It’s almost amazing to me, that after almost six years, I can still vividly imagine those moments back in March of 2004 when my world turned on it’s ear and the new “me” was born. You would think, wrongly perhaps, that such things would dull and fade with time.  That new experiences, new joys, new heartaches and memories aplenty would blunt the sharp agony that is losing a child.

You would be wrong, of course.

Maybe it’s different, because I wasn’t blogging back then.  I was just keeping a handwritten journal.  But there is no community attached to a handwritten journal.  And somehow, not having the acknowledgment, makes it almost feel like it happened even longer ago than it did.  Maybe because it feels like I have been blogging for forever and a day.  And I am sometimes left to wonder if the people who know me now, who didn’t know me then, know just what it was like.  If they can appreciate how that moment changed me.  If they understand that I feel, every single day, just what I lost.

I was reading, just today, about another blogger who just had the bottom fall out from underneath her.  She said:

If I started panicking, it was more of a numb kind, not like the adrenaline that pumps through your body as you narrowly avoid a car accident.  It was just, well, like watching yourself in a dream.

And, oh my stars, reading that brought it all back.  Because that is EXACTLY what it feels like.  Over the years, you become used to the sensation of panic being one of a heart racing (and mine was, but it was almost as though I couldn’t feel that), a hysterical giggle rising in your throat, a call to action.  And shocking loss like this, well, it causes you to react so very differently.  Because instead of speeding up, everything slows down.  You become aware of yourself in a third-person sort of way, as if you were floating over your body, looking down from the ceiling.  You hear your own voice and don’t recognize it.  Your mind, not wanting to comprehend what is happening, starts to drift backwards.  It’s surreal.  It’s agony.

Unlike Eve, I had a feeling as soon as they had a hard time finding the heartbeat.  While I didn’t technically have a grasp on just what it was I truly feared, I had that fear.  I had that fear all the way to the hospital, actually, as the niggling voice asked ever so quietly, “When did you last feel him move?”  Even so, fear and suspicion doesn’t cover the shock.  And the numbness.  And the agony that settles into your bones.

That agony never really leaves you.  Even six years later, I can still recall it and feel it and burn with it at a moment’s notice.

Because once the bottom falls out, it never really rights itself again.  You just define a “new normal”.  And you move forward the best you.

Yesterday was just a sad, sad day.  My mind was almost constantly on dear Maddie and her parents and aching for the loss.  Why did this hit me so hard?  I mean, there’s the obvious reason: a young girl dies tragically leaving her parents shattered.  But I also didn’t know Maddie or the Spohr’s or anyone related to them.  I just knew OF them.  And yet, I felt like a part of my heart had been torn from my body.  Every time I saw a picture of that precious little girl, my heart would re-fracture and the tears would start.

Maybe it’s because the emotions are all too familiar.  It is all too easy for me to imagine what the Spohr’s felt and are feeling.  While I absolultely do not fathom the magnitude of their loss, I have had that moment where the floor falls away, the room spins and the earth tilts off it’s axis, leaving you wondering which end is up and how the world will ever make sense ever again.  That fear that all parents have, the flash of “what if” that we experience during close calls… I have an inkling of what it feels like when all the bad stuff comes true.  The sick feeling goes on and intensifies and consumes your soul.  You either cry at the drop of a hat or cannot even muster the coherence to cry, depending on the day, the hour, the moment, the instant.

The nights are the worst.  You begin to dread going to bed.  Especially when your husband is blessed to be able to fall asleep relatively easily and deeply, leaving you laying awake, alone with the night.  That is when the pace of the day is behind you and your thoughts take over.  That is when there is nothing to distract you but the sound and feeling of your heart breaking all over again.  No one is there to hug you, listen to you, tell you it will all be all right.  Night is when the deepness and the dark and the sorrow seem to have no end.  Night is when you wonder if you will ever be whole again.

This goes on.  And on and on and on.  Days melt into weeks melt into months melt into years.  And for the rest of your life, you will always know what it feels like to have the floor fall out beneath you.  You are a member of that club, the club that NO one ever wants to join.  That no one ever should have to join.  So when you read or hear about stories that have any sort of common thread with your own, you heart fractures along those same, familiar lines yet again.

I don’t know exactly how the Spohr’s are feeling.  But I have an idea.

Remember when I used to usher in the new week by spewing forth vitrol regarding everything in the world that was pissing me off?  Yeah, I’m doing that again this week.  Cuz I realized yesterday that I have a lot of Hate.  And it’s gotta be shared with the internet.

• The Children’s Place. We’ve spent a lot of money at this store.  Shoot, most of Harry’s wardrobe is made up of clothes from Children’s Place.  Cute clothes at reasonable prices.  Their sales were discount GOLD, people.  We loved it so much we got a store charge card.  We don’t do that, like, ANYWHERE.  We don’t do credit cards.  So to get one for Children’s Place was a testament to how much we liked shopping there.  I was looking forward to getting to get some of their utterly adorable girly clothes that had taunted me for years.  This brings me to last week when for whatever stupid reason, they canceled our credit account.  Why?  We made our payments on time.  We hadn’t paid much debt down but there wasn’t that much on there to begin with so big deal, right?  We paid every month.  We pumped a lot of money in.  And they cancelled our account.  The only reason given?  They checked our credit score and didn’t like it.  I don’t like it either, don’t get me wrong.  But shouldn’t our account history with the company take precedence?  Should it matter WHAT our credit score is as long as we’re paying our bills?  WTF, yo??  Let it be known this card was handled by Shittybank er Citibank. It’s truly a shame because I enjoyed shopping there.  But apparently in this trying economy OUR MONEY isn’t good enough.  They want AAA+ credit score customers only.  Whatever.  I’ll get my kids clothes elsewhere.
• Old Navy.  SERIOUSLY.  What is WITH these stores??  Do they not want to keep customers?  Is the pressure of ending up like Circuit City too much for them and they freakin’ fall apart?   We stopped in there yesterday for shits and giggles and browsed their sales.  They had a lot of cute stuff that was awesomely discounted.  I saw some toddler pajamas that were marked down from $14.50 to $4.50.  SCORE!  I showed Kile a pair (that had a discount sticker on them) and offered to use my PayPal funds to buy them.  He didn’t seem enthused so I put them back.  I did some more shopping and Kile apparently went back to look at the pajamas again.  He picked a pair that had monkeys on them (because Liam IS a monkey) but (gasp) it didn’t have a sticker on it.  Shouldn’t matter.  EVERY other pair had a sticker.  Shoot, Kile even saw another package of monkey jammies that had a sticker on them.  He figured the sticker fell off this one and tossed it in the cart.  Meanwhile, I found some totally cute long sleeved shirts that were originally $15 and were marked down to $4.  I need long sleeved shirts like you wouldn’t believe so I grabed two.  On was a purple stripe and another was a turquoise.  Pretty! We went to check out and the jammies rung up as being $10.  There was much hubub as we tried to explain ourselves and the cashier called back to a manager who said, “Nope, monkey jammies aren’t clearanced.  They’re $10.”  Well forget it!  Cripes!  We paid for the shirts and left.  I get home and I realize that one shirt was $9 instead of $4.  Turns out?  It was marked on it’s sticker as $9 but in the hubub over the stupid pajamas I missed it.  Now I’m cheesed off and am tempted to just return both the shirts and give Old Navy the bird.  How hard is it to SEPARATE clearance items?  HOW?  Can someone tell me?  Is it harder than moving the clearance stuff to ONE table and the regular or just plain sale stuff to another?  Surely it must be because otherwise they would have done that, right? RIGHT?
• People who run over Girl Scounts.
• That I was unable to get the yarn I really really really wanted this morning cuz I’m ze broke.
• That it took me FIVE tries to cast on the waistband of the pair of shorties I started last night.  I swear to GOD, I lost the ability to count somewhere there for a minute and I was about ready to toss the whole thing out the window.
• When dear friends lose their pregnancies.  That just sucks all around.
• When dear friends are losing their parents.  That sucks all around too.
• Rush Limbaugh.

That is all.  For now.

I’ve made no secret that I started this blog four years ago during one of the saddest periods I’ve experienced in my life so far.  2004 became something of a dark tunnel to me and I was having a hard time finding a way out.  Blogging became that way out and I’m forever grateful for that.

I went through the grief riggamarole again in August of 2005 when I miscarried.  And it stung, to be sure.  In some ways, the sting was a lot more bitter than that of losing Jackson.  But I also had something that I didn’t have in March of 2004.  I had my blog.  (And a whole lot of alcohol, but let’s just stick with the blog, mmkay?)  And I had a lot of lovely comments from lovely people expressing their sadness over my loss.  And I had an outlet that I could pour my hurt and frustration and despair into.  I’d be hestitant to say that having the blog made that whole experience “better”, but on the other hand, I would hate to have experienced it without the blog.  I think it softened the blow, somewhat.

There are a lot of blogs that I have found through the “Loss Grapevine”.  Bad news travels fast and hearing about someone’s heart-wrenching grief often draws crowds.  And it’s very easy to find these blogs and let yourself get swept up in the unbearable sadness of their story.  This is particularly dangerous if you happen to be pregnant at the time (obviously, only if the loss in question is related to pregnancy), because it’s all too easy to superimpose your circumstances onto that of the blogger.  And the next thing you know, your husband is having to peel you off the floor with a spatula.

I don’t know what point I’m trying to make here.  Maybe there isn’t any point.  Other than the act of blogging and the community surrounding it is incredibly helpful when going through loss.  And coming up on my four-year blogging anniversary, I’m more glad than ever that I started this and that I stuck with it.  As unhappy as I may get sometimes, I know I would be infinitely more unhappy without this outlet.

I read this post over at Suburban Turmoil and had I guess what you would call a physical reaction to it.  I kinda wanted to crawl through my laptop screen, find this meddling little old woman and beat her with her purse.  Who does this lady think she is?  That just because she’s lived a handful of years more than some of us that it gives her the right to be a complete unthinking asshole?  That maybe we’ll even THANK HER for her assholery?  Little old ladies get a bad reputation and it’s from women like this one who I’m sure THINK they’re doing us all a huge favor but who are actually being complete assholes.

(Want me to say it again?  ASSHOLE!)

Something similar happened to me once.  I may have mentioned it on this here blog but if I did I a) don’t remember it and b) don’t care because I’m going to talk about it again.  This happened years ago, back when life was The Suck for us.  Actually, I think it was before things got REALLY sucky.  But just barely.  If I recall correctly, we had gone to church that morning and were going out to lunch afterward at one of my favorite restaurants, Romano’s Macaroni Grill.  This was done in an effort to cheer me up.  We were still trying SO HARD to have another baby but hadn’t made the leap to Clomid yet.  I’m pretty sure this was after I had seen the reproductive endocrinologist and before my thyroid issues were diagnosed.  All I knew was that I had been told that I was not ovulating and that if I wanted to ovulate, I would have to take Clomid.

I like to think of that period of my life as The Great Denial.  I was told to call up the doctor’s office when I got my next period and they would run all the necessary bloodwork and get me started on Clomid.  That just scared the crap out of me, for whatever reason.  I didn’t want to have to take Clomid.  I didn’t want to have to go get an exam on day 2 of my period.  I wanted to get pregnant normally, damnit.

Of course, I didn’t know that the thyroid was junking things up.  That it was why I was feeling so tired and cranky and fat.  But tired and cranky and fat I was definitely feeling.  And that week had been a particularly rough one.  So Kile took me to the Macaroni Grill to do something nice.  Harry was about 3 at the time, if I remember right.  He’s a good kid but even good kids have off days and this was an off day.  He was being frustrating and I was feeling frustrated.  While we were sitting at our table, waiting for our lunches to be served, I had to reprimand him a time or two.  We have always expected all of our children to behave when eating out in public.  I don’t recall him doing anything especially bad (because he rarely ever did), but I probably snapped at him to keep his voice down or to stop throwing his bread or somesuch.  And yes, I was probably a little more annoyed than usual. I had a lot on my mind, with my recent INFERTILE diagnosis and all.

Well, the next thing I knew, a line of little old ladies was filing past our table on their way out of the restaurant.  One of them stopped and leaned down to speak to me.  For a minute, I thought she was going to praise Harry.  That often happened while we were out.  Random strangers have often stopped to tell us how impressed they were with how he behaved in public or how cute he was, etc and so forth.  So imagine my shock when said something to the effect of, “I’m going to pray for you that you can look past your venom and see what a sweet little boy you have.  You really should have more patience with him, they’re only little for such a short time.  So I’m going to pray that are able to fully appreciate your little angel while you still can.”

Do you know what that did to me?  Do you know how those words ate a hole in my soul that afternoon?  It was a noisy restaurant and she spoke rather quietly so I was the only one who heard her words.  At the time, I was so stunned, that I just nodded dumbly while she went on her way.  Kile smiled at her, thinking she had stopped to praise Harry, much like I had initially thought.  Next think Kile knew, I was crying into my lemonade.

Of course, how could this lady know all the stress we were under, trying to have another baby?  Still, to have my parenting called into question at a time where I was yearning so MUCH to have another child was gut-wrenching.  It introduced that evilest of all little voices in my head: “This is why you don’t have another baby yet.  You don’t deserve one.  You are a BAD MOTHER.”

I would remember this incident for years.  Every time I would ache over empty arms, negative pregnancy tests, stillborn babies and heartbreaking miscarriages, I would remember that little old lady.  And I would hear that voice, “You don’t deserve another baby.  YOU ARE A BAD MOTHER.”

Rational or not, true or not…  we all know that such thoughts don’t spring forth from a rational part of our minds and hearts.  If I could go back to that afternoon, would I have the strength to say something to that woman?  What would I say?  “I do appreciate my son and I would thank you to mind your own business.  You don’t know anything about me and my family.  I’m going to pray for you, that you find peace in your own life and stop feeling the need to spread your negativity to others.”

Who am I kidding?  I would never have that sort of courage.  Still.  It sure would have felt good to see the look on her face.  That or I could have beat her with her own purse.  That would have felt good too.