Auld Acquaintance

Does Robert Burns haunt you?

I used to listen to the strains of “Auld Lang Syne,” and wonder why it touched me so much, this old chestnut of a song usually heard belted out by drunken revelers at the end of one year, the beginning of another. It’s so clearly a song about loss and remembrance – lost friends, lost times, lost places, lost love. But the unspoken answer to the question the song asks again and again seemed so clearly and easily to be “no.” “Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” Well, no. Duh.

But what of the forgetfulness that you don’t want, that you don’t seek? The added loss of forgetfulness that further negates the lost love, the lost family member or friend, the lost childhood memories? Memory is so important, and, for the most part, so hard to control. The pictures blur, the recall of what happened in exact chronological order can fade and soften. The exact words spoken may be lost to us even if the sense of their meaning is not.

I used to worry that I might forget Teddy, that his memory might flee from me as I walk in the snow, as I decorate the Christmas tree, as I watch the birds at the bird feeder, as I go about the mundane comings and goings of my life, and this terrified me. I know that I am still letting go, that I haven’t come to a place where I can fully accept his death. I don’t know what that place looks like, but I think one of the reasons I can’t picture it is that I don’t want to lose any more of him. Not one memory, story or image, not one pain or tear or scrap of longing. But it’s becoming very clear to me lately that I can’t forget him, won’t ever forget him, that he will be a part of every meaningful moment in my life. Just now this knowledge is a huge relief. I don’t have to panic if I forget to light his candle some Friday evening, or if I don’t look at his photographs for a few days in a row. His memory and his loss are still with me, will always be with me, are grafted onto my being like the branches of some strange fruit tree. I don’t exist without them.

The answer to the question so plaintively asked by Robert Burns is, in my case, a resounding, sad, and relieved, “No.”

Teddy, my tough, darling, beautiful, beloved lost boy – even though “seas between us braid hae roar’d,” I do not, will not forget. Don’t you forget either.

Parting shots from 2008

2008 hates me, but not only me. I have so many dear friends who have been hurt this year, so many friends of friends who are going through terrible times, that I’m becoming very superstitious about it.

With that in mind, I said a very foolish thing on Christmas Eve, something about just a few more days to get through until 2009. There was an inner flinch when I said it, as though I knew I was tempting fate or testing my (apparently very bad) luck.

We have a leak in our floor. Not near any of the walls, not near any pipes, though I’m hoping it’s a pipe thing anyway. It’s soaked through spots in the carpet into many a towel, and we’ve put a fan on it. Today it’s better, but today it’s colder outside, it’s stopped raining, and there’s less melting snow on the ground. I’m thinking cracks in the foundation and I’m thinking, mold, and I’m thinking, oh please, don’t make us move now. We’re too tired.

I am not thinking anything like, it could be worse, because there’s not enough wood around here to knock on after saying a thing like that.  Instead, I’m thinking, Please oh please oh please let this be the last of the bad news for a while, the last parting shot of a roller-coaster year.

How much worse can the wreck get after the coaster cars have flown off the tracks and are lying smashed next to the rails? I don’t want to know.

White flag

Today, Christmas Eve, is usually my favorite day of the year.  I have a treasure trove of sweet memories – family gatherings, of candlelit church services, holiday lights, stockings, carols, the smells of evergreen and spices, walks in the snow.  I usually put a lot of time and effort into making this day as warm and festive as possible.  But as the last few days have gone by and I’ve watched myself get sadder, crankier, and less fun to be around, I’ve been nearly frantic about making it through the remaining dregs of this year.  I am not myself, something that seems to surprise no one but me.

Yesterday I gave up, and it’s probably the best thing I could have done for myself.  I gave up trying to spread holiday cheer, trying to be good at my job, trying to pretend that this Christmas is all about joy and light.  I admitted that what I really want this holiday season is to be at home, warm and happy, playing and snuggling with Teddy.  And I admitted that I’ve yet to find peace in not having that, and that this is a large part of the reason I’m so horrible lately.  I held myself together through most of work, though tears kept leaking through, and then I went home and cried in N’s arms.

Then the downstairs ceiling started to leak – it’s stopped now and we still don’t know what caused it – and it seemed like everything was falling apart so I cried some more.

We picked up some Thai food and watched an episode of Monk, which is brilliant in many ways – all about being broken by loss and grief, and about surviving in spite of (and partly because of) being broken, and it’s funny enough to make us both laugh.

Right now, I have to accept my own brokenness.  I have to accept that my main focus right now can’t be to make other people feel good.  If I manage to do that, great.  But for the next few days I’m waving my white flag and just concentrating on getting through the hours.  If it takes steamy romance novels, too much gin, too much ice cream or chocolate, more crying, or another season of West Wing, I’m open to all of that.  And if I’m not my usual Christmas-elf self tonight, I’m going to accept that, too. And I’m not going to hate myself for any of this. I’ve been merry for many a year.  This year, I just need to survive.

What I am going to do: stock the liquor cabinet (I’m thinking hot buttered rum), cook something nice and simple for dinner, pick up a couple of cheap plastic sleds with N so that we can take advantage of the snow and of my day off tomorrow, fill the bird feeders, let myself feel whatever happiness or sadness comes my way, light lots of candles, and remember our boy.

I would wish you happy holidays, except that, if you’re reading this blog, happy holidays may be out of reach.  I will wish then, that some happiness, peace, hope and sweetness finds you as the year winds to a close, that there’s some light in all of this darkness for you, and some comfort amidst this cold.

Grr. Argh.

There’s a quote most often attributed to Shakespeare, but it seems to have been a common phrase of his time and shows up in other plays – Dekker and Middleton, Heywood, and Behn all used it.  There are days where I feel so swept up in self pity that I want to use it, too:

Oh me, unhappy!

I’m working through most of the holiday weeks, though I’m re-thinking this as it seems to be about the time where I need to take a break or take my bad moods out on those around me.  I’d really love to save up every leave day that I can, but it’s not worth spreading the misery, really.

I caught a minute of some TV station’s “Miracles of 2008” that was about a little girl with CDH.  I wish someone would talk about the miracle-ness of those who didn’t survive, too.  Or that people were less complacent about the whole concept of miracles.  I don’t want anyone else to feel this way, to miss their baby this way, but I admit that, for a moment, I wanted their miracle taken away.  If I can’t have mine, why do they get theirs?  Who is this hateful person residing in my mind and heart these days?  Why can’t I make her go away?

Oh me, unhappy!

It would be nice to see that Teddy’s loss had resulted in the ability to “not sweat the small stuff.”  Shouldn’t a great loss result in a stronger sense of perspective, in more solid priorities?  But it seems, so often lately, as though all that small stuff just hurts more than it should, more than it used to.  By the end of last week, I was fuming and unpleasant, and I’ve entered into this week feeling much the same.

And I’ve dragged Teddy into this: “If Teddy hadn’t died, I’d be taking these days off.  I’d be happy and home and wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”  Which probably isn’t even true.  I’m perfectly capable of being irritated at home, too (just ask N).  And in spite of my inexperience, I really don’t have many illusions of idyllic motherhood.  But the truth of it doesn’t matter so much.  I want my lost life.  I want my lost son.  I want my stretch marks to mean something happy and alive.  I want my lost, better version of myself.  Some days, Grief Girl dons her cape and won’t go back into her box no matter what I do, and I hate her.  I hate me.

Oh me, unhappy.

I’ll be better tomorrow, maybe.

Holiday lights

We put up ourChristmas tree last Sunday, and actually had fun doing it, though this activity, like so much else this year, was haunted. After it was decorated, and lit up, I lit Teddy’s candle, so that I could think intentionally of him while enjoying the tree and some holiday music, so that he could be a part of that somehow. It felt achingly sad, and festive, and painful and comforting all at once.

It occurred to me that I may never feel pure happiness again, that all of my happiness will be mixed with wanting to share it with my boy who isn’t here. Then it occurred to me that this is probably okay, that this is one of the ways my loss is incorporated into my life now. Anyway, isn’t purity is overrated for the most part?

This year putting up holiday lights feels like a small act of defiance. I see the cold, the sadness, and the suffering and I know that the dark days we are going through in my little household don’t even compare to what’s possible, to what some people go through every day. It can always get worse. I see your cruel face, Universe, and I feel my own cold ache of empty arms, the longing for my beautiful boy who should be here. I haven’t experienced the worst that You can do, but I can imagine it, and it’s more frightening than I know what to do with. I admit to the fear and the loss and the pain, and I know I can be blasted where I stand at any moment, but I’m going to hope a tiny bit anyway.

So, here. Here are my holiday lights, multi-colored, small but sparkly, bright in the winter’s dark. Take that.

Grief Girl goes to a party

There were two parties, in fact.  One for N’s department, a nicely catered event with a riotous White Elephant exchange that we really enjoyed and a nice selection of alcohol that apparently overwhelmed one of the grad students who ended up making several speeches that evening.  We came home without the farting phone (whew!) and with a lovely paper airplane kit.  Everyone in N’s department knows our story, and they were very kind to us without pitying us, at least in any obvious way.

The second party, which took place Saturday, was thrown by one of my friends from work, and is usually attended mainly by people from the University Libraries, though it isn’t really a work party.  This is the party we attended last year when I felt a sudden and overwhelming desire to be a mommy, the party that took place, I’m convinced, on the day Teddy was conceived.  This year is was a quieter affair, but still fun.  A couple of the partygoers were faculty in the College of Communication here.   One of them I knew fairly well, and the other I’d never met.  Since I work with them, it was nice to see them in person and to be able to hang out instead of explain why we could or couldn’t, say, subscribe to the new journals they wanted.

However, the question of why I’d been gone during the beginning of the year came up, and I explained very briefly that we’d lost our baby.  They talked with me a little about it, which was lovely of them, but after I’d explained (probably not very well) about the congenital defect that was so detrimental to Teddy’s lung development, one of them said that when she was pregnant, last year, someone had told her that if something happens to the baby inside the womb, it’s almost a blessing as the baby wouldn’t be strong enough for the outside world, and that she found that comforting.  Now, I realize that people who have miscarriages are told this kind of thing, though I can’t personally imagine that it would be especially comforting then either.  As these words were coming out of her mouth, the face of the other woman, the one I know a bit better, grew slowly horrified and a bit embarrassed, and she said something to the effect of, “I don’t know that you should say that.”

There was absolutely no ill intent and while it didn’t precisely roll off me like water off a duck’s back, I wasn’t traumatized, and I really appreciated the sensitivity of her friend, who then talked to me a while of non-baby things while I regained my bearings.  I also very much appreciate that the person who spoke those words caught me on my way out of the party, apologized, and gave me a hug.  But, since this seems to be the place where I think these things through, here is what I wish I’d said:

Well, I’m glad those words were comforting to you when you were pregnant, but you’re a mother, so maybe you’ll remember a moment like the one I had, once Teddy was born, when I fell incredibly and absolutely in love with him.  I wanted to hold that baby, kiss that little face, touch that little nose, and memorize every wisp of hair, every line and roll of baby fat, the exact angles of eyes and eyebrows, the exact shape and beauty of tiny finger- and toe-nails.  So imagine a moment like that, when you are besotted and exhausted and your baby holds onto your finger that first time.  Then imagine that s/he is hooked up to ventilators, all kinds of tubes, and watched over by a team of worried doctors and nurses.  Imagine that s/he loses ground as the night passes, and that in the morning you are told you need to say goodbye to that child who now seems to be the sun around which you orbit.  In that situation, would the words you spoke still comfort you?  They might, we’re all different.  But for me, they just don’t seem to apply.

After a little less than two hours, Grief Girl escaped with Sad Dad, out into the winter air, which was strangely refreshing, and back to the safety of  home.

I’m that woman

On the reference desk today with one of our newer library employees (she started at the beginning of the Fall semester), I was talking to her about her computer.

“I don’t have the permissions to open attachments,” she said.

“Oh, I think that’s something I might be able to fix,” I answered. “Let me see what I can do.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I think the reason it’s not working is that the woman who usually sets the accounts up is the one whose child didn’t survive.”

I paused.

“That would be me,” I said, not knowing a better way to break the news to her. “That’s why I wasn’t at work until October.”

And I watched as my co-worker realized that I am Grief Girl. “That’s you? ” she asked. “I thought that you would have been out for at least a year after something like that.”

I smiled (I think) and explained that I had to come back to work after my medical leave ran out, and we went back to work.

How much would I give to have never been in a position to have conversations like this? Well, I’ll just say that it’s probably a good thing that bargains with the devil seem to mostly exist in folktales and politics. Though a bit of my soul belongs to Teddy, so it’s not entirely mine to bargain with.

Golden Girl

My elder cousin, who shall be referred to as Ora from now on, has always been the golden girl of the family, haloed with beauty and success, popular and the life of the party.  She currently makes good money at a good job, and owns a nice house as well as a vacation place south of the border.  And, of course, she has a sweet and funny little baby girl.  This doesn’t surprise me a bit; she has always been the thin, pretty, talented one who was oohed and aahed over by my grandparents and aunts.  If I (or Mom) were around, they would add something like, “But Erica is very smart,” to be kind.  My family was close, and how they thought about me mattered, probably mattered too much.  So there I was for years and years – smart and always second-best.

Which is why part of what happened at my brother’s wedding is a bit of a miracle, and I don’t use that word lightly, especially now.

We spent roughly three days in a hotel with my family, with Ora, her inebriated husband, and their baby daughter.  For quite a bit of the time, it felt to N and I as though we were having our noses rubbed in everything that we’d lost, and I felt very Scrooge-like about it, to boot.  There’s a particular kind of pain I never knew existed until I watched my dad play peek-a-boo with Ora’s daughter and was hit again with the realization that he’ll never get to do that with Teddy, that I’ll never be able to watch Teddy getting the same kind of family love and attention that was showered (and rightfully showered) on this little girl.

Ora’s husband, as I mentioned in my last post, seemed to think that I needed to spend time with their daughter.  I was never asked if I wanted to hold her, never asked if it was okay that the stroller with the sleeping baby in it was parked next to my seat at lunch or breakfast.  As someone who hates confrontation, I can understand the desire to avoid upsetting topics, and assume that this, along with his constant state of intoxication, is why I was never consulted about how I could best interact with this little baby so recently after our loss.

But, also as I’ve previously mentioned, Ora’s husband was amazingly insensitive throughout the trip, and I frequently wanted to say things that would have upset the family peace.  I especially wanted to say these things after he handed his baby into my lap at the rehearsal dinner, without asking, causing my poor mom to burst into sobs over at the bride and groom’s table.

All this time, while watching Ora with her husband and little girl, I couldn’t help comparing them to my own little family, to me and N, and to our beautiful lost Teddy.  And while it seems that this comparison should have come out entirely in their favor, it didn’t, not at all.  N, my good, strong, kind N, was next to me that entire weekend, holding my hand, kissing my cheek, letting me know in a hundred ways that I am well-loved.  We shielded each other when we could, and when we couldn’t, we just clung together.  All of my bragging about being a superwoman rock star at the wedding is only possible because he was there with me.

When Mom started crying at the rehearsal dinner, N alerted me so I could assure her that I was okay, and then he took her for a little walk so that she could recover.  This is the kind of thing he does, the kind of excellent man that he is.  Now, even reeling from grief and sadness, I can look at N and how well he loves me, and at how much I love him, and at how we love our boy, and then I look at my beautiful, well-off cousin with her husband and her lovely third child, and (here’s the miraculous part) I feel like the golden girl for once.  Me, with my dead baby, student loans, credit card debt, crying jags, and this really annoying post-baby weight that seems to have decided to stay a while.

Home again

We lived through my brother’s wedding this past Sunday, and through the traveling to and from one coast to the other, and it was mostly good, if exhausting.  Home is looking very good to me right now.  I’m planning on sticking close for as long as I can.

We both, N and I, spent a lot of time doing our best “I’m okay” faces for the family, and I mostly contained Grief Girl.  This was the exhausting part, the always being “on,” the constant effort to make sure that the focus was on my brother and his fiancee and not on me crying.  And to be honest, Mom cried more than I did, at least in public.

But the entire trip had been planned shortly after I knew I was expecting Teddy, and so it was haunted.  Mom, who’d helped with the plane tickets, had chosen the routes with fewest layovers so we wouldn’t have to mess so much with checking in the stroller and baby paraphernalia.  I kept wondering if he would have cried on the plane, and indeed wondering what his cries would have sounded like as we never had the chance to hear his voice.  We were on the same floor of the hotel as my parents, who’d planned, months ago, to offer us babysitting services in case we wanted to explore the city.  And I started doing my superimposing trick again.  I could close my eyes and see what it would be like if Teddy were there with us – that shadow life that is so different, so longed for.

And can I brag a little here?  I think that I was a rock star, was superwoman, was incredibly good for most of the trip.  I wasn’t as fantastic as N, and I’ll write more about that later, but I was pretty amazing.  I didn’t snap at my aunt who tried to comfort me by saying, “If only we could understand God’s plan,” and I really could have. I have the dirt on her, and could have been cruel and hurtful and I wasn’t.  I just told her I wasn’t on the best terms with God right now, and we changed the subject.  I didn’t break down after our really long plane ride to North Carolina, upon being greeted at our hotel by all the cousins including my elder cousin (the golden girl of the family) and her baby girl.  Said baby girl was literally thrust in my face (gee, thanks), a situation only saved by the child’s comic instincts and (bragging again) my good nature.  Baby immediately grabbed my nose in a tight little grip, and we all laughed.

That child will need her sense of humor, though.  Her father was perpetually drunk throughout the entire weekend.  Which is why, I’m guessing, he thought the best thing for me would be some kind of baby fix and that it would be comforting to joke about how I could be their baby-sitter at the reception.  He’s British, and maybe grief was handled differently in his family, but I’ve lived briefly in England, and I’m doubtful that he’s a solid representative of any section of British culture.  Think Dudley Moore in Arthur, only, well, less charming.  And I didn’t call him a sodden idiot, or a drunken, insensitive wanker, or tell him where to go or where to stick it.  I could have, and I didn’t.  I deserve new shoes. Or chocolate.  Or something.

The thing I never said, and wish that I had, is this – “Your baby is beautiful and I’m so happy for you, but lovely as she is, she’s not the baby I’m longing to hold.  He’s gone, and irreplaceable, and playing with your child, or even watching other people playing with your child isn’t something I really want to do right now.  It’s not personal, or about you.  It’s just where I am.”  I regret not saying that partly because it’s the best expression I can find of how I felt, last weekend, but also because, by not saying it, I denied my family the chance to rise to the occasion and respond with sensitivity and grace.  I’m not sure they would have, but now I will never know.

Belated thanks

I am thankful, deeply and always, for N. I’m so lucky to have married my best friend and to live with the one person in the world who can bring light to my darkest hours, who can talk me down from the precipices, who consistently affirms that I have beauty and value.

I am thankful for last Christmas, when N brought his guitar on our visit with my parents, and that we played and sang for Grandma C, whose eyes lit up at the music. This was, though I didn’t know it then, the last time I would get to see her, and I’m grateful that the memory is so sweet.

I am thankful for gin.

I am thankful for N’s sister, who is compassionate and persistent with us, keeping in touch, letting us talk things out with her, being there even though she is miles away.

I am thankful for my brother and his Love, who are getting married in less than a week. They are good to each other, and for each other, and they’ve made it through years of living apart. Their wedding is a bright spot in an otherwise brutal year.

I am thankful for my parents and family, who don’t always know what to say, but who make their love felt, and I am thankful for my friends who do the same.

I am thankful for the doctors and nurses who fought for us, who took care of us, for the amazing community we were so briefly a part of at the Ronald McDonald house, for the friendliness of Portland, City of Roses, where Teddy was born and died.

I am thankful for our too-brief time with Teddy, for the beauty, peace, and clarity of that short time.