Fragility

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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

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

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.