Grief and its geography, 39 years later...

After 39 years of this grief journey, I don't know why I continue to be surprised by it, but I am. I am surprised by the way it lands right in the midst of my day and takes me off-guard. And there you have it.

My fourth child, Sawyer, is nearly the exact age I was when my father died. Five and three-quarters. Or to be more precise, I was five years and 286 days old when he died. And so on December 16, 2011, Sawyer will be five years and 286 days old. As the fourth child myself, I watch Sawyer closely, observing him, trying to find out exactly what five and three-quarters looks like since memory fades and discovering exactly what it is I lost.

It turns out that no matter how deep you go, how far you search, you can never fully understand what it is you've lost, but I think I have a pretty good idea.

Sawyer at five is so attached to his father. He calls out for Terry, he asks Terry to dress him, he asks Terry to wrestle with him, to read him books, to make him a snack, to watch a movie with him, to scratch his back, to tickle his back, to go on a walk, to play with the dogs, to be his punching bag when he's angry, to drive him to school, to pick him up, to arrange playdates and to make him more snacks and while Sawyer and Terry are not the same as I was with my own father, in them, I see a glimmer of what I was about to lose, and I see that played out again and again in all my children but most especially now at five.

Because at five and three-quarters, Sawyer is both branching out on his own, demanding things from us, still wanting to snuggle, still ending up in our bed and then suddenly wanting to be left alone. Sawyer is discovering his remarkable world by sounding out words: L-O-V-E. Love. And saying things like, "Mama, Grace died right, but she'll be coming back soon." And there much more complex things he is doing now too.

For example, he has written his numbers all the way from 1 to 1,413. He writes them on a number roll, each number one after the other with the perseverance and focus of an older child.

But he still has his moments of absolute collapse and panic and sheer frustration and trying to regulate his emotions with his logical mind, and sometimes despite his best efforts, he can't regulate them because he is five. So instead he collapses into an emotional meltdown.

And while Sawyer and I are not the same, I am just again understanding through him the depth of my loss. And here in this moment is a glimpse of what I lost:

I lost the ability to sit on my father's lap and read a story.

I lost the ability to tell him that I love him.

I lost the ability to understand how much he loved me.

I lost the ability to be his only daughter in flesh and blood.

I lost the ability on Father's Day to make a card and give it to him.

I lost the ability to call him up in the middle of the night as a young adult and use him as a sounding board in understanding the confusing rules with dating.

I lost the ability to have him walk me down the aisle.

I lost the ability to watch him hold his grandchild in his arms.

I lost the ability to fall apart in his arms when his granddaughter died.

I lost the ability to call him up as an adult when so many complex issues in life no longer make sense.

And what I really lost was the ability to understand what it means to have a father, what it means to be a daddy's girl, what it means to be unconditionally loved by him.

And I don't care what gifts came out of that loss, I will forever mourn his absence in my life, and I will forever miss him.

I will forever wish that this darkness, this emptiness, this place in my heart where both my father and daughter together leave a deep chasm and deep longing never really existed at all.

Because sometimes, this darkness really sucks, and this longing for a father is so much larger than we can ever really understand.

And this kind of love hurts entirely too much.

And so still the grief rises inside of me when I least expect it.

Because love after all turns out to continue to be the thing that matters most.

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

It's a six-word short story that takes my breath away. Whether or not Hemingway wrote it is sometimes up for controversy, but I like to believe it's true. Either way, it's written. Six words. Carefully constructed to hold a deeper truth than any I have ever read anywhere else:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Bam. Gut-wrenching. Having read it in graduate school when my literal self posed as a reader, writer and critic of short stories, I read it with gusto, ate it up and spit it back out, analyzing the six-words into what seemed to be profound, graduate-school like gusto.

And now? Now, I just sit staring at the words over and over again.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Grace.

I couldn't even write about her this year in her eighth year yet. Why not? Perhaps I am trying to preserve some sense of privacy now, some sense of holding something inside me that I can't possibly release. After all, how do you capture what your eight-year-old daughter might be doing when your ten-year-old daughter is standing before you reading a poem:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Yes, those are my shoes. Yes, there is something wrong, something missing. Yes, give them back.

Only I wouldn't have sold them I don't believe. I think I would have held onto them if only, if only I had shoes to hold onto because even those weren't purchased yet. I am sure that I would have recycled her sister's shoes only 2 1/2 years old, but what would I do with a pair of unworn baby shoes, perhaps still in their box, perhaps white with pink bows or pink with white bows?

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

I cannot hardly believe that school has started and an entire class of third graders lines up, and she isn't part of them. She doesn't stand amongst the others in our family.

Grace.

For sale.

Grace.

Baby shoes.

Grace.

Never worn.

It is the small things now that can undo me. The surprises, the take your breath away and catch you off guard. The whisper or hint of something that never was.

past. future. present.

My six-word story has to be written. Has to be recorded. Has to be remembered. For after this, who else will really remember any of it at all? Because all of us will simply be a figment, one day, of this world's imagination.

And so it goes.

And so it is.

And we too shall come to pass.

Sarah. Terry. Carver. Sophia. Grace. Sawyer.

Lent and Spring and Seasons

It is spring and with it comes the waiting, the wondering, the remembering.

How is it that a body prepares itself for a grief that happens time and time again?

It is also the lenten season, and with it comes a period of 40 days in the desert, of holding our breath.

Each year I welcome spring with eagerness, as crocuses appear and delicate lilies of the valley sprout. And each year, I forget and remember what the season is about to spring upon me.

Grace.

I appear in church on Wednesday nights in the spring, and in our church we honor lent with Holden Evening Prayer. It is a service of vespers, of chanting, of praying, of psalms.

And each year, one of Grace's funeral songs is sung. And each year I forget and am blindsided by that grief rising again. Of funerals. Of remembering. Of sadness.

This year, the song appeared early in lent. So I thought tonight, I'd be safe to return. The song passed. What else could possibly blindside me?

And tonight, blindsided again, by a sermon about Mary at the foot of the cross and the pastor spoke about parents who experience the death of a child. He spoke about 'those parents' in a third person kind of a way, a way that I'm sure wasn't meant to be impersonal, but how can it be anything else but that when you are the parent sitting in the pew and realizing, "Oh, that's me; I am one of those parents." And the pastor is speaking from the pulpit, protected from the grief of ever knowing what it is like to be childless, with his own children sitting there?

I am like Mary without her child.

I am one of those parents that has to be dealt with.

I am a childless mother with some of my children present. Some not all.

It is spring and as March draws nigh, and April showers greet us, my body gets tense; my muscles grow tighter, and I begin to hold my breath in a way that I do every season.

I am in a period of waiting. I am 40 days in the desert. I am slouching toward Bethlehem to find myself at the foot of an empty manger.

There is April, and then there is May, and with it comes the rush of emotions, the undulating pulse of the memories, rising again and again.

Recently, a friend posted a video news clip about the children in Japan being swept away by the tsunami. The children. More of them than one can keep inside of a head.

It is a frightening number of children still missing. And yet, each child, is just one child of one parent; each one should be individually remembered and mourned, but how can an entire nation mourn just one when there are so many?

One child is enough grief to last an entire lifetime.

Where to you place the grief of an entire town of children?

Sometimes, I am blindsided by my own grief. I don't pretend not to be.

I live my life fully present in the moment, while all at once remembering the past and looking forward to the future.

It is spring and with it comes the waiting, the wondering, the remembering.

How is it that a body prepares itself for a grief that happens time and time again?

What is the value of a human life?

I have been thinking about value a lot lately.

I have clients now in my consulting business where I have to place a dollar value on my time. And I have to decide: Do I charge them hourly or do I charge them project by project? And sometimes I wonder if I am over-charging them or under-charging them. I don't know that there is a right or wrong answer really. But it is worth thinking about and worth examining from time to time.

That being said, I also think about the value of our time in general. I recently listened to a story on NPR that was addressing the value of a human life. The attorney spoke about compensation for families after the death of loved ones, particularly, the 9/11 families.

What is the value of a human life?

Indeed.

Is one life more valuable than another? Is there a monetary value that is different from person to person?

The attorney versus the night time cleaning person. The doctor versus the patient?

How do we assign value to life and how do we place a monetary amount on that?

There was no monetary value placed on Grace's life. She died before birth. Even if we had chosen to get some kind of childhood life insurance for her, I'm sure it would be small in nature. Even then, would a check having been received in the mail for $10,000 after her death made anything better? I doubt it.

And still there are real financial implications to families after their children die. Jobs are lost. Mental health capacities are reduced. Even jobs that are kept are difficult sometimes to maintain and return to.

And let's not forget the emotional value of a life. This is what interests me even more.

In this case, is Grace's life more valuable now that she is gone because so much time and energy is spent on helping bereaved parents. Is this even worth bringing up? What if she did decided that in her own life, she had no real drive or motivation to do anything other than what she had to do to make ends meet. Would her life be any more or less valuable than the person next door?

My emotional life would be different for sure if Grace were here. My emotional state would be different.

I have continued to say over and over again that I would trade my more realized and aware self for less awareness if Grace were here. But as time passes, as I learn more about myself, about my responses to grief, about what she continues to teach me daily, is this still true?

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. In fact, I hardly think there are answers at all. But that doesn't mean the questions can't be raised.

What is the value of your own life? Are you living up to what you think it should be? Do you need to?

The perfect metaphor

Really, I have the perfect metaphor. Something is wrong with my heart. Literally. Something is wrong with my heart.

Okay, it might be pericarditis which technically is an inflammation around the sac that surrounds my heart, but it has everything to do with the beating of a heart. It protects the heart.

I have had tests this week. EKGs, blood work, ultrasounds. I had the first ever ultrasound of my heart, and there it was on the screen beating, pulsing, opening and closing the way a heart is apparently supposed to beat and pulse.

I wasn't prepared for the anxiety of the ultrasound. I wasn't prepared for the aliveness of it. The only ultrasounds I've had, of course, are of living and not living babies. This would be different, I thought. Of course, it's not a baby, it's a heart.

Oh, wait a minute, that's right, this is an ultrasound of a beating heart. And there it was. My heart beating, and all I could think of in that moment, as the technician was rubbing the gel over my chest and rubbing the probe over my heart was that This of course, is what a heart is supposed to do. Beat. Beat.

Why didn't I prepare myself better for that moment? For the memory of the not beating heart. For the technician in the room with the probe over my belly. Beat. Heart. Beat. Move.

I wasn't prepared for the memory of Grace's non-beating heart and for the contrast in size.

My heart, my heart looked nearly the size of a baby's head. Her heart was just the size of a plum, unmoved, floating in space.

"The opening and closing of your valve looks good," the technician said. "Thank you," I responded. I couldn't say anything else so I just turned away waiting for the test to be over, thinking of Grace, of her still heart, of my heart cracking into a million pieces. And I wanted to turn to the technician and say, tell me, do you see a hole? Can you see the cracks? Is that what you are looking for?

And suddenly I was terrified that she could look into my soul, and she would see the darkness.

Yes, something is wrong with my heart. Something is very wrong with my heart, I wanted to say. A child is missing. A child is gone. Can you see that with your probe?

The pericardium is the sac that surrounds the heart. It's function has three purposes. The first is to keep the heart contained; the second is to prevent the heart from overexpanding; the third is to limit the motion of the heart. My pericardium is enlarged. It is inflammed, and I can't help but wonder if it's function hasn't been tested too many times. What kind of sac could possibly contain my heart? What kind of sac could limit the motion of my heart. My heart has been cracked and sewed back together. It has a hole, and I don't believe that any kind of sac could prevent it from overexpanding.

You see, after I gave birth to Grace, my heart shriveled; it withered. It died. But then, I found Grace in the eyes of my other two children; I found Grace in their souls. And three years later I gave birth again and he came out eyes wide open and heart pounding hard. And in that moment, my heart grew again. It grew and grew and grew.

And in these last two weeks, as we have all suffered illness, my thirteen year old still managed to pass me in height. As he lay next to me shivering in bed, his body continued to grow, and my heart continued to grow in awe of him. And as the four year threw up in my lap, over and over again, I held his head and willed him better. I watched his body melt into mine, and I prayed over him again and again for health. And my heart grew.

And now the nine year old is sick. And tonight she laid in bed with me and wished for wellness. And I wished with her. And again, I could feel the pains in my chest, the crackling of my breathing, and I knew that still my heart was growing larger.

So, yes, I do have pericarditis, and yes, the sac is inflamed, and yes, my love spills out of that sac each day. And it continues to ache for the one lost child.

I imagine this inflammation will subside. I hope that the sac returns to its normal size, but I also know that the heart is never, ever the same.

I believe it can contract and expand. I believe that the love I feel for all my children will continue to grow. I believe my heart will always be inflamed. And I hope it never really stops.

Because sometimes, a broken heart is good enough

What People Give You

Long-faced irises. Mums.
Pink roses and white roses
and giant sunflowers,
and hundreds of daisies.

Fruit baskets with muscular pears,
and water crackers and tiny jams
and the steady march of casseroles.
And money,
people give money these days.

Cards, of course:
the Madonna, wise
and sad just for you,
Chinese cherry blossoms,
sunsets and moonscapes,
and dragonflies for transcendence.

People stand by your sink
and offer up their pain:
Did you know I lost a baby once,
or My eldest son was killed,
or My mother died two months ago.

People are good.

They file into your cartoon house until it bows at the seams;
they give you every
blessed
thing,
everything,
except your daughter back.

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

School board meetings, love, and how change works on all levels

Jefferson Elementary School, September 15, 2010
School Board Meeting, Opinion Forum, 7 p.m. -- My three minutes.


Seven and a half years ago, I found out that the baby I was about to deliver had died.

Had Grace lived, she would be in second grade today.

What does her death have to do with the re-building of Jefferson school?

Everything.

In that moment of her death, my family’s life changed dramatically. Our lives changed not because we wanted them to. But over time we changed for the better—slowly, surprisingly, unwillingly at times.

We are here tonight not to talk about the death of an infant, but the re-birth of a school that teaches hundreds of students to go forth in the world and change it for the better. This time of passionate, stubborn, immovable opinion, should not in fact be about anything at all except the lives of our children and our children’s children, who will have the privilege of going to an amazing school, of waking up and saying yes to their education, of saying yes to life in a school that offers what we promise them:

A safe environment in which to learn.

So I challenge the school board to offer our children the safest environment in which to learn, off of arterials and away from grocery stores. I challenge the neighbors who live nearby to embrace these children, to watch with wonder as five- and six-year-olds cross the street for the first time with their backpacks awkwardly strung across their shoulders. I challenge you to lay aside your disgruntled ways and choose instead to marvel out your windows at the beauty and wonder of what childhood has to offer and perhaps even open yourselves up to learn what these kids might teach you about life, about learning, about love, something that as I have sat and listened to you over the last six months, I think all of you have forgotten.

In her absence, Grace has taught me only love. Here among these neighbors, I have felt embarrassment and animosity all because we worry about our park-like view, and how change might come into our lives.

I am here to tell you that not all change is welcome certainly, but if you are open to the mystery of change, you might find yourself in awe and wonder of it.

Every day of my life, I will miss my daughter Grace, but every day of my life, I am thankful at what she has taught me: Change, even in its darkest form gives way to light.

We are talking about the transformation of thousands of lives over the course of decades. And I challenge the school board not to let a few disgruntled folks stand in the way of what is best for our kids.

The facts, as we know them speak loud and clear: The west location is indeed the best and the safest choice. Nothing less will do.

Letting go

There are pieces of my life I hold on to fiercely. I can't let them go no matter what.

Some of these things are good: memories that hover in my mind like small pieces of blue sky, crisp and soothing.

Other pieces are more than likely toxic: arguments, embarrassing moments where in front of my kids I acted more like a child than they did. Times when I exposed myself to someone in ways that I never wanted to be seen.

But I hold on to these as a reminder of where I've been, how far I've come and how much farther I need to go.

Recently, on Facebook, I had a discussion with some friends about happiness. I mentioned that I am leery of really happy people--those people who really and truly seem happy all of the time. Truthfully, I envy them, I watch them, I wonder how to become that kind of person. But then the demons come back, the dark spaces inside of me that I can't seem to really purge. When they appear, all thoughts of being anything other than who I am disappear.

And I want to disappear in that moment. I want to become something or someone other than myself. Only I'm locked inside that place that I can't leave.

At a grief conference I recently attended, MISS Foundation Mindful Grieving, there was a lot of discussion about remaining in the moment, being mindful of what was happening in that moment. Not falling prey to the monkey brain that we all are familiar with--leaping from thought to thought, not being present, unable to concentrate.

And I wonder if I spend more time remaining in the moment, will things get easier? Or harder? Will joy present itself more often or less often? Can I practice letting go of those demons so that they become distant memories of things past rather than things future?

I can't be anything other than what I am, in the moment, but I often exist in the past or the future and memories tug at me, pull me down. Instead, I'd like those memories to set me free, to give me permission to become something better, something larger than the memories themselves so that eventually I can let go of some things that create weightness rather than lightness.

And in that moment, I can be lifted up and fly.

Mindful Grief: 2010 MISS Conference

My final talk at the MISS Foundation memorial service, 2010:

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a long, long time ago, I was a mother who only knew about the joy of caring for a five-year-old son, a two-year-old daughter and the joy of carrying the child that was growing inside of me. I went to baby showers and played those silly baby shower games. I knew that babies were born with their eyes wide open to the possibilities of what would come. I knew about the beauty of the world, I saw the laughter on my children’s faces, and I knew that life was indeed good and beautiful. The sun shone, the skies were blue. The air was fresh.

And then, one day, that world changed forever. The skies darkened, the rain fell, and the technician in the hospital turned toward me and put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I am so, so sorry. There is no heartbeat.”

There is no heartbeat.

Why then when I heard those words was it my own heart that was still beating? For the next hour, I stared out at the world, my heart beating hard and fast, while the clouds rolled in, and the skies darkened.

In this story, there is no happily ever after: the rain fell much longer than 40 days and 40 nights. Until one day, on a day I could never have predicted or imagined, a piece of light fell from the sky and into my lap.

The MISS Foundation Passages Conference 2004.

And here we are today: Exploring Mindful Grief, 2010.

I have finally returned home after two long years—I am certain that many of you feel this way. We are all back together again as brothers and sisters in mourning.

And for those of you who have come for the first time, I am so sorry that you have to be here, but I hope that you’ll come back. I hope that coming here to this place, you have found a kind of safety, and a kind of beauty in our pain that you can’t really find anywhere else.

I’m pretty sure that most of you will understand this statement when I say, I live two lives. One as the mother of my absent daughter, Grace. And the second as the mother of my present daughter, Grace. Here in this home is where my daughter Grace is most present all of the time. Grace is both absent and present—her presence is felt by all of us, her spirit is alive. I can feel her here more than in any other place. It’s as if the walls of this hotel speak her name.

But for most of the rest of my life, my daughter Grace is missing. She is missing when I am standing in conversation with someone at work and they see me but they do not see her. She is missing when I bring my other three children with me to the grocery store and the clerk smiles at them and tells me what lovely children I have. She is missing when we go out in public and there is nothing to show the world that Grace matters. There are no name tags to wear in public that tell them I am the mother of this missing child. They don’t see her like the rest of us do.

But here amongst you—my other family members—Grace is present. And that is a kind of gift that each of you give to me.

And so there are gifts here among the incredible amount of pain and anguish. I couldn’t even begin to quantify the amount of loss in this room. It is palpable. But it is also, in its own way, a lovely and beautiful thing.

Where else, after all, can all of us feel this comfortable setting out pictures of our children? Memories hang like Christmas ornaments in the air. And we come together year after year to set out our memories, anxious and nervous at first. What will someone think when I set out a picture of my child, 20 weeks old, sitting so quietly in the palm of my hand? What will they say when I tell them that I had to decide when it was time to turn off the machine that kept my child alive?

The first time you come is always the hardest, the most awkward, the most angst filled. But here you are anyways, and for whatever terribly tragic reasons that brought all of us together, I want to say thank you for sharing your most intimate sorrow with me. I will forever be changed by your presence in my life.

Sixteen years ago, there was a mother in labor who had the vision of a daughter that would join her growing family. This mother had a vision of a daughter who would change her life forever simply by being present among her sister and brothers. Little did that mother know how much her daughter would change the lives of so many without ever taking a breath. And so tonight I want to read a love letter to this child’s mother, Joanne, that goes something like this:

Dear Cheyenne,

You should be sixteen by now. You should have gone out for your driver's test with your mother earlier in the summer. You should have known the lusciousness and heart ache of sweet sixteen. By now, you should have tasted your first kiss, and you should have been at first perplexed by it, maybe even a little uncomfortable about it, but then you should have kissed back with a kind of earnest and longing that all of us still feel—an earnest and longing.

Instead of all of those firsts, we continue to experience our firsts by the continuous presence of your absence as Anna Quindlen once wrote. The continuous presence of your absence.

All of us, Chey, long for you. For our children. For the possibilities of what will never be.

But you should know, Chey, that you have the most incredible mother.

Because of you, she has created a place where all of us childlost parents feel a little less lost, a little less lonely, a little less marginalized in our grief.

Do you know how huge that is?

Many people live their entire lives without doing something this large, this selfless, this courageous. And without ever having take a breath outside of your mother’s womb, you have created all of what is here tonight, in this room.

Your mother could have chosen to remain on the floor of the closet, but instead she built the MISS Foundation—on the tears of your absence.

Chey, your life and what your mother has done because of your life is really indescribable on so many levels.

The way in which we come together every two years, is our lament, our pining for you.

And here is what I have understood thus far from knowing you:

For the rest of your mother's life, she will wonder if you would have laughed like your sister or like your brothers. She will wonder what it would be like to console you after the stupid boy who first kissed you decided to break up with you. She will wonder who you would have married, if you would have married at all, what you would have done after that stupid boy broke up with you.

We all wonder, Chey, about so many things.

But I want to thank you for being who you are. Because your gift to me is the gift of knowing your mother, is the gift of knowing every single person in this room, and letting me stand up here on this stage to tell you what a difference you have made in the lives of so many wounded and lost souls. The number of lives you have saved is immeasurable.

And to your mother I want to say that I love you with all my heart, and I am so, so sorry that you have to cry so many tears with all of us. And I am so sorry, really in so many strange and complicated ways that we have to know each other at all.

But for that I am forever grateful.

And I will never tire, Joanne, of watching you becoming...


And finally, to all the families who are here this year for the very first time, I want to tell you that tomorrow might be a certain kind of hell when you find yourself returning into the world that still misunderstands and misinterprets our grief. And I want to tell you instead of being afraid of re-entry, to go boldly into the world carrying your grief like a child who laughs and dances and sings and stubs her toe and gets up again.

I want to tell you that this is our opportunity to show the world that the paradigm is indeed shifting, that we are not okay with the way that they think our grief will look. That instead we will teach them about our messy, sticky, unpredictable grief, and that we will survive this because in this room, what we know for certain is that our grief is love.

And our love will be spilled out into the world for everyone to experience whether or not they want to be a part of it.

Because every person in this room is love, and love is the only thing that can ever truly save us.

Dear Cheyenne,

You should be sixteen by now. You should have gone out yesterday for your driver's test with your mother. You should have known the lusciousness of sweet sixteen. You should have tasted your first kiss. You should have let your mother run her fingers through your long hair.

Instead, your mother mourns.
Instead, your mother pines.
Instead, your mother longs.

All of us long, Cheyenne, for you. For our children. And none of us will ever let anyone take that away.

Because it is in our longing, our mourning, that we hold onto you and remember you and continue to love you.

Cheyenne, you should know that you have the most incredible mother.

Because of you, she has created a place where all of us babylost mothers feel a little less lost, a little less lonely, a little less marginalized in our grief.

Do you know how huge that is?

Many people live their entire lives without doing something this large, this selfless, this courageous.

Your mother, Cheyenne, could have chosen to remain on the floor of the closet, but instead she built a foundation--the MISS Foundation--on the tears of your absence. She holds the hands of the grieving daily and helps all of us walk through this maze of confusion, of angst, of loneliness, of fear, of pain, and somehow, all of us feel a little more love because of it.

Cheyenne, your life and what your mother has done because of your life is really indescribable on so many levels.

We would all of us give up this work, for a moment with our children. But we do this because it is time spent with you. It is our way to continue to love you.

But here is what I know:

For the rest of your mother's life, she will wonder what the color of your eyes would have been. She will wonder if you would have laughed like your sister or like your brothers. She will wonder what it would be like to console you after the stupid boy who first kissed you decided to break up with you. She will wonder, as will we, for the rest of our lives who you would have married, what you would have done when you grew up, what the test score would have been of your most recent exam.

We all wonder, Cheyenne, about so many things.

But I want to thank you for being who you are. Because your gift to me was the gift of knowing your mother. And that is something I can never repay.

So thank you for that.

And to your mother I want to say that I love you with all my heart, and I am so, so sorry that you have to cry so many tears again and again and again. And I am so sorry really in so many strange and complicated ways that we have to know each other at all.

But for that I am forever grateful.

And I will never tire of watching you becoming...

Seasons

I am recycling my own material because I know somewhere, at some point, I have written about seasons. The seasons of my own life. The seasons of our grief.

But really, the older I get, the more true I find that the seasons of grief matter.

All of us will experience grief in our lifetime.

Short of locking ourselves into a closet and living in pure isolation, we will all experience grief in its rawest form.

But what we choose to do with that grief, how we choose to manage it, where we choose to hold it in our bodies, is all part of our own decision-making process.

But here is the amazing and beautiful thing about grief:

If we allow ourselves to step inside of it and experience it fully, we will come out on the other side, better. Period.

I choose to believe then that this is one of the many gifts our dead leave behind for us. It is not something to come to lightly. And in fact, it is really never helpful or useful to tell this to someone else, especially when they are in the early stages of grief. But I do think it's true.

And it has taken me a long, seven years of my own processing to come to this conclusion.

Stay with me.

Grace died in June, 2003.

I fell into a hole of utter despair and chaos.

I couldn't parent my living children.
I couldn't take care of myself.
I couldn't function as a wife.
Thank god at the time, I didn't have to function as an employee.
I walked around for the first year as what I now come to believe as the living dead. I was for all intents and purposes dead.
I didn't make for good company. Trust me.
I shut down. I went numb.
I questioned every single thing around me.
I cursed.
For the first time in my life, I struggled with depression, anxiety, PTSD--things that I thought only happened to "other" people.

But during this time, miraculous things were happening around me:

Other people picked up my children and parented them.
People came into my home and cleaned toilets and vacuumed rugs. (I can't for the life of me remember who they were.)
Someone appeared in my life (who I've never seen since) and handed me the name of her therapist who helped her after her child died.
I called the number, and even though she had a full client schedule, this therapist took me in.
Weekly, I appeared on her doorstep, curled up in a ball, and somehow, over time, she helped unfurl me.
Don't be fooled. I am not fully unfurled, not even seven years later.
She still allows me to appear on her doorstep.
I have followed her from one office to another across town.
I have uncovered more ugly and dark places in my life.

These are more of Grace's gifts.

Over time, I have discovered that unconditional love really does exist.
I have met other women, other families, who have experienced the tragedy of losing their children.
They share their stories with me fully present, heart-wrenchingly painful.
I listen.
I am awed by their courage.

There is not a week (hardly a day) that goes by without Grace presenting herself to me.

She is fully present in my life and in the life of my family.

A teacher this year told me how she witnessed my daughter consoling another student after the death of this student's father. My nine-year-old daughter was telling a class filled with students that sometimes people just die, and we don't know why. My daughter has become the most compassionate among us. She told the class about her sister, and how sometimes we still feel sad.

Grace is present in our lives.

My four-year-old a few days ago talked about his older sister Grace. It is strange to hear him say "older" sister when she died three years before he was born. When she died at birth and he, at four-years-old, is saying older sister.

Grace is present in our lives.

People have gone out of our lives, weary perhaps of the grief we carry.

But more people have come into our lives.

These are some of Grace's gifts.

They are, I recognize, gifts I would give up in a moment to hold Grace again, to see her take a breath, to watch her grow. I would become, in a heartbeat, my old, broken worn self once again to see her sitting up and looking around a room with wonderment.

But I can't.

And so I find her gifts daily all about me.

There is a heart-shaped planter on my porch this time of year filled with flowers. It is made out of a tree trunk. A group of friends soon after Grace died brought it to our house and filled it with flowers and placed it on our porch.

Last night, my four-year-old and I filled it with this seasons flowers. Yellow and red and blue and white flowers. He delighted in the dirt that filled the trunk, in the water he spilled over the heart, in the flowers that were still miraculously alive and growing taller today.

Grace remains present in all the seasons of our lives, and my grief remains tucked into the crevasses of my body. Sometimes, the grief appears wild and unruly and surprising.

But much of the time now it appears in the form of love.

I choose to believe Grace still matters.

I choose to believe that Grace remains present in our lives.

I choose to believe that she continues to make a difference.

I am still unfurling myself. It is a process that may take the rest of my life. I am willing to take the time I need to do that. And I will keep Grace at the center of that process.

Grace is present in our lives.

Our lives are filled with love.

Grace is love.

Seven years and counting...

Grace,

Here's the thing I forget every year.

Every year, May arrives and every year my body changes. It shifts, it leans, it pines, it mourns. And for the first few days, I walk around in a fog forgetting, but recognizing that I am becoming someone other than my self. Only I still am my self.

And there it is then.

The end of May comes, and I am crazed, crazy, wild, an animal let loose in the desert, the wrong sort of desert, and you are still gone, and I am that animal all alone lashing out at the world, lashing out at my family, hiding from my friends.

And here it is.

Now June.

June comes, and my body sighs deeply. My head lifts slowly out of the fog. I become functional again and present in the world. In fact, sometimes I become more present, more focused, more determined than ever before to do something right rather than doing all the things wrong as I seem to have done for the last few weeks.

This time though, Grace, this year has been a year. I think it has to do with my father. With turning 42 and then again turning 43. With growing older than my father ever had a chance to do.

And it has to do with the one-year anniversary of my grandmother's death passing with hardly anyone out there noticing, with no phone calls from family, with no shared conversations.

With no sharing among family now broken and separated by distances and by emotions and by too much time having passed.

And it has to do with all the first graders lined up this year, every day outside of the classroom at your sister's new school. First graders are all day school participants now. First graders are shy and nervous and excited and silly and loving and full of wonderment. And each time I see those first graders lined up, I see a gap, I see a hole, I feel the ache. I see you missing among them.

And so this year, Grace, has been a year filled with longing, filled with confusion, filled with still missing you.

Your anniversary comes and your anniversary passes.

And I am still here.

You are still gone.

You are still the one that matters.

And you are still love.

That's what it really becomes then, Grace: you become love. My love for you continues to amaze and frighten me. My love for you continues to confound me. My love for you continues to grow.

And in that love, I can find hope.

And with that love, I can find healing.

And because of that love, I am still.

I am

and

you are

and

we will

continue

to

love

no matter what death has decided to take away.

Your presence continues to matter.

June 1st - Noon

Grace is nearly here.

I am pushing, and she is no help.

I push, and she moves back inside.

I push, and then I panic and hold on.

The doctor is yelling now to push.

People are surrounding me and watching.

Suddenly, I remember that if I push her out, she is gone for ever.

I hold her back inside of me.

PUSH...they scream. PUSH.

The doctor says as calmly as she can, "We need to get her out."

And if I could, I would pause right here; I would pause this entire day and ask, "Why?"

"Why dear doctor do we need to get her out now? What's the hurry?"

Because I am hurrying.

Because I am well-aware that the funeral home has been called, that they are on stand by, that it is Sunday and they close at 4:00 p.m. That everyone in the room thinks that she has to leave the hospital today and go to the funeral home because no one, no one has been told that Grace could stay with me for one or two days because this is 2003 and in 2003 in Spokane, the hospitals send the babies away to the funeral homes because no one has stood up and screamed at the top of their lungs:

"Let the babies stay with the mamas as long as the mamas and babies need to stay together."

This won't happen still for a couple of years and at the hospital where I gave birth, it won't happen for a very long time.

So I push and I pull and I push and I pull until finally, finally my body does what it has to do and Grace is born.



Only she is not crying.

Everyone else in the room is crying, and fear hangs in the air and fear takes over and fear is the thing that remains for a very long, long time.

And Grace arrives at noon, and we have four hours.

FOUR measly hours to hold her and look at her and touch her, and friends parade through the hospital and people measure her and weigh her and no one really wants to touch her too much because it is clear, it is very, very clear that she has been dead for a while inside of me though no one really tells me any of this.

No one tells me that a body starts to decompose inside of you when the body dies before it's born.

That might be the ugliest sentence I've ever written, but it is the truth. The body decomposes, and no one, not the doctor who was there or the nurses who have seen this before prepared me for the state of Grace. NO ONE.

And so fear entered the room and never left.

Fear hung around and stayed until finally, finally on the next day when my doctor who was out of town arrived, told me that Grace was perfect and she looked perfectly normal and all of the things that were happening to her body were perfectly normal.

MY BABY WAS NORMAL.

But for the briefest bit of time, I was led to believe something was wrong with her because the sucky doctor never said otherwise. And no one prepared me for this.

And I sat in my hospital bed thinking that something was wrong with her when actually nothing at all was wrong with her at all.

And all that I knew was that I didn't want anyone else to ever have to feel this way again. That I never wanted a mother to feel that lonely and that isolated and that much fear in the room with her again. That fear should never have been allowed to enter that day. That fear had no right to show up on my doorstep. That someone who knew what was going on should have stopped fear from entering the room.

I will shout from the top of the mountain for all the mothers who need more time with their babies.

There is no hurry. There is no rush. You may take all the time you need with your child. This is the only time you have.

Grace is.

Grace matters.

Grace will never be forgotten.

June 1st - 3 a.m.

I wake up in a panic.

Though I don't know it yet (I will soon), waking up for the next few months, is the worst part. Waking up and realizing what has happened, waking up and realizing my baby is dead, waking up and realizing that my baby is gone, this, this is the worst thing ever.

In the moment between waking and sleeping and realization is where I want to stay stuck.

At midnight, the nurse came in and gave me another cervadil. I was in labor and starting to dilate, but not by much.

So one more cervadil goes in. More morphine goes in. I have a magical button that I push when I need more morphine, and it magically dispenses the morphine directly into my bloodstream.

Then, 3 a.m. comes and I am dreaming (or am I awake?), I don't know, but I am suddenly floating above the room. I see myself below. I see my belly. I see my dead child. I see my body, and suddenly I am aware that I want to die, that I am dying, that a piece of me is dead.

It is an out-of-body experience. It is a near death experience more than likely brought on by the morphine, but I wake up and realize I am no longer floating above myself, that I am in fact still inside my body. And I realize that I no longer want to be inside my own body. That I really and truly want to be dead. I don't want to be alive.

Are these suicidal thoughts?

I will discover much, much later, that many other moms have this same experience of not wanting to live, of wanting to die, not so much out of wanting to die as much as wanting to be with their baby.

I want to be with Grace. I want to be where Grace is. I want death.

I stop the morphine. I call the nurse. I ask her to remove the drip from my body.

She asks me if I'm sure.

I am sure.

I want to feel this birth, I tell her. I tell my midwife that I am done with the drugs. I want to feel Grace. I want to feel this birth. I want to feel whatever it is I need to feel.

Still, I want to die.

And now I am bleeding.

Blood is everywhere. They can hardly stop the bleeding. My blood count goes way, way down. I hear them talk about transfusions. I think once again that really I might die. I wish them all away. Just leave me alone, and let the blood run out of me.

And then the bleeding stops.

I fall asleep. They go away.

I wake up at 6 a.m.

I am still pregnant.

Grace is still dead.

The world still makes no sense at all.

It is June 1st.

Today, I will give birth to my dead baby.

Today, I will give birth to death.

The day, the week, the month is suddenly longer than I can ever imagine.

Grace is dead and no miracle, I realize, will ever bring her back.

And then the work of hard labor is about to begin.

Soon, my labor will begin and in six hours, Grace will be born. Only hardly born at all.

Still, she will indeed, be born. Still born. Born still.

Spin it whichever way you'd like.

The story ends up the same way every time.

Grace is dead.

May 31st - 3 p.m.

There is not much that hasn't been said and done in these last few exhausting hours.

Our children have been brought to the hospital, and we have told them the devastating news--first that they have a sister but that she has died. Telling our children was the final crack in my heart already cracked wide open.

Calls have been made to family and a few friends.

Our pastor has arrived.

My mother is flying up from California.

We are on a runaway train without any guide book to help us navigate through this terrain.

The doctor, the sucky, sucky doctor who has not delivered a baby since graduate school has arrived. And I don't know it at the time, but I hate her. She is all business, all about the induction, all about getting this baby out of my body, and I just want to hold Grace inside and pause the moment.

Grace. We have named her Grace.

We have held that name through two babies, wanting to name one Grace but never feeling like it made sense--up until now. Grace. She is Grace and she is Susie. Sweet Susie, dear Susie, who just one year earlier died an unexpected death at age 36.

Grace Susie.

Some things make a lot of sense.

Many things make no sense at all.

Cervadil.

I have been induced with a cervadil by the sucky doctor who leaves and informs the nurses to call her to return when my labor gets hard and delivery is close at hand.

But for the moment, nothing.

I sit in the bed and wait.

Our midwife and Terry take me for a walk, but first I have to be wheeled down into the waiting room in a wheelchair. And then I have to sign a form that says I am leaving hospital property to go on a walk, and that I don't hold them liable.

Of course I don't hold them liable. I hold myself liable.

For everything.

My head spins with this reason and that reason. With this meal and that meal. With this illness and that illness. With this fall on the pavement and that dog running into me. With this small glass of red wine and that small thrust of anger directed at god knows what.

We are in a holding pattern.

My belly aches with the fullness of death, head down, body still.

Calls continue to come in from family around the country--some calls I can take. Some calls I can't. Some people, I decide, I never want to see again.

My two children remain in awe of the cable television in the hospital waiting room.

Babies are being born and happy parents are cooing and fawning over their new little bundles of joy.

A silk flower arrangement is hung on my door and this, this I come to find out, means 'dead baby inside. Enter carefully and speak quietly.'

What I really want to do is scream out loud. What I really want to do is shout at the top of my lungs. What I really want to do is run.

But I have been trained to be a good girl. I have been trained to be polite.

I worry, instead, about the nurses around me. They look so sad. I apologize to my midwife. I apologize to my pastor who has left her kids for the next 36 hours and left her sermon and left her family. I apologize to Grace. I'm sorry I failed you.

I never once apologize to myself.

I have never taken a drug related to birth. I have never taken the medication they offer.

And now, I want it all. I want a C-section, but they refuse that. 'Too dangerous,' they say.

What the hell does that mean? Too dangerous for a dead baby but perfectly fine for a live one?

I want the morphine. I take the morphine. I want to be drug-induced. I want numbness.

The nurses tell me I don't have to feel anything. My midwife tells me I can feel everything. I am confused by all of it. I am confused by everyone.

I want my baby.

The rest of the day continues in some kind of bizarre and surreal fashion.

People arrive to take my children on play dates. People arrive to see me, but I don't want to be seen. I refuse some and allow others.

I am waiting for labor to start.

I am dreading that labor will begin.

I am about to give birth to death.

I think of my father.

I thought that was the worst kind of thing, to be fatherless, for a child to lose their father.

That no longer becomes the worst kind of thing.

This is by far the worst thing ever.

I am without Grace. She is still inside my belly.

I wonder when her soul left me.

I wonder when she took her last breath.

I wonder when her heart stopped.

I wonder when mine, please god, when will my heart stop beating.

I don't want to be part of this body any longer. I don't want labor to begin. I want to crawl out of my body and run away.

I want Grace.