bathtub sweet bathtub
i wasn't too sure i was ready to come home yesterday and face reality, but i find it's good to be back in the place where if there's any funk in the bathtub, then at least it's my funk.
we ended our getaway with a couple of days in new york, where we visited old favorite red bamboo (if i had access to food like that all of the time, i really would go vegetarian - honest) and a couple of new favorites on west 4th, patisserie claude and vol de nuit. say what you will about cigarettes and alcohol going together or rights in general, but it's really nice for someone like me who is allergic to cigarette smoke to be able to sit in a bar for a couple of hours drinking raspberry lambics and reading the paper without getting ill. we also watched the skateboarders and the balloon man doing the latex glove routine and the big and little dogs in their respective runs in washington square park, and discussed what kind of dog we might get (not too big but not too yippy, not a shedder, friendly but not a jumper). we had always talked about the day we knew would come when johannes would just have to have a dog or he would just die, so maybe our consideration of a dog now is some kind of compensation - i'll have to think a little more about that...
on our way home from the airport yesterday, we stopped by the hospital to see marianne, the hospital chaplain, who had just gotten back the semi-professional pictures of johannes taken at the hospital. the pictures were disappointing - they were taken after we had spent time with him, when he was getting cold and more bruised- and pulled-looking - so we were glad we got a few of our pictures taken when he was first out, even if they are grainy. it was good to talk to marianne, though, who was the first person to give us some of the vocabulary that helped us start to figure out our identities as parents of a dead child. we have missed the first two sessions of a support group she facilitates (the first one was too soon for us to even think about going, the second one was the day before we came back from our trip), but are thinking about going next month.
my fear, though, is a room of people perpetually bogged down in their grief and not interested in moving through it. i want to deal with my grief but not be slaughtered by it. honestly, i almost feel like i've gotten off easy - not that my son dying is lucky in any way, but it could be much worse. i was in the best possible place in which i could have been, mental-health-wise, when johannes came into the picture; i did the big work i needed to do to get on with my life a few years ago, and i had made peace with the niggling little loose end issues i still had in the last year, not wanting to pass any baggage on to johannes if i could at all help it. also, we had already had to deal with the possibility of terminating the pregnancy half-way through, and so had stared into that abyss a little already.
we also had the benefit of not experiencing the loss of johannes on our own. granted, no one else's loss is quite like ours, as his parents, but so many people were already so invested in our son that they experienced a loss, too. we decided early on, when i was classified as "threatening miscarriage", to go public with the pregnancy; i felt that if i did miscarry, i didn't want to grieve alone. consequently, an incredible web of family and friends have been involved in every step, every up and down, and every triumph of hans's gestation. so when he died, we had an incredible community to grieve with us - people that could speak freely with us and with whom we could speak freely about him. what a horrible, wonderful blessing.
another thing that has made grief easier is the experience of some people that have boldly gone before us. justin's friend jen, who lost her daughter a year ago just a few minutes after birth, has become my friend now, too. and marianne from the hospital introduced us to david hansen; he and his wife toni lost their son similarly four years ago and have lived to tell about it. talking to jen and david and toni and learning more about their experiences has been comforting, but more importantly it's helped shape my perception of myself as a parent. without their instruction-by-example, i'm not sure i would have viewed myself as a parent-of-the-dead, or at least not so quickly. i could have wandered in the wilderness for years otherwise, trying to make sense of my identity in the wake of hans's death.
today when i woke up, what i wanted most in the world was to pick up my son from his bassinet and change him and bring him to bed with us to feed him and to have him lay between us in our bed while we showered him with affection. that this scenario will never happen, at least not with johannes, makes me deeply sad - but not so deeply that i'm drowning. i'm still grieving, but i'm still living, dammit.
we ended our getaway with a couple of days in new york, where we visited old favorite red bamboo (if i had access to food like that all of the time, i really would go vegetarian - honest) and a couple of new favorites on west 4th, patisserie claude and vol de nuit. say what you will about cigarettes and alcohol going together or rights in general, but it's really nice for someone like me who is allergic to cigarette smoke to be able to sit in a bar for a couple of hours drinking raspberry lambics and reading the paper without getting ill. we also watched the skateboarders and the balloon man doing the latex glove routine and the big and little dogs in their respective runs in washington square park, and discussed what kind of dog we might get (not too big but not too yippy, not a shedder, friendly but not a jumper). we had always talked about the day we knew would come when johannes would just have to have a dog or he would just die, so maybe our consideration of a dog now is some kind of compensation - i'll have to think a little more about that...
on our way home from the airport yesterday, we stopped by the hospital to see marianne, the hospital chaplain, who had just gotten back the semi-professional pictures of johannes taken at the hospital. the pictures were disappointing - they were taken after we had spent time with him, when he was getting cold and more bruised- and pulled-looking - so we were glad we got a few of our pictures taken when he was first out, even if they are grainy. it was good to talk to marianne, though, who was the first person to give us some of the vocabulary that helped us start to figure out our identities as parents of a dead child. we have missed the first two sessions of a support group she facilitates (the first one was too soon for us to even think about going, the second one was the day before we came back from our trip), but are thinking about going next month.
my fear, though, is a room of people perpetually bogged down in their grief and not interested in moving through it. i want to deal with my grief but not be slaughtered by it. honestly, i almost feel like i've gotten off easy - not that my son dying is lucky in any way, but it could be much worse. i was in the best possible place in which i could have been, mental-health-wise, when johannes came into the picture; i did the big work i needed to do to get on with my life a few years ago, and i had made peace with the niggling little loose end issues i still had in the last year, not wanting to pass any baggage on to johannes if i could at all help it. also, we had already had to deal with the possibility of terminating the pregnancy half-way through, and so had stared into that abyss a little already.
we also had the benefit of not experiencing the loss of johannes on our own. granted, no one else's loss is quite like ours, as his parents, but so many people were already so invested in our son that they experienced a loss, too. we decided early on, when i was classified as "threatening miscarriage", to go public with the pregnancy; i felt that if i did miscarry, i didn't want to grieve alone. consequently, an incredible web of family and friends have been involved in every step, every up and down, and every triumph of hans's gestation. so when he died, we had an incredible community to grieve with us - people that could speak freely with us and with whom we could speak freely about him. what a horrible, wonderful blessing.
another thing that has made grief easier is the experience of some people that have boldly gone before us. justin's friend jen, who lost her daughter a year ago just a few minutes after birth, has become my friend now, too. and marianne from the hospital introduced us to david hansen; he and his wife toni lost their son similarly four years ago and have lived to tell about it. talking to jen and david and toni and learning more about their experiences has been comforting, but more importantly it's helped shape my perception of myself as a parent. without their instruction-by-example, i'm not sure i would have viewed myself as a parent-of-the-dead, or at least not so quickly. i could have wandered in the wilderness for years otherwise, trying to make sense of my identity in the wake of hans's death.
today when i woke up, what i wanted most in the world was to pick up my son from his bassinet and change him and bring him to bed with us to feed him and to have him lay between us in our bed while we showered him with affection. that this scenario will never happen, at least not with johannes, makes me deeply sad - but not so deeply that i'm drowning. i'm still grieving, but i'm still living, dammit.
posted by laura at 6:59 PM
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