Stars

Stars, in your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night

You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same

Although originally written to fit a much different context, these lyrics from a popular Broadway musical run through my head every night as I think of my beautiful little Gracie.  I am lucky enough to live in an area with relatively little light pollution, so as long as the sky isn't clouded over, it's stars aplenty.  But even on cloudy nights, and the nights that my DH takes the dogs outside, there are still plenty of thought provoking stars to see. 

The ceiling in Jenna's room is covered with hundreds of glow in the dark star stickers.  Long story, but it has been this way for about 15 years.  When I turn the light off and sit down to do our bed time snuggle each night, these stars 'shine' so brightly, having been charged by the light.  By the time Jenna is asleep in her crib, most of the bedroom stars have dimmed considerably or 'burned out' all together...almost as if Gracie is showing me that she is also asleep for the night. 

There are so many different things that remind us of our angels...stars have always been at the top of my list, and moved more further toward the top of the list after a wonderful friend had a star named for Gracie.  Even though the bedroom stars aren't 'real', it's nice to think that she is here with us each night at bedtime, and that she is, perhaps, really watching over her baby sister...

25 Days of Giveaways Prize

I was lucky enough to win two giveaways during this year's 25 Days of Giveaways.  After that, I quit entering!  I received the second prize this week, and I absolutely LOVE it!  When Tina contacted me to see what I wanted, I told her that I don't wear a lot of jewelry, and that she should just use her best judgment.  I think that frightened her a little bit!  :-)

But she did a fabulous job of selecting a beautiful prize for me.  Thank you so, so much, Tina!!

Still Life 365

I almost forgot...it's a good thing it popped up on my Google Reader!  For those who do not regularly follow, or have never been over to Still Life 365, go check it out today.  Today's 'art' is mine!!  It's kind of ironic that Angie posted my photo today...since Gracie was born 18 months ago today...

I Carry Your Heart With Me

 

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

 

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

- e. e. cummings ~

Perhaps I'm in a bit of a slump.  I don't know.  I think about Gracie all the time, but the last few days I've been thinking about Gracie ALL the time.  And then I think about my thoughts.  

I think about where I really am in the 5 step grieving process that we all know so well... 

Denial and Isolation

Anger 

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

Or perhaps the more comprehensive and thorough seven stages of grief.....the five stages outlined above plus Pain/Guilt and Testing/Reconstruction...

Pain and Guilt
At this stage, the grieving person realizes that the loss that has happened is true. This is the most chaotic and scary stage of grief. Many people succumb to alcohol and drugs at this stage of grief. Intense feelings of guilt and compunction are experienced due to the wrong things done which led to this irreversible loss. Sometimes, in grief, people blame themselves and consider themselves responsible for the loss.
Testing and Reconstruction
This is the testing stage in which the depressed person starts to indulge in other activities so as to escape the disturbing sorrow. In fact this is the beginning of the next and last stage, i.e. acceptance of and coming to terms with the reality. It is also a stage of reconstruction as in this stage, he starts the process reconstruction of his life by searching for solutions and ways to come out of his grief.

I read the definition of all of these, and can't find where my thoughts fit.  I guess if I had to assign myself to a stage, it would be acceptance.  I have accepted Gracie's death for what it is.  Death.  Permanence.  So the wondering that goes on constantly in my mind...the wondering about all of the things we missed with Gracie...wondering about what she would look like, what she would sound like, what kind of personality she would have...is part of my grief/acceptance or is that part of my healing?  Certainly, every parent who has lost a child, at any age and under any circumstances, has wondered these things.  Certainly it is normal, but what is it?  Grief or healing? 

These thoughts have been playing at full volume in my mind over the last few days.  I don't like full volume.  I don't necessarily want them to go away; one of my greatest fears is forgetting, and the first step in forgetting is the clearing of thoughts, but a much lower volume would be much better.  Regardless of the volume, I will always carry Gracie's heart with me.  It will forever beat within mine. 

With Sincere Thanks...

... to Katie, Lea and Jen, I would like to show you a few of Gracie's new things.

Katie made Gracie a beautiful ornament for Christmas...

 

Lea was kind enough to  make a pair of angel wings for Gracie, as well as do a Pregnancy and Infant Loss Ribbon with Gracie's name on.

Jen took a picture of Gracie's name under her Christmas tree - isn't it just the cutest!?!?!?

 Thanks so much, girls!!!  I love them!!!!

February FOLFOH Writing Challenge

Each month, the girls over at FOLFOH will be posting a writing topic.  If you want to participate, simply write a blog post on said topic, then link to it on their site.  Another BLM grief site used to do this, and I looked forward to it.  Sadly, they stopped doing it shortly after I came to this community.


February's FOLFOH writing topic is: Valentine's Day is quickly approaching. Write about something special a friend, family member, or other loved one did for you after your baby(ies) died that really touched your heart.


Sadly, I think most of the things that have been done for me/us have been done by other BLMs.  I guess that came out wrong.  I am always grateful for the things that other BLMs do to remember Gracie, but I wish sometimes that more people around is in our everyday lives would do more to remember her.  In terms of things done for us by other baby loss parents, it's hard to narrow it down.  I would have been simply lost in the early days without the support of my friend Debbie.  That kind of support is invaluable.  The other thing that will always stand out for me came from my friend Dawn, who had a star named after Gracie. 

I think the thing that sticks out the most that was done for us by a non-BLM or BLD is an ornament that a friend made last year for Christmas.  He did not know that we had decided that Christmas tree ornaments would be the thing we bought for Gracie each year.  He just emailed me and said that he had made an ornament for her.  He does a lot of work with powder horns and scrimshaw.  He actually made this from a piece of broken horn that he couldn't use for anything else.  It was, and is, a very special gift.

The Week of Speaking Before Thinking

I missed 3 days of work this week because I was sick, which means that I spent a grand total of 15 hours interacting with people.  Within that 15 hours....

On Monday one of my outatients asked me about Gracie.  She said that she had wanted to ask for quite some time, but didn't really know how to ask.  This woman is educated - she's a registered nurse (who should be retired, but still works home health and roving health fairs one day a week to pay for her horses).  After hearing a little bit of Gracie's story and finding out that she likely had Down Syndrome, she looked as me and said "But you know, Honey, if she was Mongoloid and going to have all kinds of health problems, it really is probably better this way..."  Blah, blah, blah.  Seriously?

Fast forward to Friday.  One of the students that I see at school had a substitute personal care nurse with her.  I've met this women before, with another student, but apparently I haven't run into her since I was pregnant with Gracie.  I come into contact with so many personal care nurses and therapeutic support staff personnel as I move from school to school that I have a hard time keeping track of things like this.  I knew it had been a while since I had run into her, but I didn't realize how long it had been.  In the big picture, it's really a small pool of people working within a small pool of students, and they move from case to case quite frequently.  (I could poll 20 nurses or personal care aides, and at least half of them would have a list of 3 or 4 other kids from my caseload that they have worked with over the last year or two.)  Anyway...this woman yesterday asked how my 'little one' was.  I gave the standard answer "Oh, she's great.  She's growing like a weed, which is what we want!"  She asked how old she was now and I said "just about 4 1/2 months."  She gave me the most bizarre look and then her eyes lit up and she said "Oh!  You have a second already!  Oh, my!!"  And before I could get a word in, she asked about my "first."  She asked it was a boy or girl, and how old now, etc.  God love the third grader I was working with...she didn't miss a beat.  She said "Oh, Miss Nancy, Miss Susan's first baby died."  Even kids with 'special needs' don't miss a thing.  The nurse said something to the effect of "Oh, Honey, Miss Susan's baby didn't die", to which I responded, "Actually, she did."  Enter the seemingly eternal blank stare.  I filled her in as much as I could in front of a third grader, and she gave me the same response that I got from the patient in my office.  Seriously???  WTF???

I don't get this much anymore, so it seems a bit odd that I got it twice this week, especially since I only worked two days.  But seriously, it's been a year and a half.    I know that these comments are just misguided, and that they are really meant to be supportive, but still...  I am happy to say that it doesn't have the scarring impact that it did a year ago, but it does sting a little bit sometimes to have someone tell you that your kid is better off dead.  Yes.  I am sure that we would have faced some difficult situations later in life, logistically speaking, that we don't face now.  Yes, there probably would have been a few health concerns.  But that's part of life.  Down Syndrome or not, I would have loved Gracie fiercely every single day for the rest of my life.  Nothing can/could change the fact that she is my daughter.  Nothing.  As it is, I will still love her every day for the rest of my life, just not how I was expecting.  I guess this is just hard for people to understand...as much as I hate to admit it, it's nearly impossible for anyone to accurately 'imagine' being in our shoes.  The only way to really understand is to be here.  As much as I would love people to understand, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  Ever.

It is what it is, but I am just amazed by how naive people around us really are.  Still.  

Remnants

I have been sick for the last two days.  As I sat on the couch today trying to muster the gumption to get some tea, something dawned on me.  Today I can say that I was pregnant with my first child 18 months ago.  In one week I will not be able to say that.  Monday will mark 18 months since Gracie died, and the wee hours of Tuesday will mark 18 months since her very silent birth directly into Heaven.  In some aspects, it seems just like yesterday, and in other aspects it seems like a lifetime ago.  I looked at her pictures on the computer for about 20 minutes after DH went to work this afternoon.  To be honest, I don't think he even realizes that we are approaching another milestone, and I'm not sure that I really want to remind him.  

It just seems impossible that it's been 18 months already.  I was reading a post by Acacia's mom earlier, and I can definitely relate to something that she wrote.  As much as I didn't want it to, I knew this day would come eventually, and it saddens me beyond words.  It makes me feel even worse to admit publicly that the details of Gracie's face are starting to escape my mind.  The generalities are still there, but the details are fading.  It seems impossible, since I look at her pictures frequently, but I now have to actually look at her pictures to recall the details. 

I look ahead another 5 or 10 or 20 years and wonder if I will remember.  I wonder how much will have faded.  I wonder how often I will look at her pictures.  God forbid, but I wonder if there will ever come a time that her birthday slips past us.  I wonder what she will look like when we are reunited...and I wonder if we will recognize each other then. 

~~ possible triggers below ~~
 

For the last few months, I have walked around every day with blog posts in my brain.  Occasionally I am able to start a post and come back and add to it over a period of days, but for the most part I usually don't have the time needed to sit down and get my thoughts into the computer.  As a result, I continue to walk around with random thoughts and feelings floating around in my brain...this post is an attempt to purge some of them and make space for some new thoughts in there!  Some of it will seem really random, and some of it not so random...I am just using this as a medium to get it out. 

My sister is currently assigned, via the Peace Corps, to a teaching assignment in Namibia, Africa.  She left for this assignment 2 weeks after Gracie's funeral, and will be in Namibia until some time between October and December 2011.  After much debate, she decided to some back to the states for a 3.5 week visit that covered the last half of December and the first week of January. To say the least, her visit did not go well, for many reasons.  While I tried to have no expectations for her time here, I was so excited for her to meet Jenna...but about an hour after she met her, an unexpected phrase crossed her lips.  "I'm just not that into babies."  Talk about a knife to the heart.  Prior to her departure, there was unpleasant communication between us about this, and other things that happened during her visit.  On the surface, things were okay when she left, but I am not sure that they are really okay.  I am worried about what things will be like when she comes home at the end of the year; I wonder what kind of interest she will have in my kids in the coming years; I wonder, in general, how different she will be once she gets back to the states and settles back in.  I am still somewhat disappointed about how things unfolded, and honestly, I am still a little mad about some of the things that happened.  Some of these feelings are deeper rooted and go beyond this visit, but I really don't think that she understood that when I threw it out there.  I don't know...I am feeling quite anxious and unsettled by the whole thin.  I hope the things that were amiss are better by the time she returns.

I seem to be quite frustrated by having to wear my big girl panties lately.  Over the last couple of months, I have had to fight, with all I have, the urge to unleash on a few specific people that I know in real life.  It's an incredible urge to blatantly and bluntly tell them what/how I really feel about them.  Holding my tongue and speaking in a socially acceptable manner is really starting to get under my skin.  At the risk of sounding judgmental, these people are all self-centered idiots (of varying degrees, of course), and everyone knows that except them.  I have no interest in being around or working with these people, but it's unavoidable.  *sigh*  I suppose that in good time, their eyes will be opened somehow.  Until then, the big girl panties it is. 


Completely jumping topics...  Over the last several months I have been unable to shake an unhealthy obsession with/fear of death.  I am petrified of those close and important to me just disappearing. Some days I want to suggest that DH and I ride in separate cars...just in case.  I am petrified that he won't come home from work one night (He's a cop.  Nothing ever happens here, but the thought is always there.)  I was petrified that my sister's plane would crash into the Atlantic during her trip home over the holidays.  I'm afraid of waking up to find one of my dogs or cats dead.  And of course, I am convinced that I will go in to get Jenna up some morning and she won't be breathing.  I am certain that this is the largest root of this whole psychological mess, and that eventually, the volume of this fear will start to fade a little bit.  In the meantime, it's kind of making me a little nuts.  :-P

Jenna's birth has forced me to plunge back into 'communication' with my mother, since DH says that she will not be intentionally kept from her grandchildren.  My parents divorced when I was 14 or 15 and I moved in with my dad when I was 16.  Prior to that, my relationship with my mother had been in the crapper for several years.  Most people assume that it's because I was a snot-nosed kid who couldn't get over something.  Definitely not the case, but only a few people closest to me have ever seen my mother's true colors to understand the whole story.  Some people, including my husband, never saw it until several years after he met her.  The fact that my mother and step-father did not show up for our wedding 2.5 years ago, more or less as part of some passive-aggressive tactic, opened the eyes of many non-believers.  

Fast forward to my pregnancy with Gracie.  No communication at all between me and mother for the duration of my pregnancy.  The only thing we heard from their camp is that they stood in a local restaurant and told the girls working there that our decision to have a baby was some huge, life altering mistake.  Other than that, all was quiet.  And honestly, I was okay with that.  I am faaarrrr less stressed with things are quiet.  Several days before Gracie died, my stepfather started calling Jeff to tell him that my mom's birthday was at the end of the week and I should call her to wish her a happy birthday.  As luck would have it, Gracie died on my mother's 60th birthday.  Jeff called my stepfather to tell him that I would not be calling, and why.  And then they proceeded to call us 4 times in the 11.5 hours that I was in labor.  Phone calls were NOT what we wanted...from anyone.  We debated whether or not they would be included in the funeral, and ultimately, we decided that my mother had the right to mourn her granddaughter.  There were several points during the service when all was quiet...and all you could hear was my mother sobbing.  I have lots to say about this, but I will leave it at that.  After that, very little communication from their camp until about half way through our pregnancy with Jenna, when my stepfather cornered my MIL outside the grocery store one day.  Again, when Jenna was born, Jeff decided that my mother would not be cut off from grandchildren.  And that's all it has taken to open the door.  Once the door is cracked, my mom tends to come through on a bulldozer.

She was very over the top in the first few weeks after Jenna was born, and then they suddenly disappeared again.  Good and bad.  Bad because she is sitting around waiting for us to call and invite them over to see Jenna.  (We have a standing rule with everybody - if you want to come see her, call.  If we're home and up for visitors, you are welcome to stop by.  We no longer issue gold-plated and engraved invitations for people to come visit.)  Then she friended me on FB.  I didn't do anything with it, and after about a week I checked to see if she had friended anyone else.  It's been a few months, and she hasn't friended anyone else, so I know that it's another cyberstalking tactic, which I just can't handle.  I know absolutely, without any doubt, that if I friended her on FB so she could see more pics of Jenna, that she would go through my profile and friend list with a fine tooth comb...and eventually end up here.  In Gracie's blog.  Which is exactly where I don't want her.  Ugh.  The whole thing is uber-stressful, and I don't need that kind of stress.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to get any better. 
 
And last, but not least, there is the age old question that has been spinning in the front of my brain again.  Why do I come to this place...the baby loss blogosphere?  Why do I come here?  What does it mean?  I suppose, on a basic level, the appropriate answer is that I come here to expel my grief.  Sometimes I wonder if coming here keeps me here.  I wonder if not coming here for a while helps to lift me up?  Am I down because I come here or do I come here because I am down?   I think, for the most part, I come here now because I am down.  The days that I come here and write are the days that I am really missing my little peanut.  They are the days that I am overflowing with thoughts that I can't really purge anywhere else, because they are thoughts that not many people will understand.  I can come here, and offload whatever demons I'm carrying with me, and usually feel a little better after I do.  For the most part. In recent months I have begun to hold back a bit, even is this forum, simply because I have had trouble really purging my feelings without offending someone in the process...even here.  Who knows how long I will continue to come here to purge.  And in all truth, who knows how long I will come here to memorialize my first born child.  I guess that only time will tell...

So there is all of the crap that has been spinning in my head for the last few weeks...  It certainly makes me seem like a hot mess, huh?  In all reality, it's not too bad as long as the thoughts don't bang into each other as they spin.  :-)