The many faces of grief

Grief comes in so many different shapes, sizes and colors.

Of late, I have had half a dozen people in my life die of a variety of reasons and causes. And these are people that perhaps have not been in my life for years, but at one point were significant or made an impression or simply were just always there as anchors in a life surrounded and enriched by so many others.

Take Bill. The stalwart German who I worked for a number of years back. Cleaned toilets in his tennis shop in high school. I was generally afraid of him most of the time, his gruffness, his solitude, but underneath all of that, I could see the hints of softness and graciousness. His mother, in her 80s, sat in the tennis shop, slipping me $5 and $10 bills in between scrubbing counters and sweeping floors. And Bill quietly (if not gruffly) went about his business. And then one day, I went off to college and returned and met him again, and we had coffee and he asked me if I'd read his book he'd written from the point of view of a dog. He'd never shown it to anyone but he heard I was a writer and thought I might have some advice for him. So we chatted and I read and we shared a connection over writing, over dogs, over things lost and remembered.

And now Bill may he rest in peace.

Take Etsa. Our Italian friend. Her husband employed my brother when he was a teenager. And over the years, as the younger sister, I tagged along to parties at their house. I tagged along to meals, grown and picked and sauteed at their house. The meals started with one course and ended in the seventh or eighth course. First the pasta and the sauce and the lamb and beef and bread and more pasta and fruit and the final course of salad when you just felt that you couldn't eat any more. And the homemade wine to go with each course. You left the table not sure if you were more full than you were tipsy or was it more tipsy than you were full.

And Etsa struggled with cancer and lost the battle but before she did, she made sure to can 170 quarts of tomato sauce so that Ben had something to eat when she was gone. How much more beautiful can love get than 170 quarts of homemade tomato sauce from tomatoes grown in your own garden.

Farewell, Etsa. Rest in peace.

Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Hardly two people that should appear in the pages of a grief blog that has to do with stillborn babies and grandmothers. But who hasn't thought of them in the last couple of weeks. And who, as a 40 something year old woman, hasn't remembered those high school years of trying to get the hair to flip just right, to have the same tan and to let the spaghetti string of her tee, fall just right over the shoulder and onto the arm. And who hasn't just once tried to moonwalk again in their kitchen in between stirring pots and pouring drinks. Who hasn't listened to Billy Jean on the radio in the last few days? And so in some small (or is it large) way, those two have shaped my life as well.

Aside from the poorly told jokes and the flippant comments about their lives, there is a kind of grief. A childhood lost and remembered. A high school love gone bad. A memory of what was and can never be again. For in those moments of carelessness and recklessness, there was the belief in angels solving crimes and music rescuing love.

Farewell to Farrah and Michael, linked perhaps by nothing more than sharing a day of memorialization and a life of tabloid jabs. Rest in peace.

As so the grief arrives in the most surprising ways. Grief comes in the memories of their faces, in the small shift of pages across the table as I turn to the next chapter. The grief comes in the memories of lamb that melts into my mouth; who knew that lamb could be so tender as to melt. Who knew that wine poured from a recycled and well-used bottle could taste that strong, that fresh, that full of ripeness. The grief comes in the passing of their lives and the memories of their stories as they shaped and turned and in some small way created the person that I've become.

And grief is forever linked to love, and in that love lies the reason for being and the reason for knowing that today, one more person who I've never met will touch my life and find a way to affect my soul in this surprising and unexpected journey that we call living.

For my grandmother

Read on June 13, 2009


I have been thinking a lot about death and grief over these last few days. Sometimes death comes slow and sure, waiting, for days or weeks or months. Sometimes it comes suddenly and graciously but certain. And no matter how it arrives, I have decided that there is no right time, no right way for death to appear on our doorsteps and certainly no set length of time for grief.

When somebody dies at the age of 97, it’s easy to say, “She lived a long life.” “It was her time.” “How wonderful that you had her for so many years.” But these are simply platitudes that are easy to repeat in order to avoid the hard work that grief offers. Because grief is hard work, but its rewards are tremendous and transformative.

What I remember most is this: Waking up in the early morning in a room off of the kitchen in my grandparent’s mobile home. Someone on the floor or in the bed quietly breathing early morning sleep beside me. And then, I’d hear it—a pan shifting on the stove; a drawer shuffling open. I’d see the light underneath the crack of the bedroom door. And once again, as often as I’d try to get up in the morning before my grandma, there she was already prepping the dough so it would have time to rise so that we’d have fresh peanut butter rolls for breakfast. As often as I tried (and I DID try), I could never wake up early enough to help her.

Another memory: Opening the pantry in her kitchen with shelf after shelf filled with glass jars: canned peaches, canned apricots, jars of pickled watermelon rind (gross!); jars of pickles; more peaches; old Christmas tins filled with—if you were lucky—chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. And if you were unlucky—pfernussen nussen, some sort of cookie I could never pronounce and never understand because what kind of cookie has pepper in it?

One more memory: The dining room table and brown chairs that swirled. Cards, lots and lots of cards that you had to count and divide, divide and shuffle, count again and hand out. And always, I wanted to be on grandma’s team because she would teach me how to cheat. And we cheated so well together! And then the cards went away and out came the Yahtzee. How she continued game after game, year after year to roll 1, 2 and yes, 3 Yahtzees was beyond me. I still can’t roll a Yahtzee. And at the table was grandma and grandpa, Anna and Alex, Aaron and Ida, Hank and Alvina. It wasn’t long before tears were rolling down our faces in laughter.

97 years. Is it long enough? I don’t know because I know the next 30 or 40 years without her are going to be long years. Is it long enough? I don’t think so because I’m still not confident in my ability to roll out the dough correctly, to put the right kind of pickling spices into the vegetable soup, to make sure to remember the cinnamon in the chocolate chip cookies. I’m certain that I can’t cook the strudels in the pan without lifting the lid and watching them fall. I still screw up the amount of water and vinegar in the cooked cabbage. And I know that I will never slice the cucumbers thin enough for grandma’s salad.

Shortly after my daughter Grace was still born, my grandma came to stay with me for a few days. It was the last time she came to visit alone. She was worried about me because I wasn’t cooking, and worse than that I wasn’t baking. But she didn’t really seem to mind. She just got out the toothbrush and started scrubbing my stove. And then she got out the flour, and she started putting it into a bowl unmeasured and added some sugar, an egg, some salt and within a few hours we were pulling peanut butter rolls out of the oven.

And then we sat down over rolls and talked. And she told me about her first born child, a boy she never got to meet, a boy that she never got to hold. A child, she told me, that she never forgot, not for one day, even though back then, she said, she wasn’t allowed to talk about him. And she told me that she wanted to name him William. And she took my hand and told me to never forget.

My grandmother died the same day that Grace died, and some small part of me wants to believe that it was planned, that somehow she knew that I would never forget, that I would always remember and that the four of us—Grandma, William, Grace and I—would be inextricably linked by a sort of grief so large, that it transforms into a beauty even larger that binds us together still like flour and water and yeast binds together to transform into the lightest, sweetest, most beautiful kind of offering.

Six years...Eight months...97 years

Grace,

Six is a very big number. Six means all those number of years have passed without you. Six means six times six times six will pass again.

Six means grief like love changes form, grows and evolves but never goes away.

And you, my love, know none of this and all of this at once.

Today we planted a tree in your name that will grow to heights unimaginable and live for 150 to 200 years. In a park, near a playground, near a swimming hole, near a library, near all of the places you would wander and grow, near all of the places your brothers and sister will visit often. Where trees can grow to be the size of buildings, where grief can in the form of a leaf fall each season only to be born again. Lucky tree that it can lose its branches each year, each fall, and each spring, can grow anew. If only it were that simple. Oh, but I would grow you again and again until you could stay long enough for us to know each other. But that, Grace, is really the heart of the matter isn't it.

What is long enough? Because good enough, doesn't work for me. Long enough hardly matters.

My grandma she lived 97 years, and one might think that was long enough, but no. Because Grace, I was just getting to know her, I was just beginning to understand the way she rolled out her dough before she placed the cinnamon and sugar on it; I was just beginning to understand exactly how much pickling spice should go into the vegetable soup; I was just beginning to understand that I'm not allowed to lift the lid when the strudels are steaming.

And she wasn't here long enough for me to figure out how 3 Yahtzees are possible in one game. She wasn't around long enough for me to get her recipe for canned peaches and canned apricots. And though I never liked them, Grace, I will never taste her pickled watermelon again because I can assure you I will never make them.

And even if I can replicate her recipes, they will not be the same. They will not be the same.

Because nothing is the same anymore.

Nothing will ever be like it has been.

And when you meet her Grace, you will know what we have lost down here. And she will finally rock her stillborn baby boy that she was not allowed to hold, that she was not allowed to name; that she was not allowed to see when he was born 75 years ago.

And therein lies the beauty in her death--she can meet her son for the first time. And that is something even I do not want to stop because nothing should ever be the same again.

Not now. Not ever.

Grace,

So, the thing about grief is this, Grace. If anyone ever decides to tell you that grief ends after six months or one year, just tell them that's bullshit.

This week. This week the grief seems rather insurmountable. And it's not just about us, Grace. It's much bigger than that. This grief includes your tree, planted in your honor, in Shadle park, dying. When I walked through the park to check on your tree, it was dead. Zap. I could tell you it's because they moved it when they dug the hole for the new swimming pool, but it seems they moved about half a dozen trees. Yours died. The rest survived.

I could tell you my grief is about your 11yo brother being in a play and singing a solo onstage. And acting his big heart out. Grief? Why? Because he is no longer that 5yo boy terrified to leave my side and stand in front of any stranger whatsoever.

I could tell you that grief came in the form of my mother calling to tell me a close friend had died yesterday. Yes, he was in his 80s and perhaps it was his time. But I wasn't ready for it to be his time, and he died alone in his house, and I just can't get that image out of my head.

I could tell you that my grief is about my grandmother falling and no longer being able to live alone in her apartment, but needing to be moved first to a hospital and then into a convalescent home. And yes, she is 97 and perhaps well past her time, but I am not ready in any way for her to go. Not.

I could tell you that something physical happens to me over these next few days, something I cannot explain in words because my body knows, it just prepares itself for your birth and death, and time hangs in the air like some kind of Southern heat that closes in on you even in the middle of the night.

I could tell you that the sight of six year old girls preparing for the end of kindergarten and the beginning of first grade opens and closes me at the same time. Their height surprises me; their abilities confound me; and their beauty undoes me.

I could tell you all of this Grace, if you were here, but here instead is this undeniable longing, this yearning that weeks and months and years of distance will never remove because this space in my throat still tightens and this bruise on my heart still hurts and this need for you and longing aches unlike any other kind of injury I've sustained. And I will sustain it, and I will survive it, but the longing is there. The longing is here. Now. Today. Forever. Long.

Dear Grace,

If you were here today, you would have seen your 3yo brother run full speed toward the dog screaming at the top of his lungs to drop the ball so he could continue to play baseball.

You would have seen your 8yo sister dancing in her room to some hip hop, top 10, movie of the week song, assured of the power of her voice and assured of the power of herself as someone who might one day change the world or at the very least, most certainly rock it. In fact, I believe she has already rocked it more than once.

You could have looked in on your 11yo brother who was not to be bothered by the other two, only 45 pages from the end of his book, Fablehaven, or some such title, book 5 I believe. He could hardly imagine that there was a world actually out there spinning around beside him as he sat engrossed by page after page after page.

You would have seen the cat on top of the roof having climbed out the second story window and on to the roof only to find herself momentarily stuck and unsure of herself when she is hardly unsure of herself at all, rarely, never.

And, Grace, you could have been here today, and none of this might have happened at all because your death changed the course of our lives, and our lives could have been happening in a different house, on a different street, in a different town, on a different planet for that matter because our lives changed forever and our roads they did diverge and they did get potholes but then somehow those holes got inexplicably filled and one day, I woke up and they were just slightly less bumpy and slightly less edgy and still there you are and here you are because I saw you in the face of that 3yo as he charged toward the dog.

I see you in the eyes of your sister as she dances to her music. I see you in the eyes of your 11yo brother as he reads because you would most certainly tear him away from his book with your pleas, with your beauty, with your charm and wit.

And I see you in that ridiculous cat of ours up on the roof because that cat fell into my arms four months after you died when what I needed was to hold a baby and there she was in a box outside of our church mewing, and two little girls picked her up and held her by her neck, and I knew then that I had to save that tabby. I had to save something, and I couldn't at the time save myself so I saved a cat. How ridiculous is that Grace? a Cat? A cat most certainly is not a baby and most certainly is not you, but at the time, that cat was something, that cat was alive and I could bring her home and feed her and give her water and hold her in my arms and when I did, it felt just a teensy bit less painful.

And that Grace is why this cat is here now at my feet purring because of you, Grace and in some small and imperceptible way, I see you in her too, each time I bend down to pet her, you are there on my mind, always in my heart and in so many ways changing the course of our lives.

love,
mama

If the doctor could read this now

If the doctor who delivered Grace was reading this blog, I would tell her that nearly six years have passed and still, Grace matters. I would tell her that, no, in fact, there is no rush for me to take the drug that quickens labor, that hastens along the birthing process.

If the doctor who delivered Grace were to see me in the grocery store, she would not recognize me or remember me because to her I was just one more patient that wasn't even her patient who most likely got her out of bed several hours before she'd intended because this delivery was a surprise, was six or seven weeks early, because my doctor was out of town and so they had to bring in the doctor on call.

If the doctor who delivered Grace were to pass me at the bank, I would remember her because her short black hair and unwittingly superior knowledge of birth was evident to me in the beginning. Yes, we need you to start the induction now. We don't know how long this baby has really been dead and we don't know what could happen inside your body if we don't get her out soon.

If the doctor who delivered Grace were to see me at a soccer game, I would tell her in fact, Grace could have stayed inside of me another day. I would tell her that the thing to do would have been to give me a hug, no, to hold me up, to tell me that it might take time, but time, time is what we have now because time will never be the same again. I would tell her that in fact I could have waited for labor to start on its own. I could in fact have gone home to tell my living children, to pack a bag, to take some photographs of my belly, to take a hot bath before returning to the hospital to give birth.

If the doctor who delivered Grace could remember that day nearly six years ago, I wonder if she could remember how many cracks there were in the ceiling (eight); I wonder if she could remember the color of Grace's hair (black!); I wonder if she could remember how many boxes of Kleenex were in the room (none!); I wonder if she could remember the color of the walls (cream!); I wonder if she could remember how long Grace was (17 1/2 inches); I wonder if she could remember how much Grace weighed (3 pounds, 15 ounces!). I wonder if she could remember the ages of my other children who were in the room when Grace was born (5 and 2).

If the doctor who delivered Grace were in front of me now, I would tell her that next time she has to be at the delivery of a stillborn baby to pause, to wait, to hold her breath because this moment of birth will be the only moment the mother and child have together, because this moment of birth, these 6 or 12 or 15 hours of labor will seem in years to come like a split second because it is all we have, it is all we have.

And I will tell her that I will no longer let her bring her fear into my presence, that her fear of stillbirth is less about me and even less about Grace than it is about her inability to cry, her inability to pause and see that Grace matters, that Grace is more than just a body being born, that Grace is my heart split open and cracked and that Grace is the person who will eventually heal me, who will teach me what love is and what fear isn't, who with her closed eyes and still heart will teach me what it means to see the world not with rose-colored glasses but with eyes wide open and with a heart very much beating fast.

If the doctor who delivered Grace could stand before me now,
I would tell her that I'm sorry she felt the need to be
so distant,
so separate from our lives
because if she had allowed herself in
even just for a moment
there she would see how
beautiful love really is.

As simple as a crocus

It started with one flake, and then the snow returned, covering the ground as if it were January instead of April. But there peeking up out of the snow, the crocus remained, the purple hue as vibrant as the day before only closed waiting for the sun to return to coax it's center to open wide again. The crocus does not exist if not for winter.

I say that over again over again so as not to forget the gifts that winter brings. Because without it, the crocus would not bloom. Though sometimes in the midst of winter it is hard to remember the crocus.

Yesterday I stood for eight hours in the sun outside of a store that I detest, selling Girl Scout cookies with my daughter so that she could reach her very ambitious goal of selling 1,000 boxes of cookies. We left in the eighth hour having finally sold 1,022 boxes of cookies over a very intense 2 1/2 week period of time.

Let me go back though to the beginning of the sentence "Yesterday I stood for eight hours in the sun outside of a store that I destest..." I could have stood eight more hours because the sun was shining and for half of the day it was in my face and half of the day it was at my back. It was truly the best drug I've ever had. I think I could have stood outside like that forever. I was so grateful to have the sun beating down on us. It has felt like so many weeks and months of cold, of rain, of snow, of clouds.

Even standing in front of a store I detest did not affect my mood. There was very little to alter the happiness I felt at the simplicity of standing in the sun. And with my daughter, my eight-year-old who was so focused on selling cookies that she must have said, "Would you like to buy some girl scout cookies?" at least 3,000 times in the last two weeks.

The crocuses have blossomed. Their short life is nearly over, but the memory of their vibrancy, of their color will remain with me long after they are gone.

Grace blossomed for all of eight months in my belly. Yet she remains vibrant, unforgettable in my heart, in my mind, and in our lives. The season of winter is over. I know, though, that there are many winters yet to come. For now, I bask in the glory of spring, in the promise of Easter, in the hope that when spring becomes summer becomes fall becomes winter, that there I will find Grace again knowing that as the snow covers the ground, just underneath it's blanket, the bulb of the crocus lies in wait.

A New Openness

When you hit the national news, you know that you've either had a tragedy, a drama, or a political mess up. In this case, tragedy has taken years to make it into the national picture--the tragedy of a baby born still, born silently into this mourning world.

So here it is,in Newsweek, no less, the story of so many parents, the story of how one family is coping, the story of MISS and the story of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

It is the unimaginable:

"Stillbirth happens more often than we imagine—10 times more often than sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, a condition most every parent knows about and dreads. Every year some 26,000 babies die during or after the 20th week in their mothers' womb..."

Ten times more often than SIDS! We all know, don't we, the tragedy of SIDS. But when that happens, the baby has been born breathing, the baby is taken home and cuddled, the baby is introduced to family and friends, the baby gets to cry and laugh and smile and coo. The baby and their family have been introduced to the world. I do not and will not minimize SIDS. It is just as tragic and just as awful and just as painful, I'm sure, as stillbirth. But up until now, we have all heard of SIDS and not nearly as many have heard of stillbirth.

And sometimes I wonder if it is simply because the stillborn baby does not get to come home; the stillborn baby does not get to meet the friends and family anticipating the birth; the stillborn baby does not get to laugh or cry or hold the finger of the mother and father.

And so we need to continue to throw open the closet doors. We need to come out together, as grieving parents, as families, and become our children's best lobbyists to let people know our babies mattered. Our babies were born. Our babies will not be forgotten.

We need to continue to remember so that we can become a family's best advocate, so that when, god forbid, it happens to someone else, we can be there to care for them, to nurture them, to tell them that yes, someday you will feel love again, you will laugh again and you will, most certainly be forever changed. We need to remember so that we can create memories with photographs and hand prints and foot prints if the families want them.

We simply need to remember so that we never forget.

I will never forget the way Grace's forehead furrowed as if to shout out that she too wanted to be here.

I will never forget the dark hair Grace had, like her sister Sophia before her.

I will never forget the way Grace's father bowed his head and wept and sobbed and screamed out loud.

I will never forget telling Carver and Sophia that their sister had died, that she wouldn't come home with us, that she just stopped breathing and we don't' know why.

I will never forget the way Grace smelled when my pastor and friend annointed her with oil and annointed me with oil.

I will never forget the footsteps of Beth carrying Grace down the hallway toward the morgue and away from me.

I will never forget.

I will always remember.

John Updike

John Updike has died. I feel lost and sad!

Dawning

Sometimes, it is 2:44 a.m. and I am not sure if there is a more middle of the night. It is quiet except for the squeak of the chair I am sitting on and the tap of the keys. Even the hamsters who love their wheels going around and around have stopped running and crawled into their caverns to rest.

I can't sleep. It's the silence that woke me, and the silence that keeps me awake. Often I find it louder than the music that plays in our house.

I have been asking myself lately why I haven't been writing, why I haven't been blogging. And I feel sometimes like it is the pause in this space that separates me from Grace. But really that isn't so. There is no pause from Grace. I have turned inward. I have decided on private thoughts versus public ones.

Sometimes, there are actual feelings, real thoughts that I don't want to share, that I want to keep private, that I want to keep only been me and Grace. That in that privacy, I can have the kind of feelings for her that stay tucked in my soul.

Tonight as I watched Sawyer falling asleep, I thought, this is what life is. This moment, now gone, I want to forever etch into my mind. The eyes, first staring up at me, the hand holding a DS game (because he's always holding something) falls against my breast and the game slides away. His eyes blink several times and for a moment he is trying so hard to keep them open and then I whisper, "It's okay to fall asleep." And he does as if it is my permission that allows him to do that. His breathing slows and his eye lashes softly relax and he is is sleeping. And in these moments I am painfully aware at how fleeting they are. Lasting not nearly long enough. I hold my breath as the children grow, sometimes feeling impatient that it's not fast enough but most times feeling like the rush of it is all too fast, too soon.

Tonight, I wanted Grace to be watching her younger brother falling asleep, watching the two of them entwined in sleep next to me. My wants are always selfish.

And so I will go crawl back into bed to lie between father and son, to watch both of them breathe and knowing that their breath moving in and out of their bodies is something I will never, ever take for granted.

Christmas Eve snow

As the snow falls, and we are covered in over 25 inches of snow, I am reminded that many families do not feel like listening to Frosty the Snowman; they do not feel like singing Joy to the World.

The beauty of the snow, the reflective white light, is contrasted by the depth of the snow, the difficulty in maneuvering through the town, the inability to just throw on a coat and go out for a walk. One needs to think twice before heading out.

And in this season of celebration for some, in the birth of a baby, I am reminded too of the death of so many infants.

And today, especially, I send my friend, Gina, big, big love, like this:



The smile on both Ginas faces may be a reminder that smiles will return, that joy will be found. Gina P's mother died last week and in the midst of the holidays, in the midst of the faces of joy we are supposed to wear, there are friends with heavy hearts, friends who would rather in the midst of this holiday season, pull the blankets up over their head as the snow falls faster.

Gina's mom, Kay, knew about grief. Gina knows about the emptiness felt by the absence of an older sister, born still, born without taking a breath, born not of this world but into her heavenly Father's arms. And now Gina knows the grief of losing a mother.

And the snow keeps falling.

Welcome to the world...

To my sweet, nameless, little friend whom I've never met,

You are three days old today and four weeks early. I heard this from your mommy who is really amazing for emailing me three days after your birth, especially since we've never even met in person. But this, sweet girl, is what you must understand about your life: Already there are people who love and adore you who don't even know you. Your little five-pound petite self is making splashes all across this country, and all you are worried about is where your next meal is coming from! As it should be.

This is a strange, strange thing, this whole thing about love and babies. You--you just get to do exactly whatever it is you do, day and night, and you will be loved. Period. end of the sentence that isn't really a sentence at all. Truly, love is more of a question mark often but today, you are the exclamation point!

Someday, you will learn about Pudding. Maybe your mother and father will tell you. Maybe your big brother, Gus! But know that you are one lucky, little girl with the two big brothers you have and the arms wrapped around you right now.

And if you ever for a second, god forbid, question your parents' love, which you most certainly will, let today be the day that I can honestly say without knowing a thing about you, that love is all around and surrounding you! And your mother adores you beyond anything you will ever understand. It is our job as parents.

Welcome to this crazy, harried, mixed-up place that we call life! That you have come into it with eyes wide open is a gift much larger than I hope you will ever have to understand.

Love from Spokane, from a friend that you may never need to meet!

And to your mother, Elizabeth, from the bottom of this cracked and beat up heart, love, love and more love to all of you!!

Beauty from Pain

Where I've been...

The lights go out all around me
One last candle to keep out the night
And then the darkness surrounds me
I know i'm alive but i feel like i've died
And all that's left is to accept that it's over
My dreams ran like sand through the fists that i made
I try to keep warm but i just grow colder
I feel like i'm slipping away

Where I never thought I'd be...

After all this has passed, i still will remain
After i've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday i'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

When you're in that tunnel, when you can't see the light, it's hard to know where the light is going to come from.

In the early days AG (after Grace), my days were all darkness. There was so much darkness that I didn't even want to find the light. And if some light started to seep in, I'd crawl farther into the dark. I remember being alive and wishing for death.

It was a dark, dark time. It was a kind of darkness, that if I think about it for too long, I start to feel panic, I start to feel the pain, I start to hypervenilate. And so, as much as I want to find the beauty in that pain, the beauty really has come after the pain, from the people, the experiences, the life after Grace.

The entire area around Grace remains panic-stricken--the ultrasound, the drugs, the birth, post-birth.

It's the sounds I can remember--Beth walking down the hall taking Grace to the funeral home. The sound of the elevators when we left the hospital without her. The whirl of the lights at 3:40 a.m. when I woke up with blood pouring out of me. The sound of nothing waking up that first morning at home, without child, with milk running down my breast, crying out.

There is pain all around. I have friends in pain right now and I can do nothing. It is the helplessness really that's the hardest. The part of me that wants to fix the world, that wants to find the beauty and take the pain away.

And yet I know that the stark contrast of pain from beauty is really what makes those moments even more stunning. It is seeing Sawyer for the first time, crying out and the eyes open, the open eyes. I can tell you now there is absolutely nothing more beautiful than the open eyes of a baby. Seeing his eyes wide open after birth, the looking around, the searching for milk.

What I wish for my friends, for my friend, is the absolute knowledge that from this pain comes sheer joy, sheer pleasure. And from this place of deep sadness within me comes understanding and love and grace. And that this sadness too shall pass and when it does, we will dance and sing and celebrate all of the briefness that is Grace and grace.

ER

Terry, Carver, Sawyer and I spent the last 2 hours in the ER. Sawyer fell at a friend's house and had to get the cut on his head permabonded (no stitches).

Being in an ER allows a lot of time for thinking and a lot of time to remember trauma.

So there she was--Grace--right there in front of me, taking up space in my head while I was trying to console Sawyer during the trauma he was experiencing. Wrapping him up in a sheet like a burrito and holding him down was bad, was painful, but having experienced Grace gave us the calm, gave us the steel we needed somehow to sing songs to him, to wipe his forehead, to keep him calm.

When Carver broke his leg some years ago, before Grace, I nearly passed out in the ER as they were holding him down, as he was screaming, as he was begging them to stop and yet, here in this hospital tonight, I was holding down Sawyer. Terry and I were singing to him and I thought, "he's screaming, I am so grateful for his tears, for his pain, for our ability to hold him."

I just wanted her to cry. I just wanted to hear her wail and still the silence of Grace's birth is deafening, the absolute stillness, the lifelessness of it all, it is too much, too great.

And so, as Sawyer cried and wailed, I found myself surprisingly calm, surprisingly okay with all of it. "All we can do is keep breathing; all we can do is keep breathing; all we can do is keep breathing."

And Grace, she is here among us, silently teaching me how to fall in love over and over again with my children, grateful for their burdens, grateful for their cuts, grateful that the trips to the ER brings us back home with our children safe in their beds.

Thoughts on a conference--body, mind and soul

Where can a person put four days of grieving with bereaved families? Where can a person put the grief for a child killed in a car accident, shot in the desert, dying in the arms of his mother, left in a car, born dead from his mother's body? There are far too many to name, far too many for anyone here to have to read.

But what I can tell you is this--

When you sit in a room full of 200 bereaved parents, there is an energy, there is alot of pain, and there is also the possibility for so much growth, so much transformation, so much awe, that I sit here thinking about my return, thinking about my homecoming and I am amazed at the resiliency, the love and the power of grief. And I know that there are families today who are aching for the MISS conference, aching for their child, aching for the understanding that is inherent in a conference like this. And I can tell these same families that I know what this is like, I know what can happen in a conference like this and how, with time, there really will come a new kind of energy, a new sense of purpose, and sometimes that purpose is as simple as getting out of bed, pouring a bowl of cereal for a living child, walking out the door to collect the mail.

Sometimes it is enough to know that someone else across the country, in another city, is sitting and thinking of you, thinking of your child, saying a prayer, sending a wish for a moment of breathing, one single smile in a day, a humingbird finding some nectar.

And never forget that all of this began, this energy, this work, this conference because 14 years ago, a small child, living in her mother's belly stopped breathing, and as she took that last breath, she created a kind of ripple effect unknown at the time to her mother, unknown to her family, unknown to the world. But with her last breath came a lasting breath, a breath that each of us feels as we return each year to Phoenix to share our stories, to share our hearts. A warm breath that becomes larger than any of us can imagine, most of all, I'm sure, her mother.

And with Cheyenne's last breath, she created new life in more ways than anyone could ever quantify or understand because really, there is no understanding in a child's death, no understanding.

But let me say to everyone who can listen, I understand. I understand that your child is your world and your life and your love.

I am here.