Falling

October has always been my favorite month.  It is when the heat that has kept me sweating for months finally lets up and allows for some cool air to settle in and change the leaves into something magical.  Everything starts to change; my clothes, coffee and donut flavor offerings and of course the leaves.  If I was in my fifties or sixties, had spare weekends, and passengers in my car that would ask me every 10 minutes where we were going I would totally be what we, in the northeast, affectionately call a “leaf peeper”.  Alas, none of these are true for me and so I must settle for oohing and ahhing out the car window while my poor colorblind husband can’t see what all the fuss is about.  I think what I loved most about fall is that it’s as if the leaves changing are the trees last attempt to show us all they still have something beautiful to offer though they will shed the best part of themselves.  

My grandfather passed away on October 15^th sixteen years ago and so that day has been a tough one since.  October has come to be a month of significance for me in ways that weren’t relevant to me of the people in my life until recently.  This year I learned October 15^th is also Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day only a few days after I buried my son.  I felt so sad that this was a day I had never known about, but now would never overlook; a day that, for so many men and women, is a rare opportunity to say to the world: We had a baby, even if they aren’t here with us, they were for a time.   The month of October is also Down syndrome Awareness month.  I have done my best to help spread some love for people rockin’ an extra chromosome but in the sad corners of my heart it seems so painful and ironic to me.  I should have my baby in my arms and doing my best to learn as much about his diagnosis as I could be for both him and the rest of the people in my life, and instead I am observing a day dedicated to babies that have passed away and it’s just all wrong.

Last Thursday, Sean, Kennedy, and I did have the chance to do something amazing in Jack’s memory.  We found out about a local organization that was recently started, called The Ohana Foundation.  A young couple that had lost their son earlier this year as well created it to help, financially and emotionally, other families going through the same thing.  Our sons died only about one month apart.  I remember feeling so hopeless as I looked for support in our area for people going through what we were going through and finding nothing and it seems this young woman felt the same.  The organization hosted a short ceremony to memorialize the babies that left this earth long before their families.  It was a memory lantern ceremony.  It was beautiful.  It was heartbreaking.  It allowed Kennedy to send a light up to her baby brother and “his friends” as a way to say, “I still talk about you.  I still think about you.  We miss you.”  This little girl that, though she never had a chance to meet him, still calls her brother Jackie, waved to the lights that seemed to float to the heavens.  It was everything Sean and I needed that day. 

We watched my nephews this past weekend too.  It was equal parts fun and exhausting.  I got my Mason cuddles in, and I swear the boy knows I need them.  Cooper, my little ginger snap, knows how to smile and melt your heart.  And Kennedy always takes these opportunities to assert her “leadership skills”, reminding both boys she was watching them.  Everyone survived and some fall fun was had, even if it was much chillier than fall would imply.

So I am doing my best to embrace this fall, October most of all.  It is the last month I have before the holidays roll in, before the winter rolls in.  It is a chance for me to show the world that I, too, have something beautiful left to offer, even after I’ve lost one of the best parts of myself.

“And the tree loved the little boy, even more than she loved herself.”

                                                                                -The Giving Tree

Something for These Empty Arms to Hold

From the very moment I handed Jack to Sean for the last time and watched as he passed him to the nurse for the last time I have been terrified.  I have been terrified that I would forget what he felt like in my arms.  I knew that I wouldn’t forget him or my moments holding him, but I worried that the way he felt, physically, would blur in my memory.  I have tried to convince myself whenever the fear becomes overwhelming that if I close my eyes I can remember clear enough to settle, but the dread that almost 9 months later that I don’t really remember.  And that, the thought that he has been gone longer than I was even pregnant with him, just about crushes me beneath the weight of the fact. So when the mail arrived one day last week, I felt a sense of relief that has been lost to me since January 25^th.

In the early days, when I was desperate to find anything that would make me feel like life wasn't over and that a mother could actually survive life without her newborn baby, I came across a list on Pinterest.  It was a list suggesting things that people could give a grieving mother.  I remember thinking to myself, “Can someone give me my baby back?  Because that is all I’ll ever want.”  I knew even then it wasn’t fair, that people would do anything to offer some sort of comfort during times like that.  I looked through and saw a bunch of things you’d expect to see; garden statues, jewelry, things like that.  One gift that caught my eye, I couldn’t get out of my mind for days. 

It was called a Molly Bear.  They are bears made by a not-for-profit group for families that have lost their babies one year or younger.  More than that they are customized to weigh exactly what these children weighed the last time their loved ones held them.  They asked for a twenty dollar donation in order to be placed on their waiting list and there was only one day a month to submit your name and request.  I joined the waiting list on February 28^th, after setting a cellphone reminder for myself weeks earlier.  I didn’t tell anyone I’d done this, afraid I’d be thought of as a “crazy” lady, looking for a doll to cradle like you see in creepy TV movies.  But I did check the list almost religiously to see when my name would show up.  It did about a month later.  I was number 10,045.  That broke my heart.  Not because I would have to wait quite a while since they were only in production for number in the low 9,000 and the group of people making the bears is very small.  It killed me that there were 10,044 other people desperate to “hold” their babies again.

Months went by and I began to worry I’d been scammed out of twenty bucks, that some sicko was preying on the broken hearts of mothers and fathers living without their children.  Sean would nervously ask me when I thought I’d get my bear, probably doubting I ever would.  And then, a few weeks ago I got an email asking me to confirm the information I’d provided months before, as they would begin making our bear soon.  Soon.

Last week Sean and Kennedy surprised me at work one day.  Sean had been watching Kennedy during the days because his mom and step-dad were on Long Island to say goodbye to Bill’s 95-year-old father.  No matter how long a person lives it is never any easier to say goodbye and it broke our hearts to tell Kennedy that Papa Walter has died and, worse still, that she understood what that meant.  So when they came to see me they had a bag with them and Kennedy said I got a present from Papa Walter.  Confused, I reached in the bag to pull out my Molly Bear.  I cried right way.  Hysterically.  I closed my eyes and was right back at CHOP, holding all 4lbs 9oz of my Jack Holden. I cried because I was so sad that this was as good as it was ever going to get for us.  I cried because I was so happy that I really did remember what it felt like to have him in my arms, his tiny weight against my chest.  I cried, relieved that my heart, truly, could never forget any part of him.  I looked over at Sean, with tears in his eyes too, and I loved him.  I loved him for knowing that this couldn’t have waited until I got home; that it was worth ruining yet another face of makeup at work and telling kids I just have really severe allergies.  I passed the bear to Kennedy and we watched our little girl feel how little her brother had been and even laughed that she still said he was heavy.

When I got home that night, our special bear was waiting for me on my bed.  I crawled in and snuggled with Kennedy and the bear, closed my eyes, and let myself imagine for just a moment, that it is what it would have felt like to cuddle both of babies after a long day at work.  And it did my soul a bit of good. 

We also made a trip to Boston over the weekend with my sister and her family to run the Tufts Health Plan 10K for Women with my friend Jen.  We had a great visit, got some great food and photos in, run a kids 1K with our little ones, proud that they were excited to be like their mamas, and had a pretty good run ourselves too.  My feet cramped for a majority of my 6.21 miles and resulted in my having to walk almost a whole mile of it.  I forced Sara to keep running, as she’d been training so hard for her first big race, and Jen and I walked for a bit.  When we had a mile to go I decided, regardless how it hurt, I would run to the finish.  As we approached the home stretch I saw my sister step off the curb and run over to me.  She ran the rest of the way with us to the finish.  When we’d stopped I thanked her for coming back and she told me she didn’t come back, she’d stopped to wait for me to catch up.  She has done that for me over and over again these last nine months. 

I'd like to think the ray of light next to them is Jack :)

No matter how slow I move sometimes because of the pain I may be in, she waits for me so we can cross the lines together.  

*If you are ever looking for a good charity to donate to consider Molly Bears.  While they ask for a $20 donation from each recipient, it costs over $45 to make and send each bear to waiting families.  Click here to donate.