Calvin's Angel Day

I can't believe it's been two years already. Two years of pain and upheaval and learning to live a life without my son. His absence is a constant reminder of what could have been and not a day has passed that I haven't thought of him and missed him with every beat of my heart...I love you Calvin, the hardest thing I've ever done was letting you go...

Two...

Two years old...what a little beauty.

Meeting Calvin for the first time.

Calvin moments after birth.

Shane cuddling Georgia in the recovery room.

Georgia moments after her birth.

Has it really been two years? I can hardly believe it because it seems like it was only yesterday you both came into my life. It was a day filled with indescribable joy and yet today is bittersweet. Happy Birthday Calvin and Georgia and thank you for giving me one of the best days of my life...

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret....

Dear God,

I'm still unsure if you exist or if you're just a crutch scared people use to deal with mortality. I'm sure the idea of death doesn't appeal to most people, in fact I'm sure of it. Not only is there the fear of the unknown but also the fear of being forgotten, of the world carrying on without us. I've struggled with believing in You since Calvin died, something I'd never, ever thought I'd find myself saying. You see, I've ALWAYS believed in You and could always say when asked, "Yes, I believe in God." I wish I could still say those words with the same conviction I once had but I'm no longer the same person I once was though either...

To be honest, I don't think I've ever gotten over being pissed at you. It's been a long and lonely road these past seven years, and it all goes back to when Shane and I started trying to have our family. I remember the joy and excitement I felt when I first learned Shane and I were pregnant for the first time only to have that joy turn to fear and uncertainty when I started bleeding a week later. I begged You to save my baby. I sat in the back pew of St. Ann's Church sobbing and begging You to intervene on behalf of my unborn child and I miscarried anyway. It wasn't that moment or any other particular moment after that caused me to lose faith in You. I guess you could say that it was a culmination of hurt and pain over the six miscarriages and loss of my son that did it in the end. I tried to hold onto my faith, I really did and part of me still wants more than anything to believe in You. Many, many people have offered up "excuses" as to why my son had to die, why You didn't heal him when You could have. I don't believe it one bit when people tell me that "God doesn't give you more than you can handle". It's a crock. A cop-out. I've had way more than I have been able to handle and I am damaged emotionally because of the things I've been through in my pursuit of simple happiness. I don't think I will ever be "fixed" or can ever be made whole again. How could I be? Each child we lost took a piece of my heart with them when they went. Calvin's death ripped my soul wide open...It's been almost two years God, two years of doubting in You, in being angry at You and in living without my son. Some days I'm surprised I've survived. I bet You are too.

As Calvin's Angel Day approaches all I can do is hold out hope. Hope that by some miracle I will get a sign, a reassurance that my son lives with You in Heaven and that we will be together some day. Hope that I find a measure of peace in this coming week and a feeling of comfort in knowing that my son is remembered and loved. Hope that I have survived this nightmare for some divine reason...because if it were my way, it wouldn't have happened. If it were MY way, Calvin would be blowing out candles on his birthday cake with Georgia on Wednesday. If it were MY way, I would have no knowledge of this babylost community and all the pain and suffering that these other women I've come to know and love have been through. If it were MY way, I'd never be torn between believing and a sense of utter abandonment. Are You there God? If you are, please help me make it through the dreaded anticipation of next week, and tell my boy I love him.

Wordless Wednesday

In A Lonely Place

I guess I've been MIA. I've been busy, we've had company, I've been getting out with the girls and having family fun. All this joy and fun and yet I'm in a lonely place and I'm isolating. I'm rarely interacting with anyone lately with any substance and I think I've been doing it to avoid some of the feelings I've been having that I don't really want to deal with. I'm at a crossroads in my life right now and I don't know in which direction I'm headed and it's scary. The last two years feel like a dream. A drugged out crazy dream. Since stepping out from beneath the haze I've had a couple of harsh reality checks and I'm feeling like I'm just not happy. I need more in my life....but more what? I need more acknowledgement of Calvin and his loss for one. That's a huge one. And something I'm just beginning to realize now. It's been almost two years and I'm still in unbelievable pain. I'm still in disbelief. I'm still wondering why and I'm still angry that it happened to us. My son is dead. To me it's the most horrifying feeling in the world to be walking around with all this pain, afraid that one day you'll start screaming and never be able to stop. And yet I don't talk about it. I don't talk about him. About a month ago I got rip roaring drunk with some girls I went to highschool with and we ended up sharing a table with a bunch of guys at the bar. We talked with these guys for quite a long time around the table and when the subject of drugs came up I ended up in a frank discussion with two of them about my painkiller addiction. When I was asked why I had become addicted to painkillers, Calvin was brought up in the conversation. My friend was horrified that I would discuss my dead baby with strangers and she made it perfectly clear that she was embarassed and that the topic was "inappropriate". My liquid courage fortifying my defiance at her attempt to shut me up, I deliberately and in more detail described why my life was so fucked up that the only way I could cope was to numb the pain with pills. It made me angry. It also shamed me. I felt like I had pissed on her parade by bringing him up and for the first time since Calvin's death I experienced outright how unacceptable it was for me to discuss my dead child. Most people are so subtle about not wanting to discuss him. Their subtlety comes disguised in avoidance. Avoid us, avoid the topic, avoid serious discussions. I feel like I'm dancing through life in a minefield. Tip-toeing to avoid embarassing people, making them uncomfortable, making them sad, ruining their day, their high, their nite out. So I've been avoiding. Avoiding talking about him, avoiding making plans for my future, avoiding having deep conversations with anyone, avoiding facing my unhappiness. I'm lonely. I have such a shitload of stuff I need to dump, questions I need answered, decisions I need to make and yet I've gone MIA and avoided forming any sort of connection that would help me through some of this. Why? Because it hurts. Because life isn't always pretty and there aren't always happy endings. I know this. My head knows this. My heart is afraid of going there again. But in a way, it's been there all along. The wound of losing my son hasn't even begun to heal yet and it's been almost two years. It's something that people can't even begin to comprehend most of the time, thank God, but it makes it sooooo difficult to get any compassion. The world of people who have never experienced the loss of a child can't begin to understand the ripple effect, how in my case, Calvin's death has affected absolutely every area of my life. I'm not the same parent to my other children, not the same wife to my husband, not the same friend now that my life has been irrevocably changed. I'm different. I don't know if I even want the same things out of life anymore that I did before we lost Calvin. It sucks. I'm here and it's such a devastatingly lonely place to be. And I'm wondering if I will ever get out...

Everyone But Me

There seems to be a baby boom in the babylost community as of late. There is nothing more joyful to me than seeing the announcement that another member of our elite club is expecting again. To me it signifies hope. The return of joy and promise. I hold my breath waiting to hear that everything is going to work out for those mamas and their pregnancies, often weeping tears of joy when the babies arrive safe and happy into arms that have ached to hold a child for oh so long. However I must say that lately those announcements of joy have brought a tinge of angst and sadness with them. It feels like everyone is getting pregnant and experiencing that joy and hope and promise for tomorrow except me. I was a fool to tie my tubes knowing full well my son's health was in question. I was a fool to have faith that the doctors could fix his broken heart and that we would live happily ever after, a family of five. I'm desperately wishing for another child. Each and everyday Georgia and Lorelei grow more independent, less reliant on me. Georgia is almost not a baby anymore, her sturdy legs carrying her as fast as she can away from me at times. It stings. I want another child but am so unsure of how to proceed or whether I should even bother.

Reading Birni's latest post at All the Little Ponies brought up alot of old feelings for me. It reminded me of my own heartache and disappointment as Shane and I first tried to conceive a child and I repeatedly miscarried. It reminded me of how my pregnancy with Lorelei was spent in total fear and anxiety that I would get to the end with no live baby and how that fear almost became a reality when I suffered a partial placental abruption and needed an emergency c-section to get her out alive. It reminded me of the shock and extreme loss I felt losing a baby girl to Turner Syndrome after Lorelei and before I became pregnant with Calvin and Georgia. The fear so strong you can taste it's bitterness in your mouth and you wonder whether you are the only person on earth afraid to move, cough, sneeze while pregnant lest you start bleeding again. I remember feeling a huge sense of failure at learning that Calvin would be born with a severe heart defect and that he might also be mentally impaired when they suspected he had DiGeorge Syndrome. Why can't I make babies properly? Feelings like this were what drove me to tie my tubes on the delivery table after the births of our twins, the fear of failure, of having two pregnancies back to back with genetic problems. Fear that I was too old to produce another child without problems and yet here I am today yearning beyond belief for another child. I want another baby. It's all I can think about lately and I wonder if I'm being unrealistic and ungrateful for not being satisified with the two beautiful girls I do have. I remember telling someone that I didn't feel "done" having kids when I had my tubes tied, that there was no feeling that "this is it, I don't want anymore". It was all about the fear and not knowing if I could cope with another loss. So why, why oh why am I wanting another child so badly after all I've been through? Why does each and every announcement of a new pregnancy bring that twinge of sadness that it's not happening to me and what the hell am I gonna do to deal with this? Is there anyone else out there that has decided not to have any more children after their loss? Is there anyone else who regrets their decision to sterilize themselves out of fear? How do I cope with the possibility that maybe I will never have another child of my own? I'm feeling sad and desperately alone in this right now and I don't know how to find the answers I'm seeking....

Today I Wept

It's been so long since I've blogged that when I sat down and actually thought about it this morning I realized it was because I've been living again, enjoying my summer and seeing friends and loved ones more frequently. It's been a nice feeling and one that I've learned to enjoy and accept for what it is with little guilt or regret. I've been to visit Calvin more often in the past few months than ever before and the quiet time I share with my son at his grave has become important in my healing. I miss him alot. And while I think of Calvin everyday, often several times over the course of my day, it's not often that I speak of him anymore. Not in any depth anyways until today. As I was chatting with a friend on the phone today, the subject of God was raised, my friend professing to not believe. Having struggled with my own personal beliefs in God since losing Calvin, I posed the question "So where do you think we go when we die?"

Asking this question brought me back to my own desperate wish to believe in God and His Kingdom following Calvin's death. As I walked backwards down the road of my childhood and the values I was raised with I realized that as a child I had never questioned God's existence, it was something I accepted as part of my life. It wasn't until I started losing people I loved that I began to question first God's goodness, second His existence. As I started to explain to my friend that as a mother who has lost her child, my desperate wish to believe in Heaven simply so that I may one day see my beautiful boy again, the tears began to fall. The next thing I knew, I was sobbing. Because I do want to believe. Because I do miss Calvin more than I realize at times and that there are so few people that I truly speak indepth with about him. Because it had been so long since the last time I cried that the floodgates were opened and all the hurt and doubt and fear came pouring out into that sympathetic ear. After explaining my want to believe and the struggle I've had with my faith, I asked another question...."Where do you go when you truly need comfort?" My answer to that question was to God. To church. To a place where I can lay my deepest sorrows in the Hands of the Creator and trust that in time things will work themselves out. I recalled days of being overcome with sorrow where I would find myself in a pew at the church praying, asking God to please, please just make things better for me and I realized that while God has never made any direct promises to me, that in whatever situation I had found myself in seeking God's guidance, that things eventually always got better. Things HAVE been better in my life, better than they have been in almost two years yet the pain is still there just under the surface waiting to be reawakened again. Surprising but not. Given a mother's love for her child and it's infinite boundaries, I expect the pain to be as just as limitless. Perhaps all I needed to feel that rush of pain, that rush of sweet sorrow and longing for my son was to open my heart back up to believing. Perhaps the comfort I seek in God is disguised in pain, having to feel it, eat it, sleep it, breathe it before healing can begin. Perhaps this is yet another message reconnecting me to the sorrow, reaffirming my need for spiritual direction and guidance. Maybe this was God's Hand gently guiding me back....today I wept for my son and oddly it felt good.