Those Early Days of Isolation

Of course the feelings below aren't all reflections of true statements. But they do reflect, I believe, the true range of emotions parents go through after losing babies. There is much scattered, apparantly random thoughts. But we are complex, aren't we? All these thoughts and feelings exist at simultaneously inside us. I hope others in pain may feel less alone when they catch a bit of themselves in where I was less than a month after our second baby was buried.

August 4, 2009
I hate August, by the way. Never a month I wanted to have babies in. At least there’s that...

Tonight I paid bills. Under the “play” section I entered in: Hawaii. The entry before it said: Fetal Doppler, 90.00. It jumped out at me. Life can change so fast. The course you are on can be jolted from under your feet and suddenly you can be reeling to catch up with the new place you’re journeying to.

A voice in my head says, Get over it, Kelly. Everyone else has. I spoke with ***for a minute tonight and she told me how she’s trying to fix her Xbox because Lost comes thru it and she can’t live without watching Lost. I hung up quickly. She’s over it. Everyone’s over it.

But I am consumed with my pain. Maybe I am selfish in it. I want people to care for us. I want someone to give up some of their time or resources for us because that shows me the Claire has altered their life. But often what we get are cards in the mail with brief cliches that slide off my skin.

I am startled by how I can’t talk to my friends. ****’s visit showed me that. I sat silent and counted the minutes til it was over. I called ****tonight and - wow! – I had to force out every line. I am perfectly functional to my kids and Blue, but to everyone else, bam: I am like a freak .I called **** tonight out of moral determination. Being so left alone teaches me how important it is for family to be there.  In times like this you need your family to carry you through. It hurt so much that family went vacationing the week after Claire died. Not having them there makes it all the harder, drives the pain deeper.
 Family roles and traditions are more than quaint activities. They are vital to the survival of families. Even if it's just sitting on the couch with the suffering. It matters. It lasts. It builds a stronger family unit.


Monday, our last day in Hawaii, our car battery completely died. We don’t know anyone in the city. A simple jump turned into a nightmare. Our rental company would charge us 50.00 to come jump us – apalling. A man parked next to us while Blue hashed it out (politely) on the phone. He said he didn’t have cables and stalked off quickly. After an hour a nice looking old couple was parked close to us in the garage and had jumper cables! Tada! Light breaking thru. The man said he had them, but he would not give us a jump. He and his wife put on their huge black sunglasses and drove away.

Pray, I thought. This is when you pray for help. Show your kids how to deal with these sticky situations and trust that the Lord will send aide. I told the Lord to Go to Hell. He slammed my prayers and life right into hot concrete. Why would I ask for his help now?

I could not do it. I could not do it. How disappointed the Christian world must be in me. Sometimes I am shocked at my own angry vigor. But as more and more of my life slips away, any control on my side in vain, the anger grows. Nothing is so sacred to me as children. Nothing has ever mattered more to me in all my life, in the deepest parts of me that dream and vision, than a little functioning family. So sacred, so shattered.

I really feel like people who have lost their deepest dream can identify with what I feel, what I carry inside me each day. Not everyone has lost what they valued most. This is a quite isolating place to be. People build relationships on commonality. When that is gone, everything is a little harder. It’s a little more forced. I am back into the moral obligations of society that I referred to. I can not love some people spontaneiously by the ties that bind, so I make ties.

I went to Hawaii to bleed out some of my pain on it’s sacred land. It’s almost too pretty to taint that way, but in it’s vastness I feel that it can handle the blood from my tears. Now, home again, my insides are ripped open. It’s so hard to be home. Books say don’t do anything major for a year after losing a child. You just can’t think right. I don’t care. I want out of this house because everything about it slaps me in the face. Here’s the family taken from you. Here are the broken dreams. Here is a most strenuous physical effort endured in vain. Here are where you dreampt up your babies and where you grew them and where you prepared for them, and where you cried wanting to be a better mother for them. And here is where you walk empty without them each day: Once before, for Jackson, in a noble effort to get up and get on with things. Now you drag on alone, devoid of the hope and forward pursuit.

I feel so lonely here. It’s quite overpowering. I feel so sad and so alone. I work for my kids but they are in bed now and so it’s just me and this pain again.

 My health has been taken. I stood and watched while the kids and Blue played in Hawaii. I tire quicker. I am 15 pounds overweight. I feel like an invalid. My children have been taken. Many, many of my loved ones have been taken. What else? Lately I am like a scared child in a corner afraid to go out and live in the world because I know the pattern. I feel like the part of me that was a risk taker is extinguished.

Blue was offered the job we've prayed for for a year. The offer came while we were in Hawaii. I am scared to make the change. It’s everything I wanted! For so long I wanted this. But now I have to trust Blue in the intuiting if it’s the right thing. I can’t feel it and go with it right now. I feel like, why look for the signs? I had them with Claire and it turned out opposite of what they indicated. I can’t place trust on intuition anymore. But that is all I am, intuition. That is how I have always directed my life.  So now without that I am lost.
Lost.