From a Different Perspective

To say my life has been moving at a break-neck pace is putting it mildly.  Since my last post in January (which kills me that it has been this long), I have been non-stop moving with my little pack in tow.  We have been firing on all cylinders from Kennedy’s social life and extracurriculars (my little girl got her ears pierced!), social commitments Sean and I have made, family visits and quick trips to visit friends, all the while planning for our Jack’s Herd annual fundraiser and trying to make sure we slow down enough from time to time to let my beautiful last baby actually be a baby.  I’m exhausted just from remembering it all, let alone actually having gone through it.

It all came together in the end and the months of planning paid off.  We had another incredibly successful year for Jack’s Herd; the turnout was amazing and the generosity was overwhelming.  This year we had a family present that were Jack’s Herd recipients after losing their precious little one recently.  To talk with them and listen to them say how appreciative they are of all they were able to receive made all of the stress and hard work that goes into the night worth it.  I felt, so deeply, in that moment that Jack’s Herd is doing some real good.  Though I say often that Jack and I are forever tied, always on that night I feel it so acutely.  Our sweet baby is leaving a gorgeous footprint on this world.  

There was another reason why it all felt a little more deeply this year.  A good friend of mine had reached out to tell me that he and his wife were expecting but that they did not get good news.  Their situation felt so eerily familiar to me; I have had a sick feeling in my belly and heaviness on my heart knowing what path they were likely to embark on.  Then just a week or so before I received a text I have been dreading from him for weeks.  It came first as just a picture.  The moment I saw it my heart dropped and my throat felt like it was closing.  It was a picture of the beautiful memory boxes Jack’s Herd donates.  He shared with me their loss; he told me how they were so appreciative of what Jack’s Herd helped do for them and he told me that he has never dreamed that when he donated to us that he would one day be a recipient.  And my heart broke.  Never in my worst dreams did I envision these things going to a friend; a friend that was there for me in so many ways after we’d lost Jack. 

Instantly, I felt on the other side.  My perspective shifted.  I was now the friend of someone who was experiencing the unimaginable loss no one wants to know about.  I was the one fumbling to say something that would bring comfort in a situation where comfort does not truly exist.  I was the one standing in the aisle of Hallmark searching for the right card, with the right words in the devastatingly small section for ‘Loss of a Child’.  I was the one arranging a MealTrain for the family, knowing that no amount of food in the world would ease the empty feeling inside but praying it could anyway.  And it had been pretty awful. 

In these moments I have felt what I can only imagine all of the friends and family that rallied around Sean and I during our darkest moments felt.  The desperation, the devastation, and the awful feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.  And my heart broke for all of them too because I don’t think I have ever been able to truly appreciate what that experience had and has been like for all of them.  What it has been like to be the people that stand by the grieving parents.  The shift in perspective has been eye opening and heart wrenching and ultimately very needed.  Grief has this way of wrapping you up and causing blind spots; blocking your vision so that all you can see is what is happening to you or right in front of you.  The periphery just doesn’t exist.  

I can only hope that my experience and journey can give my friend and his wife, the recipient families of Jack’s Herd, the friends and families of grieving parents and shift in their perspective too; they can survive this awful loss.  They can put the pieces together again and make them into something resembling a happy life again.  It will take time.  It may be ugly from time to time.  Some pieces will never quite fit again.  But, if you shift your perspective, even just a bit, it can still be something beautiful and whole in its own way again. 

Riding the Waves

I remember the weeks following Jack’s death coming across something I’d found on Pinterest about grief that, at the time, spoke to me and made a lot of sense.   It said, “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves, ebbing and flowing.  Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it’s overwhelming.  All we can do is learn to swim.” 

It’s been a good long while since my last post.  Just about a month.  I wrote on Jack’s birthday, like I have the two previous years before, because I feel like I owe that to him but after that I just didn’t have any steam in my tank to keep it going.  The truth is I’ve just felt sad.  I let myself get bogged down in some of the sadness and rather than stopping to acknowledge it, I’ve been plowing ahead and it caught up to me.  Don’t get me wrong, there has been a lot of really amazing stuff peppered in there but I haven’t been all in on the experience part.  I’ve been distracted by my heavy heart. 

My girl is so full of life that it radiates off of her but it can be exhausting trying to mirror the excitement she’s looking for after coming home from work.  A career I used to love has shifted into job-something that pays the bills-but also uses most of my patience and so I find myself digging at the bottom of the barrel to muster some for a girl that deserves so much more than that.  God love her though, she’ll call me out and let me know when I could be doing better and forgive me when it’s the best I’ve got.  As tired as this heart has been, she jump-starts it when she asks me to climb in bed with her and sing her her song before she falls to sleep. 

And then there’s the boy.  This sweet, sweet baby boy.  My God, he makes life sweeter, with his big, gorgeous, blue eyes that dance when he gets excited and his chubby cheeks that he lets me smother with kisses.  But with every morsel of goodness comes a pang of sadness as I realize over and over again what we really lost that day his big brother died.  But I breathe him in as deeply as I can, knowing how lucky I am to have been given this little love to pour my heart into. 

Through the fog of sadness there were still some really bright spots. A Valentine’s Dance for Kennedy and Daddy, lots of snuggles, snow days, our annual visit from cousins filled with fun and firsts. 

One of those firsts was Carter’s first sickness.  A high fever meant sleepless nights for me, where a heightened sense of fear had me standing over his crib to make sure he was breathing. And as I stood watching his chest rise and fall I found myself begging God to make me stop being so afraid; to stop being afraid that this baby boy could be taken from me too.  It ended up being an ear infection that put my happy little guy out of sorts and stopped us from making our visit we’d planned to Boston to see my best friend.  He’s slowing getting back to himself and my fears are dulling around the edges.

It’s planning mode now.  Trying to get everything in order and stay upbeat preparing for Jack’s Herd’s Second Annual Cocktail Party and Silent Auction.  I try to remind myself not to be sad while doing this; that this is how we help celebrate our first boy’s legacy.  I know when the stress passes I will find my footing again, and hopefully that’s in time to enjoy a wonderful night.

You see that quote I mentioned before about waves and grief has a ring of truth to it.  Over these last three years though I’ve learned something that takes the whole ocean smile a little further.  Grief is more like a rip tide.  It can come on strong and quick and sometimes out of nowhere.  As a little kid, spending loads of time at the beach, my dad used to warn us if we ever got caught in a rip tide, not to fight against it, that it could exhaust you causing you to drown.  Instead swim parallel to the shore until you are free.  So my grief, I’ve stopped fighting against it, I swim with it and change my direction to get free of it.  It took me a few years to figure out that if I fight against this sadness it will overtake me.  I have to respect my hearts need to feel what it feels and to give it the time to call out to the little boy that took part of it with him. 

The Happiest Place on Earth

The holidays are a magical time in general.  Add Disney World to it and there are just no words.  Disney, as a kid, seems amazing; like all of your dreams are coming true in front of your little eyes.  But as a parent?  My God, it’s like a religious experience to give your children those moments.  Watching them smile the most genuine smiles to have ever crossed their mouths and the light that dances in their eyes watching the fireworks and meeting the characters that have filled their TV screens? It’s absolutely epic. 

Christmas (all three installments of it) was a whirlwind.  For the most part it was really great.  Christmas Eve at Sean’s mom’s house was great, though when we sat the kids down for their yearly jammie photo it just about killed me to see them so grown up, and made my heart simultaneously swell and break to see my baby boy in there with them but his big brother still missing.  The big reveal of our trip Christmas morning was absolutely amazing especially since Kennedy was more thrilled by the fact that Carter would go to Disney for his first time (mind you, this would be her first trip too!).  We caught it on camera and it was seriously the stuff Disney World commercials are made of.  The rest of the day went by alright except that I didn’t get to go visit Jack’s grave that day and the guilt took me under by the end of the day.  I felt like a terrible mother.  It was Christmas.  His brother and sister were given tons of gifts and smothered in love and kisses yet I couldn’t even get to him for a quick visit.  I was angry-at myself, Sean, the universe-whatever and whoever I could rage at; and so I cried myself to sleep. 

I woke up dead set that I would be there first thing.  We were. It was a frigid cold that went right through you and with the snow covering everything it reminded me of the day we had picked out his spot almost three years before.  Kennedy excitedly told her brother we were going to Disney World and he can come with us to watch.  My tears froze to my jacket.  The tiny Christmas tree I left and the five minutes I could bear the cold just didn’t feel like enough but it was all I could manage that day.

Her count down had begun and she was so excited it made me wish that we had told her sooner and at the same time thankful that we hadn’t since I threatened (empty-I know) that we wouldn’t go at least twelve times in six days; any longer between the telling and the going could have been disastrous.   We packed and prepped and hoped for good weather. 

We flew down early and made our way to the hotel to get checked in and to the park as quickly as we could.  The second we stepped off of the bus I thought we would all burst.  The magic in that place just spills itself all over you and you have no choice but to let it.  You are walking around suddenly feeling with all of your being that you too need a hat with ears on it; it’s that intoxicating. 

I was watching my little girl for those four days walk around with a smile on her face that left me with a very sobering realization: there has been a lot of life weighing heavy on her heart. She is so sensitive to emotion-especially mine-that it has obviously taken its toll on her.  She will hear me talking in another room and if she hears any change in my voice, come running and ask, “Mama, why does your voice sound sad?” It’s not fair, I know this.  I will spend my life trying to make up for inadvertently putting too much on her little shoulders when I was grieving.  She may not even know that it happened-but I do and looking at her smiling face broke my heart as it occurred to me: she hasn’t really smiled like that in a very long time. And my God, did she ever smile. 

The kid lives for a thrill.  She was all about roller coasters and I felt amazed by the daringness she showed, never hesitating to get on line for another and never showing any anxiety about the unknown.  She humored us and rode the “little kid rides” too with her brother and I but was clearly unimpressed. 

Each time she hugged a character or got their autograph she would shriek, “Best Christmas present ever!” And it really was, for her to go, and for us to watch it all unfold. 

And just as Kennedy had told him he could, Jack followed us to The Happiest Place on Earth.  It was as if he made his presence know to us over and over: from the elephants that popped up all over (I just about lost my mind when I saw the baby elephant surrounded by the herd), to the grown girl with Down syndrome that sat down to talk with my girl-who conversed with her like they were old friends-he was letting us know he was there too.  We were a family of five on vacation at The Happiest Place on Earth.  Even in the pouring rain you couldn’t deny the beauty of it (what a metaphor for us). 

And so as the pixie dust wears off and we settle back into the mortal world these photos and those moments will give me life. They will help carry me through the rough days ahead.  My little boy would have turned three this month.  Three.  How can that be?  My heart aches at that thought. And his baby brother, I suspect, knows this somehow; knows I need to hug him a little tighter, breathe his scent a little deeper and take in all of his baby goodness. 

This year will be all about deep breaths of chaos- magical, magical chaos.

Happy New Year!