these are the lovely bones

I've been sitting here for quite a few minutes trying to figure out where to start. I don't have some fancy, eye catching opening line to capture your attention. Not only am I lacking that one-liner, but I really don't know where to start in the general sense either. I have so much to say, and I don't know how to fade each of the breakthroughs I've been having into each other. It is six months of deep, deep grief all coming out at once. This is hard to fathom since I've written nearly every day since July 31st when my mom brought me my laptop in the hospital. How could there be so much I haven't addressed already? Well there is. How could it actually be worse than the raw truths I've already written about? Well it is. Everyone says I'm so honest and I take it as a compliment but it also means I don't censor even the ugliest of thoughts and words. If I feel it, I write it. At least that's what I, and you all, thought. There are things I've been afraid to admit maybe even to myself or my own deep subconscious at times. These are the infected wounds, these are the miles below rock bottom, these are what Alice Sebold called The Lovely Bones.

I read that book many years ago, so I knew going to the movie version with my mother last night, what I was getting myself into. A child dies. A daughter. She is murdered, brutally. Raped. And it was pre-meditated by the killer and she was the one he wanted: the evilest of acts. It's fiction, but it makes you shiver because these things really happen.

Why would she go to that movie, she is such a glutton for punishment?! But no. To me, the punishment would be picking up one of my favorite movies from the past, "Knocked Up", where a healthy baby girl is born at the end and all their problems are solved in an hour and 45 minutes. Happily ever after... that's too much of an obligation for me to have to experience a feel-good movie right now. I have no interest in that. My life in consumed with death and anguish.. I fit right into those lovely, bloody bones. Misery loves company.

They really portray grief so well. And when I got home, I picked the book back up and browsed a few pages and was reminded that she wrote grief honestly also. The author stated that the mother "braced under the weight of [the sound of her daughter's name], a weight she naively hoped might lighten someday, not knowing it would only go on to hurt in new and varied ways for the rest of her life." The girl who died is the narrator of the story, telling it from the afterlife. She frets over why she was so stupid: how could she have allowed herself to go off with her murderer even after he creeped her out at first? She allowed him to lull her into his clutches. Her friend in heaven says the thoughts are fruitless. Don't mull over them, it does no good. That she's dead and she has to accept it.

Kathlyn is dead.. Don't mull over the position I chose to sleep in on July 29. Don't mull over the normal NST. Don't mull over the absense of a medical reason after autopsy and inspection of the placenta. Don't, don't, don't. It is fruitless.

I'm still so sorry my baby. I would have done anything to save you.

Why does Hollywood insist on every portrait of a dead person being stuck in some sort of middle world and pergatory? Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come. They were so scared, lost, they wanted to go back, they wanted their families to be ok. The little girl in The Lovely Bones was so scared for so long, nearly the whole movie. She was stuck in the middle and she wanted to go back to make sure her family was ok. I don't want Kathlyn to be scared and I have prayed over this a million times in the last 24 hours. I hope she wasn't scared or suffering at absolutely any moment before or after her death. For one second, probably less than a second, when the girl was facing her killer during an extremely frightening and vivid scene (the one with the muddy, blood soaked bathtub, if you've seen it) I thought to myself, if I have no daughters on earth, I will never worry about some monster doing this to her. Kathlyn will never be manipulated and harmed in this way. Please God, let her be safe where she is. Just let her be safe. They zoomed in so often on the actress's crystal blue eyes and gorgeous red hair. My baby girl... I never saw your eyes but I know they look like that because of Daddy's and because the nurse told us. Your dark hair had a gorgeous red tint to it. Please be safe where you are. Please. I went straight to my church office after group today to talk about this. I said to my pastor my concerns for a frightening path before heaven, and I said "but I know better than that, right?" and he said yes. Of course I do. My faith tells me that there's no fear where she is. No fear, no pain, no tears, not in heaven nor leading to heaven. I know better, I do. I just needed the reminder.

There are so many things they said and did in the movie that need no explanation to how they made me feel inside, especially to those of you who read me all the time. It's just a few of those things that sneak inside of you and settle in between your heartbeats, things that you can't believe you didn't write yourself. They may not be verbatim, but here they are.

"We were never the kind of family that bad things happened to for no reason."

"She's dead, it means she's gone. Or does it? Maybe it means she's still here."


After receiving the news their daughter was dead, they cut to a scene of the parents lying in bed holding each other, and the mother is sobbing and saying "I can't believe it, what are we going to do, it's just never going to be ok ever again, never going to be alright." The father, stroking her hair, his face utterly devastated but trying to be strong "no, it's going to be ok, I'm going to take care of all of us, it's going to be alright, we'll figure it out somehow." How I cried... It was a perfect mirror reflection of the conversation John and I had this week and many nights before that.

The detective states, "Your wife isn't coping."

The wife/mother after being told she wasn't coping well or "living with it", defended herself and screamed "LIVING WITH IT?! WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M DOING! I'M LIVING WITH IT!"

I'm living with it. I promise you. The quality of life may be what's in question, but I am still alive and do not take that fact with a grain of salt as reason says I should have died 2 weeks ago. I was out of my mind with grief. How did my heart not just stop beating like my father's and my daughter's did? I am the link between those two generations and yet my heart is the only one that's left in the middle. In these moments of panic, the grief becomes physical and maybe that's why I feel like my heart is beating 3 times as hard as it's supposed during those times.. because two people so important to me don't have a physical heart muscle anymore. Their hearts are simply ash. It's a burden for one heart to feel like it's beating for three. I can't do it alone anymore.

This group therapy is so emotionally draining. It stirs up those painful thoughts and even once the thoughts have settled, hours later my body is still physically reacting. I felt calm and was involved in conversation with some other clients but I had to stop eating because my right hand was shaking as I held my lunch with it. It was noticable. I resisted the group therapy setting at first but these people are in tune to everything. They notice the shaking. They identify with it. They've been there, or they are there now. For different reasons but that's not the point. They've been there, they've been scared, they've been at the point where living wasn't the desirable option anymore. Ending their life, for them, was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That's where my unfortunate lowest common denominator comes in: I have this terrible, unthinkable, PERMANENT problem - my child has died. There is no way to change it, no way it will ever be ok, and that was the subject of my last note and it's still an issue for me. I can't let go of my baby. I can't allow myself to feel happy, I can't leave the role as "the grieving mother" behind because I'm being disloyal to my daughter if I do that.

This is what's holding me back. I have to realize that I can feel better and still honor my daughter all the same. I am letting go of the pain, not of the baby. I brought some of her things along with me so I could have a physical reminder of her memory and existance. You can start to feel better. It's ok to. Because she's RIGHT HERE.

It didn't work. I still have a hard time admitting that this therapy might be working, that I might be starting to feel better. I still have a lifelong road ahead of me, as her death won't ever "be ok", but there has to be a light, there has to be hope, there has to be moments where I can smile. But the first thing we do every day is identify our emotions so they don't sneak up on us, and I said I was feeling blank. Such as how I force myself to feel when I go to work so that I can do my job (and at that, I have been successful.) But then I called my own bluff. I don't feel blank at all. I'm full of emotions at every end of the spectrum. Pick one. I feel it. Deeply. To the core. Down to my lovely bones.

Even though the physical presence of a pink and white striped onesie, a pink fleece baby blanket (it IS cold in there..), and a pink giraffe pacifier didn't work the way I exactly wanted it to, it did serve a purpose as the other girls during break came up to me and said they wanted to see her things, and they fawned over the sweet tiny onesie and how soft the blanket is. They had already seen Kathlyn's photos on the days before, but I only have one set of photos ever to share. So if I can share her items and have people coo over those instead, I'll take it. They were so kind to do that. It was beneficial to me and to them.

After the tearful "morning check in" of emotions, the counselors returned from break and said they had changed the plans for the day and gave us handouts on grief. I think it's great that they can tailor the lessons based on what the clients need. I'm the only one with a recent loss, but they acknowledge that grief isn't only about death... it can be about the loss of a job, loss of your marriage or another family relationship, loss of dignity, loss of a child not to death but perhaps after divorce, loss of health or you can stretch it to even a temporary loss of self control.

It's helping. You have to measure in baby steps. Someone do it, call my bluff. Is this more than baby steps? Is this great strides? I originally thought this program was only a week long but I've been doing it a week and I see now why it is 3 weeks at minimum. I have barely scratched the surface. They don't just dump you out at 3 weeks, they help you establish your long term follow up. I was frustrated the first day because they offered a video on bipolar disorder... it turns out I was pulled out of group anyway to make my treatment plan and goals, but I was thinking, you've got to be kidding me, bipolar disorder, this is such a waste of my time. But after such resonating group lessons on Tuesday about dealing with crisis and haunting thoughts, the emotional group check in on Wednesday, and the tailored-for-me lesson today, the light at the end of the tunnel is widening. I can step off of the dangerous railroad tracks in the tunnel and walk on one side with the other grieving parents at kindermourn and on the opposite side with the other clients suffering this unrelenting depression. Behind me is my doctors, family, my church group, my friends, my husband, and the prospect of my next child. In front of me is Jesus Christ Himself. He goes first, always.

I want to say I dreamed of Kathlyn last night, but I can't be sure it was her. John and I were in the mall somewhere, and we were looking at a screen that was filming a baby about her size (what she would be now, 6 months). We have cameras at work that film children who are being monitored for seizures and it was that kind of camera (I had a patient with one not long ago.) The baby was sitting in what looked like a chair in front of an arcade game (no clue where that came from..) I adjusted the camera much like I did at work to try to get a better view of the baby, but it was only the back of the baby's head and she was wearing a gray winter hat. Strange.. I don't think gray is often the color of a hat for a little baby. We thought for sure this was Kathlyn and there was no way to get the camera to view the baby's face. We were disconnected from her. I had an awareness in the dream that she was dead, as I do in all my dreams of Kathlyn, I have never dreamed of her alive, even in the dreams where I've seen her, she was either already dead or about to die.. I think I prefer it that way. I don't want to dream that she's alive and then wake back up to the reality that she's not. I can't tell, in the dream, when the baby finally turned around to allow us to view her face, if we were next to her, moving her, or if we were watching it on film. We just can't quite clutch her, can't get our hands on her. But the chair was being pulled away, the baby was turning towards us and there was a view of her face, but my heart dropped because along with the gray hat, revealed was a navy blue shirt and denim overalls, so this baby looked like a boy. When the face was in view, the baby closed its eyes. I NEVER SAW MY BABY'S EYES. But the hair, and the shape of this baby's nose, mouth, and chin, that was my Kathlyn. This baby was alive and moving. Quiet, very still, very calm, but alive. I wanted to hold that baby, but I don't remember anything after that. Just one glimpse of my baby's lower face. It's like one of those missing children's fliers, with a possible age progression. My beautiful newborn fast forwarded to a chubby faced 6 month old. Was this a boy? I don't know. The girl in the movie had been wearing a winter hat. Not gray, but still, that's where the hat came from, and she was a girl. And on Sunday, my sweet shadow baby Kylie had on denim overalls. She did have a flowery shirt underneath, but that's where the overalls came from.

Don't tease me Kathlyn. Granddaddy put you up to it, didn't he, always teasing... If it's you, show me some pink.

The final activity today was a relaxation exercise. Everyone has done these at some point or another, where there is calming music and words to lure you to a restful place. I always thought they were kind of lame. When I tried a relaxation CD when I was pregnant preparing for labor, all I did was fall asleep. I feel asleep at the end of a yoga class I took in college too. That's relaxation, sure, but not really the ideal purpose of the exercise.

I was listening this time though. I wasn't falling asleep like usual, so I was listening to the words. We were asked to walk through a forest, to notice the trees, the breeze, the birds. We were supposed to picture ourselves alone, but with absolutely no surprise, I pictured Kathlyn on my hip. My 6 month old Kathlyn. I was holding her, caring for her, nurturing her, loving her, but more clearly, she was guiding me. She can't talk, but she was telling me things, pointing out the beauty around us that was being described by the exercise. Without words, she was saying, look at that Mommy, isn't it beautiful? The words of the exercise described a large tree. Sit down, relax, take off your shoes. I did it. I sat down in the grass under the tree, I sat Kathlyn down next to me and took off her shoes too. White baby sandals. You notice a brooke and you put your feet in, it's relaxing, cooling. I pictured myself with my feet in the water, and I stood Kathlyn's bare feet in the water too, between my knees, supporting her weight, allowing her to stand but holding her by the hands and arms. She's wobbly, but she does it. Mommy's big strong girl! A yellow basket is described to be coming down a waterfall. Put your worries in this basket. Let them go. There's nothing you can do about them right now. If you need to go back to them sometime, you can, but for now, let them go. Those were the words of the exercise. Kathlyn was on my left side now, not between my knees anymore. The basket was there instead. She was prodding me. Again, without words, she's just a baby, she can't talk yet, but she was saying, it's ok Mommy. You can feel better. I'm still right here next to you. Put those worries of dishonoring me away. I know you love me. I feel it. So I put them in the basket and together we pushed it away. I lifted her back close to me and we hugged. My baby. Just me and my baby.

Next I was told there was a pier. Walk down the pier and there are two chairs, because someone is coming. My chair and Kathlyn's chair? No. I walked down the pier with her on my hip where she belongs, sat in the chair, and sat her on my lap. She sits with me. I was told in the exercise that someone is coming in a boat, someone important to me, someone I love, perhaps a religious figure, a family member, a mentor, or a greater version of myself.

It was John.

Throw that person a rope and allow them to climb on the pier sit in the chair. Enjoy the time with this other person. So I gave Kathlyn to John and they embraced. Daddy's little girl. I can't stand this... I needed to be with them, so I sat on John's lap too. The three of us, my perfect little family together. I was told that this person had to leave again in the boat, but first, I was allowed one question. My conscious mind told me it would make sense if it was Kathlyn to leave in the boat, leaving John and I behind after our perfect reunion. We asked her "are you safe, baby? Are you ok where you are?" The response, as dictated outloud by the exercise, was "you already know the answer."

She's safe.

But I couldn't let her go. I just couldn't. So John got back in the boat. My forever outdoorsman, he was ok with that. He left. Again, just me and my baby.

I was told to walk back to the forest and the grass. The exercise was nearly over. I was asked to feel the blessings around me. I didn't know what to do. I pictured myself still with Kathlyn. Hugging her, holding her to my hip, taking every ounce of her as we walked through the heavenly forest. Thank you for showing me heaven, princess. Thank you for guiding me. I don't want to leave. Where do I put her? Alone in the grass? How could I do that? Give her to Jesus? To my dad? I don't know what to do. I tried to picture my dad or Jesus to hand her off into safety, but I couldn't. The exercise ended and I was still holding her to my hip. It's unfinished. I can't let her go. It's so accurately symbolic. I can't let her go.

The counselor asked another client if he felt relaxed by the exercise and he said a few things and that yes he was relaxed and that it was "hard to leave." He was smiling.

I can't leave her there. I can't just put her down and leave. I don't care if it's heaven. She's my baby. I can't leave her. She's in my heart, my soul. She's at my hip. Her lovely bones fit perfectly next to mine. She's my heaven.

I can't let her go.