walking & stages

walking
Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 12:21pm
I just got home from walking in the Hopebuilders 5K on Team Kathlyn Joy.... a big thank you to my coworkers who walked with me, and those who ran. Some of the girls had even just come off their 12 hour night shift and ran or walked.

I really need to go back to sleep for a few hours. I had a hard day yesterday and then had trouble going to bed since John wasnt home.. and still isnt. hopefully he got some sleep before helping his friends move and he'll be here soon, but i havent heard from him :(

as i was leaving the house, there was a spider in the doorway that im pretty sure was a black widow. it reminded me how on one of my first entries, i was saying how there's no word for what im going through. there's widow and orphan but no word for a parent who lost a child... it just ISN'T supposed to happen, so there's no need for a word to define it. it's unnatural. it's always cleansing to go for a nice walk as the first thing you do in the day, and it was nice to see and talk to some people I hadnt seen in a long time, but everything is still so unnatural to me. i was in the middle of a completely pleasant conversation with my coworkers, one who's even pregnant, and there walking past went a woman with a pink carseat in hand, and i immediately got that heavy feeling in my chest. i want MY carseat with me! i also saw someone walking with the same Jeep jogging stroller that i have unused in my house. i can imagine i might have considered walking WITH kathlyn in her jeep stroller in this 5K beneftting my hospital.. not walking in honor of her. so, so unnatural. and while my friend walked with me, she said i'd get to use my jeep stroller one day, to look at it positively that way. i'm just not there yet, i'm sorry. it feels too far away, too unachievable, too scary. im grieving, and i will still be grieving when i push my second child in the jeep stroller that was supposed to be kathlyn's first. there are no buts in this situation. there's no "your baby died, but you will have another one." there's no "your baby died, but there's a reason for it" (hmm, really, and what reason would that be? im calling you out on it) there's no "your baby died, but she's in a better place." try.. "my baby died"..period. no buts. or just "my baby died and it's horrible."

i stopped by at a store on the way home and in front of me in line was a father with three small boys, they couldnt have been much older than 5, 3, and 1. they were so cute, touching everything, daddy can we buy this, daddy can we get that. i held the door open for him as we walked out the front door together, as he was holding the baby and trying to keep the older two close by. we walked seperate ways in the parking lot, but i heard him frantically yell one of his sons names. he was stern, but calm and gentle. he said, "come here. right now. listen to me.. no, look me in the eye so i know you're listening. you almost just got hit by a car! you have to stay close in the parking lot, so dont you ever, ever do that again." i was so impressed with how calm and gentle he was, considering it probably scared him to death to watch this car come so close to his little boy. there, just in an instant, their middle child could have been taken from them so easily. but i say "their" child, not knowing them at all. i just look at these little scenarios and i write new ones, stories that might be so much better than mine, or could be terribly worse. maybe there's no more mother. or maybe there's a mother, and she's pregnant, so that's why dad is running the errands with the kids instead of her. maybe they lost their first little girl, and had three boys, and now they are sad because they have boxes full of pink that will never get used. he was a good dad. so now when i see good parents, i suspect maybe they have lost a child in the past and that's what made them good parents. or maybe they're just another set of those good people left in the world ive been talking about. either way, they are lucky to have their three boys, lucky that one of them didnt just die in a parking lot in front of his father's and brothers' very eyes. that's where the mind of a grieving mother goes.. new scenerios, sad stories, close calls, where everything can change so quickly and for this family, for today, it didn't.


stages
Monday, October 12, 2009 at 8:52pm
friday was a terrible day, i was panicked, fearful, and lonely. saturday was hopeful and inspiring as i walked with my coworkers for Kathlyn and then heard a truly awesome message (the real definition of awesome, not the teenage slang version) at a friend's church about grief and suffering. sunday, i was sad and cried all day. what does that leave for today? anger. consider that my disclaimer for this note.

we went to see our regular doctor today. i called them on friday while i was so upset, but he didnt have any appointments left so they made one for today. really, it was totally pointless. i wasnt panicked anymore, and he didnt have anything to offer that my OB and kindermourn havent already. i wanted him to know, and now he knows, and that's all that was accomplished. im not saying he did anything wrong, he is a sensitive doctor.. but he had absolutely nothing to offer. that is frustrating. i want someone to offer me something! im desperate for it. so after we left the office, john pointed out how we need milk, so we were gonna go to walmart to do some grocery shopping. how exciting. this is my life: needing milk. john could sense my frustration and asked if i wanted to go to the mall, out to lunch, to a movie. i just said, shortly, "i dont know!" then he was getting frustrated too, he was just trying to offer something for us to do. i said "i dont feel like doing anything except going home and screaming my fucking head off."

we drove in silence for a few minutes. as we were nearing the road that leads to the mall, he asked if i was sure i didnt want to go, and i said how i wanted to try to find a christian book store, and there is one at the mall, so off we went. i can admit, it was nice. we looked at both the regular book store and the christian one, and i spent a three-digit amount on books about grieving and healing. there i go again, searching for something. anything. then we had lunch together. we made lighthearted fun of the couple at the booth next to us (she was loud and ditzy, think jessica simpson), and watched the most adorable family of SIX blonde children walking, more like bouncing like children do, past in the mall outside the window from where we were sitting. what a nice family. the older ones fumbled for coins to get candy out of a gumball machine, and then they shared with the younger ones. then they bounced along their way. i watched john watching them. it's so sad. he wants kids. i always have.. but now he does too.

after lunch, we headed to walmart to get the milk. we tried the new walmart across from the mall, and it is so much cleaner than the other one, and surprisingly, not crowded in the least. we always go our separate ways to look around for different things and then meet at the end to pick the food we need together. i very stupidly walked past the baby section. i didnt just happen to accidentally walk past it.. i went straight for it intentionally.

seriously.. why did i do that? the war inside my head started. it isn't fair! i want to shop in this section! my whole life, i have always stopped at the baby section. even when i was little "mommy! look! can we look in there, please!? look how cute this is!" i always searched for someone we knew, a friend, a cousin, someone from church, someone from her work, ANYONE that was having a baby so we could buy them a baby gift. i dont want to spend over a hundred dollars on fucking grief and loss books, i want to buy a bib that says "baby's first halloween" goddammit. so i sat on a bench to pout. a father walked by, and then his toddler. that is my pet peeve. why do parents let their children walk behind them? just when you're not watching, anyone could grab her (and now, it might be me!) and run the other way and you'd have no freakin clue because you're walking in front. pay attention. walk behind your children who made it safely out of the womb.

next, a woman walked by, without a child, but in her cart were diapers and a package of new sippy cups. this leads me to believe that she has an infant or a toddler. she's a mommy. so am i.. but there's no indication of it. this is why i like to wear kathlyn's pink paci on my shirt. if you saw me wearing it, you'd think that i have a baby girl. well, i DO have a baby girl, and you better not fucking forget it. i felt like telling everyone that passed by with baby items in their cart, that i have a baby, but she died. obviously i didnt, instead i felt myself getting heated and angry with john that he hadnt met me in the food section yet. i wanted to text him with something nasty, to hurry up, but he didnt deserve that. just like we didnt deserve for our daughter to die. so i resisted the urge. why should i yell at him.. all we have is time. i can sit and wait for him on a bench in walmart just past the baby section that i have no damn reason to shop in anymore. i have no where else to be.

i hate the universe.

i really did enjoy the message i heard on saturday night. it gave me some of the best answers and explanations i've ever heard about grief and pain and suffering, but im not writing about them just yet because there are too many people i want to talk about it in person with first. but in the bookstore, i found a book called "If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil", and I bought it in hopes that it will continue on about the message I'd heard. i flipped open the book to read it a little bit, and i came across the quote "faith that can't be shaken is the faith that has been shaken." wow.. that definitely describes me. and today, the angry beth makes me say "well.. i guess that means my faith is stronger yours!" as if to spite you. as if no one else is hurting like i am. i know that's not very nice.. but that's where my mind takes me on angry days. i just dont see what could shake someone's faith more than a healthy baby dying for absolutely no reason. a baby that would have belonged to parents who would have raised her so right.

some people might say that my faith will be so strong and i will be so much a better mother, a better nurse, a better person, with such a testimony of my faith to share with others... they will say that is the reason kathlyn died. i dont believe that at all. i believe that result might be something positive to come from this horrible situation, but that's not the reason it happened. God didnt cause this, he didn't plan this, i dont agree with "God has a plan" and i've been through great and tragic grief twice now and i wont change my mind on that. would you want to hear that your child had to be sacrificed and die so that you could be a better person? a friend of mine wrote about me in her blog, and she said "if you are going to tell a grieving woman that there was a reason for this, you better have the reason ready for explanation to her then." i have not quoted her verbatim but that was the idea. i believe that God had a vision for us and that vision went seriously awry.. He still has a vision for us, for us to love and to be happy and to seek Him, but because everything went awry, suffering exists. and i dont like it one bit.