My Christmas Wish.. .. ..

I am pretty resolved that from here until the day we meet again, my holiday wish will be to have my son.

Last year I think I was still in such a stunned state that Christmas went by in a blur.  This year, though, I feel the heaviness of him not being here with us.

This year we did Christmas a little different.  We rented a cabin last weekend, which was the big present for the family, and we just bought the kids a few things they wanted.  Less junk, more memories. 

The whole time we were at the cabin I imagined what our lives would be like if Colton were there with us.  How we'd be chasing him, keeping him from the stairs, cuddle with him by the fire ... I realized I miss the little things he'd be doing.  Like eating at the table with us, or laughing and trying to talk along with us.  Though he was never part of our lives, I still feel like he is missing from the moments that matter.  That there is a gaping hole in the space he should fill in our time and lives.

Now, with Christmas just days away, I feel this heavy sorrow that he isn't here.  I wish he could curiously play with the wrapping, unsure of what it is or how to handle it.  I wish he could want everything out of the boxes ... just to play with the boxes. I wish I could chase him away from tipping the tree over, and sit and watch his awe of the lights and decorations.  I wish I could tuck him in Christmas night, grateful for all of our family.

But it just feels like something is missing.  And it is.  Our son, our Colton, is missing.  And now I realize it's time to learn to live with those gaps, those empty places he will never be.  The hard part is figuring out, when the only piece that's missing will never come back to feel the void.

Merry Christmas in Heaven, Colton.  I love you and miss you so much.

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore .. .. ..

Remember when Dorothy wakes up after her adventures in Oz, wondering if it was all real??

Or have you ever gasped for air, not realizing you'd been holding it without even realizing it?

Friday morning I sat up in bed, looked around and wondered how I got there.  I took a deep breath, a breath that felt like the first refreshing gulp after a long plunge underwater.

People had said after the first year things get better.  People said it wouldn't be so cumbersome, so heavy.  People said and I didn't believe.

Yet, there I sat, feeling victorious.  Feeling free.

I didn't realize how terrified I'd been.  How choked and drowned I was in the sorrow and the fear of the first year. The fear of what things meant - or didn't mean - without Colton.  I didn't realize how much I was suffocating until I began to breath again.

I survived.  I survived his loss, his birth, and finally his burial.  All the days that haunted me in sleep and wake, that tortured and taunted me, threatening to destroy me.

I survived.

For whatever reason my son was taken from this earth, but not from me.  He is alive all around me.  I just have to look and find him and seek out those that reassure me and not those that drown me.  I have to focus on the love, not the loss.  I have to remember I am stronger, braver, more able than even I give myself credit for.  That if I can make it through the first year, I can make it through anything.

Life still swirls around me.  I still feel on the outside looking in most days.  Though I smile and laugh and tiptoe back into the madness.  I find myself excited, hopeful about things to come.  Little things, big things, every thing. 

I realize life didn't lose meaning, I was just too scared to find the sense in it all.  I was too scared to engage because once you do the door is wide open to be sucked in, sucked away, and lost in the twirling circumference around you.

This, however, is not the mother Colton knew.  I find myself ashamed in sorts of the way I've been. I speak of wanting to honor my son by being myself, yet I sat for a year choking in the grief not even realizing I was holding my breath, waiting for something worse to happen.  I think, at times, I really wondered if I'd survive.  If I'd make it.  Or if one night my heart would just stop beating, too.  At times I wished for that.  Just let my heart give out and let me be with my son. 

And then it all snapped.  I took a deep breath, I saw the world around me.  I made it through to the other side.  I have no delusion that everything is fine.  Things will still trigger me, my heart will still ache, I will always long for my son.  But I am here.  I am alive. And I will be okay.

Happy be-a-little-lated Unbirthday sweet Colton.

Happy rebirth to me.

The Eye of the Storm

They say in the eye of a storm everything stops.  The winds are whirling around you, debris ripping through the air.  Yet the spot you are in stays completely still, untouched, numb to the chaos around it.

The world around me continues to turn.  People bustle from place to place, errands to run, things to do.  Work continues to flow all around me.  Children continue to run on the playgrounds. 

Yet, in my little bubble, there is silence.  There is stillness.  I am stuck, suspended in this time, with the chaos around me and stunned stillness in me.

This week a year ago I realized my son was dead.  Tuesday a year ago - today - I confirmed it.  In about two hours will be the year difference in today and the start of meds to induce my labor.  Tomorrow is the actual date - 11-16 - that we confirmed Colton was dead and began the process to release him from my body, which was so desperately holding on to him.  Thursday (last year Wednesday) was a day of blur, a day when I realized that as each moment passed part of me seeped away from myself and into the storm whirling around me, shredding everything in its tracks.  And Friday will be the 18th ... the day Colton's body (his soul long gone) entered this world.  And the last little bit of strength gave like a rope frazzled enough to snap. 

People talk to me, and I hear them, yet I do not process.  Thoughts pass through my mind and leave no footprint for future reference. All I can think about, all I can feel, is the deep loss and desire to have my son with me.

I know, realistically, that won't happen.  I know he is gone and this situation cannot be fixed.  I know, reasonably, that no amount of tears will fill the gaping valley ripped in my heart when I lost Colton.

Yet the tears still fall in buckets.  The sadness still swallows me whole.  The world, if only - hopefully - for these next few weeks, freezes and there is nothing but the emptiness he left behind.

I continue to work. I continue to be domesticated. I visit with friends, I make plans.  I pretend to be normal, to be infused in the storm around me, in the cyclone of life. 

Inside me, though, is a stillness, a silence, a void ... Just like any center of a storm.

I cried myself to sleep ...

For some reason the past few days have really been difficult.  Tomorrow being the first day of November seems like the inevitable is so soon.  As long as it were any other month then the anniversary was obscure and distant.  Now it's only a few very short weeks away.  And the reality of it is crushing.

I cried last night because I missed my baby.  I cried because I wonder what he'd look like today.  Would he be walking already like his brothers or still stumbling along, preferring to crawl?  Would he have a tooth already or be drooling constantly without anything to show for it?  Would he be baby-signing and talking or stubborn and just smile and cry when he wanted something?  Would he sleep well through the night or still be fussy?  Would he be a size 12 months or 18 months?  Would he ... would he ... would he ... ?

Daydreaming (and night dreaming) are the enemy. They are the times where the haunting of what's been and what will never be seep in and terrorize the mind ... and the heart.

Eleven days until the day I believe my son died....
Fifteen until I accepted it...
Sixteen until they confirmed it...
Eighteen until he left me forever.

And I don't know how I'll make it through even one without drowning in these tears.

Lucky? Eh, I think not.

Yesterday I got sucked into a conversation (my own fault, I should have walked away) about stillbirth/baby loss. 

The comment was made that we are lucky to have a gravesite to visit.  That early miscarriages don't have that place to mourn.

I was dumbfounded.  Lucky? 

I carried my son to a point where if he'd been born alive he'd have lived.  I went through two and half days of induced labor.  I pushed my son into a silent room, the heaviness of reality that he was gone... Up until that moment, as absolutely ludicrous as it sounds, I held out hope.  I thought maybe, just maybe, he'd cry.  He'd be alive and it was all a mistake, a bad dream.  His weight would shift inside me and I'd - for a split second - think "see, he's fine". 

I held his little body, the poor shape it was in, and loved him with every ounce of me.  I couldn't fully comprehend how he could be dead.  He was perfect in every way.  His little mouth and nose.... His beautiful head of hair.  He was gorgeous and perfect. 

We had to chose a box to bury him in.  A 2' box that had extra room.  I don't consider that lucky.

Every time I visit his gravesite ... which I am "lucky" to have ... I fight the urge to dig with my bare hands to get to my son and run away with him.  I do know it's only bones at this point and his soul is long gone, yet I just wish I could have him close to me.

I feel like such a horrible mother.  Like I abandoned him or buried him out back like a pet.  I feel like I let him down and every time I go see him I am reminded of all those feelings.

Every time I go by his nursery or sit in there I remember how close I was to holding him there.  He wasn't an abstract ball of cells growing anymore.  He was a baby, all grown and just waiting to join us.  Everything was ready for him.  Those things don't just go away.  The room, his stuff, his headstone ... all there to remind me of how close I was before he was stolen from me.

I am not lucky to have those things.  I am tortured by them.  Though, without them I would probably feel the same torture.  There is no luck in the death of a child.

How quickly things change.. .. ..

It's amazes me how one minute I can feel fine, then a memory hits, and suddenly the world flips upside down.

Yesterday I was going about my day when the date suddenly hit me.  October 17 ... exactly one year since Colton's baby shower.

That was one of the most magical days I can remember.  I had so many friends join me to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Colton.  People traveled up to six hours (one way!) to join us.  The house was full of people.  Laughing, sharing ... celebrating.

That day feels so abstract now, so surreal.  I can't help but still be amazed at how quickly and drastically life can change.  Just three and a half weeks later my son was dead.  And I was being induced to deliver him too soon and without life.  A life that so shortly before we were celebrating and showering with love.

Today is one month until the day I delivered Colton. As it closes in, so does the world around me.  The reality of the last year, of the loss, closes in.  The reality of the loss and how deeply it still hurts and saddens me.  I miss my son, I wonder who he would be today.  And I wonder how life can change all so quickly.

It does matter.

Throughout this grieving process I have battled with loss.  And does it matter if it was 10 weeks or 40 weeks.  Well, it does matter.

There is a huge difference between no heartbeat at 9 weeks and no heartbeat at 9 months. 

There is a huge difference between cramping and passing tissue and being induced over three days and delivering your child.

There is a difference between the dreams of a nursery and a name and coming home empty handed to a fully prepared nursery with a child's name all over the place.

There IS a difference.  It doesn't mean that both don't hurt.  It doesn't mean both babies don't matter.  It's just totally different and it does matter.

I sometimes wish I'd miscarried at 10 weeks.  That I cramped and bled and lost the baby.  Or gone in and there was no heartbeat then.  At that point I could say "crap, that sucks" and move into another cycle and try again. 

At 34w ... it's so different. 

The doctor wanted to send me home on meds for three - four days to prepare my cervix.  He wanted me to come home, huge tummy, baby inside me, and face my family and friends with my deceased son in my body.  Thank God my cervix was already softening and dilating and he allowed me to go back to the hospital that night to begin induction.

Induction started Tuesday night; I delivered early Thursday morning.  I do not recall so much from those long days and hours.  I existed, I didn't live. 

I had dreamed about delivery.  I wanted an induction free, drug free delivery.  Instead I was induced and on an epidural.  I wanted my son placed on my chest and to begin nursing immediately.  Instead the nurses took him to clean him, moisten his deteriorating skin, and make him presentable for me to say goodbye to. 

Now all would be happy with just a living baby.  I realized all else is so trivial.

I didn't get to miscarry and take some tylenol and go back to normal life.  My milk came in full force.  My body ached from delivery.  I took vicodin for the migraines from crying. 

I had to go design his headstone.  I had to chose his burial plot.  I had to pick which 2' box to bury him in.  And I had to pretend for everyone around me that all was okay and I wasn't falling apart and shattered.

If people say a loss is a loss and there is no difference, they are sadly mistaken.  And I sincerely pray they never have to know the difference.  A loss is a loss and they all hurt.  There is a difference, though.  A huge difference.  And it does matter.