Céline Dion - Goodbye's (The Saddest Word)

Mom...

My mother passed away suddenly this past week. Although she had been sick for many, many years with Multiple Sclerosis and that I knew her death was an eventuality, I was unprepared emotionally for the pain. I got the call Monday night at seven o'clock that she had pnuemonia and would likely die in one to two days, her doctors having decided years ago that no medical intervention would be taken in an such an event due to mom's poor quality of life. That said, still hoping for the best I boarded a Greyhound Tuesday afternoon after spending hours trying to arrange care for the girls so that Shane could come with me. When we couldn't find anyone to care for our girls, Shane stayed home and I went alone. Mom passed away at seven o'clock Tuesday evening, an hour before my bus got there. I was too late to say good-bye...However, the staff at the hospital had arranged with my family to keep mom there, in her bed in her private room until I arrived to see her and spend some time saying all the things I had hoped to say while she was still alive. It was surreal to say the least. When I walked in to my mother's hospital room, the lights were dimmed, there was soft music playing and my mother lay still, looking peaceful. The tears came fast and hard and I cried and held her hand, kissed her forehead and said my farewells....The same detatched feeling, the head not part of my body any longer came over me just as it had when Calvin died. I felt like I was outside myself as I left her room for the last time.

The next couple of days flew by in a flurry of activity, making funeral arrangements, dealing with the bank and the lawyers handling her estate. Mom's wishes were to be cremated and have her ashes scattered where her father's ashes were scattered on a pretty stretch of road in the coastal mountains of BC. Trying my best to honour her wishes and yet deal with my own feelings of "needing a place to go", the family and I came to a compromise that I would receive half of Mom's ashes which I will have buried with Calvin in the spring. I feel old yet young at the same time. At the age of thirty-nine I have lost both my parents and my infant son...nothing I ever expected to have experienced by this time in my life. I'm sad. I'm sad for my mother's suffering all these years, yet at the same time, I'm happy she's free. When I imagine her holding Calvin in Heaven it brings a sense of great peace to my heart, knowing that my son is receiving the love of his grandmother until we all meet again...

This song spoke to my heart and I wanted to share it with you...Goodbye's the Saddest Word.

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...