Veritas Openhouse and Choir Recital

Poems from Grief

Recovery

I have been crushed 

   to pieces

and put back together

   piece by piece.

The glue is not dry yet.

Fragile.

Handle with care.

My reconstruction has new form:

   Spaces

that before did not exist.

The wind blows through them,

   a disconcerting chill.

But I will grow accustomed to it.

My spaces are triangular now.

   Strong.

Melancholy

The earth has been dormant and grey

and after

not too long

   it will heat up and dry out

   and the green will thirst for life

      and refreshment.

But just now

the bare branches

are suddenly bursting

   with bright green newness.

Barely surviving mysteries

   in planters

   are tall and colorful and fragrant.

My favorite blossoms never last long.

Red tulips open and open and open

   til petals fall

   --like a brief gasoline blaze.

Sunlight-yellow forsythia

   shone all over like Moses' burning bush

   yesterday

      but are now just leaves.

Hyacinth that defy frost and snow

   with their aroma,

   the perfume of restoration and beginnings

      droop after rain, withering.

Why can it not last?

   the time before biting insects

   and smothering humidity

   and blistering noontides?

The fresh green

   gives way to parched--

   to thorns

   and crisp, brown 

      formerly living leaves.

And why must I know this?

There was a time

that the red tulips bloomed 

and it was enough.

   Enough to be there.

The fading would come

   but it was not present.

      It did not invade the light,

      Spring's bright pallet,

With Melancholy.

You Fed Me

When I was 16 my Grandma passed away after a 12 year battle with breast cancer, which eventually metastasized to her bone marrow.  The refrigerator seemed to magically fill up with food (mostly hams it seemed at the time) from loving friends and neighbors, and I have known ever since that when there is nothing else you can do to make it better, you bring food.

But I didn't really get it.  From the perspective of the person doing the cooking, this is more or less it. I want to help somehow. I want to show you I love you and I care.  But when I had a miscarriage 11 weeks into my pregnancy, and you brought me food, I found out that it is so much more than this.  The day I found out I was having a miscarriage, TWO friends offered to bring supper that night.  Multiple others called in the next few days to see if we needed a meal.  And the provision for meal time with some really good food and amazing desserts went on for 3 weeks!

During a time that was so dark and sad and uncertain, I felt amazingly loved and supported and "carried."  You were the hands of God, hugging me, holding me up, providing for the details.  

During the week I have called "The Horrible In-between Place" when I knew I was having a miscarriage, but it had not completed yet, the most enjoyable thing I did was eat really yummy food and lots of chocolate desserts.  It was something to look forward to. Some small thing to enjoy.  That food tasted so good. During that week, there were some days I had physical pain, and some I did not.  On the days that nothing was happening, besides the agonizing worry of "Is this normal? Why is nothing happening?  Should I be concerned? Is there still hope? --Oh yeah, there's not," I felt vaguely guilty that others were working extra hard so they could cook for me when I probably could have cooked for myself.  But I sure didn't feel like cooking, as physically capable as I might have been.  I wanted to read a book, watch a movie, lay on the couch in the dark and just be there in my sadness.  

After the hard, painful part, I was weak and exhausted and it would have been physically impossible to cook.  As I started regaining a little energy (and probably did too much too soon, only to regret it in a weepy puddle on the floor later), I put it all into making a scrapbook of my brief pregnancy and the miscarriage.  I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to do that.  It isn't something everyone does, but I had a consuming desire to record everything, to make sure I would remember.  Because it seemed like I had woken up from a beautiful dream, like it maybe never really happened.  I needed to have something tangible to keep and look at sometimes.  Maybe even more, I needed to DO something.

That week, I couldn't have made a single decision.  For a few days I got to relive finding out I was pregnant (a bright page with the word "Positive!" across the top, fearing the impending nausea but finding peace about that, buying a package of brown and blue baby socks, craving a Greek House Lamb Burger during a break from nausea, our kids' reactions over-the-top with excitement, telling our families with fun poems in cards on Valentine's Day, taking my first "belly" photograph to have to starting point to compare to later (ok, actually, I was already looking a bit pregnant and wearing maternity clothes!).  The last page of being pregnant caught me off guard and made me sad.  I had been so happy...  Then the next page. That was hard. Nobody scrapbooks sad things.  I did that page all in grey and black, except for a drawing of Jesus with a baby, framed in blue.  A little hope.  

Anyways, I couldn't focus on other things. I couldn't tell my kids yes or no about something the following week, I couldn't figure out what day to make a plan with friends, I couldn't answer the easiest questions that involved making plans for daily life at all.  And venturing out into public, for church or to pick up a few groceries, was gut wrenching and exhausting.  I wasn't ready.

So I sure couldn't have planned and cooked meals.  I mean, ok, I probably could have. In fact, I felt like I was taking advantage to be scrapbooking and letting someone else cook me dinner.  But emotionally, I was inside myself.  I had been smushed into a little pile of guts, and wasn't ready to try getting up yet.  And what put me back together, piece by piece (and is still doing so) was grieving.  Every picture I put in that scrapbook, every tear I shed, every piece of maternity clothing I took out of my drawer, every word I wrote in my journal, every picture I took of the flowers given to me... put a piece of skin and bones back on the mushy pile, so that when I closed that scrapbook and it was finished, I was more or less whole again.  I cleaned up the scrap booking table, we had a funeral as a family and planted some tulips and hyacinths, and the next day we went for a little hike.  I went to church and out to eat.  The next day I got groceries.

I was glued back together, but the glue was still drying.  You were still bringing me food. I again felt guilty that I was up and around and functioning, but was still receiving the delicious fruit of your labors.  And then I realized that my energy level was still struggling to keep up. As I went back to home schooling, laundry, sweeping, dishes, it was really, really nice to ease back in my not needing to plan and cook dinner.  Unless you've been here, too, you will never know how much difference it made.

My Second Miscarriage

March 27, 2014

Two weeks ago I set out some things I planned to drop off at consignment when I took Addie to piano lessons.  Then we settled in to do some school work and I realized my pants feeling too tight and my back hurting was actually contractions.  I was 10 weeks 5 days pregnant.  My fear at first was that having had a very busy, tiring day the day before, that I had pushed myself too hard, and would have to be really careful not to end up on bed rest again this pregnancy.  It wasn't until later in the day that I started spotting, first brown, then pink, then red.  

The contractions lasted all day, but did slow down enough for me to hope it was something that would clear up. The brown and pink weren't indications of anything serious necessarily.  But when it became bright red, right before bedtime, I knew.  

Friday the doctor's office worked me in for an ultrasound.  Rich came home from work and the kids went to a friend's house.  On the ultrasound I could see a tiny little head and body, itty bitty little arms and legs.  By nearly 11 weeks, the baby should be moving around.  And a lot bigger. And showing a heartbeat.  Mine wasn't.  

I just needed to get out of there. It isn't safe to cry in a waiting room, or with strangers.  I said, "I'm never doing this again! Ever"  I said, "I can't remember a single time God has ever answered my prayers for healing for me or someone I love."  I said, "God, why did you bring me to a place of contentment with not having more children, then give me this baby, only to snatch it from me?"  I thought of how amazed I had been at starting to feel better in the last week and how I had announced the pregnancy at church last Sunday with so much joy... when at the time the baby had not been living.  Later I found words for this, borrowed from others.  It felt like a slap in the face.  I felt betrayed by my own body. It just felt royally unfair and cruel.

Rich and I got in the car and drove aimlessly, ending up on a dirt road in some rice fields, with lots of ducks feeding and flying overhead, a few old guys fishing in a canal.  It was cloudy and windy.  Dark. I cried. I saw Rich's eyes get teary, too.  After 2 hours we decided to eat lunch at a diner in Bald Knob, 10 miles from Searcy.  I sat, stunned, red eyed, as mostly older farming couples and a few younger families ate their barbeque and coleslaw, wondering if any of them were also hiding something raw and tragic behind their normal appearance. We saw a daddy walking across the parking lot with his little blond toddler who didn't want to hold hands. He finally scooped him up and put him on his shoulders.  Rich said, "You know, you just feel kind of jipped."  

We finally got our kids.  Addie cried.  Libby went inside herself.  Ben didn't know what to say.  They all hugged me over and over.  Addie woke up crying 3 times that night.  Libby had a stomach ache that night and the next, and it eased when she finally did cry.  Filing 10 pages of her journal hadn't quite been enough.  She needed a "friend hug" so Rich took them to see friends Sunday, and her friend hugs did her good.  Carol had been telling everyone "I'm gonna be a big sister."  Libby and Addie would tease me to hurry up with the baby every time they saw other people with their babies. I had registered for some natural rubber pacifiers on Amazon already. I wanted this baby to be sure and take one, to be able to be rocked to sleep by his sisters and daddy, not just me.  I couldn't help that from the very beginning I had thought of the baby as "him." I would realize I had done it again, and try to tell myself it might be a girl.  I even bought some little brown and blue socks earlier, and had looked at them on my dresser every day since, imagining those skinny little newborn legs that are always dwarfed by the tiniest socks, which come half way to their knees.  That smooth skin.  That tiny meld-into-you body.  Another chance to nurse a baby, use my cute cloth diapers, see each new milestone, a smile, a laugh, a giggle, sitting up, waving bye-bye, giving kisses.  

Although I usually need to talk about things, I did not want to talk.  The contractions had gotten stronger Friday, but tapered off in the evening.  Saturday I felt more crampy but not contractions.  I was awake for a few hours Saturday night with labor-like contractions and a lot of bleeding, but that tapered off, too.  I read, watched movies, waited for my body to do what it was not prepared for but had to do.  Sunday, crampy. Monday, not even crampy at all.

There is not vocabulary for this. “Having a miscarriage” means the baby has died.  What is it called when you have a dead baby inside you and you still feel vaguely pregnant?  Not really pregnant, but what?  What is it called when you are waiting to "pass the products of conception?"  Many women who have a miscarriage at this stage of gestation experience a process very much like the labor in childbirth.  But do you call it labor?  Delivery?  Mostly I heard "passed." "I passed some clots and tissue."  This is isn't good enough for me.  Many people don't know that "had a miscarriage" doesn't mean the process is over, so when they ask you are feeling, its complicated and awkward to explain that the process isn't over yet.

In this horrible in-between place without a name, I didn't want to go out in public at all, not even on the days I felt ok. I didn't want to do real life at all. I wanted to get lost in a book and a movie until the moment of finality came, and then I could fully grieve. But it went on so long, I had to live real life a little. And a little was quite enough.  I was more afraid to go to church and to our homeschool coop, places with lots of friendly acquaintances and friends, because I didn't think I could handle the mass expression of sympathy.  Wednesday my kids had a festival at our coop, so I went for a while. It wasn't as hard as I imagined, but it did wear me out.  I guess keeping such deep, powerful emotions at bay for the sake of others and for the sake of it being so private is exhausting.  Even for a person who is normally a pretty open book, I felt incredibly private about it.

If I couldn't be pregnant and have a baby, at least I could have this delivery of sorts.  I know not all women who miscarry feel this way.  But I wanted to do the labor part.  I needed it. I needed the physical pain, the focus, the finality.  And I wanted to see and hold my baby, even if it was not like the baby I would have held and infinitely smaller.

Wednesday night I started feeling crampy like the worst periods I used to have as a teenager.  When I had those cramps a few times I curled up in a fetal position and writhed and cried.  This started like that.  I took some tylenol, and I laid down and just breathed.  Having 4 births, I now knew how to breath to relax and handle pain.  Soon contractions combined with the cramps.  In labor, you get a break between contractions.  In this, I didn't.  I laid on the couch and breathed and felt like I'd be ok if I didn't have to move. But then I could tell I was bleeding a lot, not steadily but in gushes.  So I went to the bathroom. But I couldn't stay there either. I went to bed and breathed myself into a sort of trance, but would have to go to the bathroom when I felt the blood gush.  In the bathroom I started shivering uncontrollably (shock?), so I got in the shower and sat on the shower floor until the hot water ran out, watching blood run down the drain.

When the water got cold I dried off and went back to the toilet where suddenly I "passed" some blood clots and what was probably the placenta.  The contractions tapered off, but I got light headed and nauseated and laid on the bathroom floor for a while.  During childbirth I had wanted Rich next to me; in fact I had panicked if he walked away at all.  During this labor, I wanted to mostly be alone, as long as Rich peeked in to check on me once in a while.  He felt helpless, not knowing what he should do or what I needed.  When I passed the placenta, Rich came in, and we looked through everything for the sack with the baby.  I had read many accounts online and heard friends tell of finding theirs. Of a tiny, perfectly formed baby, with fingers and toes.  I desperately wanted to do that.  And we didn't. We couldn't find him (or her).  

That felt like a double loss.  A huge blow.  It was my very small consolation to have planned on it.   And it didn't happen.  I kept thinking the labor might pick up again, there might be more.  But I got hungry and then drowsy, and went to bed. And really, I couldn’t imagine doing that all over again.

In the morning, I cried and cried. I felt weak and shaky, and after eating, I went back to bed and slept like a rock til noon.  I can't believe how exhausted I was.  Once I had rested for a few days, I needed to tell my story. Like women always tell and retell their birth stories.  Only this one was gory, it was painful, and it didn't have a happy ending.  Who would want to hear it?  But I have amazing friends who did want to hear it, and my husband let me tell it to him, although he was more or less there for most of it.

I thought with this closure I would experience a big release, and just cry for days.  But after the first day, I didn't do that.  That was a week ago.  It is up and down.  I laugh at my kids and go outside with Rich, and feel genuinely happy.  But other times I feel just generally blah and bummed.  And then sometimes something unexpected triggers a flow of tears, which always feels so healing.  I have been hunting Rich down to get a hug and another hug.  I have asked my kids to lay on the couch with me.  I have needed touch like NEVER before.  

I have been blessed to tell and retell how I'm feeling to different friends, either close friends who know how to listen or other women who have been there too and have words for things I am sometimes at a loss for.  It has put salve on the wound to hear "I was so thrilled for you. I’m so sorry" and "I'm just heartsick for you" and "I'm still thinking about you."  Friends have jumped in to bring meals, which though such a practical help, has also been an emotional support.  My family and friends have bent over backwards to accommodate whatever I need right now.  

Even people I don't know have expressed their pain on my behalf.  Which is touching, but when done in person has been hard for me. I don't know why.  I have so appreciated the messages here on facebook, the emails, the texts.  Phone calls and talking in person with people I don't have a previous relationship with has been a little hard.  I'm sure not everyone is like me in this, and I appreciate the love anyways.  

I started a scrapbook on Saturday about the pregnancy and miscarriage.  This morning I got to the last page in which I was still pregnant.  I was more sad today than I have been this week.  And I couldn't figure out how to do the next page.  I don't normally scrapbook sad things.  All the paper is too cheerful. Stickers of bubble letters don’t suit. I didn't expect this challenge.  But its good because I need to cry.  Anything that makes me cry right now is welcomed.

This afternoon I got ready to take Addie to piano lessons. I picked up the things I was going to take to consignment two weeks ago, dropped Addie off, went to face the world of groceries and errands that has gone on like usual without me and is now so hard to reenter.  Going in Walmart Monday night made me feel like I was going to have a panic attack or a sobbing breakdown on the floor in the middle of the produce section.  Nobody is bending over backwards to let me grieve there. No body knows my guts have been ripped out and I am just barely holding them in. Nobody knows that I am wearing the only shirt I have that still fits without making me look pregnant, over my maternity pants that no longer fit properly at all. Today I went to the health food store look for folic acid and some hormone support supplements.  Because I had a miscarriage.  I overheard the clerk talking to a woman about taking Red Raspberry for her pregnancy.  I didn't cry.  I bought my favorite health drink to indulge in.  I got some groceries, which seemed grossly casual and inappropriate.  I dropped those things off at the consignment store, those things whose destination was deterred by two weeks. Is that all?  These two weeks have lasted an eternity.  

While I was there I decided to try to find some clothes that fit.  I bought two pairs of jeans, larger than my normal size, but not maternity sizes at least.  And a few shirts.  After 4 kids, I started looking pregnant pretty quick this time. I like how I look pregnant. But not when I'm not pregnant anymore.  I want to look in the mirror and be roughly satisfied with how I look, not have a figure that lies to me about reality.  I'm taking the maternity jeans out of my drawer.  And even though these jeans fit, I don't quite fit them. I will have to feel a little awkward in them for a while as I get used to regular clothes again.  But sometime soon I hope they will feel normal.