Healing & Holidays

I love the sea. I always find being near it calms me in a way that nothing else can. We don't have a great line in palm fringed sandy paradises with calm azure waters here in the North East of England. Our coastline is rugged and dramatic and beautiful. It rains a lot too. Standing by the sea here is a salutary reminder of nature's power and its unpredictability. The coast round here is studded with ruined castles, relics from an era when Vikings and others ravaged our little bit of England, the sea is studded with wrecks of ships who have come a cropper in these dangerous waters.


Last year we loaded up our brand new people carrier (well, brand new to us), bought to accommodate our need for 3 car seats, and trooped to a cottage on the Northumbrian coast. I was 34 weeks pregnant and we were all so happy. The weather was blissful and we stayed on the beach from morning (well lunchtime by the time I'd had my nap) until night.

D. & I headed back this way in November. The friends who let us use their cottage gifted us with a weekend here - a tiny opportunity to heal in the bleakest and darkest of days. We left the little ones with auntie, loaded up the too big car with logs for the open fire and lots and lots and lots of wine and comfort food. We hid away for a day or two.

... and we came back this year, uncertain if we were doing the right thing. Coming back without Emma. It was bittersweet, of course. How could it not be? But it was still a lovely holiday. The weather was not so kind this year but it was still good enough to spend our days building sandcastles and certainly not cold enough to deter our eldest daughter (who is almost certainly part mermaid) from braving the sea!


We arrived late afternoon on Monday and went for an evening stroll on the beach. Reaching out over the sea was a beautiful and vibrant rainbow. It wasn't the weak or vacillating sort. It was a perfect arch and it lasted the whole time we walked and played and climbed over the dunes back to our car. We claimed it as a good sign, a promise. Of what? I'm not too sure really. Of hope for brighter times to come I think.

Most mornings our children played outside the cottage whilst we got ready to head out. There is a family who have made a life for themselves, in this very remote spot. They live there all year round, the only permanent residents in a row of holiday homes. Their three children let ours use their ride along tractors and climbing frames and secret dens last year, and the friendships were renewed this year. We didn't really get to know the parents last year but I remember that their mother gave us a sympathetic and sad smile as we were leaving last November. This year, she cajoled me around for tea and parsnip cake (yes, really. Root vegetable cake! It's absolutely delicious). As I've said on this blog many times, I don't really socialise any more. Actually making small talk with a stranger ranks pretty high on my list of nightmares but I braced myself and went. She was lovely. Without any preamble she poured tea and said, "I'm so very sorry for your loss". Someone who said the right thing. How incredible is that?

"The same happened to me nine years ago. Our first child, our first son was stillborn." That's how she knew what to say. I always feel so sad when I hear that somebody else has lived through this awful experience but there is such relief in pouring it all out to someone who truly knows.

Yes, this holiday certainly had its sad moments. I stood on the beach and ached to know how Emma would have reacted to sand - would she have eaten it? (a la big sister) Would she have screamed at the sight of it? (a la big brother) Would she have a completely different reaction all of her own?

But, you know there were moments of peace and joy and even, maybe, a tiny bit of healing.

My grief work

After reading Lea's lovely news about her new pregnancy and her thoughts about a second blog, I contemplated the possibility of starting a new blog to document Jurgen's journey. I only contemplated it briefly. I am unlikely ever to win an award for world's most prolific blogger as it is and I know that I would not be able to do either blog justice. So, with your permission, I will remain a solitary blog kinda girl for now.

This is Emma's place and I still intend it primarily to be about her and my journey since meeting her, kissing her and saying goodbye. There will be the occasional pregnancy post of course. The crazy triad of birth/death/maybe life that is pregnancy after loss (so powerfully articulated by Sally here) is an enormous part of my tangled, messy grief yarn right now. Parts of Emma's birth and death that I thought I had begun to process, begun to integrate suddenly loom very large again now.

I remember reading "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart" just a few days after Emma died and latching on with absolute fervour to the idea of "grief work". The idea that grief was something I could "do" something about, the possibility of clawing back some control in a situation where I lost every last vestige of controlling influence - that possibility was a heady and intoxicating one. It still is, although I think I possibly have a more nuanced idea of what it means now. I might be able to "do" grief but I cannot do away with with it.

I also remember reading a thread over on the pregnancy loss section of Mothering, not long after Emma died when my arms ached to hold a baby and getting pregnant again seemed the cure for all ills. There was a wise and gentle post written by a someone who was several years into this journey. She found herself unexpectedly and quickly pregnant again after the death of her precious firstborn daughter. She talked abut how she handled her still very raw grief alongside her hope of a different outcome for her second pregnancy. She talked of working on her first daughter's scrapbook & journal whilst all the time documenting her journey towards meeting her second little girl. It seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, a powerful and positive way to approach a new pregnancy and I have stored it away in my brain for a time like now.

I'm about to leave the first trimester and today I saw Jurgen again, doing headstands. I am being forced to believe (against my current inclination to preclude any optimism in case of a jinx) that at his moment in time, this pregnancy is progressing well. When I was expecting Emma, I started a cross stitch birth sampler for her. I didn't start it until I was 34 weeks as I was making one for her cousin first who was expected before she was. So Emma's was unfinished when she was born. I looked at it a few days after I arrived home from the hospital and had what might have been my first coherent thought of the aftermath. "I can't complete this now but if I ever have another pregnancy, this is my project to get me through". I have not touched it again but now I'm ready. Ready to document my daughter whilst I wait hopefully for her sibling. Like the cross stitch, this blog is a place to document her too, another place where I do my grief work.

I think there is still quite a lot to do.

Monday Musings

9 months.
Tomorrow she will have been gone from my arms longer than I ever held her in my womb. But she is not gone from my heart - my ever pregnant heart. There she lives, there she shines, there she IS ... eternally.

***

The Red Tent.
After reading this beautiful post from Inanna, I was compelled to go back and read this gorgeous book. It is rich and dangerous and brutal and sad. I've read it more than once but this time I read it in a different way. I read it as a baby lost mother. I don't think I managed more than 2 pages at a time without tears. It is a story that honors motherhood profoundly. It is a story that recognises that for all mothers, even those who in our sanitised culture have forgotten it, death & life are both a part of birth.

"In the red tent we knew that death was the shadow of birth, the price women pay for the honor of giving life. Thus, our sorrow was measured." (page 58)

We ignore the shadow in our modern world and when our babies die, we become shadow women. Other mothers don't know what to make of us. They don't/can't embrace us because we are the embodiment of their most secret fear. The thing they want to deny.

We don't have a red tent. I do have a little gray box and a keyboard. It's not quite the same but I don't know where I'd be without you all - my modern red tent.

***
Gravestones.
I never imagined having to choose a gravestone FOR MY BABY. It stinks and we can't agree on a design. But we will, because we do agree that we want her name proclaimed. Her tiny plot is no longer so clear, the edges are no longer raw like a gaping wound. There is comfort in that, the earth is doing its job - integrating her more thoroughly than I can yet. But there is fear too - I don't want her forgotten or hidden. So soon, there will be a stone - beautiful and polished and permanent and we will plant daffodils round it. And her name will be remembered.

Little Whisper

Well, I'm getting used to my emotions careering in all different directions. After crashing and burning yesterday, today is a whole different mood swing.

I'd like to introduce you to the person who is somewhat responsible for playing with my hormones - but who is also a precious source of hope for us. At 9 weeks and 2 days gestation, this tiny whisper is going by the somewhat odd bump name of "Jurgen" (D.s idea!!).


The scan was an emotional moment. Our sonographer found the heartbeat immediately and then lost it again because I was crying and making my belly wobble! I was completely expecting to be knocked down all over again (which might account for my huge grief dip yesterday) and the relief is immense (albeit temporary, I'm sure).

I know this will be hard news for some of you and for that I am truly sorry, but for those of you who are able to stay with me for this journey - whether it lasts seven more days or (please, please, please) seven more months and then beyond - please know how much I value the support and love I receive through the comments I get.

Black

I smile when I remember that I delayed starting this blog because I was frightened that if I started pouring it all out, I'd never stop; that I'd be sucked into a virtual world and fade away from the real world. It was like that to begin with. There would be so many threads I'd be trying to unravel in my brain. I post one thing and already be thinking about what I wanted to say next. But now, I look at the big gaps between my posts. It's not that the buzz in my head has quietened - I still find it hard to pin down any one feeling or emotion but I can't seem to find the words for here.

Perhaps it's because I feel wrapped in blackness right now. I never wanted this blog to be a place where I spewed bitterness. I've tried to look for the positives in this horrible and tragic situation. I believed (I think I still do) that whilst I will never "get over" my daughter's death, I will in time find joy and healing and hope. Sometimes that's just too hard.

Right now, I feel as though if I start to unpick the thoughts that rattle around in me, I'll fall apart. I feel so fragile. I miss my little girl so much. I ache for her every single day. It hasn't got easier - or rather it had. I definitely felt that I was making some progress. I was starting to rediscover a little of the life I had before. Maybe it's because I'm heading for Emma's nine months day. That just seems huge to me - in two weeks she'll have been gone from me longer than I ever carried her in my womb. I'm so frightened by that thought.

All I know is that today is a black day.

Eight Months

Tiniest Sweetheart,

I keep waiting for the point when this gets easier. I suppose, most days, it has. But today - and all your Forever Days - it's just not. If anything, I think these days get harder because the gaps between the truly sad days are longer now so when they come, I'm blindsided all over again.

I hate that I don't get to choose how I mourn you. I want an ineffable sadness to wrap around me - a blanket of memories. I want the grief to pull me closer to you again. But that's not what I've got today. Today, my grief is bitter as if the anger I've been carrying has cooled and hardened to a leaden lump at the pit of my stomach. I never invited bitterness to come on this journey with me. I want you to be proud of your mama, little one. I want you to be the star that I swing from. Not possible when I'm mired in hatred and self pity. It hurts to be so vulnerable to the side swipes of hormones and emotion. To feel unable to fight the urge to stamp my feet and scream, "It's not fair." But it isn't fair. Not fair at all. No amount of cool, calm logic will ever make it so.

You'd probably be crawling now - tormenting the life out of your big sister and brother. It's not fair.

I try to go back to those moments when I first held you, when I kissed you and tried to love you in mere minutes enough for a lifetime apart. The only image I can conjure today is the moment in the porch of the church when your granddad carried you in your tiny, tiny white box - so tenderly. I buckled, your daddy held me up as I sobbed. Nobody can tell me that's a memory a mother should have. Too many of us do.

I miss you, sweetheart. Eight months or eighty years - I always will.

love
mummy
xxx

Living in the Kaleidoscope...

... that's pretty much where I've been, these past couple of weeks. Just being one of the dancing, ever changing flecks that glow when you hold them up to the light. Some of them are dark, some of them are bright. Together the patterns are luscious. I love kaleidoscopes.

I'm learning, more deeply than before, that this grief is eternal. It changes and mutates and bursts into the foreground and fades into the background but it is - always. I've been rediscovering joy with the children I am privileged to parent. I was frightened it was gone for ever but it hasn't. Moments of perfect peace and contentment and licking of cake batter - they've come back. I'm glad. They are my light, my life and my reason for living. I've been rediscovering belly laughs and bear hugs with my husband too. I am proud of us - weathered and brow beaten and together and in love. I'm recognising my limits too - and learning to respect my own vulnerabilities. I have met my brand new nephew and my 8 month old niece, thought how gorgeous and adorable they both were and forgave myself for feeling not one iota of longing to hold them in my arms - and forgave them for not being Emma.

The pattern will change again - and I'm learning to let it.