Cover her briefness in singing

Grief and its geography, 39 years later...

2011-12-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-09-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-12-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-10T01:37:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

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,

2010-07-28T00:28:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-31T22:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

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.

May 31st

2010-05-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Terry calls our midwife at 3:30 a.m. and mostly, I am concerned about waking her up, about the hour of the day, and I keep thinking, what if I'm wrong. Please be wrong. Who calls their midwife at 3:30 a.m.?"

Now, of course, this seems absurd. Ridiculous.

But then, I wanted everything about the moment to be wrong. I wanted to be wrong.

I wanted my baby to move.

Move.

Then there is the very real problem of the two other children fast asleep in our home, and so I reassure Terry that everything will be okay, and Tamy reassures me, and I get in the car and drive myself to Tamy's office alone while Terry stays behind with the children.

Kick.

I am certain we will do a quick check and at worst, the baby's heart rate has slowed, and maybe, just maybe, I will be induced today and deliver our baby early.

Please just move.

I arrive at Tamy's office shortly after her, and she calmly tells me that we will check the heart rate with her doppler. She listens. I watch for signs. I watch her eyes. She hears something. Something. She is not sure though if the heart beat is mine or the baby's. I hold on to the something. Anything.

Kick.

And so we both decide that going to a hospital is best.

I call Terry, and he has to call a friend to see if she would mind coming over. It's 5 a.m. on a Saturday. Who do you call at 5 a.m. on a Saturday to come to your house? Who do you call to wake up so early in the morning?

The children sleep.

Terry arrives at the hospital just as the technician, who is also woken up, arrives at the hospital.

She wheels in her machine.

The nurses stand toward the back of the room.

My doctor is out of town. They are trying to find another doctor.

Terry holds my hand while sitting in the chair next to the bed. Tamy stands at my feet. There is silence.

The gel goes on my tummy. More silence.

Kick.

The technician quietly goes about moving the doppler across my tummy.

And now it all seems so ridiculous. The way the conversation went.

"Here is the baby's head," she says. "Here are the arms. The legs." She moves the doppler over my belly. "The spine."

No one says a word.

I watch eyes. I see the outline of the spine, the head, the neck.

I have to ask. I can't believe I have to ask, but I have to ask.

"And her heart?" I ask with a wide-open question mark at the end.

"Her heart beat?" I ask again.

There is an exchange of eyes once more.

"We are supposed to wait for your doctor to arrive," the technician says. "I am not supposed to say anything, but since your midwife is here..." she trails off.

More eyes.

Move.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry. There is no heartbeat."

The silence is heart-wrenching, surreal.

The world spins in the wrong direction.

"Can you tell me what the baby is? Can you tell me if it is a boy or a girl?"

"A girl," she says. "A little girl."

Move, goddammit, move.

The nurses begin to back out of the room.

I can hear Terry crying in the chair next to me.

My body is cold, so cold. The room is shrinking and growing all at the same time. I go numb. It's as if my entire self in some kind of protective measure tries to completely shut down. I cannot cry. I cannot move. I am shaking.

I only hear the pounding of my own heart.

The technician mumbles that she'll give us a few minutes, and she walks out of the room.

I can't understand anything that is going on. There is nothing anymore, nothing for a very long time that will ever make any sense. And some things will never make sense ever again.

May 31st has just begun, and it will be a very long day.

Some things about the day will be etched into my body forever. Everything runs into itself as one big, long paragraph without a beginning or end.

6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and most of Spokane is still asleep.

My baby shower is still being planned for the next day. Sunday.

And for one absurd moment, I worry about needing to cancel the baby shower.

Someone, somewhere pours herself a cup of coffee.

Someone, somewhere is reading the morning paper.

And someone in the hospital just told me that I will need to deliver this baby vaginally. That I will need to be induced.

And I will give birth to death.

The world continues to spin in all the wrong directions.

May 31st.

The Moment

2010-05-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

It is May 30. And here is how the day will go:

I will go to a friend's house today, and I will try to get Sophia down for a nap. She is 2 1/2 years old. She is so tired. I am so tired, but I haven't been able to stop, not for a moment.

My friend will offer her bedroom to us as a sanctuary, and I will gladly take it.

Sophia and I will lie down together, and I will rub her back, and she will fall asleep. I am so tired, that I too, will fall asleep. And as I do, I will rub my belly. I am so tired that when I notice the baby isn't moving, I make note of it for sure, but I push it aside in my head.

No movement.

I fall asleep and Sophia wakes me up an hour later jumping out of bed.

I tell my friend I am still sleepy, but I don't want to sleep anymore. I tell her I've been depressed for a few days, but the afternoon continues as if nothing is wrong. I keep pushing aside that voice in my head. I want that voice in my head to go away.

May 30.

I will fall into bed late because the children have been exhausting today. Two and five years old.

And as I fall asleep, I will place my hands on my belly, lie on my side and wonder when exactly it was that I last felt the baby move. A sudden darkness and fear rises inside of me, and panic sets in.

But I am so, so tired. I have been so tired for more than a day.

I fall asleep.

But a few hours later something wakes me, jolts me awake, and I can feel my heart pounding inside of me. It is 2:00 a.m.

Move.

I get up and walk downstairs.

Move.

I do the only thing I can remember to do. I drink a glass of sweet grape juice.

Move.

I walk up the stairs and down the stairs.

Everyone sleeps. The air hangs low, and I feel my heart beat. I feel my heart beat.

Move.

I turn on the computer and type in fetal movement. I type in counting baby kicks. I follow every instruction and every suggestion.

Move.

It is 3 a.m.

I cannot feel my baby moving.

I go backward in time searching for the moment, trying to remember when exactly it was that I last felt the baby move.

There is no moment. There is just a memory of always movement. Of every few hours pausing in my day, my busy, busy day to hold my belly while she kicked. There is a memory of stopping mid-sentence while I talk to catch my breath as she pounded against me, while she moved.

And then there is the moment in the night trying desperately to remember the last moment.

Trying desperately to pinpoint a moment, any moment as a sign as a vehicle through which I could enter to find blame. A moment when I could say, this then is when her heart stopped beating, and there is nothing I could have done. This then is when her heart stopped beating, and I should have done something.

I want a moment.

I want there to be a moment when I paused, when my heart stopped too, when I could say, “I’m sorry.” I want a moment when I could say, “Goodbye.” I want a moment where I could change the course of things to come.

There is no moment.

There is only the darkness descending. The milky tears which fall from my breast. The fullness of the world around me feeling so empty.

It is 3:30 a.m., and I go back upstairs to wake up Terry.

This becomes my moment.

Fragility

2010-05-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

Have you ever held a butterfly in your hand?

Have you ever touched its wings only to discover that they can break or tear with just the slightest tapping.

I am that fragile.

If you were to hold me in your hands, if you were to touch me, I may just crack for you. I might just fall to pieces.

Today, I was tested for explosives at the airport. I was in line, waiting for my flight, minding my own business, watching a group of Thai people in front of me get their passports checked. And then as I was walking forward with my own boarding pass and driver's license, a security guard appeared out of nowhere and said, "Please follow me, ma'am."

She then proceeded to wipe down my hands with a cloth, run the cloth through a machine. She placed my hands on some kind of scanner. She took my license and ran that through something and then felt me up and down.

"Do you mind if I ask what you are doing?" I asked.

"Testing you for explosives," she said with a smile as if I'd just asked her what she was watching on tv, and she had answered, "Dora the Explorer, of course."

I spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out if I was just a random person in line chosen to be tested or if I was looking and acting in some suspicious manner.

And then for a moment, I thought, the security guards at the airport can see inside my head! Of course I'm being tested for explosives. They are looking in my head, and they can see what's going on. They can see that I am filled with explosives.

My head is certainly about to explode. My head is certainly ready to blow up. My head is certainly filled with explosives.

What if we could see inside of a person's head, inside her brain? Are there so many faces we wear that we would be surprised by what we really saw inside of each other?

There are some parents who come to our support group who know before their babies die, that their babies are going to die. They come because they know that the baby growing inside of them is going to die. And I can't for the life of me really know what that must be like. To have the knowledge ahead of time that the baby you are carrying will die. There is something beautiful about the way they are able to prepare, to say goodbye, to hold on to what they will not have for long.

If I could go back and hold on to what I would not have for long, I would.

If I could go back in time, there are words that I've spoken that I would take away from my mouth.

If I could go back in time, there are moments when I would pause longer before I speak, I would pause before I take a breath, I would pause before I ... Can you finish that sentence with me? What would you pause before doing?

I would let the butterfly land on my hand and with its own legs, I would let it sit still. I would resist the urge to touch her wings and instead, I would watch in awe at the intricacies of her wings, of the colors and patterns and way in which her wings flap back and forth slowly as if testing her stability.

If I could, I would pause the world right now, to see who else out there feels at least this broken, this fragile, this unsure of whether or not I should take off and fly or try to find my cocoon to burrow back into?

When you have set before you two choices--to walk or run--to stay or go--to grieve or forget--what would you choose? It is easy for me to choose grieving over forgetting. That one is not really a choice at all. But the other two confound me.

What if everything I thought I knew about grief, about death, about choosing wasn't true at all.

For an infant, it is easy. You choose the mother, you choose the breast, you choose the one that sustains you and fills your tummy.

But as we grow older, as we turn from the caterpillar into the butterfly, the choices are not always so clear.

And for the baby who never takes a breath outside of the womb, the choice no longer lies in the ability to choose the cocoon over the butterfly. The choice then is left up to the parents to figure out how in the world they choose to live the rest of their lives.

And therein lies our fragility. The world no longer makes sense. The world no longer moves in an orderly fashion.

The world took the butterfly first and left the cocoon behind.

When failure is the only option

2010-05-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

I have failed this month at many things in my life. At most things in my life.

I have utterly and completely failed. Do you ever feel that way?

When the month ends, when time moves forward, my failure will still be evident.

The cracks in the wall grow larger, and I don't know how many cracks a heart can really withstand.

Here is the thing: At the end of the month, at the beginning of the next month, at the beginning of next year, Grace will still be dead. Always and forever.

My failures, I suppose, are small in comparison to the largeness of the world.

It is easy to look at life and compare our failures and compare our grief, and think, well, mine cannot be so bad. That mother, that mother lost two children. That country suffered devastation. That family experienced multiple losses.

But, at the end of the day, as someone recently said to me, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Indeed.

And so whether or not there is famine in Africa, whether or not there are earthquakes in Haiti, my heart still feels like it's cracking. The initial quake set the stage many years ago, created my fault line. As a child experiencing death, losing a parent, the fault line emerged and settled into my body.

Then, a larger kind of quake happened years later when that child, now a parent experienced the death of her own child. The fault line rumbled, the earthquake roared, the buildings tumbled, the glass shattered into a million pieces around her.

And the fault line remains: larger, more fragile, more tenuous.

"Wherever you go, there you are."

What kind of platitude stands more in opposition to hope and love than this one? This platitude stands alone creating its own fault line.

And so I wander the streets. I board an airplane. I run out of my life. And still, here I am with the fault line still cracking, with the walls still tumbling. With Grace still dead.

There may not be a four-letter word more real, more alive, more grief-filled than that: Dead. Gone. Over.

And other things still happen to make me realize: Dead. Gone. Over.

Seven years. Seven times seven. Seventy times seven. The earthquake returns. The ground shakes. The glass rattles. And I use all my force, all my power, all my energy to keep the walls from crashing down.

'The moon is hiding in

her hair.

The

lily

of heaven

full of all dreams,

draws down."

And still, wherever I go, here I am. There is no escape. There is no running away.

And wherever I go, Grace is still dead. There is no escape. There is no running away.

"cover her briefness in singing

close her with the intricate faint birds

by daisies and twilights

Deepen her,

Recite

upon her

flesh

the rain's

pearly singly-whispering."

Twilight has come. Dusk has fallen.

Running away

2010-05-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, I wanted to run away. The story goes something like this:

I packed my suitcase after getting mad at my mom, and I told her I was running away. She helped me finish packing, opened the front door and let me go. I walked half way down the street while looking back at the house and finally, turned around and came running home.

I want to run away.

Tonight, I took the dog and ran 2 1/2 miles. That hardly seems very far at all, but honestly I'm not a runner and so I felt the distance of the miles. It was nearly 10 p.m., and I hadn't been out that late in the evening on my own in years. I felt like I could have run straight out of my life.

I felt like I could have kept running.

I was tired for sure. I was breathing hard. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. And toward the end of my run, I could see lightening in the distance moving closer toward me. Then thunder came and just as I was finishing up, the rain started.

While I was running, I thought about what might happen if I just kept going, if I didn't stop. I wondered where I would end up, what might happen, how far I could travel. And as I got more tired, I realized that I probably couldn't travel very far at all. In fact, I was ready to turn back home after only a couple miles. And when I couldn't run any farther, I started walking.

Do you ever just want to run out of your life, away from your past, toward some unknown future that has to seem better than what is in the now?

I want to run through the rest of May and past June 1. I want to rewind the tape and go back to May 27, on the day that Grace's heart was beating, 140 beats per minute and I want to tell my midwife to induce labor now, to get her out of my body and onto my chest. I want her heart to beat again, to pound in her chest, to see her nearly seven-year-old self chasing after her best friend. I want to find her shoes scattered across the living room floor like the rest of children's shoes are, and I want her tossing and turning in her own bed or in her sister's bed each of them taking up way too much room, unable to lie straight with the covers neatly tucked around themselves.

I want her to tell me she doesn't want the corn and edamame salad at dinner, and that she doesn't like the grilled tofu. I want her to pull at my leg as I'm putting on my tennis shoes to go out for a run, and I want her to stop me from going.

And I want all four of my children lined up, side by side, running along beside me without knowing what it means to want or long for or pine for or wish for.

I want the laundry piled up even higher with her clothes tossed in, and I want the dishes stacked taller and the enormity of our lives even larger.

I want to simply feel overwhelmed by being a parent not overwhelmed by a sort of grief that continues to pull me into these dark spaces, that continues to enlarge my heart in ways that I no longer want it enlarged.

I want to shout at the top of a mountain that I didn't want this, that I didn't choose this, that I could think of 20 people I'd rather have dead than Grace, that certainly someone else could have handled it better. That maybe those people who know how to shut down and shut out and turn off would be a better person for all of this grief, that they could have done a much better job. That maybe denial has a really good reason for showing up in people's lives because the protection from denial right now seems pretty good.

I want to climb to the top of the mountain and down the other side.

I want to run away.

I want to put on my running shoes again and head out into the storm to let the thunder and lightening and rain come crashing down.

It is in these moments that I most remember that love is the reason for all of this. Love is the reason for grief. Love is the reason for denial. Love might be the only real reason for us to be in this world. And that love without Grace sometimes seems kind of pointless. But then there are the faces of the other three.

And it is in their faces that I most can find Grace.
It is in their love where she exists.
And if I can find her there, then really nothing else matters.

This then is how grief works.
This then is what love is.

This is where grace matters most of all.

Loneliness and Hope

2010-05-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

Mother Teresa said, "Loneliness and the feeling of being unloved, is the most terrible poverty."

There is a very sense of poverty then after your child dies. There is a desperate sense of loneliness, and the curtains on the world fade. There is no one who knows this as well as the parents of a dead child.

Hope fades.
Darkness falls.
Fear rises.
Confusion looms.
Grief prevails.

Around this time, about three weeks before Grace died, I sent a desperate middle-of-the-night email to my midwife. I told her that I couldn't stop crying. I told her that I felt overwhelmed, depressed, and incredibly sad. I told her that I didn't know why, that I'd never experienced this with my other two children, and I hardly knew what to do.

There was, of course, nothing to do. The baby's heart beat. My check ups didn't detect anything unusual and all my stats were normal.

My midwife did the only thing she could which was to reassure me that hormones can play havoc with our bodies and that many women feel emotionally unsettled.

I still have that email.

I read it sometimes, and my body goes cold. A numbness settles.

Was this some kind of premonition? Was this the precursor to what was coming? There were signs coming out me from all angles. Only a month before this email, on Easter morning, Sophia, age 2 1/2 walked out the back door at a friends house, down the driveway and headed on her own away from all of us, three blocks from the party. She was crossing a busy street, wandering around, with no one running after her.

I thought she was in the house with Terry, and he thought she was outside with me.

A couple found her and carried her from house to house knocking on doors: Is this your child? Do you know this child? Until they found our party, until they found us, laughing and chatting, Easter candy strewn all around us.

And I looked at this stranger carrying my daughter confused in that moment of the series of events leading up to this. Time began to slow way down and my head began to pound as I pieced together the story.

I took Sophia in my arms, and she immediately fell asleep. I held her and cried, and saw before me a flash of what it meant to lose a child. And I remember thinking, This would be my undoing. This, losing my daughter, would send me over the edge and into an abyss that I could never return from.

Was this a sign, a premonition of what was coming?

I could give you more instances, more examples, but I think the point is simply that in all of this, I never could have predicted that I could have survived this sort of thing. I never would have predicted that seven years later, I would find hope, seek joy, find laughter and sing.

If we were made aware of our traumas, if we could see what was coming, surely we would try to run the other way.

But by some miracle of grace, we do survive and sometimes, if we are lucky, we come out stronger in the process. Certainly more vulnerable, but stronger too.

And therein lies the dichotomy in all of this grief: Here is my grief, for sure, present, daily, surrounding me and yet here is grief's companion: joy, present, daily, surrounding me.

And hope does exist because I am surrounded by people in my life that give me hope, that give me reasons to live. And still, and yet, there is Grace alive in my mind, missing in our lives, wreaking great havoc on my heart and expanding my ability to love.

The weeks are closing in on me. The memories come at me like shooting stars out of nowhere. I can be staring up at a sky filled with light, filled with stars pulsing in the night and then suddenly, one drops down quickly, out of the night sky, appears before me in a flash and disappears.

I can see Sophia in my mind, two and a half years old, walking down a neighborhood street. Was she looking for me? I have to believe she was. And I was unaware that she had walked out of my life for a moment while Grace still growing inside of me was living her life in the only way she'd ever know--inside of my body, forever cocooned from the world, sheltered within my womb, her little heart beating its last beats forever with just a few weeks to go.

Hope still exists.
Lightness appears.
Shadows move in and out of my life.

Grace continues to matter.

It always starts on an ordinary day in May...

2010-05-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

It starts on an ordinary day in May. Each year, it surprises me. One moment I am walking, I am gardening, I am driving, I am playing with my children, and then.

Then, a single tear falls.

Falling quite suddenly out of nowhere really. It just appears on my face, and I can't quite figure out why.

And then.

Then.

A few days later, it happens again.

Only this time it doesn't really stop.

It keeps falling.

One after another.

Falling.

And then the flood arrives.
The tsunami.

And I remember.

May.

How many weeks do I have left?
How many days do I have left?

When was that moment when she stopped breathing?

Was it the evening of May 28, Wednesday, or the early morning of May 29, Thursday?

There is a fog, then in those days before and those days after.

There is a haze in the days of knowing she was alive and the days of knowing she was dead.

There was the day of knowing.
May 29.
There was the day of confirming what I'd dreaded knowing.
May 30.
There was the day of waiting.
May 31.
There was the day of delivery.
June 1.

And they are all there, the days stacked upon each other.

And I wonder, what day then is the day I mourn her death? What day then is the day I celebrate her birth.

It is not a day. It is not a moment.

It is a week of hell.
It is a week of trauma.
It is a week of remembering.
It is a week of Grace.
It is a month of Grace.
It is a lifetime without Grace.

And in these days and weeks leading up, it is a time of holding. Of wondering. Of pondering. Of wishing. Of pining.

And none of it ever goes away.

May comes. It is my roaring like a lion, and there is no exit like a lamb.

It is my lament.

It is my longing.

It is my emptiness.

It is my hole.

Tears fall.

Days pass.

June will come and Grace will still be missing.

My four-letter word:

Still.

My four letter word:

Born.

Still born.

Born still.

No matter where you put those words, no matter what order, they are without.

With and without.

Without Grace.

And with grace.

It starts with a single tear.

Weddings and Funerals; Life and Death

2010-05-10T22:43:00.001-07:00

How is it that something written so many hundreds (okay, thousands) of years ago can say it best of all... (Ecclesiastes, chapter 3)

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

And so it is as I read this, that I am reminded that everything is indeed beyond my control and everything has its place in time.

Though I try and tear down walls and mend fences and stop wars, I cannot do all of these things. Though I try desperately to only love and only heal and only grow, I cannot do and feel and be without doing and feeling and being all of the rest.

There are some of these though, that are more difficult to feel.

It is difficult to hate.

I remember after Grace died, literally, hating, absolutely hating babies.

And the first time I saw one and the thought crossed my mind, "I hate you," I was horrified. How can a person hate a baby? It was probably one of the lowest, darkest moments of my life.

It is difficult to be uprooted.

I was uprooted this week. Upended. And there was not a damn thing I could do about it. Out of my control again. I am waiting to be planted. I am waiting again to bloom. I am waiting to sprout.

But in the meantime, I am tearing down; I am scattering stones; I am searching; I am silent; I am mourning that which can never be.

There is a time, indeed, for weddings and funerals, for life and death, for love and war. And it is good to be reminded of these things. Even those of us with the best intentions and the best hope, can feel despondent.

I no longer hate babies. I get pleasure out of holding them. Though if you had told me I would find pleasure in babies nearly seven years ago, I might have torn out your eyes. Rage, envy, lust was at the heart of all of my emotions then. Feelings foreign to me. Feelings that made me uncertain of where to turn, who to trust, where to go.

And I see that look now in the eyes of a newly bereaved parent. It doesn't take much to remember, to go back, to sit with them. It is in this time and in this season where I am most fully alive, where I am blessed. There is nothing more sacred and holy than being in communion with a parent who has just lost a child. To sit. To watch. To wonder.

I am blessed indeed. Even in times of absolute despondency and hopelessness, hope prevails.

It is in these seasons of life that I most recall the seasons of death.

And in these moments, I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.

The Second Coming

2010-05-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself, the centre cannot hold.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself, things fall apart.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself, the best lack all conviction.

Sometimes, it is just one of those weeks.
Exhaustion sets in.
Grief takes hold.
Unexplained emotions rise to the surface and there is no stopping them.

World War I poets like Yeats must have felt as if the world was spinning out of control with no end in sight. Perhaps they really did think This is it! Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen felt the same way. These war poets wouldn't know about WWII yet. Would never find out about Vietnam, Korea, Persian Gulf wars.

But they all share something in common. They know the trauma of loss first hand from being in the battlefield. They know the trauma first hand from the horror of those moments, the sound of the guns, the cracking of the bombs, the acrid smell of burning bodies.

It doesn't take 100 bodies to become overwhelmed. It doesn't take guns and ammunition and bombs dropped from above.

One child.

One child dead at birth.
One child dead before birth.
One child ripped from your arms.

And you remember the sound of the monitor and your own heart beating while the other one lies silent. You remember the sound the wheels made on the ultrasound machine wheeled in the room to have 'one quick look to see what's going on.' You remember the metallic taste in your mouth when all moisture suddenly disappeared and your jaw clicked together when you tried to talk but no words came out. You remember the way the room became cold, frigid really as you started shivering uncontrollable unable to regulate your body heat. You remember the sound of the bomb being dropped, "I'm sorry, your baby is dead." and the silence that hangs in the air. You remember thinking you never knew silence could be so deafening that you needed to cover your ears to make it go away.

You remember.
You remember.
You remember.

This has been a week filled with hope and wanting. It has been a week filled with disappointment and sadness. It has been a week, a full week, of the full emotional range.

I have met two more this week, two more babies no longer with us. Two more babies whose mothers fall to pieces when they talk. And I continued to be amazed at the courage of these parents, at the love, at their genuine hopelessness and hopefulness. I continue to be amazed.

My own life spins somewhat chaotically this week. Unpredictably.

So much so that I question so much about the direction of my life at the moment, but on some level, I have to trust in the fact that things will continue to present themselves to me, things will continue to make sense at some point, things will continue to improve.

I am not without wanting, longing, desire.

While I was convinced at one time in my life, that longing was just folly, I am more convinced now that longing is a part of who I am--constructing its path for me, teaching me patience, laying down its gifts.

It is difficult though, in a week like this to see that far ahead into the future. It is difficult to understand the implications.

The darkness drops again.

And still, I hope, I wonder, I wait.

I long.

On the bittersweet side of what I know for sure

2010-04-27T21:42:00.001-07:00

In Oprah's famous words, "Here's what I know for sure:"

That my father died too soon.
That my daughter died too soon.
That when I wake up in the morning, I will be older than my father ever got a chance to become.
I made it through my 42nd year. Always with my father on my mind, in the back of my head, wondering, thinking, realizing that his life was too, too short.
That time doesn't heal all wounds, and I still miss him.
That time will always be too long without my father and daughter and too short with my husband and living children.
That no matter how hard I try, I will never fully understand why some of us live longer than our own children.
That the pain, when it arrives in those unexpected moments, continues to surprise and confound me.
That love really does transcend death.
That hearts really do literally crack.
That I will always miss having a father.
That turning 43 surprises me because I thought I'd breath a sigh of relief, and instead I am surprised by the overwhelming sadness of the fact that my father never made it this far.
That for so many years his death was about what I had lost, but now it is about what he has lost.
That I wish I knew more about him.
That I wish I could have said goodbye to Grace before she died.
That I wish I could have said goodbye to my dad before he died.

That there is never, ever enough time with the people you love.
That therapy has saved my life.
That I haven't always wanted my life to be saved.
That cracked hearts can be repaired though they are always fragile, and if you look closely, you can see the hairline fracture.
That I will always wonder what he sounded like, smelled like, and looked like.
That I wonder what of him I carry in me.
That I wish sometimes that things could have been different.
That I really am grateful for the person I've become, and so much of who I am is because of who Grace and my father were.
That death in all its mystery will be what I think about my whole life.
That thinking about death isn't a bad thing.
That all my pain, all my hurt, all my sorrow stems from love.
That I will turn 43.
That I am lucky to be alive.
That luck really has nothing to do with it.
That someday I will not have so many questions.
That I fear the very thing that will save me.
That love will save me.
That love terrifies and excites me.
That I am, in the words of Joanne Cacciatore, still becoming.
That my father died too soon.
That my daughter died too soon.

Too soon.

I am ...

New Death

2010-04-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

This week, I met three new babies who died. And that is the beauty in the sadness. I get to meet these babies who don't get to be with us. Not necessarily in a physical sense. Most of the time not. But I get to talk to their mothers, their grandmothers, the friends. I get to hear about their loveliness. I get to sit in the company of the bereaved and listen.

It is not about me. It is not about my agenda. It is about listening and watching and breathing in.

It is about love.

It is about an overwhelming need to feel and be loved and to have to endure the excruciating pain of saying goodbye. It is about being present.

It is about unfairness.

It is about the desire to throw yourself on the ground kicking and screaming.

It is about love.

It is about needing someone to listen to you so that you can try and make them understand that this baby held all your hopes and dreams. This baby was your future. This baby was everything. And now the future has disappeared.

In all of the pain of these stories, I have to keep coming back.

Why?

Because it is a calling. Because I remember for the rest of my life the fear, the isolation, the overwhelming loneliness, and I remember the one mother who stepped into my hospital room and said, "It happened to me."

And I remember thinking that there she was: Standing.
There she was: Looking whole.
There she was. Fully present.

And out of the amazing kindness of her soul, she shared photographs of her child with me. She shared memories. And she cried with me.

And that is one of the kindest, most loving things I remember about that time.

This happened to someone else.

And she survived. Maybe, just maybe I will survive.

And so I go to be with the bereaved. To sit in their presence. To hold their hands. To listen on the telephone. To exchange email messages.

And there is some small or perhaps large miracle that occurs. Because they do survive. We survive.

We don't always believe that we will survive, but we do.

We don't always even want to hear that we will survive because at times the probability of living hardly seems like a glimmer of hope at all.

But...but...And yet.

Love is at the heart of survival. And taking one step at a time is part of the process.

It is like that silly, fuzzy white monster in the Christmas movie who puts one foot in front of the other. And soon you'll be walking across the floor.

Three babies. One week.

Amazing love.

That is where Grace lies. Between the love and the grief. Between the sadness and the joy. Between the hope and the fear. Between the confusion and the noise. Between the rage and the isolation. Between the silence and the music.

Between and betwixt.
Above and below.
Beside and behind.

Love in all its complicated forms.

Grace.

Anger, Fear, Isolation

2010-04-12T16:16:00.002-07:00

I spoke with a mother this weekend who is angry. Very, very angry. Her baby died, and she doesn't know why. Neither do the doctors. She just died. And she's angry. And hurt. And sad. And confused. And tired. And then the anger, it starts all over again. Sometimes turns to rage.

I know immediately what that rage feels like. I remember it in my bones.

Only, as she tells me, she's a woman. What in the world is she supposed to do with her anger?

A good question.

Since I was a child, I have been taught how to suppress anger, and I bet I'm not the only one. If I threw a fit, I was sent to my room. If I got mad and stomped around, I was sent to my room. If I kicked and screamed, I was out of control. If I threw a tantrum, I was spastic.

Where then was anger supposed to reside inside of my body?

Nowhere.

I learned that very quickly.

The only problem is, it didn't actually go away. It built up. It boiled, it bubbled, until one day, on the day my baby died, the anger started to seep out.

So, you might think when it overflowed, I screamed and cried and raged, but oddly, I sat silent most of the first day--confused by the people around me, oblivious to the fact that I was angry, at least in that early confusion of shock and anger.

My baby was dead. That was what kept going over and over inside of my head. There is a dead baby inside my body. There is a dead baby inside my body.

That tape played continuously. Remember as a child when your brother or your friend said something you didn't want to hear and you covered up your ears and sang, la, la, la, la, la. I can't hear you! Make it go away.

That's pretty much what happened. I shut down and the tape kept going over and over again and again. Dead baby. Dead baby. Dead baby.

And then, slowly, over a great deal of time, the reality of it set in and after the delivery, after the people had gone home, after the arrangements for the body were made, after the abundant casseroles were put into the freezer, after the milk let down, after the bleeding stopped, that is when the anger appeared.

The anger brought fear along with it. The anger stood up and introduced confusion. The anger came and threw a party for isolation. The anger snickered and taunted and teased until my body grew weary and gave in and just exploded in all the right and wrong ways.

And as I learned to express my anger, a strange thing happened. It started to lose power over me. I started to feel stronger. I was the mother bear who though she couldn't protect her cub, could protect the identity of her cub and shout from the top of the mountain, "Grace matters."

Anger is as valid and appropriate as sadness, as joyfulness, as love. Anger and fear and hope and exultant feelings all reside inside of our bodies.

I am so sorry that your baby died, I said to this mother. I wish I could tell you something else. I wish that you didn't have to talk to me about this horrible, tragic, life-changing, forever event, I continued.

But I will stay on this journey with you. And it will not always be pretty, and it will not always be so raw either. This anger is love. This sadness is love. And it is all good in its own tragic, painful loving way.

Love then is anger and fear and loneliness. Love is tossing rocks into the river, breaking dishes on the ground, spilling a glass and throwing it against a wall. Love is stomping your feet and flailing on the ground and screaming out loud: I want my baby; I want my baby; I want my baby.

"Everytime a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there's a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead."

2010-04-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

Rarely do I find myself to be superstitious, to believe in superstition. But when it comes to death, I find myself highly suspect to never again put myself in a position of challenging whether or not superstition can play a part in it.

And so in these last few weeks before I turn 43, before I become older than my father ever had a chance to be, I find myself not walking past black cats, never walking under a ladder, tossing salt over my shoulder. I find myself holding my breath.

Was Grace's death my punishment for thoughts and feelings from long ago? I know on a conscious level of course, that kind of thinking can be the undoing of me. That kind of thinking is counterproductive and counter to all things that I believe. But... Still... Nonetheless...

Did you ever find yourself playing hooky from school or work? Calling in sick one day just because you could. But then somehow, mysteriously, one or two days later, you actually become sick? It's happened to me on more than one occasion. Certainly then, the thought flicked across my brain: Is this then my punishment?

I don't pretend to be an expert on theology, but I grew up in a home where theology seemed pretty black and white, right and wrong. The trouble with that kind of theology is that the answers are often too clear in times where murkiness begs to be seen, where black and white becomes lines of polarization.

Where do our superstitious come from because part of me does still believe in fairies. Part of me does believe when those words are spoken out loud, "I don't believe in fairies," one indeed will drop dead.

Early in my pregnancy with Grace, I felt a divine kind of presence, a real kind of faith in the fact weeks before it could even be confirmed. And with that divine confidence, I walked around playing with fire. I walked around convinced that this was a pregnancy that was meant to be, that this was a pregnancy for which I could by pass most testing, most routine checks, most standard procedures because I had the certainty that everything was going to be just fine. I was certain that no fairies, thank you very much, would be dropping dead on me.

And still, still, there is another part of me that will tell you there was a tugging all along. That there was a voice far behind the recesses of my mind preparing me for the worst. Don't nest too much. Don't freeze too many casseroles. Don't buy too many baby items. And I listened to that voice and I didn't buy anything. I didn't freeze anything. I didn't prepare anything.

But I did call in sick even when I wasn't. I tested the waters. I ate a few slices of unpasteurized cheese. I even drank an occasional glass of red wine. I felt pretty invincible until the unspeakable actually happened, until I tried to take it all back. Until I saw the eyes of the technician when she looked away.

Just tell me my father was dying. That's all I want. I want the truth of the situation when it was happening. I don't want the faith in miracles, the faith in sparing what can't be spared. Just leave me a note, write me a letter and tell me you won't be at my wedding. Tell me you won't live to see your grandchildren. Tell me you won't live to see me turn 43 let alone your own self.

Just call death what it is and don't sugar-coat it with other statements.

I don't know if fairies really fall down dead or not, but I sure as hell know people do: parents do, children do. And don't pretend anything else because the murkiness in all of that? That kind of murkiness creates the most confusion, the most havoc that can stick around for a long, long time.

I do still believe in fairies. I have to. Because if I remove the rabbit hole, if I take away the fairy rings, if I give up believing in magic then everything else at times can seem pretty hopeless. Faith exists without seeing. Hope exists because faith is present, because the magic and wonder of the world holds so much potential. And if believing in fairies provides even one child with a magical moment, who I am to be the one to take that away. Who I am to challenge that which cannot be seen?

Out of my control

2010-01-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, the world just decides to spin on it's own axis and forgets to ask me permission for changing plans. The thing is, when this happens, the world also forgets to warn me ahead of time so that I can give permission to the universe for the plans to change. I find this extremely annoying, irritating, and well, unpleasant.

That happened this week when certain plans, things that were going to occur and perhaps affect my life in big and not so big ways, were changed. Not just changed actually, but canceled. Splat.

I know I'm being vague. Purposely so.

The point has less to do about the actually plan being altered this week as it does about the idea of control, or lack thereof. I can actually control very little in my life and in the lives of others.

For a long while after Grace died, our lives spun out of control in a direction that had me constantly questioning everything I did. And as I desperately tried to cling to finding purpose again in my own life, I found myself for a short while, completely letting go. Not giving up necessarily, but letting go of any and all expectations. There was a certain freedom in that to be sure.

But as the years have passed, as time in it's own cliched version of life, marches forward, my hold on control has slowly returned. There are things about this I definitely like, and things about this that I abhor.

Four years ago, if you had met me, I'd tell you that I am a very different person than I was BG (before Grace). In fact, if you'd be interested in entering my life, I'd have to vet you first to see if you could handle my grief, the person I felt like being on any given day. And there were those people I knew BG that had to pass certain tests in order to stick around. The most crucial test simply being: Can you understand that my grief is raw, present and unpredictable?

And I developed a laissez faire approach to things, that is, I didn't really give a damn about what happened when it happened. In other words, I gave up most control.

Interestingly, little affected me, but I also found myself mildly distant from caring about a lot of things. In other words, my passions disappeared, my control, or lack thereof, left me in a free-fall kind of way of living.

I thought this was my new choice.

Turns out, though, that some level of control in a person's life is in fact a good thing. Some things, however minor, are good to control.

But this also means that vulnerability creeps in again.

So here I am watching things spin out of control and trying to decide what in fact I should try and reign in, try to control and what I should just let go of.

These things are not always necessarily easy to figure you.

What a granddaughter and a grandfather can share

2009-12-07T20:33:00.001-08:00

They are both here in front of me: two photographs. One of a daughter dead at birth. One of a father who died after a four year struggle with cancer. I can barely remember either one without the aid of a photograph. Of course, I can remember Grace and her small body, her three pound, 15 ounce self. But what I actually remember of her is rather hazy because I didn't realize then that I could have asked for more time. I didn't realize that instead of the three hours and 48 minutes I got with her could have stretched into another day. Instead, I took in what I could. The closed eyes, the dark lips, the furrowed forehead.

But now it really is rather hazy without the photograph in front of me.

And my father? Nothing. I remember nothing. I see the black and white photo in front of me, and it is as if I see a stranger. I see him holding my brother on his lap, me on my mother's lap, the other two off to the side. But no amount of staring at him can bring him any closer. No amount of looking in his eyes reflects back anything more than stories I have been told by others.

I see him in my mind, kneeling on the grass in our front yard with my brother, Jason while I remain inside of my mother's belly. I can envision the prayer my brother has told me about, when my father, joined by my brother, kneels down and prays for a daughter. I wonder if it was morning or night. I wonder if the grass was wet with dew. I wonder how fervently my brother actually prayed with him.

I see this image too as a photograph told to me several times as if the telling of it makes it real.

Are they real? My father and my daughter? For they were born, one living and breathing, one not. Set next to one another I suppose you could say my father got the longer life, the 42 years set against the other, 32 weeks inside of a body seems quite long.

But neither was long enough for me. With each of them, I cannot say that I had enough time with either one. I can say easily that I feel greedy. That I want more. That I want enough time with each of them to feel satiated.

I want one sitting with the other--granddaughter in grandfather's lap.

I want to call my father when conversations with my mother don't go so well.

I want to call my father when conversations with my husband don't go so well.

I want to call my father to tell him about my day, and I want to ask him for answers to questions that I just can't seem to answer.

I want to call my father and tell him, hopefully retired by now, to fly up to visit, to come up and fix the moulding around the refrigerator that we don't have time to fix. I want to ask him to patch the ceiling where the water has dripped for a couple of weeks now. I want to ask him to stay with the children while Terry and I go out on a much-needed and much overdue date.

And I want him here to teach me how to grieve. To tell me what it was like to lose his own father as a child, and how he found ways to cope. I want him here to teach me how to grieve.

As a minister, he would have seen and performed enough funerals by now to have a sense of what works and what doesn't. He would be able to comfort me with words and laughter, and I want to believe all of this with the desperate faith of a child toward her father. I want to believe that whatever words I would have cast out toward him in anger as a teenager would long ago have dissolved. I want to believe that I would have lived up to his prayer in the grass on that long, long ago day when his prayers rose up to sky and were met with answers that all of us found pleasing.

I want my prayers to be answered as easily as his: Yes, yes, you can have your daughter. Here she is.

And you, you can have your father for as long as you want.

I want my prayers answered as positively as his were on that day.

I want. I long. And I continue to feel terribly greedy toward all of these things that I wish for.

Granddaughter set atop of grandfather. Is that really too much to wish for?

Maybe, just maybe, with my childlike wonder and candy-coated faith, granddaughter really does sit with grandfather and time no doubt will pass too quickly until all of us are together again and some of my questions will finally be answered.

Grief arrives in the quiet passing of a year

2009-12-05T21:51:00.000-08:00

42. I have been 42 for more than seven months now. But as those seven months end and as I move closer and closer toward 43, I cannot help but think about my mortality. I cannot help but think that 42 years is how long my own father got. That's it. That's all.

And with his death, came the journey of my life at five years of age, learning again how to live, learning to live without him, not understanding the meaning of his death in that moment. And experiencing it again for the first time, 31 years later when my own child died and knowing finally how permanent death is.

42 years. Leaving behind a wife, a 13-year old son, an 11-year-old son, a 9-year-old son, and a 5-year-old daughter. And that is how I have always seen it. Until now.

And now, I see a life left still living. Leaving at 42 is leaving behind your own life, leaving behind your joys and sorrows. Leaving behind all of those things you imagined on the days that your children were born. Leaving behind their weddings and births of your grandchildren; leaving behind the death of your parents; leaving behind your daughter's high school graduation; leaving behind yours sons' marriages to their wives. Never knowing what it means to hold a grandchild in your arms; never being able to console your daughter when she grieves. Never being there to mediate an argument; to hold your wife again in your arms; never being able to sit again with your six-year-old, now seven and eight-year-old. Never taking your grandchildren out for an ice cream cone; never seeing the joy on their faces as they tear into their gifts on Christmas morning.

And at 42 with all three children on the couch, sharing a bowl of popcorn while watching a movie, I feel the inexplicable grief at being unable to call my father to tell him about this moment. I feel the grief of a daughter who for so many years has known the emptiness at losing a parent unaware that this emptiness was so much less even than the emptiness of losing a daughter and how is that even possible? How is it possible to sit one emptiness next to another and compare it? It really is no more or less, but together that emptiness is huge. That emptiness and longing feels like an open wound that sometimes closes and heals, but most of the time remains raw and exposed only pretending to be something other than it really is.

It is at best bearable and at worst excruciating. It is a kind of love so large that it tears open the heart and literally pauses the breath and closes the throat. It is a kind of longing so huge that words seem like empty placeholders filling up a page with mindless letter after letter, word after word creating nothing more than its own kind of void filled with nothing more than words on a page.

42. It is a kind of grief all on its own to live through this year. To make it to 43. A birthday that can only be bittersweet in the passing of it because living through this year cannot be a kind of celebration, it cannot be a joy worth celebrating. But it can be a life worth remembering. It is the closest I can get to being nearer to my father.

A father who for me is merely a series of photographs and told stories. A father whose face I cannot even conjure up without the help of a photograph. A father who I've been told from story after story after story that I was loved and wanted and wished for and prayed for. And to that again I say sometimes it feels like empty words on a page because nothing, nothing can bring him back into view for me. And with all the cells of my being I want nothing more than my father here sitting on the couch with my children and with a six year old sitting on his lap in the form of my other daughter, also missing.

And that is the kind of longing that never leaves. That is the kind of longing that stays behind no matter what joys come along. It is, in fact, that longing that sometimes makes the joy even sweeter, the heart sing louder, the love feel bigger than anything any words can ever describe.

The pain of those first holidays

2009-11-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

There are many families who, for the first time this year, are experiencing the holidays without their children. They sit around the Thanksgiving table with their families, dreading those words from loved ones, "What are you thankful for this year?"

I remember our first. We neither wanted to give thanks nor did we feel like we had anything to give. I was empty, both physically and spiritually. I had nothing to give, nothing to celebrate. It was a dark year. It was a lenten year that went on and on and on.

But not many people understood. Grace had died nearly six months before Thanksgiving and people would ask us, "What are you doing this Thanksgiving?" And I would stare at them with my alien look thinking, "Honestly? Do you honestly think I have anything to be thankful for?"

I don't remember what I responded, but most likely it was a standard response, something mumbled in passing to get out of being asked any more questions. Darkness descended. Clouds hung low. And we sat around, our family of four, fully knowing it should be a family of five. Our extended families called, and we let the phone ring unanswered. Why would we want to listen to their empty words when our empty hearts were hard enough to listen to?

And so at this time of Thanksgiving, while indeed we have much to be thankful for, I remain mindful of those dark days, remembering, holding in my heart those families experiencing their days of firsts: Our first Thanksgiving without our child; our first Christmas coming near; our first New Year with absolutely nothing to feel hopeful about because no resolution will bring our child back.

And I want to tell them that over time, the clouds will lift, the darkness will rise for the light to appear. But I also want to tell them to hold on to those dark days because in those days their children are present. In those days, their sons and daughters remain very much alive in their hearts and minds. I want to tell them that with the grief comes the love, and neither remains without the other. I want to tell them that the ache does subside, the loneliness dissipates, the hole in the heart gets smaller. But none of it ever goes away.

And therein lies the beauty of our collective grief. For in the loneliness is the memory of Grace. In the dull aching that pulses in the recesses of our minds, is the ever so slight reminder that Grace matters. In the way in which our children smile or laugh, in the way in which they cry, there is Grace.

And so as the holidays appear, as the lights go up and the carolers sing, "Oh little town of Bethlehem," they also sing, "Angels we have heard on high," and in the promise of the birth is the promise that life begins again. Despite the painful, painful realization that indeed our children cannot be born kicking and screaming, they remain present in our minds, kicking and screaming, laughing and smiling.

For indeed, unto us, a child has been born.

And unto us, our children matter.

Statistics and how they become meaningless

2009-08-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the privilege of spending the weekend with six different families with six different stories to tell. You can tell me everything I want to know about statistics and spin it in many different ways, but here are the statistics of six families. I know that these are the real statistics for them. The statistics of six:

One in three children dies shortly after birth.

Two of two infants die one day apart in two different hospitals though they shared the same mother and the same womb.

One in one child is stillborn.

One in three children dies of a fetal anomaly. (Who came up with that horrible term?)

Two of three children die of cancer, five years apart.

One in three children dies of unknown causes.

One of one father and husband dies of cancer.

The statistics of six. The grief of six mothers and five fathers. The grief of nine siblings left to make sense of the grief that they carry and that of their parents.

It is a large canvas upon which these stories are spun. But their stories carry meaning and the weight of their lives will not be forgotten and so I speak their names out loud and challenge you to do the same. Speak their names and hold their names so that the forgotten are remembered.

Isabelle

Aiden

Wyatt

Olivia

Grace

Michael

Nikki

Kerry

Dakota

Six families--nine deaths. It is a grief that is palpable and living. It is a grief with so much energy and movement that the power these six families have is remarkable.

These are people who understand the real meaning of living and what it means to watch someone die.

Six families and nine deaths. Each of them has given me the gift of insight and understanding. Each of them has taught me something about my own life.

And mostly, I want to thank them for being present, for being honest, for sharing with me a portion of their life and their days. And I want to thank them for their courage, their grace and their courage.

It is an honor and a privilege to have each of them in my life.

"The mention of my child's name may make me cry, but not mentioning my child's name can break my heart. "

Did you know ...

2009-08-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

26,000 babies die each year in the United States before they have a chance to take a breath!

4.5 million children worldwide are stillborn each year!

Most stillborn children do not receive a birth certificate. Yet the parents are required to file a death certificate.

In up to 50% of stillbirths, no cause is ever found.

One baby is stillborn in the United States for every 115 babies born.

You can find information here: Still no More

or here: International Stillbirth Alliance

And you can take action here: MISSing Angels Bill

An amazing mother, an amazing wife, a wonderful friend

2009-08-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, a person gets so caught up in their own lives and their own grief, that we forget, and god knows, we don't want to forget. But we do forget there are others out there with stories so profound and so humbling that it takes your breath away.

I have had the privilege and honor of knowing Mary Anne Ruddis for a very short amount of time. But we are fast becoming friends and sharing our work and sharing our writing and in the process, I am amazed at her grace, at her candor, but most of all by her wit, wisdom and love for life.

As so often happens in Spokane, where I live, my life crossed with Mary Anne's about five years ago when we were both presenting at a conference, but it wasn't until just last month, that we were able to really sit down, talk and share our stories. And now, we meet weekly as part of a writer's studio.

If you were walking down the street and you saw Mary Anne and you met her 20-year-old son and you chatted with them casually, you would not know the whole story. You might walk away thinking that Mary Anne is single; Mary Anne has one son; Mary Anne works for a nonprofit organization. But if you stuck around, if you stopped and listened and watched and heard, you could meet Mary Anne's daughter Nikki, who at 16 months old, was diagnosed with cancer and after surgery and aggressive chemotherapy, the cancer disappeared only to reappear again six years later in the form of leukemia resulting from her previous chemotherapy.

And if you peered closer, you would meet Mary Anne's husband, Kerry, who had the courage and grace to tell Mary Anne about his cancer over dinner one night when they were alone. During this time, Mary Anne and Kerry fought his cancer aggressively too. And during his treatment is when Nikki was diagnosed a second time.

Fifteen years ago, on Easter Sunday, Kerry died. And four months later, Nikki died.

There isn't one person who wouldn't agree that Mary Anne had had her lifetime's share of grief. There is no one who could deny that Mary Anne above all else deserved the "no more trauma for life" cards. Don't we all yearn for one of those. The card that says, "You are done. You have had enough trauma, enough grief in your life. And now you get to walk freely without fear or worry."

But that, as we know, is a fiction that doesn't exist.

And so just as Mary Anne and her two sons, Michael and Matthew, were piecing their lives back together, the absolute unthinkable happened. A teacher called Mary Ann in to say that her once very bright son, Michael, was struggling in school. After a brain tumor was found and treatment was attempted, Michael died at the age of 12.

And so, young Mary Ann, by the age of 42, when most of us are re-evaluating our careers and celebrating our children's milestones, had buried her 9 year old daughter, Nikki, her 35 year old husband, Kerry, and her 12 year old son Michael.

This would be the undoing of any person.

But Mary Anne has taken the unbeaten path, and instead of treading carefully, instead of losing hope, she has chosen to embrace life. And that is not to say that Mary Anne denied her grief. Certainly, there were days and there are days, that I am certain when Mary Anne questions and rages and wonders.

But on most days of any given year, you will find Mary Anne, Executive Director of Candlelighters of the Inland Northwest, providing support for families whose children are diagnosed with and dealing with cancer. You will find her counseling parents and offering hope and giving out 'hope bags' and most importantly offering her kindness and her grace and her belief in embracing life.

And so take a moment, visit their Web site, make a donation, say a prayer because somewhere out in the world, for the very first time, a family is hearing the words, "I'm sorry. You child has cancer."

La noche oscura del alma

2009-07-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

There are times when your title says it all. And if not, then Robert Karen does a pretty damn good job of trying to sort things out for a person:

In "The Forgiving Self" Robert Karen says,

"Ideally, the therapeutic partnership offers something that cannot be found in a book: first, of course, the relationship itself, a relationship in which one is perhaps heard and understood as never before, that can access repressed and disowned parts of ourselves, that can get into the formative machinery and shed light on the forgotten gears and levers of our choices. But it also offers a relationship that may enable us to experience ourselves as cared about in a context where care has been wanting, where we can know our beauty and our ugliness, and where we can know the latter without obsessive self-recrimination but, rather, with a healthy remorse and a desire to grow. The therapeutic experience can--and should--engender a fresh perspective on what is possible for us in the realm of love and loss."

It is difficult in the middle of summer to have a dark night of the soul experience. It is better, I think, to do it in winter both literally and metaphorically. But sometimes that night will come even in the brightest of days. Sometimes that darkness comes in the midst of a sun-filled, huckleberry picking, waterslide waterpark, filled with kids kind of day. Sometimes you just can't stop that train from coming no matter how fast you try and run.

Do you ever feeling like you are running and running and still, you just can't escape that thing that is tugging inside your soul?

I wait and wander in the desert knowing that I'll find my way back stronger, better and with more empathy for the world that moves around and beyond me.

The many faces of grief

2009-07-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-05-28T22:26:00.001-07:00

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,

2009-04-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

John Updike has died. I feel lost and sad!

Dawning

2009-01-17T02:44:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-11-27T00:08:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-25T19:55:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-02T01:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-29T16:15:00.001-07:00

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.

Figments of imagination

2008-09-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

I first discovered this book in Oprah magazine, excerpted as an essay and what struck me besides the absolute beauty and starkness of the language was the understanding, the grace, the simplicity of the words and the complexity of the words all at the same time.

I will just quote Elizabeth here at the beginning of her memoir:

"A child dies in this book: a baby. A baby is stillborn. You don't have to tell me how sad that is: it happened to me and my husband, our baby, a son."

And that, my friends, is the beginning of a book that takes your breath away with sadness, with laughter, with hope, and with the ultimate faith in life.

Is it a book for parents whose children have died? I don't know. I am reading it. I put it down several times a day. I will read it. My husband may not. He doesn't like sad books anymore. He doesn't like books or stories where babies die. He doesn't find comfort in that. I somehow still do.

And because I first discovered Elizabeth in The Giant's House, a novel that sings, I know that I cannot be disappointed in her writing. And because Ann Patchett and Alice Sebold love McCracken's writing, well then, that also says a great deal. And because I think, Elizabeth's first love is of the literary genre, it too is evidenced here.

But of course there is a paradox because the book, however lovely, is here because her son is not. And that will always be the real tragedy.

Do I have any disappointments about the book? Only one. When I picked it up, it was lighter than I expected, and I realized in that moment, that I wanted it to weigh a healthy eight pounds. I wanted to hold it in my arms and rock it. And that perhaps is all that is left to be said except for this:

Go and buy the book!

Gracie girl....

2008-09-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, I find myself walking along through life doing just fine. And then something happens and bam, I'm struck back down on my knees! Just like that.

A couple of days ago that happened to me. I was just going along with my day, with my life and this song started playing, "Gracie" by Ben Folds. I'd never heard it before, and just like that, I was there with tears streaming down my face, completely taken by surprise, off-guard and what was lost was right there in front of me. A life with Grace. A baby, a toddler, a child, all of those years just wiped away and the song, so haunting, so lovely, so simple just undid me.

Two days later, I think, the puffiness in my eyes is decreasing, and I am starting to return to this world again but not without this song playing in my head over and over again.

"You can't fool me, I saw you when you came out....and there is always gonna be a part of me nobody else is gonna see but you and me..."

And sometimes you just have to be prepared for when life catches you off guard.

Traveling Mercies

2008-09-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

A friend emailed me last week while reading Anne Lamott's book, 'Traveling Mercies: Some thoughts on Faith' and sent me this quote:

"... (Grace) is unearned love -- the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrased and eventually as grateful as you are to be there."

And that seems to sum it up best. Anne Lamott seems most times to find the words to express the emotion when it fails others.

Grace is the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. And in this way, Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place...

I remember shortly after she died being afraid to be alone. I didn't want to be left alone in any room by myself nor did I want to be in the presence of others. It was a difficult place to be wishing for isolation and fearing loneliness when of course, both of those things co-existed whether or not someone was in the room with me or not.

I was afraid to be alone because the silence was overwhelming, the emptiness, the hunger, the aching was too great, too large, too cumbersome.

Sometimes, someone would come and sit with me and ask questions when I didn't want questions to be asked and other times, there was the rare person who just came and sat and that was grace. That was the grace I was looking for, the simple presence of another person without questions, without an agenda, without fear.

Most people who came to visit me were afraid--afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid to not say anything at all, afraid to get too close to me as if I could rub off on them, as if I was bad luck, voodoo, a black cat walking under a ladder. And I don't blame them. Occasionally someone asked me if they could get something for me, and I would look at them blankly. Grace, you can get me Grace. Can you do that? Because unless you can, there is nothing else I want.

The times when I felt most comfortable was when I could lie in bed with the shades drawn and the blankets drawn up around me. But once in a while, I could hear my heart beating in that space, literally, I could feel it beating against my chest. And literally, I could trace a crack through my heart, a tear, a hole, an irreparable crevice that when I breathed in, I could feel the air racing through that hole and the shortness of breath.

And somewhere along the way, there was a kind of mercy that descended, a kind of grace that eventually allowed me to stand up again, to crawl out of my cave--a light, an electricity, a breeze that pushed me along back into the sunshine, out into the world, where Grace could find me and I could find her.

A place where Sawyer could fall from the sky to land in my lap. A place where my arms could open wide enough to catch him.

Imagine if we could be more like Gana...

2008-09-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

What if when your baby died, you could hold her until you were ready to let go? What if you could keep her up against your chest? What if you could share your meals with her? What if you got to be the one who decided when you were ready to let go?

What if you could roam in the wilderness, through fields, across valleys, and feel her against your chest, feel her body close to you, up against you, until finally after hours or days, when you were ready to let go, not really let go, but when you decided that it was time to give her back into the natural world, to place her body in the ground, that only then was it time to give her up?

Well, Gana the gorilla in a zoo got to do that with her baby. Turns out the zookeepers get it and they let Gana carry around her dead baby until she was ready to give it up. And people came to mourn and leave flowers and share Gana's grief.

What if at the hospital they let us hold our babies until we were ready to let go. What if it didn't matter whether your baby was born on a Monday or a Sunday? What if it didn't matter if the funeral home was only open for 4 hours on Sunday? What if they had told me, you call us when you are ready to give her up?

We're getting there aren't we? Are we there yet? Have we advanced to the point that Gana has? When will we get there? When?

It can't be soon enough.

What Grace and grace can look like...

2008-08-28T16:51:00.001-07:00

Grace can look like 26 backpacks all lined up on a set of steps, and grace can look like 26 people responding, answering, asking to help, to purchase backpacks, to send them on to schools where students might not bring them, to put them on the backs of five-year-olds heading off into the classroom, into the unknown.

Grace looks like this, and as I drove to Longfellow elementary school today to drop off 13 backpacks, I thought about the transformation of grief and the transformation of love and how love can take on so many forms and how love is so much deeper than the affection for a person who is standing right in front of you. Today I felt so much love toward Grace and so much love toward my family, toward Terry and Carver and Sophia and Sawyer who have managed to stand with me through this, who have managed despite losing a daughter and losing a sister to continue to love one another and to continue to embrace each other.

And then I drove to Holmes elementary school to drop off 13 more backpacks. I thought about the confusion I sometimes feel in loving Sawyer, in finding absolute joy in his 2 1/2 year old self, in knowing that if Grace were here, Sawyer wouldn't be here. Yet also knowing that Sawyer is here with and without his older sister.

Grace can look like all of this, all at once, transformational and loving. And on Tuesday as 26 kindergarteners appear in classrooms with backpacks waiting for them, I hope that they find a little bit of grace in knowledge that even though they couldn't go to the store and pick one out for whatever reason, that someone took the time to buy one for them so they could know the joy at opening it for the first time and finding new crayons and pens and markers and glue sticks and all of the things they need to begin creating their mark in the world, their yes. So that each day when they wake up, they can understand that yes, they are walking and riding away from their homes into a classroom of opportunity, into a classroom of possibility.

And that yes, Grace exists and grace is real and grace is really the only thing that can propel us forward into the future--that ability to love unconditionally and that ability to understand that love transcends all things. Grace is love and to that end I can honestly say that I am grateful to her and for her, and I am grateful, despite the hole and despite the darkness and despite the grief, I am grateful for the things she continues to teach me and for the possibilities that keep presenting themselves because of her.

That feels like the best kind of love of all.

Backpacks for Grace!

2008-08-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Is this the backpack you'd choose? Or would purple be your favorite color? Would you be a tomboy and pick blue? Maybe, just maybe you'd be less like your sister and more like your own self. In that case, maybe you'd want a slingback bag or a tote bag or maybe even a brief case!

We don't know do we for sure, what kind of bag you might choose for your first year of school, for your first day of kindergarten...

What I do know is this? I have to take action. I have to do something because in three weeks, all the kids go back to school and all the 5 year olds are shopping like it's Christmas, buying school clothes, getting school bags, buying pencils, practicing writing their names.

So here's the deal, Grace! I can't buy you a backpack. I can't dress you up for school. I can't let you scream at me that you don't want me to brush your hair and you don't care if it's all tangly and you just want me to let you dress yourself in stripes and colors and patterns that don't match. And I can't walk or drive or follow you to school on the first day and sit in your classroom as you look around taking cues from your older brother and sister on how to act.

But, sweet child, here is what I can do:

I can go to the store and pick out a backpack and fill it with school supplies and take it to a school and drop it off for a child who maybe hasn't had the same chances as we have, who maybe won't get a new backpack even though she is here. What I can do is ask others to do the same. I can ask them to go to the store and get the following supplies:

1 girl's or boy's backpack
A supply box to hold pencils and crayons
1 box 8-large size washable markers
1 pair blunt-end scissors
1 box of tissue
1 box 24 Crayons
2 - #2 pencils
glue stick

You can buy those things and send me an email and I will come to you to pick it up and donate the backpack in Grace's name to a kindergarten class in the Spokane District 81 school system.

Or if you don't have time or live far away, you can send me a check for $25 and I will go shopping to purchase a backpack and school supplies in Grace's name for someone who might need a little extra something to get them started.

And who knows, maybe I can get 5 or 6 bags or a dozen or more and children around Spokane can carry backpacks on their shoulders and I can find Grace in them.

Ask and ye shall receive!

2008-08-19T11:33:00.001-07:00

14 bags and counting. The world rocks!

More backpacks for grace...

2008-08-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Wow, and just like that, I have 10 backpacks either made or promised to me! So now, I'm going for a dozen at least! Thank you, all of you, for your support!

And incredibly, I just got a note from someone in New Zealand who is participating, and I've never met her! How amazingly cool is that! Thank you, Sarah! (really, her name is Sarah too!)

Fourth of July

2008-07-17T21:19:00.001-07:00

Thirty-four days after Grace died, I got it in my head that we needed to get out of the house and we needed to go to Riverfront park and we needed to take Carver and Sophia to the Fourth of July Fireworks show. We brought a blanket, we brought snacks, and we sat on the grass looking up at the sky watching the fireworks. And I remember just staring at them, listening to the crackling and kabooms and looking at all the people around me, hundreds, a thousand or more people, and feeling lost in a sea of strangers.

Tears were streaming down my face, and Sophia was buried in my arms terrified at age two of the noise the fireworks were making. And Terry was holding Carver who was mesmerized by them. There were people everywhere, eating cotton candy, drinking icees, and I had never felt more lonely, more alone than in that moment, the sky above lit up and somewhere out there was Grace among the fireworks, lost in the air, and I couldn't reach for her, I couldn't save her from the sounds, I couldn't cover her ears.

And five years have passed, and just a few nights ago, we sat under the stars, on the same grass watching what could have been the same fireworks and it was a beautiful and glorious site, mesmerizing, transformative and Sawyer at two was on my lap and I was covering his ears and I buried my face against him and I said a prayer in thanks for his sweet, sticky self, for the way the icee was spilled all over his shirt, stuck between his fingers, and his hair hard and cracking from the sugar, a sweet, sweet taste of life and love.

...something is missing...

2008-07-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

My daughter Sophia cried for an hour straight tonight. No, she didn't cry, she sobbed. And while she sobbed, Terry and I tried unsuccessfully to figure out what was wrong.

She had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion at about 5:30 p.m. on our bed and woke up an hour later sobbing.

We assumed she was discombobulated. We assumed she was hungry. We assumed a lot of false things on the pretext that we are the parents and we assumed we knew what was wrong. My talking made her crying worse. My leaving the room made her crying worse.

And finally after settling down, after drinking some water, after being cheered up by her older brother, she confessed that she didn't really know what was wrong, that it just seemed to her like something was missing. But she couldn't tell us what was missing. She just felt like something was missing.

She has done this before--started crying inexplicably and in the end can't vocalize what's wrong. And tonight I thought about it some more. Of course, this something missing she is going to carry her whole life.

I've felt it. Terry has felt it. Carver has felt it though he doesn't express it in the same way. Something is missing. Someone is missing, and I think that I need to be more aware of this as I help my children navigate through the complexities of this feeling. Because as Sophia grows up, as she understands the greater thing that she has lost, her grief could become larger, heavier, more complicated. She may in fact feel that missing sister more as she struggles to understand her place in the world sans Grace. It may be that as my grief settles and changes (never diminishing), as the children grow older, their grief for Grace may feel unsettled and larger.

And sometimes, I get too caught up in my own grief to allow anyone else to have theirs. I want to keep my grief for Grace and I want it to be THE grief for Grace and I don't always remember to let Carver or Sophia or Terry or even Sawyer have their own grief. And yet, here in front of me is Sophia reminding me that she has her grief too.

The last thing I want is for her to walk around with that hole being unable to express it, being unable to be okay with it. I know that hole; I know that sense of loss deep into my bones as deep as a five-year-old girl knows when she has lost her father, when she has come home from kindergarten to find her mother and her brothers at home crying and a whole host of friends, family and strangers walking around in her house and never understanding why her father decides to never walk through that front door again. And as she fails to understand all of this or describe it or even be allowed to express it, the hole just grows deeper and larger and darker until it disappears into a black hole only to be unleashed thirty some years later as she holds her lifeless daughter on her lap and in her arms.

And that hole, that something missing is what she's been trying to protect her family from unsuccessfully. And yes, Sophia, yes, something very large is missing, and there is something very fragile in that feeling, but there is also something very beautiful and delicate and full of love, and full of love, and full of love...

Gina and Sarah and Grace

2008-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Last week a friend moved away. She didn't move across the country or out of my life, but she moved across the state, and with her she took a piece of Grace. Last week we were standing on her porch talking, and she told me her story of Grace, her story of standing in her driveway, having a party during Artfest weekend and answering the phone and hearing the news and standing among friends with tears rolling down her face. And as I heard that story for the first time, it occured to me that there is a whole piece of Grace's story I am still missing.

I am missing the pieces of Grace that affected other people's lives. I have another friend who started a jewelry business after Grace died. And these are the friends that get it. They are not the friends who have lost children, but they have an innate understanding of my grief that most people seem to be missing. Why is that?

Why is it that some of the people I've known the longest, some of the people I grew up with, some of the people I've shared houses with, don't get it. They don't get that the grief doesn't ever go away, they don't understand that what I really need is for them to just say Grace's name, they don't get that it's okay still, after five years, that I long for Grace, that I think of Grace, that I miss Grace.

My circle has grown smaller. My circle includes the people that understand me, that let me be me in front of them, the people who say Grace's name outloud, the people who tell me their dreams about Grace.

I miss Gina already. I miss the familiarity of her presence, knowing that in a moment I could step onto her porch and be with her as she talks about Grace; I miss the security of having just one more person in Spokane who was here when Grace was here, who gets it and gets me and without saying anything else, I miss just being in her presence, in their presence together knowing that when I am with Gina, Grace is present and Grace is real.

the ocean

2008-06-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

When you are standing in front of the ocean, when you are looking at the water with the eyes of a seven-year-old, you think that the ocean goes on forever, that the waves crashing onto the sand will fall back into the ocean and return again and again into forever.

When you are standing in front of the ocean, when you are looking at the water with the eyes of a two-year-old, you think that the sand and the water and the air and the sun and the noise are all exploding into a sensory overload of your head, your body and your soul. It is all too much at once and all too little and as you try to drink all of it in, you begin to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and you simply learn to delight in the what is there in front of you--first, the sand, then the water as if the rest of the world existed to make you become the water.

When you are standing in front of the ocean, when you are looking at the water with the eyes of a forty-one-year-old, you wonder how it is that you swam in this same ocean, that you slept on the same sand, that you walked along the same shore year after year for so many years and not once did you contemplate that it would only be yours for your childhood. That you would walk away from that ocean in your teens and not return again until well past your twenties. That when you returned, the forgotten days of childhood, the innocence of it all, the memory of it seems distant and fond and all with rose-colored glasses.

And when you are standing in front of the ocean as an adult, you realize how momentary it all is, how fragile it is and as the waves come crashing down and the sea salt sprays your body and the water touches your skin, you close your eyes and breath it in, breath it in so that this moment when it passes is with you forever so that like the conch shell you can carry it inside of you and hear the waves, smell the salt and feel the breeze at any given moment even when you are 1,200 miles away.

And you do the same with your children so that when they leave home whether at birth or as they walk out your front door and into their own lives, you can close your eyes and smell their breathe, feel their warm milkiness against you and their soft, downy hair that has turned coarse and altogether disappeared into forever like the ocean and the waves and the memory of the sand all at once warm on your body and stuck between your toes.

Foot Bridge

2008-05-31T11:20:00.000-07:00

I went walking this week. I probably walked close to 30 miles, all over town, across bridges and up hills, through neighborhoods, past baseball diamonds, into parks, through fields and into the city. I walked across rivers and I stood on a foot bridge with the river splashing over the top of me until I was drenched, until my glasses were fogged and my hair was dripping and my clothes were soaked. Certainly the urge was there to get lost in the river. What I wanted to do was float, I wanted to float on top and let the current take me where it will. They say people die in rivers because they fight the current, that if you really fall into fast moving water, you shouldn't fight it, you should float it. That's not to say there isn't still a danger. Of course there is. Of course, there is still a huge risk but you have a greater chance of survival if you don't fight it, if you don't fight the current.

That makes sense because I'm guessing that people who supress their feelings, people who bury their grief, live a shorter life. This is not a scientific theory but it makes sense to me. After all, if you can release your emotions, if you can release your feelings, it's healthier for your physically, mentally and spiritually.

What if we took our collective grief and really did something with it? What if we took our collective grief and let it out, if we wailed in the streets, if we danced in the park, if we floated down the river.

Grace would be five years old tomorrow, on Sunday. And Grace is five, but she is five in a much more ethereal way then I ever expected. And of course I'd rather have her in a tangible way, I'd rather have her in a physical way. So I can mourn that loss, I can grieve that loss of her while I celebrate the presence of Sawyer, while I celebrate the presence of other things in my life.

Here is a list of first names of people I know because Grace isn't here:

Jill
Sara
Joanne
Kara
Hawk
Jo
Ellis
Aubrianna
Isabelle
Pam
Vanessa
Layla
John
Peter
Amanda
Beth
Grace
Payton
Tom
Micah
Liam
Russ
Olivia
Micah
Arah
Carolyn
Heather
Becky
Virginia
Ben
James

This is by no means a comprehensive list. But it is a list of people who have made me a better person in one way or another. It is a list of people, one or two who have saved my life, 5 or 6 who never lived more than a month but affected my life, many who have made my life better.

And so for that I am forever grateful and knowing that Grace is not here, I know that my life is still rich and my life is full and I am supposedly a more empathetic person. I am a person with a deep, deep wound that once in a while seeps. But we all carry our wounds one way or another and it is how we heal them that determines the size of the scar. I wear my scar proudly, and I remain wounded, but I am wounded with my heart grown larger and so the river still rages but eventually it will subside and it will flow more smoothly until another snowstorm hits and another thawing melts the snow and it may just very well start all over again to rage. But it will have changed and it will have evolved and it will have strengthened.

Chronos versus Kairos

2008-05-29T22:15:00.001-07:00

In graduate school, I had a professor who often referred to literary references in novels in relationship to kairos versus chronos. Kairos time, he explained, meant 'in the time of angels.'

It was a difficult concept for me to grasp at the time because when I was working on stories, it was easy to think there was a beginning, middle and end. Time moved forward. But the more I wrote, the less time began to move in a forward direction.

While chronos is described as quantitative, kairos is described as qualitative.

My life used to be easily divided into segments of time: before I got married, after I got married, as soon as we have children, when we adopt a dog, 10 years into marriage, etc.

And then Grace happened and time as I've always known it, twisted and turned upside down. Time was no longer linear; time was no longer slow or fast, time became kairos, time became qualitative and I still find myself struggling to define time. When I tell a story, I often confuse the time period, I can't recall how long it's been since I've been on an airplane, or how long it's been since my last period. But I can tell you how long I have been without Grace and how long I have been with Carver, with Sophia, with Sawyer. I can tell you that Sawyer is 2, but really hasn't he been here my whole life? Haven't I always known he was going to come be with us. And it is in this time that I now live, with the angels, among the angels and because of the angels.

The River

2008-05-28T21:40:00.001-07:00

If you live in Spokane, it is highly unlikely that you've missed the river of late. Even as it is rushing by, you cannot miss it, you can blink and it still appears rushing by. It is swelling, full, raging--it is all things I have felt of late. And still I am drawn to it, to its power, to its fullness. I walk by it nearly every day. I have walked across all the walking bridges in downtown Spokane, and I stand on the edge and look over; I stand on the edge and wonder about jumping and I don't mean jumping in the sense of losing life, but I mean jumping and swimming up river, swimming against the current or lying on my back and letting myself float downstream. What if you could wear some kind of body suit that protected you from the river's damage, would you jump? Would you fly over the edge? What if the river took you downstream and there sitting on the edge of the stream was a little girl, about to turn five, with her feet dangling over the edge, and you could swim and sit beside her and talk to her and ask her about her life and ask her about the life she isn't living. What if you could find her in the river, on the rock not worried at all about falling because she has already fallen. What if you were the one who had fallen and she was there to pick you up?

But then the river just keeps flowing and I keep going downstream and occasionally I try to swim upstream and I try to fight the current and eventually I return to floating on my back, to watching the sky above me and letting the river below me hold me, float me, and carry me. And on that journey, I discover new things about myself and others.

Fragility

2008-05-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like you were walking on egg shells that were just about to crack? Have they ever cracked on you?

I am both amazed and frightened sometimes at the fragility of life. It can happen in a moment, a child darting away from you, stepping out onto a ledge, a heart beating one moment and the next, it stops.

Today Sawyer ran away from me. He ran hard and I chased him. He ran out into the street. Luckily there were no cars coming because if they were, well, I can't go there. But he does this often, he thinks it's a game and he dashes off, running at full speed with a good lead. It can be hard to catch up to him.

And shortly before this, Sophia went off to a public restroom with a friend. Carver never would have gone on his own and I wouldn't have let him. But now, my hands are so full with so many children that the younger two get away with much more. And so off she walked, dripping wet in her swimming suit, barefoot, into a public restroom. And then, I didn't see her come out. I didn't see her come back and head toward the fountain, the water fountain in the park where everyone was playing. And so I went looking for her and as the minutes ticked by, my heart beat fast, my head filled with blood and I started to feel woozy.

I've been holding it inside, all of this, thinking that if I breath, if I let out my breathe, something else might happen. As if my very existence could conjure up something terrible. I breath and my breathe holds itself up, as if falling, it might very well crush something. And so my chest rises and falls, and I wait, wondering, looking, feeling overwhelmed.

Plunging into the wild

2008-05-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the movie, 'Into the Wild?'

Some might see it as adventure, as foolishness, as stupidity...I see it as loss, as growth, as discovery...The quote that takes my breath away:

"I fear for the mother in her. Instincts that seem to sense the threat of loss so huge and irrevocable that the mind baulks at taking its measure. I'd begin to wonder if I can understand all that chris is saying any longer but I catch myself and remember that these are not the parents he grew up with but people softened by the forced reflection that comes with loss. Still, everything Chris is saying has to be said and I trust that everything he is doing has to be done. This is our life."

And there it is--'people softened by the forced reflection that comes with loss.'

I suppose you have a choice, to be softened or to be hardened, but in choosing, one doesn't really consider those things on a conscious level. One just does what one has to do to go on living, and sometimes the living is the most difficult part, the getting up in the morning, the getting through the day, the getting to the end of the day.

And here I am, nearly five years out; in just a few short days, Grace would have been five. In just a few short days, I begin the re-living that starts again, that has already begun. It is not so much that the grief pales, but it does change, it does metamorphose and in that change, it doesn't always necessarily get easier. I feel like I've taken steps backwards as of late, steps in the opposite direction. I feel like I want Grace here. I have everything I've wanted. I have Terry, I have Carver, I have Sophia, I have Sawyer. I want Grace.

Why is it so hard this year? Why is it different than last and the one before that? There is Sawyer who is no longer a baby, but a toddler, a person coming into himself and love grows and love grows and Sawyer, I know, is not Grace nor would I ever want to put that on him. But in turning five, Grace would be starting kindergarten, Grace would be trailing after Sophia, looking up to her, looking for her approval, testing the limits. I want the tantrums, I want the hair cutting episodes with a pair of scissors under the kitchen table, I want the ponies lined up waiting for princes and princesses. I want those things that are out of reach, out of touch, out of sight. I don't want flowers on an altar; I don't want pity; I don't want gray images of my daughter with her eyes closed. I want Grace. I want the very thing I cannot have. I want to see the baseball land at my feet in the 9th inning with the bases loaded so that I can reach out to catch the baby that is falling; I want to catch the baby; I want to stop falling.

before you leave...

2008-05-17T03:57:00.000-07:00

Go here, buy a song, buy a cd, take ellis home with you. And before she leaves town, I want to say thank you for coming back, thank you for reminding us what matters, thank you for your laugh and thank you, thank you.

It is much easier to get through the month, it is much easier to make it to June 1st. It's much easier to make it past June 1st. It is all just much better with you here.

Blessings, my friend!

The Anguish of Loss

2008-05-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is the book on my desk next to me. Have you read it? If not, why? It speaks volumes around anything else I could say or write. And when I just want to curl up in a ball and cry, this is the book I hold. It is beautifully written, the art is stunning and what it says, says it all.

At our MISS meeting on Tuesday night, Sara and I gave out books to all the moms and grandmothers who came. It is a reminder of where we are, of what we share.

Mother's Day is on Sunday and for some of us, it is a reminder of what has been lost, of what is missing, of what we can't have. It is a reminder that we while not entering lightly into the task of motherhood, could not choose our path, could not have what we wanted, could not hold on to our children despite our best efforts to protect them, to protect ourselves from that which we could never wish for.

We are mothers still; some of us have other children that we can cling to; some of us are mothers despite the fact that our children are not here.

And so a challenge: What could you do for someone on Mother's day who is hurting, who is lonely, who might be missing their child? Probably nothing, but for us whose children are missing, in Spokane we are handing out Random Act of Kindness cards and we are driving through espresso shops all day on Mother's day and we are buying cars behind us a little bit of joy, a little bit of relief, and in the moment, maybe for just a few moments, someone will think of our children who aren't here, someone will wish for us the kind of peace that we might never have. But I will drive away from the window smiling, knowing that in that moment, perhaps someone can have a cup of coffee with grace, for grace and of grace.

Grief has a way...

2008-04-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

Grief has a way of blindsiding you, of stepping into your day and turning it upside down; of showing up on your doorstep unannounced, rapping at the door, tapping, insistently until you let it inside, and when you do, it has a way of unleashing itself, of throwing itself onto you and not letting go.

This is how it has felt all month to me and today. An ordinary day, an April 30th, 2008 ordinary day. The three kids are tucked into bed, a cake is in the oven, the dogs are asleep on the floor and there behind the door I have refused to open all day is my grief, rapping harder and harder, pretending to be patient, pretending to be waiting for me as if it's not just going to break the door down and descend on me.

And here I am hiding, amongst my things, hiding behind a screen, in a room filled with papers and books, and dust. Hiding and hoping that eventually the grief will turn around and leave thinking everyone has gone away. But we haven't have we? Here we are, waiting to open the door, hoping at any moment instead of the grief, it will be Grace knocking on the door, running inside at the end of a day, an ordinary day where she might have played with friends, where she might have made a mud cake, climbed over sleeping dogs only to knock after her friend's mother has brought her home, only to say, "Here I am mommy, don't cry, here I am."

Only to say, "It's me, and I will grow up and be your daughter and find a love in my life and have children and you can see them and hold them and love them and they will have cousins and I will still have one sister and two brothers and the four of us, we will all be here with you and I will hold your hand when it's your turn to be held and I will still be here and I will still be here."

What if you could...

2008-04-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

What if someone told you that you could see what your child, though dead, would look like at 2 years old, at 5 years old, at 8 years old, at 12 years old, at 18 years old. Would you do it? If all you had was a picture of your baby at birth and her eyes were closed and you never saw her grow and you never saw her blink and you never saw her climb a tree or ride a bike or run on the soccer field or chase her brother and sister but you saw her lying, unmoving, would you want to know what she might have looked like? Would you want to see her with eyes staring at you, with hair falling over her shoulders, with lips curled up into a smile. Would you? What if you could? Would you do it? Or would you sit around too frightened by what the possibilities could have been...

"I love me"

2008-04-08T22:01:00.001-07:00

Tonight, Sawyer and Terry picked me up from work and on the way home, Sawyer said, "Mama. I love me." It was sweet, genuine and a matter-of-fact.

And then he said it two more times when we got home. And I thought, of course, he loves me and he loves him and he loves you. He is a love machine and he is not old enough to have that sense of lovelessness.

How lovely.

And I love him too but what about me? How often do we really think or feel love toward our own self? Probably not as often as we should. And I wonder if we really loved ourselves more, if that love wouldn't transfer out into the world.

And without getting too sappy what's wrong then, when our love continues after death. When that love sometimes makes us incapable of doing anything else. Sometimes, still, I am frozen by my love of Grace. Not very often any more; mostly it's love that creates movement but sometimes, every once in a while, it freezes me, it stops me, it takes my breath away and I have to compose myself again. I am awed by the power of this love. I am in wonder. "Mama. I love me."

Where I want to be today!

2008-03-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning feeling better than I have in over a week. Sawyer stopped coughing. Sophia isn't coughing at night anymore and Carver is back to his old self, looking at me sideways most of the time and raising his eyebrows. Terry, however, woke up feeling our colds, feeling our congestion, feeling sick and I stared at him sideways and rose my eyebrows. And then for a split second, I contemplated taking the car and driving south. South to the ocean, to the warmth, to the beach, to the palm trees.

I longed to smell the salt in the air, the sand on my skin, the way it gets stuck between my toes, the grittiness of it all.

Instead, I trudged to church with Sophia, I picked up a 50 pound bag of dog food, I trudged home and I fell asleep for two luxurious hours with Sawyer as the laundry somehow piled higher, the kitchen sink filled with more dishes, and the toys continued to get strewn all over the floor.

Terry remained sick, I continued to look sideways and now at 12:40 a.m. with the laundry still unfolded and the dishes still unwashed, I am calling it a day. I am going to sleep to dream dreams, to feel the ocean air and listen to the lapping of the waves on the sand.

Sleep

2008-02-29T09:49:00.000-08:00

Is any parent getting enough sleep? That's the question pondered today at the S-R blog.

It is a question my friends and I have pondered for years as we sleep with our children in tow, welcoming them into our beds at all hours, and nursing on demand at anytime they wish. There are nights when it seems exhausting, nights when it seems never ending, but here I am now, with a child about to turn two and nearly done with co-sleeping.

Oh, perhaps he'll still be in my bed another year or two, but I wouldn't trade these moments for anything. Just this morning, my older two crawled into bed with me and we stared for nearly an hour at Sawyer's sighs, turns and movements. He looked angelic as he slept and the three of us couldn't get enough of it.

I have known each moment when my kids have run a fever, when it's broken, when they feel sick, when they have aching teeth, when they need to get a drink of water, when they can't fall asleep, when they need to go to the bathroom, when they have bad dreams, when they have good dreams, when they cough, when they are ready to nurse again, when they think Terry's breast is mine, when they mistake snuggling with him to snuggling with me, when they kick off their blankets, when they pull the blankets up to their chin, when they hiccup, when they sigh, when they take a breathe.

These moments, I hold on to them, I see them disappearing, I see them growing up, and these moments, I can't get enough of them!

Nannies

2008-02-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

I am surprised by my reaction. Ten years ago, I would have been enraged, angry and shocked. But today, I find myself sympathetic to this nanny, and I'm not sure why.

It is easy though to toss the blame toward her, to direct our anger toward her. But it is much harder to find sympathy, to find empathy in a situation that seems so sad.

I don't condone her behavior, nor do I find it so shocking either. Is it because I have become desensitized? I actually think quite the opposite. It is easy to be judgmental and point fingers and find blame. But if we step for a moment, really step, into her shoes, perhaps we can see after six weary hours, two babies, in a strange house, how it might happen. Is she alone? Does she have any supportive friends or other nannies to get together with? Does she know what she is doing is wrong?

I don't know. But what I do know is that I can hold my kids closer tonight. I can kiss their cheeks and rub my eyelashes against theirs and be grateful for these small moments.

Gypsy

2008-02-24T22:55:00.000-08:00

I went to see Gypsy tonight at the Opera House in Spokane and I was surprised toward the end that I teared up. In a scene where Mama Rose and Loise are fighting and they mention that June has gone away. There is a small moment when Mama Rose realize that what she really misses is her own mother who abandoned her when she was a child and there it is... That longing, that feeling of loss, that mother-daughter connection zapped. It is in those moments that my own tears can fall so quickly.

It is an emotional response to a feeling deep within me. It didn't help also that when I left tonight, I left with Sophia sobbing for me not to go out. She can pull at me, tear at me, and I have to keep my emotional self in check at those moments. It is a difficult place to be and a tricky point to maneuver between distinguishing emotional manipulation and emotional maturity. I know that Sophia misses me sometimes when I leave but I also know that she is going to be okay, better than okay, in Terry's care. So I struggle with that sometimes.

But we all struggle and in those moments, I am reminded of the power of love, of the pull of love, of the genuine breadth of it all. Love does not boast. It is not proud. It is not self-seeking. Love is. And I am. And Grace is love.

Shoe Shopping

2008-02-23T19:25:00.001-08:00

My seven-year-old and almost two-year-old went shopping today for shoes. Sophia was ready for a pair of spring shoes, you know, puddle jumping, flip flopping, slip on and slip off kind of shoes. She found several pair that she liked in size 13 1/2. And while she tried them on, Sawyer and I walked over to the size 6 shoes for him. But I found myself gravitating toward the size 8 and 10. Is that what size Grace would wear? And of course as it always is in any store, the girls shoes outnumber the boys easily two to one. And all the shoes in 8's and 10's where the same kind as Sophia's--matching shoes--how cute would that be.

My two girls walking around in matching shoes, Grace mimicking Sophia, Grace wanting the same shoes, the same color, the same kind.

It reminds me a bit of Hannah's shoes, have you read Maria Housden's book? Hannah's Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived. It's a classic, it's a heart breaker, it's compelling. Go get it and prepare to be absorb. Oh and have a box of Kleenex nearby: Hannah's Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived

Enough said. When I see a pair of red shoes in the children's department, I think of Hannah, I think of Maria, I think of Grace.

One more 75-worder

2008-02-20T20:53:00.001-08:00

When my mother handed me my father’s sunglasses—ray bans—from the 60’s, I was certain that I’d see things I hadn’t seen before when I looked through the green-colored lenses. Did he wear them the day he died? Did he wear them with his collar on and tuck them into his robes before he stood up at the pulpit? Did he ever wonder why his direct line to God couldn’t save his life? Because I did.

A Contest

2008-02-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

Who doesn't love a contest? Who doesn't love a contest where money is given away?

Try it. You at least will enjoy reading others.

Oronte Churm

Here's my attempt using 74 words:

She didn’t know when she was five years old and staring at the hole growing bigger in her father’s back that her world was growing smaller. She didn’t know at 34 years old when she was staring at her unmoving belly that her whole world could grow even smaller still. If all the pieces of your own puzzle fall in ruins at your feet, how do you know which piece to pick up first?

Saving the planet

2008-02-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

Our local newspaper, The Spokesman Review, has gone the way of blogs for many topics. I don't know how many people actually read them, but a former colleague is one of the moderators, and I often go on to post things. Sometimes they create a bit of 'anger' in me or a reactionary response, but mostly it is food for thought. Her recent question had to do with 'eco moms' and my response is below. I wonder sometimes, if Grace had been my first child, how I would have responded to things differently. It is after all a much different response then I might have given five years ago.

You know, I think it's a really interesting topic and one certainly to bring up. I have gone from one end to the other and hopefully landed somewhere in the middle. When my kids were young, we were in a mom's group and we all sat around breastfeeding our babies, changing our cloth diapers, sharing organic snacks, and I think, feeling pretty smug about our choices.

But I never felt quite comfortable because I remember thinking, "So if a mom walks in here with a bottle and paper diapers and a bag of Cheetos," are we just going to toss her out? Of course, it didn't happen because like-minded moms ban together and we were never around bottle-feeding, cheeto eating moms.

And on some level, I felt like I was missing out on something that maybe those moms could teach me. And I wonder about that now in conjunction to this question.

I think the 'eco movement' is good. I think we need to look at the bigger picture and we need to send out a message that enough is enough. But we can't do it all at once and we can't see it all done in our lifetime, and I think it can all happen, one conversation at a time, at the dinner table with our kids. And it can happen when we use cloth napkins; and when we grab that paper diaper, we can be glad that we have the resources now to purchase the diapers and perhaps tonight at the dinner table with the cloth napkin, we can make a difference with the children in front of us.

I just re-read To Kill a Mockingbird last month and I also reminded of the timeliness of the novel written almost 50 years ago. As Atticus Finch says so wisely, "If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

For me, this holds true today as it does any day.

Kairos

2008-02-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

It is four years, eight months, and 18 days since Grace died. It is good to remind myself of this sometimes, to try to understand how time passes, how it moves neither forward nor back but it just moves. I want to be moved, I want to be reminded of Grace, I want to remember her small face, her even smaller hands.
Terry took a short but meaningful video of us shortly after she was born, and I had fallen asleep without knowing that I had fallen asleep. Grace is lying on top of me and I am holding her and you can see the rise and fall of my chest as I breath and in the video, it looks as if she is breathing too, moving up and down on me and I love that. I love that I can pretend for a moment that she is moving, she is breathing, she is there alive and well.
And sometimes, I look at the pictures I have of her but there are so few, so few poses, so few of these pictures and she never changes, never grows, never moves forward in time. Time is frozen into one moment, one place and one time. It neither moves forward nor backwards, nor does it move at all. And if I close my eyes, I can go to that moment, to that space with Grace, with her in my arms, and when I revisit that place now, it is not so much filled with pain, but a moment of peace, of joy to have her in my arms, to be sleeping again and breathing with her. And if I could, I would have her here: Carver, Sophia, Grace, and Sawyer--all of them together here and now. But that can't happen and won't happen and knowing this pulls at something deep within me and the longing remains and the longing aches but there is love there too. And for now I must live in the time of the angels, in a space where time exists neither as a movement toward the future nor away from the past but just simply living in the moment, in the here and now. With Grace and without.

Break the Spell

2008-02-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you want to be moved, if you want to fall in love, if you want to have an emotional shift, if you want to be lulled, if you want to be changed, if you want to be amazed, if you want to feel passion, if you want to feel hope, if you want to feel a change coming on in our country, then go out and buy this cd or download the cd or get 10 for you and your friends.

Ellis

Have you gone yet? What are you waiting for? Go. Now. Get.

e e cummings

2008-02-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

What can I say about this poet? He says it all best of all:

the moon is hiding in
her hair.
The
lily
of heaven
full of all dreams,
draws down.

cover her briefness in singing
close her with intricate faint birds
by daisies and twilights
Deepen her,

Recite
upon her
flesh
the rain's

pearls singly-whispering.

e.e. cummings