A poem for Myles on his birthday

Born at Rest

Born to the world
Already at rest
Our search for lifes meaning
Is put to the test

Unlike his name
His journey not far
The road Myles traveled
Led right to his star

To walk with his family
And those here on earth
A path not to be
For his miraculous birth

Expressions to ease
Our need for a reason
With words meant to comfort
When too short the season

For tears shed in sorrow
And to eyes that have cried
On the wings of a butterfly
His spirit does glide

Those Myles touched
Should look to their heart
To bring them the peace
That he had to depart

Ever so close
In our mind's eye
His essence you'll find
Never to die

For our dear "Little Myles"
Is beyond our embrace
But etched in our soul
Is his sweet newborn face

Written by Myles' Great Aunt Rosary

Myles 2nd Birthday

The days leading up to these big days are the worst, but after being on this journey for two years, I realize no day is ever how we expect it to be. So I don't know what today will bring. I just know I wish I was planning my son's second birthday.

Losing him sometimes feels like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like a century ago since I held him. The hardest part is remembering my daughter's second birthday. I've been packing and moving and ironically happened upon a bunch of cards from when she turned 2. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the gifts she received, how big she was, all the things she could say. It hurts that I can't imagine Myles doing any of those things. It hurts that he will forever be only what my imagination will allow, it just feels so inadequate. Trying to picture him doing those things, grasping at what should be today. It makes me frustrated and angry, he should be here. I'd love to hold him and hug him forever and ever and i can't, i want to so badly it hurts

So, we're going to a movie, decorating a cake for him, taking a birthday balloon and decorations to the cemetary. I find myself doting on l/c to make up for the little one I don't have to dote on. Like its another birthday for her. They say your heart expands everytime you have more children. It's so hard having this heart made for two and only having one to give it all to. It's a hole. And today I know that as much as I'm trying to celebrate, as much as I'm trying to make it a special day to remember my son, that really deep down I'm trying to fill a hole that can never be filled. Grasping to give love that I cannot physically express.

I just wish things were different. I wish this time of year was how I had imagined it would be for the rest of my life. My little turkey Myles should be here. And it makes me sad. It makes me wish I could turn back the clock and change something, anything to make it different today. But we get what we get. So I'm going to try to have the most gentle day I can.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Son. I miss you and love you and I am so proud of you and I wish so badly that you were right here so I could make you pancakes and surprise you with balloons and give you all the love I have to give.

Still here . . .

Yep. Still alive. Doing well. Was without internet for about a month so that was not a bad hiatus. Can't say the fally doesn't hit me hard. Partially why I'm here again. I decided some time ago this was my grief blog, and with my divorce and move and new life (even dating) it's not that I don't grieve but it's harder to write about. I'm afraid. I think about that story about grief in a jar, and how you store it and then suddenly, the jar falls off the shelf and you're covered in grief and nobody understands.

So I'm a little covered in grief at the moment. Naturally I find myself back here. Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I've got a candle lit for Myles now. This Fall I've found myself more raw than I've felt for awhile. It's been tough. I've got a new job, soon I'll have a new home, everything has changed. It's happy and sad and fuck; i'm ambivalent old me.

I've been trying to take it easy as the raw grief has resurfaced. I don't want to let my old bad self take over again. I want to be wiser, understand my limits, worry less about disappointing people than I worry about myself and my maintaing. I've learned that this life isabout knowing your own limits, and keeping the gentle people and distancing from the hurtful people.

Bah. So here I am. And as I've eluded. I'm thinking a blog less about greif and more about my other tribulations needs to happen. So. When it does, I'll let you know. If you have followed my grief blog I'd love for you to join me on the other side on a blog less about grief and more about my life as I find it today. When the time comes you can email me and I'll let you know. I've been longing for that anonymous venue for some time. Today I know I need it.

Remembering our children today and this Fall and just always and forever . . .

Failing my daughter

My daughter was so excited to become a big sis. She knows she is still a big sis even though her brother died. She takes so much pride in him, sharing him freely with anyone who lets her, she is her brothers keeper and i'm so thankful for that. She has always been my constant reminder of all of the wonderful times we had with her brother, how loved he was, how happy he made us, and how he will never be forgotten.

Still, she wants a living sibling so bad. Her father and I are separated and it is likely we will get divorced eventually, it just hasn't been urgent to file the paperwork at this point.

It seems like at least twice a week, she brings up having another baby or (because she's precocious and knows) she wants me to adopt.

How do I explain to her the complexities of the world? I don't know that I could ever handle a sub preg, i'm not ruling it out because i am 29 and you never know what the future will bring, but it is obvious that this will not happen anytime soon. I also can't explain to her that being a single mom, my options for adoption are limited. I don't have any money for adoption, and I don't know enough about the child welfare system to know if they would allow a single mom to be a foster parent, let alone an adoptive parent. Even if they did, could I handle a child in my current capacity? Could I afford it? Do I have the emotional resources to foster a child? And if we did take that route, that child may not be with us forever, so I would be creating an attachment that could inevitably end in another loss (not the same, but i see parallels).

My daughter is almost six, her brother and her would be four years apart. It feels like time is ticking away and i'm losing any chance i had at giving my daughter the experience of having a living sibling. I certainly can't tell her, well maybe when you're older or I get remarried (bah, never want to get remarried!) or whatever. That's too much for her to understand, and I would never ever want to ever promise her a sibling ever again. That's what happened the first time and here we are.

I usually just find myself, each time she asks, just disappointing her all over again. That's what it feels like anyway. All I can say is that I don't know. That it might just be me and her, and that I'm so happy I have her in my life. She is all I need, not all I ever wanted, but she makes up what remains of my heart.

I know that many only children (i hate saying that, she is not my only child!) would have liked to have a sibling, and they are fine being the only child. It just seems doubly unfair though that she SHOULDN'T be an only child. That she had and has a little brother, yet she has very few of the experiences most children have and she perhaps will never know the love (and all the other stuff) that is a part of having a living sibling.

This has been my biggest turmoil since the moment the nurse couldn't find the heartbeat. How could I tell my daughter? As my marriage eroded, i've still grasped at any conceivable chance that maybe, just maybe I could somehow be a mommy to a rainbow baby. I don't know that I'll ever be there. And that is okay for me I've accepted that, but I feel like I'm failing her everytime she asks for a sibling.

Anyway, I know there aren't any answers really. It just feels like I need to get this off of my chest. How could I fail both my children so fully? How can I keep failing her? How can I possibly just tell her, life isn't fair? 'I don't know' seems like such an inadequate answer to her pleas. She deserves so much more

Out of the funk, then back in again

I was such an insomniac for so long, I don't really remember having any bad dreams in the beginning. Maybe I've forgotten them. I dreamed that Myles wasn't dead, that it was all a mistake. That was a good dream, waking up was awful.

Having said that, I had an awful dream two nights ago. So bad I'm still trying to shake it. I dreamt that I was pregnant and had to have a c-sec (i've never had one before). My baby died, but it wasn't Myles, it was the next baby. I'm not pregnant or planning on ttc anytime soon. But there I was. And I remember trying to hide the fact that my baby had died. That I had even been pregnant. I didn't want to tell anybody. It was awful. It was like proof that there was something wrong with me, and I was so ashamed.

So that, and the assassination of Dr. Tiller both have me feeling sad and shaken. All of those women, enduring the worst time of their life, making the hardest choices they've ever had to make, and now the only person they could turn to is gone. Pro-life my ass. This man has helped and saved the lives of so many women. He will be missed by so many people in so many ways.

The abortion debate is front and center as a result it seems, and I can't help but feel stepped on by both sides. There is a way to promote womens' choices without devaluing the love and pain women like me feel. I know it.

He counts

I've been struck recently by how I'm often off count. I get together with my sister, or go out to dinner, and someone asks me the number of people, and I'm never right it seems. It noticed for the first time last Christmas. I'm counting and recounting stalkings and presents, and I'm off. Bam, it hits me. Myles. I'm counting Myles. What a shot in the gut.

It has me thinking a lot about feminism and the right to choose. I guess what bothers me is that I think that the right to choose MEANING is often overlooked. The right to view your child as a person, with a life and future is often overshadowed by the pointless banter, back and forth, under and over each othdr.

My son was not a fetus to me. Medically, yes. But to me; he was a baby, a toddler, a little boy, and a man. He was my son. He counts to me. He counts to me the same whether he was born still or alive. He was loved and wanted, and he was our son.

I just want that reality recognized. That a child can be loved at conception, and that their loss at any gestation means the loss of meaning, the loss of the future and the loss of many women's dreams.

My son was very much a person to me, and I want that to be respected as much as anything.

Sigh

I'm still debating on the deletion thing. Mostly I just don't want cruel people to have access to my personal thoughts, and I don't want people who can't constructively talk to me in real life to get the privelege of knowing what's going on with me. With family like this, who needs enemies? Sigh.

Anyway, that's not why I'm writing now. Last night Simone had a teary night. Sometimes she is upset about something else, and it turns into her being sad about Myles. Her pain over Myles generally grows out of a general feeling of shittiness for her, and I totally get it. Last night was different though. We were laying next to each other as I tried to get her to wind down and she said she had a lump in her throat. Usually the crying isn't crying like when she gets hurt (feelings or otherwise) it's a little more dramatic, somewhat forced. Her crying about Myles has always been that way. Last night, though, she really got swept up in tears like I haven't seen.

I think it was good for her. She doesn't see me cry like I once use to. When I cried last night as we were talking about what we had wanted for Myles, I could tell the sense of reciprocity and her ability to empathize and comfort really gives her a sense of mastery. Her compassion is unparalleled.

Okay, but teary nights we've had. What I have never heard her say before is what's been bouncing around my head:

'Mom, I just knowed it was going to happen. I tried to just act normal and smile, but I just knowed he was going to die.'

?! huh ?!

Simone will be 6 in August, is just finishing up her first year of Kindergarten. Kids grow so damn fast. When I told her she was three when we learned about my pregnancy, and we celebrated her 4th bday when I was very much prego, it blew us both away to contemplate how little she was, how long ago it was. She has grown so much since he died. She loves to play this game, how old would Myles be (or would he have been). So she'll say, When I'm 8, how old would Myles have been. She'll go up into their teens and 20's. It's so sad.

So watching Simone develop, and watching her understand her loss more deeply as she ages has really given me some insight. I know lots of women who have felt they've had a premonition. Hell, I look back and even B has looked back and said (because of x, y, and z) we knew something, even though we didn't KNOW. It makes me wonder if going back, and giving more weight to the fears and anxieties we felt during the pregnancy, is part of being human. I don't think anyone can know, but I think we have this inclination as humans to go back and make sense of the events in our lives. We create forshadowing in the aftermath. We tell some story in our minds leading up to whatever terrible life altering event we've been through, that makes sense like a book makes sense. I think perhaps it gives us some sense of control in a world where we really have no control. Where do psychic beliefs originate from? Are they something that evolved?

Sigh. I'm still thinking on it. Has anyone out there felt they didn't have a sense of forboding about their child's death?

Simone said a lot of interesting things last night. She also said, for the first time, that nobody knows what she feels. 'Nobody knows what it's like to lose their little brother'. It remeinded me of my blog a few weeks ago when I said nobody knows what I live through each day without Myles. That sense of loneliness I wish I could take for her. I know how painful that is :(

I'm so fortunate to have her, and I'm so glad to be her mother.