A Lesson I Did Not Necessarily Want to Learn

I have a very vivid memory of leaving the hospital the day we found out that Rip was not going to make it and watching a woman walking down the street in a Santa hat. I remember turning to Parke and saying "How is she walking around like that when the whole world has just ended?"

And that was how I felt, and to some degree how I still feel. What is hard, just like that day, is that the world has not ended for anybody else. Even though Rip is all that I (and Parke, and probably the rest of our families) can think about, everyone else is getting ready for the holidays with the usual excitement and cheer.

I think the loss of a child, and maybe especially a baby, is first and foremost nothing anybody wants to dwell on. I know I used to feel awkward talking to someone after they experienced any kind of loss, probably even avoided the subject all together if possible. I also think it is hard for people to understand another person's pain. With Rip, Parke and I are really the only ones to know what it was like to see that positive pregnant test, to feel those first kicks at 17 weeks, to know that he got the hiccups every day at 7:00 am and 4:00 pm, and to know that the first moment of Rip's life was the best of ours. Even our feelings and experiences during those times are different.

I know that time (I've developed a real dislike for time by the way) will help, that this will not always be such a constant on my mind. I guess the only real lesson to remember is that everybody has something going on in their lives, and even though you may not really understand it, you can be there to help them through it.

Remember When

At Rip's service, our minister said something that I've thought about many times in these last few weeks. He said (and a friend had to remind me he said it, so much of that day was lost on me), that one day when Parke and I are old and gray, we will be sitting there in a house filled with our children and our grandchildren, and we will be able to look at each other and say "Life is good".

Today is Rip's original due date, a day I have been dreading all week. Even though I knew for a good bit of my pregnancy that he would not be born in December, it is hard on days like this not to think of the "what-ifs".

This morning I got up, grabbed my ipod, and headed to the beach. My plan was to walk and mope around. What I did not realize was that it is FREEZING outside, even worse by the water. To warm up, I started to run. It was amazing, I'd forgotten how much I love the freedom of running. I felt healthier and stronger than I have in such a long time. And I felt Rip with me every step of the way. I thought about how much I miss him, but also how much of him I carry with me.

When I turned around, wind-whipped and exhausted but happy, the Alan Jackson song "Remember When" came on the ipod. What has always seemed like a pretty cheesy country song suddenly made a lot of sense. The last part of that song reminded me of what our minister said...

Remember when thirty seemed so old
Now looking back it's just a stepping stone
To where we are,
Where we've been
Said we'd do it all again
Remember when
Remember when we said when we turned gray
When the children grow up and move away
We won't be sad, we'll be glad
For all the life we've had
And we'll remember when

Rip will always be my little boy, and I will always love and miss him. I will always wish with all of my heart that he was still here. But I also expect to get old and gray (well, maybe just old), to have a full life with children and grandchildren, to have many "remember whens", and to be able to say at the end of it all that life is good.

Whatever Works

My mom and I were talking this morning about how different people are when you lose someone you love. I have now read many, many books about the process of losing a child (some of them really good, some of them not so much) and I get that there are certain stages that we all go through but I think whatever gets you through those stages is very different for everyone.

I call the stage I am in now my bubble wrap stage. Most of the time, I feel like there is almost a shield between me and the rest of the world. I kind of bumble along in my little cocoon, not exactly feeling numb but just insulated from anything going on around me. I am actually pretty content in my bubble wrap phase but every once in a while something will pierce through and pop the bubbles (the other day it was some red and white mints that I ate in the hospital) and I am a mess.

It's those messy times where I've really learned what really works to help get me through all of this.

One of the things that has surprised me is how much looking at pictures of Rip has helped me. As the weeks went by, I found myself forgetting things about him and that scared me. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I ordered pictures we had taken on Rip's first days. When they arrived in the mail a couple of days later the first thing I noticed were his ears. He had the funniest looking ears I have ever seen, they had a weird little divot in the middle that made them look like the world's tiniest elephant ears. It was the first thing I noticed when I held him after he was born and I could not believe I'd forgotten about them. Even though of course I cried looking at the pictures, it also made me smile that I never have to forget again. I have the best elephant ear shot beside my bed, and it makes me so happy.

Those pictures are helping me get through this bubble wrap stage, and like I said, whatever works.

Won't I be SURprised When...

Recently, it was pointed out to me that I misspelled "surprised" all over this darn blog...which is just soooooo typical. And even though I've fixed the misspellings on the actual page, I can't figure out how to change the name of blog to include that all important "r"...which is also soooooo typical.

Either way, whether I am "suprised" or "surprised", I think I will be thankful to look back at all of these posts this time next year and see how far we have come.

I also now understand why nobody seemed all that "surprised" when I never won a Spelling Bee.

Good Grief

I like to do things fast. In school, I was almost always the first person done with my test. I like lists of tasks that I can check off. I always wake up in the morning with my head swimming of things I need to do, thinking I will never get them done, and knock them out by noon. My speed reading is legendary (well, not really, but several people know about it.)

The thing is, with all of these things I can do so quickly, it is mostly just so I can get to the end. For example, with the books, I almost always read the end of the book first. That way, I know the outcome, knowing full well through whether the hero will be saved or ruined. Then I get them there as quickly as I can...it's not knowing how the ending is going to go that stresses me out, so I get there as fast I can.

If there is one thing I have learned in these past three weeks, it is that you cannot get to the end of grief quickly no matter what you do. I was a psychology minor in college, and listened to all of those "stages" the experts listed when it came to loss. I probably even finished the test in record time. What I did not realize was that you could go through your anger, sadness, denial, and acceptance all within an hour (if not a few minutes) and then do it all over again. Thousands of times. I did not realize you could literally be on your knees crying so hard you can barely breathe, only to be laughing an hour later.

I am not "good" at grief. I want it to be over. I want to read the end of the book and find out whether or not I turn out okay. But no matter how hard I try I can't outrun, check off, or get to the end of grief before it is done with me. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.

Two Things...

When I was pregnant, I wrote a lot on here about what not to say/do around pregnant women. I completely understand that there is just no appropriate thing to say/do when someone has lost a child. Nobody is going to be able to tell us what we want to hear (that this whole thing never happened), but most people are so sincere in saying that they are so sorry for our loss that it does actually help. That being said, in the past two weeks I have experienced two circumstances that I just thought I should write down as what, under no circumstance, should you do when someone has experienced the loss of their baby.

My first encounter with "what not to do" occurred when I got back to work. I received plenty of hugs and warm welcomes, all of which made re-entering the work place much easier. Even those that did not know about Rip were so sympathetic when they heard the news... that is until I ran into a woman I did not know very well from another office.

She knew I was pregnant so she asked how the baby was doing. While this is always hard, I can hardly blame people for asking a totally understandable question. It was only after I explained what happened that she came up with a real gem. "Oh" says she, " at least it was just a baby and not really like you lost a child." I'm really not prone to violence but let's just say she is lucky not to have a black eye right now.

As bad as that was, I think this second situation was worse, if only because it occurred with a "professional". Parke and I went to see a grief counselor, with my hope that she could provide us with guidance and better ways to cope. What she did was talk for the full hour about how life was really about loss... how she in fact had lost two husbands, a father, and a girl she went to college with...how her daughter has also lost a child but that she (the trained grief counselor) had been too sad to go to her daughter...and then just when I thought I could not be any more depressed she ended the session by sticking her iphone in our faces so that we could watch a two minute video of her happy healthy baby granddaughter squealing and laughing...just in case we did not realize what we had lost, I guess. Then she charged us one hundred dollars and asked when we would be back. Needless to say, we won't.

I realize I am a little on edge right now, and probably a lot more sensitive than I will ever be again. And I know these people probably meant well. But honestly folks...

So, that is my vent for the day.

Don't you know I like my life that way...

You will probably think I am crazy after reading this post, but as Pat Green says, if this is crazy then I like my life that way.
My mother-in-law was kind enough to get us fuel for our gas fire as an anniversary gift. The "gas guy" came by yesterday to fill the tank while I was not there...by the time I did get there the house smelled strongly of gas. I figured blowing up the house at this point would be the last straw for a lot of people, so I called the company.
They were little to no help, had me running around turning on and off gas and finally asking me to re-light the pilot light to the darn fire. I am not mechanically inclined under the best of circumstances and I can barely get myself dressed right now so you can imagine how thrilled I was to be playing with fire.
So there I sat, my big head directly in the fireplace, mashing every button in sight trying to get this alleged pilot light to do its thing while the whole place still smelled terrible, no clue whether I was making things better or worse.
I lost it. I screamed and yelled and shook my fist at God, let Him know I could not handle ONE MORE THING.
And the fire came on.
And then I heard very clearly, "you will have another baby."
And then I cried some more.

So...I realize that makes me sound crazy and I don't care. If it takes me melting down (no pun intended) over a fireplace in North Charleston, SC to feel God again then so be it. I know that I will have so many more days of breaking down and crying my eyes out, but I also now know that we are going to be okay. That's my kind of crazy.