know, good to know some happy family out there loves their twins and feels the need to tell every car that happens to be driving behind them about their familial joy. Couldn't have lived another moment without knowing that the brown minivan/SUV people love those rascally little twins.

I would have loved mine too.

There's never a good time of year for someone you love to be seriously ill. Never. But right now? My God, my mental resources are so depleted from the double whammy, I don't know what to do with myself.

So I've been walking. Somewhat obsessively. I found a site that lets you map your routes and then post them in a training log that adds up your accumulating kilometers and keeps track of the number of calories you've burned to date. This is the perfect thing for someone who desperately needs to fixate on something she can control.

11.6km so far this week.

If only I could outrun my fear and sorrow I'd be set.

An open letter

2010-03-01T10:15:00.005-05:00

Dear March,

So, you're back. You unpredictably cruel month, you.

You dangle the promise of spring before our hungry, winter-weary eyes with your thaws and balmy winds. And then you mock our need for your kindness with unexpected winter storms.

You're a sonofabitch.

I used to love you. I did. I loved the smell of your air, rich with earthy dampness. I loved your melting, dirty snow running in rivers down the streets. I loved your rushing, swollen rivers straining at their banks. I used to breathe you in deeply, marvel at your promise, urge you on eagerly knowing the treasures you held in store.

I was one of your biggest supporters.

Until.

And now you are just something to be endured. You are April's ugly, mean-spirited neighbour. We can't avoid you, so we just smile through gritted teeth and wait you out, hoping you'll move but knowing you never will. You'll be here, year after year after year.

You are endless, March.

I don't have to like you anymore, but I won't let you beat me. I will stand up to your cruelty and replace it with kindness. I will take your gloom and throw light on it. I will bundle up against your chill and stay warm. All month long, you bastard.

I will meet you head on and win. Not because I don't have any choice - but because I have chosen to fight.

There's nothing more you can take from me, but even though I'm empty-handed and broken-hearted you still haven't won.

I just thought you should know that.

Until next year,

Kristin

Dad

2010-02-22T15:32:00.004-05:00

I know her well enough to know that the phrase, "Don't worry, everything is okay...", means nothing when it's said with palpable fear that I recognize from 26 years of straining to hear the truth in words meant to comfort and distract.

Everything is not okay. I've known that for a while. When I opened up my eyes from the deep sleep of babyloss grief and saw just how old they've become in the last few years, I knew everything was not okay. Not anymore.

I've just pretended otherwise because it was easier that admitting that his heart is failing rapidly. I can't bear to think of that heart being stilled. I can't bear it. So I've been stubbornly burying my head as far down into the sand as it'll possibly go and pretending that I can't hear or see what is achingly obvious.

His heart is failing.

In February 1984, during an ordinary school lunch period, I found out that fathers aren't immortal. I found out that a dad so strong he used to be able to turn me upside down, lifet me up and let me walk on the ceiling, is only as strong as his heart.

In June 1998 I comforted myself with the knowledge that he probably had another 10 - 15 years, according to the doctor who implanted the defibrillator following his sudden cardiac arrest.

In August 2004, while pregnant with Thomas, I learned that even sickly fathers can be as strong as an ox; that they can survive defibrillator replacement surgery at 74 and thrive in only the way a stubborn Irish father with a bum ticker can.

I won't grieve before it's time. I won't. He would hate that as much as he hates knowing he's eventually going to be the cause of such awful grief.

So I won't.

But I can't promise I won't still cry every once in a while. Someone with a heart as loved as his should expect nothing less.

WOW...

2010-02-20T00:18:00.003-05:00

I think we're going to reach the 5000 member goal for Thomas' Random Act of Kindness group. With still more than two weeks to go, we're sitting at 4755 members!

I remain in constant awe of the love and support that's out there when you simply reach out your hand and ask for it.

Thank you.

A six month span

2010-02-18T21:23:00.008-05:00

Then (July '09)

And now (January '10)

And some random beauty shots which, although providing a certain amount of evidence to the contrary, do not mean that I'm turning into the crazy cat lady.

Mostly.

Crushing

2010-02-17T10:49:00.004-05:00

I have a bit of a girl crush on Dawn French these days. She's absolutely (and justifiably) unapologetic about her waist size, and funny as a stitch to boot. You can't beat that in a lady.

My Beloved and I devoured The Vicar of Dibley after Thomas died, watching back-to-back episodes day after day to soothe our wounded souls. Britcoms have proven to be an excellent salve, we've discovered. The British (and undeniably better) version of The Office had similar healing properties.

But Dawn is my girl.

I've been reading her autobiography, "Dear Fatty", for the last couple of weeks. Beyond her obvious comedic prowess and success in her field, I didn't know anything about her, so Dear Fatty has been an interesting read. And a funny one, of course. Written in letter form to friends, family and, on occasion, to Madonna and 1960s teen idols, it's a fascinating way to learn more about her.

Of course, I should have known that no life passes without sorrow. No soul makes it through life unscathed. And she is no exception. Her father committed suicide when she was 19. Many of the letters are addressed to him, posthumous ramblings about things in her life that he has missed since he left. Very touching and bittersweet.

One passage struck me so much that I dog-eared the page on which I found it - something I almost never do, along with cracking the spines of my books.

It was this:

"My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that...It's a process of having faith in the self you don't quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that's it. The further I walk, the stronger I become."

And isn't this what we all do, we babyloss survivors? We just keep walking. We walk until we've figured out who we are now. We walk until believe we are as strong as they tell us we are. We walk until we find our way. We just keep walking.

God, I love Dawn French.

Waiting and praying

2010-02-16T16:56:00.003-05:00

I inherited my inability to wait patiently from my father. He would (and did) drive thousands of miles to collect me and/or my sibling from various places/schools/homes/malls/jobs/ when we were younger without a moment's hesitation. And happily at that. But heaven forbid we make him wait one minute beyond that four hour drive - or five minute drive. He wasn't the least bit bothered by the length of time it took to reach his child, only the time spent waiting for her once he arrived.

And yeah, I'm kind of like that. Minus the kids waiting to be picked up, of course.

So after Mass I always sit in the pew and wait until the hoards file out of the church and start to vacate the parking lot, because my hackles rise almost instantly when I'm faced with the prospect of a waiting in my car. And then sitting in stop and go traffic until I can turn onto the main road home.

Sometimes I sit in my pew and watch the little groups chatting after Mass. Other times I kneel with my eyes closed in what would appear to be prayer, but usually actually isn't. I have trouble concentrating on prayer when people are moving and chatting around me. I'm entirely too nosy for after Mass prayer.

Why I bother making it look as though I'm praying is beyond me. Maybe I'm secretly hoping that God won't notice I'm planning the week's meals in my head. Maybe I'm hoping he'll just take a quick glance at my exceptional praying form (head bowed, eyes closed) and give me a gold star that I can redeem later in life.

I could use a gold star. He owes me.

Which brings me to the point of all this.

Last Sunday whilst I was kneeling in what no one would ever suspect wasn't prayer, I happened to look up and see an extremely pregnant woman standing at the foot of the altar staring up at the depiction of Jesus and his disciples. She was deep in thought (or maybe prayer, who am I to judge?) and was patting her belly very deliberately, as though punctuating whatever words were running through her mind with each little pat.

I froze in horror. And in my mind I screamed, "No, no, no - it won't make any difference! What will be, will be no matter how fervent those prayers are - no matter how hard you plead!"

And that seems like an awful reaction.

But I still think it's true. God help me, I do.

I admit that sometimes I still whisper quiet, tentative prayers for people who I think need them. I have asked God to cure. To save. Even since Thomas, I have uttered those words. Even when I know how utterly and completely they failed when I prayed them nearly five years ago.

And that's why I'm not sure they make any difference at all, those frantic, pleading kind of prayers.

Because, if you've noticed, people still die no matter how many people are busily begging for a different outcome. Because that's when they were supposed to die. Period.

I believe in God. I believe in miracles. I believe in the power of prayer - but only in so much as it can bring comfort to the helpless who have no other recourse but to beg, so that they feel they've done something. Anything.

I just don't believe in that kind of prayer anymore. There are other kinds, of course. Prayers of gratitude? Those are fine. Prayers for guidance and clarity? Also fine. But prayers to save the lives of others? I don't think anyone here has that kind of power, no matter how fervent the words, or how many of us are saying them.

I don't see this as a weakness or some little chink in my armor of faith. I see this as a realistic way to proceed from this point on. To ask God to save someone when it's their time to die only sets me up for the kind of confusion, feelings of betrayal and all-consuming anger I felt when Thomas died.

I hope the woman at Mass has a healthy child. But I can't pray for that because it's already decided.

No matter what I want. It's already decided.

A request...

2010-02-15T22:37:00.002-05:00

It's joining this...if you could.

5000 members by March 9th is a big goal, but that many random acts of kindness done in the name of a little boy who was here just 20 hours would be incredible. Incredible.

And so very, very appreciated.

Thanks, Kitty

2010-02-10T10:50:00.003-05:00

On Saturday morning we had to put My Beloved's cat to sleep. Kitty, at 17, had lived longer with My Beloved's parents than with him after he was forbidden to take her with him when he moved out of the house.

But still, she was his. And we had to make the agonizing call on Saturday morning after the vet ran tests through the night. It was the right call, of course. Neither of us wanted to prolong her suffering, and she was indeed suffering.

But still. But still.

As we were driving about in the bright February sunshine later that day trying to amuse and sooth ourselves, I had that odd, familiar feeling. We were at a red light and I was absently watching traffic passing in front of us. The cars drove by, the people inside oblivious to the sorrow I felt for the little orange cat I'd said goodbye to the night before.

And it all felt familiar. So familiar.

It was like I was wrapped in gauze, staring out at the bright, functioning world from within a filmy layer of sorrow. Both part of the world, and yet somehow totally removed from it. Seeing it all, but not fully engaged in any of it.

It's the way I spent most of my 30s. Losing babies and losing Thomas and sitting in a tiny cocoon of grief, detached from the world around me.

Of course, Kitty was a cat. And as sad as it is to lose a pet, the sorrow eases much more quickly. The world won't wait long before pulling you back into its warmth and brightness in its eagerness to show you all the joys and beauty it has to offer.

But not so when it's a child you're grieving for. The gauze is thicker. The time it takes to shrug it off and truly see again is much, much longer.

I knew I was in full-on survival mode when I was in the first throes of grief with each of my babies. I knew I was absorbed in my pain and I did feel a sense of detachment from the world and people around me.

But it wasn't until Kitty died that I realized just how isolating that grief is. It came and went with Kitty - she wasn't mine and the length of that immediate shock and sorrow was appropriate for the situation. But it lingered for months, maybe years, after Thomas died. I just didn't realize it until I felt it again - until I saw the world through the gauzy lens of sorrow once more.

You don't know how much progress you've made until something like losing a cat reminds you exactly how far you've come.

And I have come far, as it turns out. I really have.

It doesn't matter how gentle you are, Dr.

2010-01-22T08:11:00.004-05:00

I think it's safe to say that nobody likes the dentist. But I've found an interesting challenge in dentistry these days.

Let me backtrack...

I had braces when I was 12. And before the braces, four molar extractions. All at the same time. Which resulted in a low grade fever and a bloody, drooling mess of a girl. After that, followed by the agony of a year of orthodontic torture in the form of regular brace tightening (which, I'm positive, is some modern relative of medieval torture), there was very little a dentist could do to scare me.

I laughed in the face of the buzzing drill. I scoffed at Novocaine. I rolled my eyes and sighed at any and all scaling, scraping and prodding using pointy little wands.

Until five years ago.

I had dentistry conquered. And smugly so. But then one day I found myself lying on an operating table hearing the words, "We're having a little trouble stopping the bleeding", and everything changed.

My baby died. And hell folded in on me.

There were complications. Nasty, life-threatening complications. And a few days later there was a moment when I was laying splayed out on my hospital bed waiting for an OB to come fix my leaky c-section wound while two other nurses searched desperately for viable veins in each arm in which to pump the drugs keeping the infection at bay when I completely lost it.

And I've never recovered it.

Fertility treatments added to the weight of the cumulative trauma. As did a subsequent lap, and a D&C that required an overnight stay complete with a balloon catheter in my uterus to stop yet another bout of bleeding after yet another loss.

And so now, when the most gentle dentist I've ever known leans over me to do routine (albeit still unpleasant) dental work, it takes deep breathing, an unwavering focus on my happy place, and absolute nerves of steel to keep from succumbing to the panic of not being in control.

Such a familiar panic.

Which is why I've put off dentistry for a while. And why, in turn, I have a solid month of weekly appointments to deal with the neglect.

The mind is ever fascinating. Secret panic kept locked away always manages to snake its way out. But, I suppose, there's nothing like four weeks of immersion therapy to deal with it.

Guilty

2010-01-11T17:45:00.004-05:00

It takes so much energy to chase away the unfounded guilt that I still occasionally find lurking in my head.

I've worked hard to distinguish unfounded guilt from real guilt, so much so that now I can feel it. I know it by its weight, and height, and breadth. I can actually feel it taking up space. In my neck. In my shoulders. On my back.

Today I made my Mother cry. Now, in my defense, it doesn't take much to make my mother cry. She is one of those people whose protective armor is about as strong as cheap cling wrap. And with good reason. She has lived a difficult life in many ways, and is certainly no stranger to the kind of tragedy that crashes in on an otherwise quiet existence, turning it upside-down and inside-out.

But still, I made her cry.

We were talking, in a round about way, about Thomas. About our common sorrow, and how it affects your views of life and death. About the curious ambivalence you have towards both once someone so wee and dear is taken from you.

And, she cried. She choked back tears as she told me that she has nothing to look forward to because what we all thought was going to be our future was suddenly gone one sunny March day. She said part of her died that day too.

And she cried.

And I sat stupidly mute on the other end of the phone searching for the right words. Because I'd made her cry.

And I felt responsible for her grief. For who she is grieving for, and for what she now knows is never coming. For the future she lost so many times over.

It pressed me down to the bed. Held me there. Sat on my back and tried to suffocate me in the blankets.

But I am not responsible for this. In the smallest voice I have, I quietly told guilt that it isn't my fault. That I can't do more than I have. That I can't risk more than I have. That I cannot be held responsible for someone else's sorrow.

I pushed back. I stood up. I shook it off.

But I made my mother cry.