The House That Built Us

I will start this post with an overly sad, sentimental song that has looped through my head for the last few months:

                                          

Any time I think about my parents moving away from the home they have lived in for the last 30 years, literally all of my entire life, I hear these lyrics.  This past weekend we travelled down to Long Island to my childhood, perhaps for the last time, to take some pictures there for my parents. 

Now, last week didn’t end as great as it started and so I was already pretty emotionally drained.  There are certain instances I try to mentally prepare for.  Well, let’s be honest: I’m a planner and so I literally try to plan for EVERYTHING.  It’s unrealistic and ultimately causes a whole lot more stress than it eases but I digress.  A coworker stopped by with her new baby, everyone (totally understandably) went nuts oohing and ahhing, and I lost it, which only made me feel like a bad person for not saying hi or acknowledging her new little muffin, but I just couldn’t hold myself together.  And so, making my way down to sleep at “my” house, maybe one last time, seemed all the more emotional. 

Truly, we had a great time there.  We stayed up late laughing with my parents and woke up early, laughing with each other.  We swam in the pool that was put in far too late for us older kids to fully take advantage of and enjoy but that our kids can’t get enough of.  We put the kiddos down for naps, fingers crossed that they would sleep long enough to ensure there were no meltdowns.  Turns out, there isn’t a nap long enough to make that a guarantee.

By the time everyone had his or her acts together, dressed, groomed, and otherwise presentable it was already exhausting.  We were down one brother and one brother-in-law; you’d have an easier time staging a coup in North Korea than you would trying to organize a time when 6 adult children and their spouses and children can come together at the exact same moment.  As best we could, we made it happen. 

When Sean, Kennedy and I sat down for our family shots my little bug refused to cooperate and sit where she was asked.  I was convinced we wouldn’t get one good picture of us.  Really, the truth is, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I will never have a complete family photo.  Not ever, and it was heartbreaking to think about.  The amazingly patient photographer snapped away, we bickered in between poses as only a family can do; there were tantrums and tears and an abundance of snacks meant to placate cranky toddlers. 

When it was all said and done we were drained- every single one of us.  I watched my parents pose together on the porch of a home they quite literally built to raise their six children in.  I watched my sister sit with her boys on the steps we took her wedding pictures on.  My brother sat with his wife and daughter on the porch he would storm off of angrily years ago and the one he returned to much more put together years later.  I saw boys that used sit and wait for the ice cream man to pass when they swore they may have hear his bell about 12 miles away.  Sean and I sat on the steps he used to pick me up for dates on the summers between semesters of college. 

A house can hold so much history, good and bad.  There is a lot in that house.  The house served it's purpose.  It provided as good a home most people can hope for in life.  Everyone is sad to let it go, no one more than my mom and dad.  A little surprisingly, I believe I am a close second.  This truly is the house that built me.  Maybe not so much the house itself but the life that began there, making me strong enough to be able to attempt to live the life that is now laid before me; a life missing a very big part from it.  

While his little face maybe never be in any our family pictures, Jack’s presence was definitely there that day.  When we got the pictures back, it was like magic.  The sun was incredible, everyone looked so happy, and it was like his big sister knew to leave a space for him; a space between Sean and me that will always be filled with an enormous amount of love and a little sadness mixed in there too.

Happy birthday to the love of my life.  Thank you for taking such good care of your girls.

You Just Have to Get Through it

You just have to get through it.  You just have to get through the day; just get through this; just get through that.  These are phrases I have heard from various people and said or thought of myself for months.

Well, time waits for no one.  Six months has gone right ahead and marched on as if no one was watching; certainly as if no one has been grieving while trying to figure out how to move forward in life.  I knew that this milestone would be a tough one, measuring half a year since we had to say hello and goodbye to our tiny, baby boy all in one day.  Rather than sit and just wait for the day to pass I decided to plan a surprise party.  Sean’s 30^th birthday is coming up and so I thought a way to put a happy spin on the day and distract myself was to plan it on this six month mark.

I planned for about two months, inviting out of town family and friends, some high school friends and work friends.  I squirrelled away money so he wouldn’t notice anything strange about the places showing up on our checking account. My mother-in-law helped make all of Sean’s favorite foods a few days in advance to make the day as low maintenance as possible; I arranged a plausible ruse for getting him out of and back to the house; I though we had it all planned out.  What I hadn’t planned on was feeling as crazy sad as I did the night before and next morning. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’d known all along it would hurt something sort of familiar.  I just didn’t plan on it being so raw again.  We got up early and left to visit Jack’s “special spot”, letting his big sister leave him some pretty flowers.  My heart broke a bit more when Sean was looking down at his grave and Kennedy asked what he was looking at.  When he responded with, “Jack,” she said, “No Daddy! He’s not down there, he’s up in the clouds,” and laughed as if to tell him how silly she found his mistake to be.  We got through it and were back home to have Sean leave to fish and to have us begin the last minute prep.

Everyone arrived, including the birthday boy, whom I believe was moderately surprised, and the rest of the day was a success.   

Monday morning got here quicker than I would have liked and I had barely slept the night before, which is always a key ingredient in my recipe for disaster.  I still just didn’t feel ready to go back to work, back to where I had to be Ms. Doyle again, a person with (most likely a delusional) self-perceived control over most things.  This first week is only staff so it would be just dipping my feet in but I was still terrified. The last sixth months have gone like this:  Extreme grief, grief, grieving while functioning, grieving while functioning and caring for Kennedy.  Now I had to add another component back into the mix and I felt brutally overwhelmed. 

I woke before the alarm, applied a minimal amount of makeup, because if nothing else I am a realist and knew that there was a good chance it wouldn’t withstand the day, got a hug and pep-talk from my loving and optimistic husband and left for my first day back.  I almost made it to the highway before the tears flowed freely.  I called Sean for reassurance, which he was ready to give, and finished what was left of my ride.  As I pulled into the parking lot I began to shake.  I mean really shake, like couldn’t shift to park easily because my hands were shaking so hard.  Two of my girlfriends were waiting for me in the lot to walk in with me, which I loved them for.  As we got close to the doors, doors I hadn’t walked through since the day I left school to head for Philadelphia two days later, I began to sob. Hard.  One of them took my hand and helped me get through the door.  They led me to my office, ironically a room crying middle school-ers often find their way to for comfort, gave me hugs and water and we made our way to the first of our meetings for the day.  I made it through, it sucked pretty badly but I got through it.

The thing is though, I don’t want to just “get through” life.  I want to live it.  It dawned on me that I haven’t really been doing that the last six months; but I am trying to.  So maybe, God, I hope, that with it going like this: grieving while functioning and caring for Kennedy and being Ms. Doyle and living.

So Long, Sweet Soother

It started out three years ago with everything I read telling me that if I was planning to breastfeed I should absolutely not give a pacifier to my new baby girl as it could cause “nipple confusion”. Now, I don’t know what anyone else’s nipples look like but I was pretty certain there was no mistaking mine for the little newborn Nuk “pacies” that I had laying around from free samples I’d received in the mail and baby stores, but I had had a baby for all of two days so what the hell did I know.

Let’s move ahead 3 weeks to my little bottomless pit nursing to the point where I felt like a dairy factory and that if I didn’t get an hour with my bra being closed and my shirt down I thought I was going to lose it and tell everyone I knew to buy stock in Similac. In a moment of absolute desperation I dug out one of my samples and gave it to her. It was an instant miracle. She took to it immediately and slept soundly for hours. Hours!! From that moment forward I’m not sure who loved the pacifier more, Kennedy or me, but in any case, we were sold (and in case you were dying to know, there was no confusion between nipples. Imagine that!). Throughout our love affair with the pacifier we may have changed brands and how many we were working with at a time, two being a favorite for nap and bedtimes, but our relationship stayed strong and unwavering. We were hooked. Literally, right to the front of whatever she was wearing; the pacifier and security strap quickly became a wardrobe staple.

Flash forward through the years and I’m pregnant with baby number 2 and telling everyone I absolutely would not take her pacifier away as she was getting the boot from her crib and baby nursery, while finishing up toilet training and sleeping in a big-girl bed; too many big changes. For me too. We battled with disapproving family members clucking about how we should take it away soon or she was going to need braces though we were assured by our pediatrician and pediatric dentist that as long as we got rid of it by three there was less of a risk for braces than if it continued past then. As a thumb-sucker until the age of about ten, I really viewed it as a good thing that she preferred a pacifier to a finger. I mean you can take a pacifier away eventually but fingers are there for the long run so….

When Jack died we were all a mess.  Sean and I trying to reconcile this unimaginable loss and trying to explain to a two and a half year old that her baby brother wasn’t going to be coming home, not ever, the thought of trying to wean her off of the only comfort she could find was out of the question. So for the last five months I was of the mindset that if she needed braces she needed them; who really gives a shit. I wasn’t going to take away one more thing from her. Her being content was a small comfort to us and we’d take what we could get.

We did decide that as she was losing her pacifiers, we were not going to replace them. It made Kennedy a bit more mindful of where she was leaving them (I convinced myself we were teaching responsibility. To a three year old.)  She was only allowed to use them in bed or long car rides. We were patting ourselves on the back for standing strong even when this last month brought us down to one solitary paci. 

Last weekend I was on an overnight getaway with a girlfriend and when I gave a call home the next morning to check in and see how things were going my Sean informed me Kennedy slept through the night without the pacifier! In all actuality they couldn’t find it and she begged him to go buy a new one, but either way she made it. When I returned home I brought her a small surprise and told her how proud I was. She started to whine a little bit at night that she “needed” it. We made a deal that if she could be a big girl and make it a whole week with not paci we could go to the toy store and pick something out. She got all jazzed up and went to bed without much fuss.

Well, that made one of us.

As I lay down to sleep I literally broke down into hysterics. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I had left my baby girl for one night and came home to a big girl. I officially had no baby. As I sobbed into my pillow I started to realize that I might have been allowing her to hold on the pacifier more for me than for her. If Jack had lived we were planning to “give” all of the paci’s to him as a ceremonious way of getting Kennedy to give them up. I suppose my fear has been, without him, once she was done with them it would feel like losing a baby all over again and I didn’t think I could bear any more heartache. 

We all stuck with our deal and made it through the week.  There were lots of tears, pouting, and whining but that all comes with the territory of being three.  Sunday came and we were off the to store bright and early for the big reward.  She picked out a tiny plastic bear cub.  That’s it.  Talk about anticlimactic.  I practically dragged the kid through the store and luckily we found something a tad cooler than baby bear...princess walkie-talkies.

“Mommy, come in Mommy.  I’m big now”

So I guess rather than looking for ways to keep her a baby, I need to embrace the fact that, despite all the change she has been through these last months, she doesn’t need a pacifier to bring her comfort anymore. But, if I’m being honest, I may have to go make a Target run and buy one for myself.