Two Years Ago Today

We learned of Calvin's heart defect in utero. I've been feeling weepy all day at the remembering. Revisiting the fear and devastation as we sat down with the pediatric cardiologist, revisiting the anger as we sat down with the geneticist who offered to terminate my pregnancy with risk to Georgia's life also. Revisiting the hope we had for our precious son. It's been a rollercoaster of a day. Sometimes I can't believe my life has carried on this long since losing him but then there are days like today where it all feels like yesterday. How I miss him. I love you Calvin.

What's Been Going On Here

Well it's been a terribly long time since I last blogged, truthfully my mind has been elsewhere these past couple of months. Getting off painkillers has been rewarding but has also come with a downside. While I am clearheaded now and able to enjoy my days with the girls with no memory gaps or feeling unmotivated, the lack of fog made some of my memories hard to deal with. The emotions involved in Calvin's death and the chaos that came in it's wake are still very real, very strong and on some days very hard to cope with. It's amazing to me that over eighteen months later I could still feel the sadness as strongly as the day he took his last breath in my arms. It's been overwhelming at times, these rushes of sadness that rear their heads when I'm least expecting it. I've gone to the cemetery more in the last two months than I have since my son died. It's not a bad thing though, I find I'm communicating with Calvin about my feelings alot more than I was and that talking to him is a good release. I've also been finding small comfort in cleaning his headstone, making sure his flowers are still living and just spending quiet time alone with my son. I need it. I find I'm needing time with just him, to talk, to grieve, to assuage my guilt.

We are also struggling financially right now and it's been a tough few months. Shane's business hasn't been going well since we lost Calvin and since the recession hit. We've had to cut back our lifestyle and eliminate alot of luxuries, even some necessities to make ends meet lately. It sucks. I've been feeling pretty stressed about money, one burden I haven't had to worry about for a long time now and I dislike how I feel when I'm constantly worrying about bills. There has also been added pressure from family to participate in things we can't really afford which has added to the stress. It's hard to say no when you're being asked to do something especially when help is offered but you know they don't see the entire picture. Yes, we may not spend any money on hotels but there is the expense of food, parking, gas, lost wages etc. that we need to look at as well. Unfortunately Shane lost out on some work at a resort because we felt pressured by family to take a trip. Learning to be assertive and not feel like I'm being a party-pooper if I say no is going to be tough, but we are now in a no choice position. I hate feeling this way but I know if we don't do everything we can to ease ourselves through these tough times it's going to be harder in the longrun for our family.

This past week we also had some friends come in from out of town to visit which was a welcome break from my self pity party. They pitched a tent in the backyard, bought their own food and drink and basically "camped" at our house for a week. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much, and it was good to get out of myself again. And while I was truly sorry to see our friends pack up and leave, at the same time it was nice to get back into our routine with the girls after they were gone. So far the weather has been completely crappy and we haven't been able to enjoy alot of our summer yet, in fact it's rained out here for eight weeks straight give or take a few days here and there. The weather alone I'm sure has contributed to my feeling of melancholy, who needs to wear a sweater in July? Lol....Anyhow, I'm holding out hope for some sun and being able to do all the free wonderful things you can do in the summer like going to the beach with the kids. Taking them to the park and sitting in the backyard watching them play in the sprinkler. The girls are growing so fast right now, changing daily before my very eyes and it's these precious days with them that I want to make memories, despite the fact that we are struggling financially right now.

Overall, while some things are better, coping with a new reality has been my biggest hurdle lately. Trying to stay positive and hopeful that things will get better for our family is my main focus right now and although I've been very much out of touch with some of you, I do think about you and your babies and want you all to know you hold a special place in my heart. Always.

Remembering Dad...

I'm missing my Dad today. Today, Father's Day of all days....it might seem like an odd comment but my Dad wasn't the best person in the world. In fact we spent the better part of my adult life estranged from one another until the last two years of his life when we had reconciled. It's a bittersweet day for sure, not only for me missing my dad, but for our family also missing Calvin. Today I choose to remember some of the sweeter moments in my life with both my father and my son and to picture them together, celebrating fatherhood in Heaven.

I still remember the all consuming love I had for my dad as a child. As a little girl who only got to see her dad on weekends, my time with my father was precious and much looked forward to. I still remember Saturday mornings spent anxiously waiting by the window for my dad's black sedan to pull up, excited to find out what we would be doing for our day together. More often than not, we spent the day with my father's Dad, my grandpa, in Ridgetown On, where he had retired from the funeral business. My grandpa was a good man, a hardworking man respected very much in his hometown and his house was a safe haven for my dad to bring me on his visitations. Many days were spent outside my grandfather's house playing on the swingset, chasing butterflies and catching bugs and were usually finished off with a pizza and pop before the trip home. As a child, I understood that my father had a drinking problem but it never bothered me. My dad was extremely kind and loving and throughout my childhood, I remember him spanking me only once for misbehaving. He often told me that he didn't want to wreck his one day with me by having to dicipline me and thus I got away with much more than I ever should have. I knew I had my father wrapped around my finger, and remember with fondness how he used to ask me "Who'd ya get your brown eyes from Margie???" to which I always replied "You Daddy". It used to make him smile in delight that I looked so much like him with my big brown eyes. I adored him. I truly did and wished with all my heart that he and my mother would reconcile some day and that we would live together as a family happily ever after. It never happened suffice to say and in my teenage years my father's alcohol addiction brought about abuse and mental health issues that jaded my feelings towards the smart man who had given me life. It saddens me to think of some of our past exchanges and the hurt feelings that came round after but I also feel a sense of peace that my father and I had mended the proverbial fence before he passed away in 2002.

I remember so well one of the last conversations I had with my father over the phone. He was living back in Ontario and I was newly married and about to be separated from my first husband. Dad had called to tell me his number would be out of service, that I wouldn't be able to reach him there for awhile. He was deliberately vague with me about what was happening so I didn't press him for details. He gave me a new number and extension to call him at and amused, I imagined he was going to jail for awhile, that something he had done had landed him in hot water yet again. We talked once or twice after that and then we lost touch. The number and extension he had given me were no longer working and I assumed he would be in touch when the time was right for him. At the beginning of February 2002, I received a phonecall from a woman who didn't identify herself and who's accent was very thickly Asian. I could barely understand what she was calling to tell me about, but one thing she said stands out. She told me my dad was very sick. Not understanding her and not knowing what was going on, I simply thanked her for telling me and hung up the phone. He died later that month from lung cancer. When the funeral director who had apprenticed under my grandfather called to notify me of my father's death, he told me that my dad wanted to spare me the agony of knowing he was so ill and so far away. He chose to keep his illness to himself and because of that, died alone. My heart broke. It broke for my dad, it broke for me, it broke because his life had ended so sadly. When I flew out that July to bury his ashes, I was the only attendee at the funeral. It was a huge statement to me about the life he had lived, the people he had mistreated over the years and it brought me back to the days where he was a kind and doting father and I wept. So many things can go wrong in life, just as I imagined I would never see the day where I lost either of my parents, I also never imagined that in later years I would lose my only son.

When my children were born, part of the agony in my heart was the fact that with my mother in the terminal stages of MS and my father in Heaven, that my children would never know their grandparents. When Calvin died, I couldn't imagine who would be taking care of him in Heaven because I remembered the Father who had let me down, who had broken my trust. I forgot about the loving Dad who would sit with his child on his lap for hours telling stories, the dad who smelled of cigarettes and beer and some wonderful aftershave. Today when I think of Calvin, I imagine him with that Dad, the Dad who loved his child more than anything in the world and it warms my heart. I know God is keeping them both safe in His embrace and it brings me a measure of comfort. For those missing their Dads today and their children too...warm hugs, a peaceful heart and happy memories be with you.

Pray

Baby Mira's treatment at Children's Hospital isn't working. Her parents have brought her home and are hoping to find a clinic somewhere in the world that can help their precious daughter. Please, if any of you know of a good clinic that specializes in medulla blastoma or brain cancer, message me so that I can forward the information to Ragne. And please, please pray for baby Mira....she needs a miracle.

Geoff

I haven't posted in awhile. My Mother's Day and birthday were the focus of my dread last week, willing them both to cheerfully go away if I could. Then they both happened, despite my best intentions for them not to come and the day surprisingly was uneventful and peaceful....for the most part. I say for the most part because it was not my dreaded thirty-nineth birthday or Mother's Day that actually put a heaviness in my heart that day, it was my husband's friend Geoff. Geoff committed suicide on my birthday. On Mother's Day, at the age of thirty. It was a sobering end to a night spent in the warm embrace of family, in good company. Having had a spur of the moment family dinner at my inlaws house, we had gotten home late and I had just retired to the bedroom computer to "check my FB" to view my birthday wishes and there it was....in the form of a status update..."RIP Geoff".

WTF? I was stunned. Immediately saddened and then angry that my husband's friend's death was a status update on FB. I wondered where the etiquette of phone calls had disappeared to, why my husband had to find out that a friend he knew since childhood had died via a FB update. Disturbing and sad. I felt a deep sense of sorrow for Geoff's mother who was spending her Mother's Day facing the news that her son had taken his own life. I was angry at his disregard for the timing of his decision. Committing suicide is a hard enough fate to accept, but learning that it was done on the day that celebrated motherhood was especially disquieting for me. Not wanting to hurt Shane with an angry outburst, I kept my feelings under wraps until the next day when many of us got together at a local pub for beer, hockey and quiet talk about Geoff's loss. Overhearing a comment about how we should "All give his mother some space....", I opened my mouth and disagreed. As a mother who also lost her son, the last thing I wanted at the time of Calvin's loss was silence. I wanted people to tell me that they were sorry. I wanted the comforting arms of loved ones and people who genuinely cared. I couldn't bear the thought that Geoff's mother would be facing his loss in solitude. "Call her," I said..."Let her know how much he meant to you...". It was what I wanted, and I'm sure she needed to hear words like that just as badly as I did at the time. I wanted to jump on my soapbox and educate my husband's friends about loss. I wanted to let them know how painful it is for a mother to lose her child, how no other pain in the universe comes close. I resisted the urge to lecture and instead quietly pleaded with a few to let Geoff's mother know he was loved. It saddens me to think he didn't know how much...

Remembering Him

With Mother's Day looming tomorrow, I've been trying to keep myself occupied so that I didn't have to feel that empty longing in my heart for Calvin. I've tried to ignore the little nagging thoughts in my head that were telling me to go to his grave and remember him. Not that I don't remember him, I think about him every single day but the thoughts in my head were telling me I needed to focus, to think about my son, to make time for him and only him in my day today. As awful as this may sound, I don't think I went to the cemetery last year. Calvin's marker hadn't been installed yet and I don't think I could bear the thought of going to my child's grave on a day that celebrated motherhood. I'm pretty sure it ate me up inside...it always does when I think I should be going to see him and then I avoid it because I feel like a spectacle crying at his grave. Today Shane and I went together, just the two of us in the cold evening air to stand by our son's resting place. I felt uncomfortable. I felt it because I wanted to cry but didn't want to bring Shane down, because I didn't want to spoil our evening out by crying just before we went home. But my heart hurts. Not that all consuming hurt from a year ago, but kind of a hollow echo in my soul, an emptiness that I'm always aware of but learning to live with. Calvin has become a fleeting moment in my day instead of the centre of it, the focus of how I'm feeling and I feel guilty I suppose. Guilty that my life carries on without him. Guilty that I don't weep all the time anymore for him, guilty that some days I push thoughts of him away because I don't want to feel the pain. Part of me feels that a "good" mother would visit her son's grave every day, make sure there are fresh flowers and little decorations to tell the world how much he was loved. Part of me feels I should have an area in my house, a shrine, dedicated to his memory, a reminder of the pain and emptiness we live with. Part of me feels guilty for wanting to live again, to feel happy and experience joy. There is great guilt in healing.

I know that I have come to a fork in the road, a path that branches off in a new direction. I could easily continue along this path of darkness that I have walked for the last eighteen months but some spark inside me is fighting to stay alive. I no longer need to be medicated. I have conquered my addiction to painkillers and am finally drug free after months of weaning slowly off the pills. I have fought my way through withdrawl, through insomnia and the feeling of having the creepy crawlies all the time. I have managed to beat back the blanket of numb that has cloaked me since my son died and I am learning to live with the awareness that Calvin is missing from our lives. I am pursuing happiness again, actively making conscious decisions about where I want to go from here. I don't want to live under this dark cloud anymore. I don't want to spend my days inside, drugged out of my mind and letting life pass me by. I'm craving social interaction again, days out with friends, doing things with my girls, making memories with them instead of being focused on my six days with Calvin. I've come to realize that this time with my daughters I will never get back. I will never have the chance again to redo the things I should have done with them while I mourned the loss of my baby boy. I can't go back to last summer and take my girls to the beach. Mindful of these things, I stepped outside my comfort zone yesterday and bought a swimsuit even though I detest the extra weight I've put on since detoxing. Reminding myself that it's not about me all the time has become my latest mantra, something I say to myself to stay motivated for the sake of my daughters, to step outside my cocoon of comfort. So why am I so sad? Why is it that I'm feeling guilt over feeling better? Maybe part of me feels like it's a betrayal to Calvin, that denying him to be the focus of my life will make him disappear. Maybe I'm afraid of reaching that point where I feel nothing when I say his name, no sadness, no longing for the sweet baby boy who I will never hold again. Maybe I'm afraid of losing him all over again.

In any case, the dreaded Mother's Day is upon us again and despite my best intentions, I have to face the day without him. I am glad to have had my son, even if he lived only six days, even if Mother's Day fills me with melancholy for the life I wish we had had. Some whisper tells me that somewhere he is proud I loved him enough to let him go. And that it makes no difference that I am learning to live again. Somewhere I imagine he smiles....

I love you Calvin.

Mother's Day...

Can fuckoff this year, it's also my thirty-nineth birthday and it can fuckoff too. No, I'm not feeling particularly down, I'm just not into celebrating either occassion. Woo-Hoo, I'm a Mother to a dead child and I'm on the way to forty...Let's kill two miserable occassions on the same day shall we???

I hate being old. And I hate living and celebrating parenting with a child in Heaven. Enough said.