honest

When I woke this morning my eyes were swollen almost completely shut and my heart was screaming in agony. It was my hope that last nights purge would lift some of the immediacy of the pain, it did not.

Last night, for the first time in a long time, I wailed. I moaned, uttering sounds to express the pain for which words do not exist. My hands groped the air, reaching for my son, coming back empty time and time again. These inexplicable expressions of grief are irrational, nonsensical. I know I will not reach into the dark and come back with my child in my arms... and yet my hands still reach for him, over and over.

"I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry."

"Damon"

"Damon"

"Damon"

"I miss you. My baby boy, I miss you"

"Do you know? Do you know how much you are loved?"

"I failed you. I'm so so sorry."

It has been a while since living with this grief has so overwhelmed me. For so very long I did nothing but grieve. I cried so much, so long, so hard that my vision went permanently blurry for a time. I thought maybe I'd go blind. I didn't care. I found a lump in my abdomen and was almost hopeful, maybe this is cancer, maybe it will kill me. I'm struck by the selfishness of that notion now. But for nearly a year I have functioned.

Some time ago I saw a quote that I think encapsulates grief so well. "It doesn't get better. You just get better at handling it." I've gotten better at handling it. The "handling it" feels so fake, so untrue. Often at the end of the day I lay in bed thinking "What are you doing? What are you doing acting like a normal person, making plans, pursuing dreams? You're shattered. This is fake." The months of endless tears, indecipherable moans... those were real. That was true.

Today I am not better at handling it. Today I am a mess of torn flesh, aching, missing, moaning, questioning, longing, and raging. Today I am honest.

Until next time

I'm sad

Damon

I've never posted pictures of Damon here because I couldn't look at them. Today I just can't stop sobbing. I can't stop the flashbacks or the tears so I've been looking at pictures. I miss him so much. I only have these two on my computer. I'm sure that seems weird. There are pictures all over the house but I just couldn't deal with them popping up unexpectedly. Anyway, These are the two I have right now.

He was so beautiful, so amazing. I can't believe he's gone.

I can't deal

Oh guys... March. The month of if onlys and the last times. I am a complete disaster.

I'm sitting at Panera. It's spring break and the hubby and I are trading off two hour blocks of time to work, study, etc. I spent the last half hour reading the blog of a bereaved father and crying, at the corner table, in Panera. I have a book on lizard behavior open in front of me topped with a to-do list that just keeps getting longer. I can not concentrate. I've been vacillating between frantic hyper focused bursts of activity and hours curled up just staring into the distance. I can't deal... I can't deal.

I'm back in grad school. GRAD SCHOOL, what the crap Jodie? Seriously? You still can't consistently communicate with other human beings and you're taking on a PhD? What-on-earth?

If I'm being honest I've actually been doing pretty well. I get into an academic situation and people start discussing speciation and gene flow and genetic drift and some part of my brain that is undamaged wakes up. It's the scientific, logical Jodie. I can rock a scientific discussion but if you want to talk to me about the weather or my favorite foods or, hell, anything chit-chatty I just shut-down. My brain stops working, literally (and I do know the correct use of that word).

Then, enter March. I can't think. I don't care. I just want to die. I want to curl up in a ball, sob until the tears wont come anymore and then just cease to exist. This is grief. It DOES NOT get better. It doesn't you just get better at handling it, until March.

At night I sit in the dark holding my rainbow baby and the flashbacks come. I've largely gained control of them... until now. I can't stop them. I can't control them. Damon...

I can't figure out my purpose. I can't figure out the point. Everything I used to cling to is gone. My foundation that I was so sure of has crumbled. The illusions are torn away and I am here, naked, staring into a black hole.

Here's the truth. I desperately want to believe there is some good supernatural being that gives a crap. I want to so badly that it makes me feel sick but I just plain don't. I'm past my rebellious phase where my anger drove me to hatred. For a long long time I hated God. I mean vehemently, horribly, desperately hated. I would think things like 'if the bible is true and it hurts you to lose your children then I'm willing to sacrifice myself to hurt you.' That's how much I hated him. I wanted to go to hell just to hurt him. I wanted to suffer for all eternity just to cause him what little pain I was capable of inflicting.

I still have those moments but they are fleeting. Now, I have resigned to a painful increasing belief that everything I believed so fiercely was a lie I told myself to cope with the crappy reality that is life. I told myself that there was a design. That there was a way to rise above. That even when things made no sense there was a higher purpose. I just wasn't capable of understanding it, being a lowly human and all. Increasingly, I just don't buy it anymore.

You have no idea how strong the motivation is to believe in a god, in an after life, for a parent who has lost a child. I guarantee I want to believe it more than the most dynamic preacher you've ever heard. I want to... but I don't. I want to believe there is some f-ing REASON. That I will hold my child again. That he is safe and happy and not just GONE. But the more I try to work through this. The more I study, the more I learn, the less convinced I am and that is a horrible feeling. Beyond the fact that it is terribly isolating to live in the bible belt and less and less believe the bible (which, by the way, I know pretty darn well) I no longer have a direction, a point, a purpose.

I simply cannot fathom a god who would allow this kind of agony and this agony opens my eyes to the unbelievable pain, loss, and devastation experienced by human beings every second of every minute of every day. Right now thousands of parents are watching their children breathe their last breath. Stop, stop yourself from rationalizing, stop yourself from skipping over that reality. Stop your self from erecting the shield that protects your heart from the truth that is life and death and think about that. Let it touch you. Thousands of spouses sit alone in a home that they shared with their beloved for decades just waiting to die. Thousands more are watching their partner slowly disappear as disease destroys their brain and body... making choices between feeding their children or housing them... making choices between surviving or killing.

I do not know how to deal. I miss him so much. I miss him so much. I cannot understand. I cannot function. It has been nearly two years. Flashes of his sweet baby body dressed in his pajamas flash in front of my eyes. His lips slowly turning blue as he died in the a hospital bed. How... how do I cope with this? How?

I can't deal...

good

This morning I’m running like a well oiled machine, breakfast, big boy dropped off at school (with his lunch, jacket, and homework), grocery store run with no meltdowns, and the rainbow baby is peacefully napping in his crib. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the first time since Damon died that I’ve felt like I’m on top of things.

The weather has finally turned which means this thermophile is driving with the windows down and the radio up. After a loooong month of waiting we assembled the eldest’s new basketball goal and a gaggle of little boys ping ponged between the trampoline and the driveway all day yesterday. I’m riding high on feeling good for more than a few hours in a row. It’s a new good. It’s not the care-free all is right with the world good of those whose hearts are intact. It’s a good weaved through with pain and missing, those ever-present truths, but it’s good.

And the best of the good, better than the good weather, better than a peacefully sleeping baby, better than a day of simply silliness? We go the rainbow baby’s immunocompetency blood work back. His immune system is perfect. We found out last week. It’s only just now sinking it. His immune system is perfect, PERFECT. I wish I could describe the feeling in my chest. Imagine the most relieved and excited you’ve ever been, maybe it’s a little like that.

It’s a huge relief, knowing that his body can defend itself but still find myself counting the months. It’s entirely irrational but I feel like I’m waiting for the day he reaches 20 months to believe he’s going to be ok. Last night as we played in the bath I thought “You’re nine months old. Do I only have ten months left?” I resist planning things for him. I wont buy clothes for when he’s older, bigger. He’s three months from his first birthday but I refuse to plan anything. Plans are scary, life is scary, the future is scary. What if he doesn’t make it?

But for now the littlest beckons and I plan to learn to accept this new good in my life.

Until next time…

Today is a crying day

It’s a crying day. It’s been a long time since I cried.

My man is home today so the plan was for me to catch a yoga class then spend the interviewing time cranking out as much reading as possible before I picked up my eldest. I’m back in school and life has kicked into double high gear. There’s no time, ever, for anything… including grief.

It’s weird to think about the fact that you have to make time to grieve. It takes time and energy, lots of it. If you don’t make time it will creep up behind you with its sticky black hands and you end up sobbing in a coffee shop parking lot where you’re supposed to be studying. It will not be denied. Either you grieve on your terms you you grieve on its terms but grieve you will, always.

When the pain stuck in my throat I text a friend, a friend who cries out the name of her child every day, a friend who knows. I reached for her like a life-line. “Are we seriously supposed to do this for years and years!?” she responded. I can count on her to just say this is bull-***t, not to try and encourage me, not to try to put a band-aid over the gaping Damon-shaped hole.

People are so deep in denial about pain, about death, about suffering that truth makes them unaccountably uncomfortable. She mentions a conversation she had about cancer statistics “The death rate is 100%. I will die, you will die, my daughter died.” The woman looked at her as if she had seen a ghost.

I’ve said it before but life after Damon’s death is like waking up from the Matrix… knowing how black the world really is and not being able to convince anyone that what they are seeing isn’t real, standing outside of everything, alone, excluded. Caught between a desperate desire to die and the desire to cling to life.

Today is a crying day. I miss him so much I can’t breathe. Walking through life is so weird. I put one foot in front of the other, just like everyone else. I love my children and my husband, just like everyone else. I study. I work. I even laugh but I’m not just like everyone else.

Today is a crying day. Damon Ray, you forever have my heart. I never forget. I’m never ever not missing you. I’m never ever not thinking of you. My precious baby boy. Today is a crying day…

Until next time…

Raw

The thing about grief…about profound soul darkening, life destroying grief is that is scrubs you raw. It exposes your heart. You walk around with no skin on. Every breath of air, every friendship lost, every story of pain, every death reaches to the core. There is no distance, everything burns.

This world is a horrible place. Every single day there are stories, death, torture, pain, anguish, loss. It’s horrible. Before Damon died I was in such denial. I refused to see it and if I was forced to see it I refused to feel it. I can’t do that anymore. I’m held under the black water, absorbing the anguish I know the mother of a dead child in Afghanistan is feeling, the confusion of the fathers holding vigil in the cancer unit, the loneliness of the widow whose family just has no time.

I view the happy denial of most of the world with disdain… fully acknowledging just two years ago I was fully there. I get that it’s crippling to feel it all, to see it all, but I’m so tired of hearing how good life is, how good god is when all you have to do is turn on the news for five minutes to see clear evidence to the contrary.

I’m tired of the chosen few who have had the privilege of growing up protected and loved, who have had the means to have what they need, whose children are growing healthy and happy making the rules as if having survived a crap storm is some how inconvenient to their pleasant illusion. The thing is most of the world is living with some sort of gaping wound. Outside of North America most people are barely surviving. Mothers are watching their children starve. People are lonely. Hell, I know I am. The people who most need relationship are shoved to the periphery because their pain is inconvenient. Quite frankly, this is crap.

Until next time…