Waves

"Time does restore us to our quiet joy in the spiritual presence of those we love, so that we learn to remember without pain, and to speak without choking up with tears. But all our lives we will be subject to sudden small reminders which will bring all the old loss back overwhelmingly."
--Elizabeth Watson


We've had a quiet holiday season, a conscious effort on our part. On Christmas eve, Maxwell came over for dinner with his girlfriend Annie. They were so generous with gifts to Felix. Among other things, Annie gave him a copy of "The Snowman," which we already have and love, but it felt like we made another connection in our mutual admiration for that sweet film. Maxwell gave Felix a Bob Dylan CD, a fun inside joke: a few weeks ago when I was taking Felix to school, a Dylan song was playing on KGLT. "I like this song, Mommy," he said, and I told him, "This is Bob Dylan, and he's a great musician." When I picked him up from school, the radio was on again. "Is this Bob Dylan?" Felix asked. When I answered that it was not, he said, "I wanna hear Bob Dylan!" So I took him home and played "Blood on the Tracks" for him.

Christmas Day, we opened our presents, with Felix delighting in every gift but having even more fun ripping open packages. After we were done, a tidal wave of grief knocked me down.

I cried my eyes out in my room. Dan came upstairs and held me while I cried some more.

Then I went for an hour and a half walk, stopping at the Rocky Creek bridge. I sat and watched the creek ripple under ice floes between snowy banks. I closed my eyes and listened to its melodies.

Felix woke up sick this morning. Somehow it's soothing to know that he needs me. And the chickadees have found my bird feeder at last. Today, Elise's due date, they've brought me the gift of their presence.

Solstice at Last

I'm taking heart that the daylight will start lingering a bit longer each day, even if it's only by minutes. In some ways I am savoring the darkness too, just because it encourages me to take things slowly. But the sun on my face, bright red behind my eyelids, feels the most comforting.

I sent candles to each of my family members. Inside their cards I wrote: "This Christmas, we would have been looking forward to Elise's 1st birthday. As my gift to her and to you, I am sending this candle. Please light it in her honor on Dec.26th and 27th, and whenever you think of her."

I also included this passage from Daphne Du Maurier, quoted from Healing After Loss. It captures best my feelings of our lost future with her, the hope she seems to bring us despite her death, and my belief that her life, however brief and forgotten by many, will always resonate with me, Dan, Felix, and therefore in those who truly love us:

"To have lived at all is a measure of immortality; for a baby to be born, to become a man, a woman, to beget others like himself, is an act of faith in itself, even an act of defiance. It is as though every human being born into this world burns, for a brief moment, like a star, and because of its pinpoint of light shines in the darkness, and so there is glory, so there is life."

Circles and Cycles

"You are growing stronger with each cycle." That phrase from a comment posted here lingers, because I need to keep faith in the cycles and circles of life. It's hard to get the linear concept of time and progress out of my mindset. To practice faith in life's circular rhythms, even though I see it around me in the seasons, the sunrises and sunsets, the daily and weekly routines, I need to make a conscious effort.

Last night, Felix was particularly cantankerous, and bouncing off the walls too. "He worked us over," Dan said as we were getting ready for bed after Felix finally settled down. This morning he ran to us and gave us each a long, delicious morning hug. Those hugs are indescribably wonderful. I can't begin to explain how they make me feel all right about the world.

But on this particular morning as he hugged me, the world and I floated away on his words. For the first time, he said without my saying it first, "You know what Mommy? I love you."

Light and Shadow

I felt on a high the beginning of November, and made it through Elise's birthday with flying colors. Everybody was saying how I looked different, sounded different, and I thought, "I made it!"

As if I wasn't going to be sad ever again.

After Thanksgiving when we returned from a relaxing, cozy 4 nights at the moms' house in the forest near Helena, where we got lots of grandma love for Felix too, I descended.

What comes up, must come down.

I keep thinking, habitually, over and over again despite what I know is true about life, that my pain and grief go into some kind of "remission," and that I'll be "cured" or healed someday.

I've been feeling low the past week, and couldn't figure out why. When I realized the reason, I was surprised at my ability to repress the pain. Last year at this time I was supposed to be looking forward to Elise's birth. Her due date was Dec.26-27th. She should be turning one year old soon. I wasn't acknowledging this consciously, but my heart was--her spirit was. And so I am missing her so badly again.

But my pain is part of me. The light cannot be appreciated without the dark. Light always casts a shadow, lovely shadows of mystery with their own unique form and suggestion. I need to embrace those shadows, as impossible and formless though they may seem.

The other night we had our neighbors over for dinner. Pete and Sanna's daughter Oskaria was born last year on July 1st, and died hours later from a rare genetic disorder. We met them through our Share support group, but in a strangely fortuitous coincidence, they moved in across the street from us a mere 2 weeks after Elise's death.

It was very comforting for me to talk about our daughters. Sanna is due to give birth to their second child this Dec.16th. I told them I am excited for them, yet we all felt so aware of the sadness mixed up in the anticipation and joy. Felix went up to Sanna and patted her belly. "There's a baby in there, Felix," I told him. "Oh!" he exclaimed, and ran into the living room. "Papa, help me get the picture down," he asked Dan. Then he ran back to Sanna and handed her Elise's photo. "This is Baby Sister," he said.

Joy and grief. Shadow and light. Winter's darkness is here, and I am drawn to candles. Maxwell and Annie gave me a glass star to hang in our front window, and I light a tea candle for it every evening. I'm going to light Hanukkah candles too, even though I missed the first day of it yesterday and I'm only just now interested in educating myself about it, and it's not an important Jewish holiday, and Dan's family isn't that religious.

I don't care. My gut says I want candles. Elise wants candles. I feel a connection to her with stars, especially the evening star. I bought a star ornament today for the tree we'll put up next week. I lit the candle Katy bought for us on Elise's birthday. "May this candle light your darkness," she wrote. It will, and the shadows will dance around it. And the stars will glow in the dark night.

Giving Thanks

I haven’t yet written about what exactly Dan and I did on Elise’s birthday.
Dan set her photo and ashes on the dining room table, and together we lit the “Peace” candle my sister Mary and her partner Chris gave us. Dan said, “Happy Birthday, Elise.” We stared at the candle with tears in our eyes.

When we opened our front door to go out, there were a dozen pink roses on our porch. They were from Sanna and Pete, our neighbors across the street whose daughter Oskaria died of a genetic defect July 1st of last year. They are expecting their second child in just a few weeks. We placed their lovely flowers in front of the candle, along with their card. “Love is stronger than death,” they wrote.

We went out to breakfast and talked about how we were feeling. We spent some time taking care of ourselves: I did 2 hours of yoga and took a bath, Dan went to the gym. Sarah dropped off some narcissus bulbs in a lovely pot. Ann sent daffodil bulbs from Seattle. I’ll have to wait until spring to plant them: snow has settled in. Katy gave us a beautiful, tall candle: “May it light your darkness,” she wrote in her card. Throughout the day, we got phone messages and cards from friends and family. We both cried when we read Jan’s card. “Although I still grieve our loss of our tiny granddaughter, I am so grateful I was able to hold her and rock her that awful (awe-full) morning and could be a part of a family that mourned together. Whatever else Elise may come to give me over the years, that is a gift beyond measure to me.”

Moving FORWARD, not "moving on"

Lots of big events have happened since I last wrote. They are in a chronological (if conventional) order:
1. I resigned from my job
2. We took a family trip to the San Francisco Bay Area to have a great time with dear friends
3. I went to a women’s retreat called The Gift and—no joke—had a transformative experience
4. We commemorated Elise’s birth and death day on Wednesday the 7th.

At the Gift, I was able to let go of a lingering, if irrational, feeling of helplessness and failure over Elise's death. I knew in my mind that I hadn't caused her death, but my body and spirit ached with the pain of not being able to protect her in my role as her mother, especially since I was carrying her at the time she died. But at the retreat, I gave voice to this agony and exorcised it. I let go of trying to control my future, said goodbye to the inner "control freak" whose existence I hadn't noticed until that weekend, and claimed my role as Elise's mother . I also claimed my role as my own parent: a practice of self-care and compassion for myself, instead of the perfectionism I've demanded of myself all these years.

I'd already rejected a big part of the soul-crushing expectations I've had for myself by leaving my job as a tenure-track professor. Some of the parts of my job worked for me: the satisfaction of finishing a piece of writing; my wonderful colleagues; the excitement of listening to my students' ideas and learning from them in classroom discussions; the challenge of getting an idea across in writing and in lecturing to students. But I didn't write and publish quickly enough; I didn't like administrative work; and when I showed up for class on the first day of the fall term and found I didn't want to perform for a room full of strangers in my fragile emotional state, it was a pivotal moment. I don't want to be here, I thought. I don't want to perform for others, I want to go inside me and find what I need to care for this pain. I want to be with my boys, and with myself, in our home.

Once I took a leave of absence, I started to feel a lightness I'd never experienced before. With our wonderful week in Berkeley and Stinson Beach with Dana and Mike, David and Cynthia and Baby Jacob, then a retreat with amazing women where I plunged to the depths of my pain and was lifted up, I emerged from a chrysalis. The pain of losing Elise will always be with me. But I've made peace with it, and I'm not afraid to feel it. My experiences with her are not solely painful ones, but show me the way to compassion and gratitude.

Oct. 31st: We had to put our kitty down yesterday. Her name was Freud. She was a beautiful dilute calico, a perfect balance of orange and grey fur on her back, tail, and head, with lovely white chest, belly and stockings. We named her Freud because under the triangle of white nose and cheeks and chin, she had a grey patch that looked like the beard Dr. Sigmund had. She was very sweet to everyone, and slept at the foot of our bed. Sometimes she would tease our dog Genki by rearing up and swatting at her nose. They would have a round in the ring with Freud swatting and Genki wheeling this way and that to dodge her “blows.”

At first I thought I didn’t want to be there when the vet administered her lethal injection. But when she had to endure two failed attempts to get a catheter for the injection into a vein in her leg, I decided she needed me. She had feline leukemia, and was so dehydrated from not eating or drinking that her veins collapsed when they tried to insert the catheter. When the vet finally gave her the injection in a femoral blood vessel, she was so weak that it was difficult to tell when she left her body. She lay on her side as the sedative took her away, while Dan and I stroked her head and cheek.

I knew yesterday morning that I was spending my last hours with her, but I only shed a couple of tears when I had Felix say goodbye to her before he went to school. I thought my lack of overt sadness was because I was tired of being sad, or that I was comforted by getting to say goodbye to her and by the knowledge that she wouldn’t suffer anymore.

But when I held her on my lap in the car while parked at the animal hospital, I sobbed. She shook her head to disperse the tears that fell on her ears. I sobbed with Dan after the vet explained the euthanasia process and left us alone to be with her in the examining room. And I sobbed over her lifeless body. The agony of death and abandonment came flooding back. I pictured Elise’s sweet but lifeless face again, and I wanted to scream helpless curses at the universe.

I was exhausted the rest of the day. I felt thankful that I had a simple life with no work obligations to drag myself through. I was glad we were picking up Felix from school to watch him make his cheerful, uncomplicated way through his day.

I had one work obligation that evening, but thankfully again, it was a comforting one: for the Bozeman Film Festival, I introduced and facilitated a Q & A session for the Japanese film After Life. The story takes place at a sort of way station for the dead: the newly deceased are given 3 days to choose one memory from their lives, which the staff at the way station will recreate on film and screen for them, at which point the dead will leave to spend the rest of eternity with that memory. It’s a languid, thought-provoking film, one that asks what is important to us in our own lives. It celebrates the art of filmmaking, our individual ways in the midst of our need for connection, and the unshakable belief that we will be consoled. One of the characters says that he made the wonderful discovery after many, many years, that he was important to someone. And that is what I hold on to: that even in their tiny, short lives, beings like Freud, who very few besides Dan and I care about, and Elise, who is forgotten or never remembered by most except Dan and me, are important to us, and cherished.

Oct.15th: As the days creep forward towards the day of Elise’s birthday, my agitation builds. We don’t have anything planned to commemorate it. We don’t know whether to spend it as a family, with just the two of us, whether to stay home or go somewhere, what kind of rituals, if any, we’ll hold.

I wonder whether I would feel less restless if I did make plans. But whenever I try to think about it, I draw a blank. Maybe I don’t want to think about it.

Which is strange, because I think about her every day, several times a day. She is constantly on my mind, if sometimes in the back, or hovering somewhere out of sight. If she’s always on my mind, why am I not thinking about ways to honor her and help us take the next step toward integrating her into our lives, however that’s supposed to feel?

Maybe I should give it some focused thought, because it seems like most our emotions associated with her are regretful, sorrowful, disillusioned, frustrated. Dan let out a moaning sigh last night: when he said he’d received his first e-mail from his new employers, I thought he was going to say they gave him a huge assignment, but the e-mail was announcing the birth of a fellow employee’s baby. I shopped for some birthday things for Felix the other day, and saw the little plastic tiaras and beads for other birthday girls, not mine. The last photo we have of me pregnant with Elise is with Felix on his 2nd birthday at his grandparents. His face is lit up with glee as he sits on my lap, and Dan and I have joy and anticipation in our smiles as all three of us gaze at the birthday cake before him.

We travel to the Bay Area to see some friends next week. After that, I’ll go to a retreat for women in Seattle with two of my sisters. I’m sure some ideas will come to me then. As always, I will practice patience with this journey.

Oct. 9---I visited a Montessori preschool today, one of several I am checking out for Felix. We think Felix’s teacher in his toddler group at his present daycare is wonderful, but he’s ready to move on to a group with older kids.

I was really exhausted after spending an hour and fifteen minutes visiting this school. Not because it was chaotic or crazy—the atmosphere there is far from that, actually: the children were totally engaged in their little projects with drawing animals, or making letters, or sorting shapes and colors, or siphoning colored water from one beaker and squirting it into another. Also, I had a long delightful conversation with the very dynamic director. She showed me some endearing books about children in Japan who meet foreigners, and about a biracial child’s family, written by an American who grew up in Japan. When I sat down to read them, a little girl who’d been fascinated with me ever since I arrived showed me another book that showed how to make colorful animals with autumn leaves.

Suddenly I had eight kids surrounding me, pointing and exclaiming at the leaf animals. Then Annie Jane, a five-year-old whose parents let us crash her birthday party at the park last month, showed me a book about colors called “Little Blue.” She and another little girl read some of the words with me, about how Blue and his friend Yellow hug each other to make green.

I felt so warm and fuzzy, it almost made me want to start my own preschool. To look into their smiling, searching eyes, their eyes that show they are getting to know the world’s wonders, lifted me up, but also wrenched me open.
I try not to force the door closed on my sadness, but lately it’s been easier to move through the hours without feeling flayed open, exposed to the indifferent elements. I’m building up my protective layers again, the healthy kind that keep me safe and calm, not hardened and edgy. So today when I immersed myself in all that little-kid energy, and saw another teacher at the school who is pregnant (“having a baby in three weeks,” the director said; I hope so, I thought), it was like having one of those layers slowly, painfully peeled away. I really did enjoy myself and smiled the whole time, but once I was alone, that rawness began throbbing, and regret flooded through me. Now I’m exhausted. Some tears slide silently down my face as I sit here at the public library, gazing out at the treetops through the big picture windows.

I thought I wanted to just sit and read today, but I need to take myself into the glorious clear day out there. An October passage from Healing After Loss reads, “In the turning of the seasons, I find promise and hope.” I’ve been feeling particularly drawn to the colors of autumn. Maybe I’ll gather some colorful leaves and make pictures of animals with them.

Phantoms

Sept. 26: I am having these muscle twitches in my lower abdomen that feel exactly like a baby inside me with the hiccups.

What the hell does it mean? It seems cruel and hopeful at the same time. It seems more cruel to my empty body than the usual sights that stalked me this morning at the public library: the mother with the two small daughters who opened her van door with its two carseats next to me just as I was getting out of my car; the woman with the preschooler and toddler walking by me as I entered the library; the hugely pregnant woman with the toddler boy passing by me as I went to buy some tea at the library cafe.

I know these are common sights, as are the multitude of hugely pregnant women I seem to see every day, and the FIVE friends and acquaintances I've learned are pregnant in the past couple of months. I want to believe these are good omens of another, healthy baby in our future, and good reminders of our Elise.

But these twitches...the hiccup-like ones are new. I've had phantom ones that were occasional, like the kicks and punches with which Elise once poked me. When I read about others having these ghostly movements in books about stillbirth, I could hardly believe it. But then they happened to me.

And I don't know what to do with them. I do remember seeing an item at the popular museum show Bodies: The Exhibition in Seattle that has stayed with me: in the room about fetal development, a passage read, "Fetal cells stay in the mother's body for years after birth." I felt comforted by those words. It seemed like a physical element of Elise's spirit living on in my life.

I think I need to rethink my connection to my body, let my body into my consciousness more. The weight loss, the illness, the feelings of disconnection are telling me this, not to mention the words of my massage therapist and acupuncturist. I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe I'll start by taking myself for a walk.

Integrating

Sept.25th: It’s been so long since I’ve written that my readers must have given up on me by now. I’m still here, but words have been absent from my state of mind until recently: I agonized through the writing of my conference paper and finally e-mailed it late to my panel chairman on Saturday the 15th, while Dan was out running a race and I was in charge of Felix. This day of course, Felix didn’t want to just zone out in front of his DVDs when I plugged him in to finish that infernal paper, but said, “I want to watch with you, Mommy” for the first time ever. Of course. So that made it even harder to write, but I finished the paper, and didn’t look at it again until the morning of my conference panel in Salt Lake City. Luckily, it was coherent.
I’ve been writing in my journal nearly every day, as an ongoing therapy that helps me unload my anxiety, sadness, and estrangement from words, ironically. I write about how I have nothing to write about. I write 3 pages, as prescribed by Julia Cameron in her “morning pages” prescription in The Artist’s Way. I usually feel off-kilter if I don’t write in my journal, even if I’m convinced I don’t have anything to say in it.

Today I went to meet with a fellow professor who kindly made an agreement with my worried chair / boss to be an official mentor for me. He wasn’t in his office though. I asked the secretary of his department if he’d been in, and she said she hadn’t seen him. I hope he is okay…the last time I was supposed to meet with him, almost a year ago when I was on the search committee for an anthropologist of Japan, I didn’t show up because I was in a delivery room waiting to give birth to Elise.

Sarah walked by while I was waiting for my official mentor this morning. We hugged each other a long time: one of her coworkers was killed in a car crash a few days ago, a woman with three children and two stepchildren, a husband who adored her, with whom she was looking forward to retiring with, Sarah said. My heart feels heavy with empathy today. Another friend’s sweet, beloved dog died, just got terribly, suddenly sick while she was out of town. He was not much more than a puppy and so cherished by her ever since she’d found him abandoned in the desert by the Colorado River.

Anne Lamott writes in her newest book Grace (Eventually): “It’s fine to know, but not to say, that in some inadequate and surprising ways, things will be semi-okay, the way wild flowers spring up at the rocky dirt-line where the open-space meadow meets the road, where the ground is so mean. Just as it’s fine to know but not say that anger is good, a bad attitude is excellent, and the medicinal powers of shouting and complaining cannot be overestimated.” My share of anger is definitely there, and my friend Tracy and I wished we could choose any number of others to get rid of (how about just ONE, perhaps Osama bin Laden?) instead of losing innocent babies, or good people or creatures that leave behind so many broken hearts.

I think I am figuring out how to integrate my pain into my life—something I’ve been frustrated with and confused about for many, many months. I can’t describe the exact process, except to try and try again to be patient with myself: be patient with my anger, my denial of Elise’s death, my depression, my impatience; and credit myself for my self-care (the therapy, the support group, the tears and conversations with Dan, the attempts to reach out to family, the outings with friends, the yoga, the massage, the antidepressants, the acupuncture, the exercise…and yes, the complaining!). I walked home from campus today, and the maple leaves on Grand Avenue are a lovely gold and red. The air was clear and chilly, the sun warm, my steps grateful.

A Break from...

I’m taking a leave of absence from my teaching this semester. I hadn’t posted anything in here for a while because I’d been freaking out about going back to classes, and then freaking out about not going back.

Even my body was telling me something wasn’t right: several people have remarked that I look like I’ve lost weight, and I got a stomach bug the day before the fall term was to begin that kept me home my first day of classes.

Again, I’d been doing everything to help myself heal: I got a massage from the fabulous Heidi, who sensed an emotional blockage in my belly region or chakra. I’m not well-versed in the chakra lingo, but the fact that I’d been going around with my stomach in knots, that my waist was shrinking with the weight loss, that my appetite was poor, and that I caught the flu two days after the massage, tells me my belly was trying to telegraph something. Also, it had been nine or ten months since Elise’s birth—the body remembers such timing.

When I told my mom about my leave last night on the phone, I didn’t hesitate, even though I had it in my head that Mom would never approve. She asked “How are you?” and I said I decided to take the leave. Surprisingly, she responded the way everyone else has: “That’s good. You need to take care of yourself.” She passed right by the news to tell me she was sending me a Joseph Campbell book, Pathways to Bliss. Her gesture is so touching: my mom the Catholic, who knows I am no longer a Catholic, much less a Christian, is reaching out to my intellectual side, and the part of me that still believes in some higher power or spiritual essence.

And the universe / God / cosmos / spirit seems to be speaking to me with synchronicity: the same day at lunch with Maxwell, we were talking about how life can be so cruel. “How do we go on?” I sighed with my head in my hands. Maxwell said that’s where mythology and theology must have stepped in. I’m not sure they’re for “making sense” out of this life, but maybe for imagining something beyond this existence with all its pain, for hope and deliverance.

Not that I don’t see the beauties of this life: my husband who is so loving, gentle, wise, fun; my sweet little son; my friends who don’t fear my sadness; the family members reaching out to us.

The other night at our SHARE meeting, I marveled at the courage and love of one couple who decided to carry their son to term after discovering at the twenty-week ultrasound that he had no kidneys. He lived for fifteen minutes after birth. His mother spoke of her gratitude for the experience of her first pregnancy with him. When I think about Elise, I picture her face as I gazed at her while she lay in my arms. Whenever I see her Papa’s funny long toes, so long they hang off the front of his flip-flops, I remember that she had his long slender fingers and toes. Somday I want to remember her with joy and gratitude.

Th other night I had a feeling I wouldn't fall asleep, and Dan had started snoring, so I got up and took an Ambien. As soon as I started nodding off, Felix woke up crying. He wouldn't be comforted by Dan, so I went in, and he still wouldn't calm down. So we took him into our bed. He didn't squirm around as much as he has in the past, but we have a queen and he's getting to be a big boy, so I only half slept while squeezing my body toward my side of the bed.

He's been our sweet sensitive boy lately. I've been honest with him: he has asked me, "You sad, Mommy?" And I tell him yes, I'm sad a lot, but being with you makes me happy, and it's okay to be sad. I showed him Elise's photo again last Sunday, and he asked "Is baby sleeping?" And I said no, she is dead, that means we can't have her here with us. He just responded with an "Oh..." in a tiny voice, while staring at her picture. The books say not to tell little ones that someone who's died is "sleeping" because that gives the wrong idea and they also might be afraid of falling asleep themselves. I suppose "dead" is a pretty big word for a not-quite-3 year old, but I have confidence that my honesty with him will be a good thing. He is already a wonderful mixture of self-assuredness and emotional sensitivity, and I want him to be able to be open with his loved ones and able to protect himself too.

I'm parenting in the classic Not Gonna Put My Kid Through the Shit I Went Through method: I grew up thinking I was supposed to Be Nice and not talk about yourself or your pain. Now I'm struggling to seek the support I need from the right people, avoid the ones who can't respond--no matter who they are or how close they seemed before Elise died--and take care of myself without worrying what others need from me when I don't have the energy left.

Last night Felix woke up crying twice. He has a very stuffy nose, and I have the flu. I had a massage from Heidi a few days ago and she happened to call this morning. When I told her I was sick, she said the massage is likely helping my body move through all the pain and turmoil, and this sickness is part of that flushing out. I hope she's right, but at any rate those words encourage me, as I lay in bed with my stomach roiling, to believe that we are not suffering for nothing.

We returned a few days ago from a week with my family in Sunriver, Oregon. There were 37 of us there. Needless to say, it was hard to exchange more than a few words with all the activity. Still, when 2 days had passed since our arrival with no one saying a word about Elise, I wanted to drive home screaming. My sister Mary and her partner Chris helped me calm down. Chris had already talked with Dan on his own, and they offered to communicate my needs to the others so that I wouldn't have to explain yet again that it really is okay, it really is a good thing, and helpful, to ask us how the day is going, how the hour is going, then listen for a response.

After a yoga class the next day, my sisters and mother and I cried in a group hug. They all said they are hurting for Elise, for us, and didn't know how to talk to us. Is it our eternally optimistic American culture that keeps us from including any talk of sadness in our days? Is it the same old fear of death thing? I keep hearing from people "I've never experienced what you're going through so I don't know what to say," and sometimes I get so sick of it. You expect us to teach you what to say when we're barely keeping our heads above water emotionally? Go read a book.

A lot of books have helped me, if just to confirm that, in the words of one wise soul of a bereaved mother who wrote me a card: "Remember, you are NOT going crazy, it just REALLY HURTS." Empty Cradle, Broken Heart; Still to be Born; Help, Comfort, and Hope; and a daily missal of sorts, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief offer other people's stories and practical advice for being patient with myself and others in the drudgery of this pain.

But much of the time I am impatient. I still haven't accepted Elise's death. Maybe it's a gradual process--so gradual it's undetectable. It's not as if I am not working hard: yesterday I made calls to my doctor, my therapist, a close friend; I'm getting a massage on Friday, I write in my journal every day, I treated myself to 2 hours of yoga yesterday and took the dog on a short walk. When a friend called to go to a movie, I went even though it sounded better to cozy up at home with my boys for the evening.

But I also thought, maybe Dan and Felix could use a break from my gloomy self for a couple of hours. Felix had thrown a fit a little while ago: was it just a drop in his blood sugar from needing dinner, or is he picking up on my grief? He is a sensitive little guy; I hope he can still embrace that part of himself as he grows older. I hope his baby sister is teaching him how.

So I went to the movie and was surprised to see such a big crowd for the Bozeman Film Festival on a summer evening. With both movie theaters downtown closed indefinitely, and the cineplexes showing the usual lame comedies and blow-em-ups, this town must be starved for decent entertainment. At any rate I wasn't really prepared to see so many acquaintances with their meaningless "How are you" 's, so I inched my way out of conversation most of the time, which felt like absolutely the right thing to do. Whey do we even say those words when we don't really expect a real response? I'm not even answering that hiccup anymore: it's just another way of saying hello anyway.

Then Heather came up to me and gave me a hug. Her son died at birth 4 years ago. Her eyes seemed to reflect my pain, which I found strangely comforting. "I know where you are, and part of me is still there with you," they seemed to say. I could tell her today was a hard day and not see a look saying "Let's get this dreary stuff over with so we can move on to lighter, more trivial chatter." When it was time for us to leave the lobby for the film, part of me wanted her to stay with me like a mother might stay with her scared child in the classroom on the first day of school. But that child has to be left alone with all those strangers eventually, so I dragged myself off to be with the others who were comfortably socializing.

The new term is starting and with it all sorts of people spouting "How are you?" and me wanting to say, "I'm not really here yet," or "Today is going by slowly," or "This hour is an improvement on the last one," or "Words can't express it."

My loneliness and pissiness has eased off today. Partly that’s because I had such loving responses from family and friends I’d told about my blog, and partly because we went to our SHARE support group meeting last night.

I don’t want people to think I was scolding them in yesterday’s posting, because for the most part I get the support I need when I ask for it. But “when I ask for it” is the key concept: sometimes I can’t ask for it, and tell myself people are too busy and I shouldn’t bother them. That’s my youngest-of-seven mindset speaking: Don’t bother anyone, you can handle it yourself, just stay out of sight and read your books.

Lo and behold, when I put it out there the universe responds: I’ve always been afraid to speak the truth about how I’m feeling, and grew up thinking that emotional expression and honesty are unseemly or weak. I’m trying to change that, even when it’s painful. These past few days in particular seem to be telling me I have NO CHOICE but to say what I need to, or I’ll end up one screwed-up, warped sack o’ woe (to borrow a Cannonball Adderley song title).

So on a run yesterday, I stopped to talk with a family friend I see every once in a while. I decided to thank her for the card she and her husband sent us when Elise died, and we had one of those talks that are so uplifting for their sincerity and compassion. She brought up the possibility that people might not mention Elise because they think it’s a private matter for us. That could very well be the case, maybe even with acquaintances here in town who infuriate me when they scurry away before the conversation goes beyond “Hi, how are you.” But one member of our support group definitely spoke for me last night when she said she cherished conversations where people asked about her daughter’s story, what it was like to be pregnant with her and experience her birth and death.

This morning I ran into my doctor, a wonderful woman who instinctively knows how to be encouraging without being clichéd. She recalled my anguish at Elise’s birth, and that reminded me of how all I could do at that moment was scream until the people in the room, the hospital ward, the whole world, could hear my rage and helplessness.

Last night at our meeting we talked a lot about people who forget about our babies in their busy distracted lives, and we talked a bit about how to hold on to the memories of our babies while still moving forward. I said that a friend had asked me whether I believed in an afterlife, and I wasn’t sure there was one but am clinging to the possibility there is. In any case, we carry our children with us in some form. The guest speaker asked if I thought that I can see Elise in the world around us, and again I said I wasn’t sure… “Keep looking,” she urged.

I know that even if I might not “see” Elise in a bird who sings to me or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, she is speaking to me: she is telling me to put myself out there and ask for what I need. She never spoke a word in her life, but she is teaching me how to communicate.

9 months on

Today makes it 9 months since our daughter Elise was stillborn at 33 weeks. Nine months, and I still can't believe I've just written that sentence. It still feels like I've been punched in the stomach. It's very exhausting trying to catch my breath, clutching my gut as I stare into space in disbelief.

It's not like this every day, or even every hour. Sometimes days go by when I feel pretty good. But when I do feel weighed down by grief, it feels terribly lonely, because most of our friends and family have gone on with their "normal" lives. I'm learning that when I need to find support, I need to be selective. Otherwise, the pain of getting a response like, "Are you still taking your antidepressants?" or "Are you going to have another baby?" makes me want to take that person by the neck and fling them onto the floor.

So this blog is for people who feel alone in their loss. It's for people who want to understand the grief of stillbirth. It's for people who are deluding themselves that their own routines and petty concerns can excuse them from remembering that we are still hurting. It's for people who have forgotten Elise. It's for people who think she was "just" a pregnancy. Guess what? She wasn't. She was our daughter, she is STILL our daughter, and a little sister to Felix, and a niece, and a granddaughter, and a cousin...

This summer I was hit with the realization I will never see her grow up. There I was watching the high school graduation ceremony for my niece, and the next thing I knew I was rushing out of the auditorium to cry my eyes out. Summer has brought memories of being pregnant with Elise, outings to the park and the pool with Felix where pregnant women are everywhere with big bellies bursting under their tank tops, and all the anxieties of trying to conceive again.

So yes, we do want to have another baby. No, I am not taking antidepressants now because I'm worried about the effects if I get pregnant (among other reasons). But however much others want to think, even unconsciously, that another baby, if we have one, will "fix" our loss of Elise, it doesn't work that way, no more than remarriage replaces a dead spouse or other children take the place of another dead child. No, we never saw Elise alive in this world, but yes, our grief is as crushing as that of someone who shared some time on this planet with a loved one they lost.

Lastly, I want to say to those who are acquaintances of someone who has experienced a death in their family recently: SAY SOMETHING IN SYMPATHY. Ask "how are you REALLY doing?" You won't be "reminding" that person of their grief, dummy: they always already feel it. Get out of your own ego, the one telling you death is icky and uncomfortable, and someone else's sadness is awkward, and act like a human with a sense of decency and compassion. And by the way, you can still ask after months have passed.

Where to, Elise? Where did you go? Where are we going? Such simple questions, but the answers are never, ever predictable. So I'll just ask, Where to next? and let go of the rest.