Never quite there

I’m laying here staring at an empty crib…

This crib is almost an exact replica of the one that stands empty in the next room, only smaller, so as to fit in our room, next to our bed. I just keep staring at it, as if it is going to help me… as if it will explain what the hell is going on. It wont.

We went to a movie today. We debated this venture. Our small group got together to see the movie. We weren’t sure if I could handle it. Movies have the tendency to purposely push your emotional buttons and mine are so raw a sideways look can set me off. Ultimately Will left it up to me. I wanted to go… I wanted to be with our friends. I wanted some normal.

I don’t know that it was a bad idea but the choice certainly had some repercussions. A tsunami has been pulling water out into that endless ocean of pain for a while now. I knew it would be crashing soon. Soon was today, soon is now.

In the movie the main character visited two graves repeatedly. In the emotional climax the sight of the grave markers was more than I could handle. Crash. The roar of unbearable pain deafened me. My child is in the ground. For most people that was just an emotional scene, for most people the fact that a wife in the movie buried her husband and a child had his father torn from his life add richness to a plot that ties up in a pretty bow at the end. Not for me. For me the image of leaves covering a grave marker is all I can see.

MY life doesn’t tie up in a pretty bow. There is no nice resolution. My son is dead. There is a hole in my heart that will never be filled. I hurt. I hurt. I hurt.

I stare at one empty crib that waits for new life. It is empty in anticipation. Every. Single. Day. I pass a crib that is empty with loss. Representations of the duality that is my world.

Normal is so confusing. I live perpendicular to the world. I see green where you see purple and hear screams where you hear music. It is so hard to walk here, never quite there.

From under the waves, until next time…

Rainbow baby

I haven’t written much about my pregnancy. I haven’t talked about it much either. It’s April, the month after hell month, the month before our “Rainbow baby” is born.

Like everything in life now this pregnancy is fraught with contradictory emotion. I swing from elation every single time I hear his heart beat to absolute conviction that something has or will go terribly wrong. I swear my Obgyn’s office has my number on speed dial I call so often and my friend who is a labor and delivery nurse probably wishes she’d never given me her number!

What if he looks like Damon? What if he doesn’t? What if I call him the wrong name? What will it be like for a child to enter a family after the loss of his beloved brother? Will I be able to give him room to be Raz or will I always see his brother?

There are a million things that could go wrong. A million things between now and his birth. A million things during those few crucial hours and as we know agonizingly well, a million things every day for the rest of his life. I no longer get to live in that comfortable place assuming my children will be ok. Terror fills every minute. What if?

A friend asked me today what we need to be ready for Raz…

Well, everything. We haven’t let ourselves believe it. We haven’t let it be real. We keep saying to each other ‘ok, we need this and this and this and we need to get ready for this baby.’ Then we just end up staring at each other, paralyzed. We are so afraid, so afraid.

I stood in a local store the other day, staring at the diapers. I had a coupon for diapers. I stood and stared. I couldn’t buy them. I walked out with my heart in my throat thinking ‘at some point, Jodie, you will have to venture into the baby section. At some point you will have to buy diapers and wipes and onsies….’ That point hasn’t come yet because I want so desperately to by buying pull-ups and 3T clothes.

Our amazing family (no blood relation but they are) is throwing us a baby shower this month. Wow… this is getting real ya’ll. So afraid.  So afraid.

Until next time…

My people

You know, when I sit down here and put my fingers to the keys I have no idea what will come out. Sometimes I have thoughts banging around in my head that I intended to “put to paper” and I walk away realizing they didn’t ever make it to the page. My writing has a life of its own, its own course, its own personality. Sometimes I surprise myself.

Today I’ve been chewing on relationships… people…my fear of relationships and people… juxtaposed against my desire for relationships and people. Nothing like an introvert immersed in profound grief with PTSD to make things super complicated.

So, here’s the bottom line. I love my people. Like, really, really, really love them.

There are more things than I could even begin to count that I’m unsure about, foundations I thought were rock solid that have crumbled, questions I never thought I’d ask and beliefs I’m not sure I hold anymore. But here’s one thing I know, however deeply flawed, the church has held me up, tended my wounds, held me together and let me fall apart.

NOT the building. NOT the communion plates. NOT the old songs. NOT the new songs. NOT scripture memorization or regular attendance (Lord knows I haven’t darkened the door of the building in over a year), or prayer meetings, or programs. The church.

The people who haven’t given up on me. The people who pulled our first Damon’s dance fundraiser together. The people who pick Isaiah up on Wednesday nights and take him to class. The people who covered our yard with signs telling us how loved we are. The people who grab my husband and take him to hang out. The people who randomly bring me Dr. Peppers. The people who haven’t pulled back and protected their hearts from my sorrow. The people who hear my anger and bitterness and just let it be. The people…

I love my people. My heart clenches as I write this. I love you.

Until next time…

shifting sand

What do I do? What do I do when I have no idea what to do, when the spinning in my head won’t stop and my body won’t move? I come here, here to the blinking cursor and I write. I write and I write…

I’m devastated today. Saturdays are usually ‘good’ days. When I open my eyes my husband is still beside me. We spend the morning lying in bed, talking, not talking, whatever until hunger drives us out. He’s home. He doesn’t have to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to teach Zoology or Physiology. He’s mine. It’s one of my favorite times.

But lately my restlessness has been nearly impossible to quell. I can’t sit still… but there’s nothing to do.

The past month things inside of me have started to shift. It’s been confusing. It’s made me irritable and even more irrational. I’m naturally an introvert. I think that would surprise a lot of people but it’s true. Even in college I was much more contented on my bed with a good book than mingling with the crowds. When I’m wounded my reclusiveness is amplified and after Damon’s death I was completely nonfunctional. People, probably more than anything, freaked.me.out. I could not converse. I’ve never been good at ‘small talk.’ I’m far too impatient and blunt. I think a lot of things that people are so concerned with are downright stupid (always have) but for the past year it wasn’t just that I didn’t like it I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t think. I didn’t care.

But here I am realizing that for the last few weeks I’ve undulated between craving human interaction and being thoroughly confused by the feeling. I’ve been thinking things like ‘who am I?’ ‘what do I have now?’  I’m jealous of my husband who has a purpose every day, who gets up and goes to a job, who uses his mind and his education, who single handedly supports us. I want to contribute. I miss having a life… and for that I feel guilt. 

The new person I seem to become every few months confuses me. Nothing is stable inside of me, everything is shifting sand.

Fear… it rules my life. To do anything is to battle it and often to do nothing is to succumb.

What if I can’t? What if I try and I fail? Fear…

I’m not who I was… who do I want to be? I have to remake myself according to an entirely new set of rules and I have to do that without my child. Can I?

This sucks. Today is black… deep, dark, black.

Until next time.    

What love looks like

 I don't have a picture of the people who prayed for 24 hours or the circle of friends who stood on our front lawn and sang last night while we sat on out bed and sobbed but that's what love looks like.

Damon's Dance Application

The application is finally up. Thanks so so many people's hard work we have $10k to give away to adoptive families. Hanging on to this good for dear life.

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Damon's Dance Adoption Application link

the gray

I just got out of bed… it’s 5pm. I just laid there and stared, at nothing, at everything… and thought and thought and thought. The thinking is dangerous but sometimes I’m just too tired not to. I’m sad. I’m so so so sad.

And here I am, sitting in this chair staring at the blinking cursor on this screen. I’m drawn here like an addict, like I’m going to find something here I didn’t find the last 200 times I dumped out the black tar from my heart and sifted through it.

Maybe I do. Maybe when I write I sort through things on some level maybe that’s why I’m here, again.

I’m so ripped apart, so torn, so whipped by the ravages of grief. The trying to live while dying is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe it’s more like living while dead. I died. I died a year ago Wednesday. I lay down in that grave with my son and I never came out. Yet some ghost of that person sits here today. That person is torn between the devastation, ache, missing and loss that is her life and the new life kicking at her ribs with every ounce of strength his little feet can muster. I’m torn between the relieved smiles when he moves and the memories of when Damon didn’t.

I exist in the world between. The space between life and death. Days like today when my soul leans, longs, aches for death’s side produce angst and guilt because of the lives loving me from the other side. Because I know what that feels like, to be left behind. And still my heart aches to be with my son. My arms ache for him. My soul cries for him and for the thousandth time I cry out ‘why?!’

From the gray…