Life with an asterisk

I feel like I am living my life with one big asterisk beside everything I say. If I were to write out any conversation I have right now, for instance if I said "We had a good Christmas", I would then have to add "*but it was sad and we missed Rip", somewhere below.

This is completely my doing, I know nobody else thinks for a minute that whatever good time I have is not coupled with some sadness. I think it is mainly guilt that makes me feel like I have to add a disclaimer, like somehow I am not being a loving mother if I don't remind everyone how much I miss my child. Like having fun is somehow disrespectful.

What I am slowly coming to realize is that the asterisk is there whether I choose to voice it or not. Missing and loving Rip is a part of me now, just like my smile or my shoe size. I am a different person than I was before he was born. Are some of those differences for the better? Absolutely. Do some of those differences completely suck? Yes again.

The point I am trying to reach, and I think I am doing better about getting there, is that despite the sadness there can still be fun, good times.*

*and it is still okay for me to enjoy them

Who I Am

I woke up this morning in a funk. Partially just the normal "day after (after) Christmas" funk, compounded by the overall crumminess of my situation.

Right now, I mainly wish that I could have Rip back, which I also realize is not going to be possible on this earth. On top of that, my reason for getting pregnant in the first place has never changed, I wanted and want a baby...but my body (and probably my mind) is not ready to get pregnant again. So I here I sit in limbo, unable to do anything about what I want most in the world. Hence the funk.

In an attempt to be productive, I decided to clean out my wallet (mainly because this type of productivity did not involve getting out of bed). After going through many years worth of insurance and Bilo bonus cards, I moved on to the side pocket where I stick notes, pictures, etc.

The first item I pulled out was I notice from the Social Security Office, acknowledging that I had completed the final step to becoming Anne Hassold Harris.

The second was a sheet of photo booth pictures Parke and I took at a wedding several years ago. We are dying laughing in most of them, in the last one I am leaning into his neck while he hugs me close.

The third was a note from my mom, written on a birthday a few years back. It reads, "We all love you so so much, You've always had that special touch, No one else could take your place, with your smart little self and beautiful face."

Fourth was a note I must have written after we lost Rip, although I don't remember doing it. It reads "Dear Lord, please let me be a mom again to a healthy baby".

Finally I pulled out a very old piece of paper. It reads, "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs and don't forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this you will experience God's peace, which is more wonderful than the human mind can understand, Philippians 4: 6-7"

With five pieces of paper, my wallet managed to remind me of who I am, who loves me, and where to go from here. Not bad for a Monday morning, right?

Great Miracles

Where there is great love there are always miracles. - Willa Cather

I recently came across this quote and it gave me an overwhelming sense of peace. One of the many gifts I have received from Rip is the ability to see how much love surrounds me. Love for Rip, and love for and from my husband, family, and friends.

My wish for this Christmas and the new year is to surround myself with great love and watch the miracles unfold.

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.