here's what i'm wondering

first, why me? why was it my son that died? why am i in this tiny percentage of people who lose a child just as he should be being born for reasons that aren't entirely clear? why do i have to live with this event coloring my perception of any other children i have? why, why, why?

second, should i get pregnant again, at what point do i unpack the "another child" box? when is it safe to change the guest room into a nursery again? when can i safely bring home all the gear stored in kath's attic? i can't figure out when it would possibly be safe; it will never be safe. i've been thinking that maybe we won't do more than wash up the clothes and pack a diaper bag for the hospital; we still have the bassinet out and up (we've used it for friends' kids visiting our house), and the only other thing we'll need at first will be the car seat, which i think we could just ask kath or mike to bring to us at the hospital.

but then i think, doesn't my second child deserve as much of my anticipation as the first?

maybe i should be on meds after all

after i dropped justin off at the airport, i strongly considered going to michael's and seeing if they had any straw hats for hans's box. i think they have a whole doll-making section, with lots of accessories, so it seemed like a good place to look. the sky was just so beautiful, and i was going to dig in my yard, and i wanted hans to have something appropriate for hanging out in the yard, too. the only reason i didn't do go into michael's was that i didn't have the energy to make up a lie when the cashier asked me about the doll i was making. although, you have to admit, it would have been hysterical to see her response if i had told her it was for my dead son's box of ashes. okay, you don't have to admit it.

do they make dolls' flip-flops?

cold turkey

i stopped taking my anti-depressant of choice (serzone). i took my last dose tuesday morning. i forgot to refill the prescription that day. on wednesday i called in the refill request, but i haven't picked it up.

my therapist acknowledged that he wasn't qualified to give me medical advice, but said that he believed that it was safe for a fetus. he also believes that staying on it will keep me from being less anxious during a subsequent pregnancy, and of course anxiety could be detrimental to a fetus. but the truth is that no one knows for sure what the long term effects of these drugs are on children exposed to them in utero; some studies are beginning to suggest, though, that there is a higher incidence of developmental problems. the short term effects vary; particularly in babies who were exposed in the third trimester, some pretty severe withdrawl symptoms can create justifiably cranky newborns.

i know there are compromises that will have to be made in my next pregnancy; there is no such thing as a perfect pregnancy. other than a week of heavy drinking and sushi consumption before i found out i was about four weeks pregnant, i had a perfectly-managed pregnancy, and hans still died. but there are some things that don't require compromise, and i think the anti-depressant issue is one of them. i don't feel like i can afford to take any chances with another wanted child. while the serzone has been helpful, i don't think it's been essential. and while it may regulate my mood, it definitely doesn't affect anxiety, which has become a bigger issue for me than sadness.

it takes a little while to completely drain from my system, but i'm doing okay so far. i'm sad about hans and find it absolutely necessary to keep myself busy, but those things are the same as a week ago and a month ago. i've talked with justin about it and asked him to be on the lookout for any signs of my method not working. i'm talking to both my primary and my therapist again in 2 1/2 weeks. i think i'm being responsible about it. i have a few months to see if i'm okay without it or i need it so much that the need outweighs the risk before we try to conceive.

rainbows and raccoons

on our way back from getting hot apple sundaes with matt and sara at the east coast custard in fairview, we drove through the rocky river reservation of the metro parks and justin spotted a rainbow. he took us up to a lookout point for a better view of the rainbow, and when he opened the sun roof we suddenly saw not one but two rainbows, parallel to each other. i was kicking myself for not having my camera. just before we left the house i had taken it out to upload the newest blooms in our yard and hadn't put it back in my purse. doh!

a handful of cars and suvs, teeming with elementary-aged kids hanging out of the windows, had pulled into the same section of the park to watch the rainbows, too. as the rainbows faded, we were all distracted by a raccoon scoping out the trash. the cans were mounted to a post and elevated, but the raccoon shimmied up the post in between them to survey the contents. he found his objective but couldn't reach it easily; we held our breath as he gradually lowered himself further and further into the can until all we could see of him were his rear claws, tethering him to the rim of the can.

and then he popped back up, mcdonald's bag in his mouth, and hopped to the ground to enjoy his dinner. either he ate the paper or someone left behind a ton of food; it took him quite awhile to get his fill before he finally headed back up a tree. as we pulled out of the park, another raccoon eyed us from the edge of the trees, perhaps wondering if we had left anything behind for him.

i wanted hans to be there, strapped into his seat in the back between sara and me. i wanted to show him rainbows and raccoons. all of the youth spilling out of the vehicles around us pressed in on me and gave me a headache. and it's not that i resented them for being young and alive, or their parents for having them. it's just that i wanted hans to be there, too, dammit.

jamie and janet had their baby this week - benjamin, who looks just like jamie. benjamin would have been another friend for hans. i'm surrounded by all of these babies that would have been his peers - emma, charlie, jay and now orson and benjamin. what a waste that hans will never know them, and vice versa.

i sing the body not-so-electric

if i close my eyes and concentrate, i can conjure up the smell of hans in my head...slightly acrid, maybe from the yarn in the blanket they wrapped him in; a low sweet note, like an old bic pen; and something like popcorn or maybe toasted nut (which is kind of ironic since one of his testicles was essentially toast).

i am teetering on the edge of obsession with his body. i drove by the hospital last night, and i wondered if his body was handled with dignity when he left the place. i wonder what it was like to be the mortician who handled him and if he found him to be as beautiful and damaged as i did. i wish before we handed him over the last time we had thought to undress him and look at all of him. the part of him i felt the most was his back, as i held him, but i never actually saw his back.

last halloween as i handed out candy i thought about how we would handle the holiday this year. would one of us walk hans around the neighborhood while the other stayed home to hand out candy? i imagined him in a bumble bee costume, with fuzzy yellow and black stripes and springy antennae. as i laid in bed this morning i told justin i wanted to decorate his little white box with stripes and put antennae on it anyway. i think he thought i was joking and suggested we put a tiny santa hat on it at christmas.

thank god we didn't get lulu the dog - i would probably be driving her nuts with cutesy dog outfits that would just annoy her.

i want him back, all of him. if we hadn't cremated him, i might be tempted to go dig up his body.

i want to feel what i felt when i held him.

2x2

today, in ohio city, i saw two different men, at two different times, on bicycles. and smoking cigarettes.

i also saw two different drivers, in two different cars, at two different times, use their arms, extended through their open windows, to signal a turn.

why do these things happen in pairs?

it's a corollary to that phenomenon for which i STILL don't know the name, where one hears a new word or idea for the very first time and then immediately hears it again.

hooky

i am suffering from what justin fondly calls "anal glaucoma", but the cure (playing hooky) seems to be working.

today is the first day i have called in sick since hans died. all things considered, i think this accomplishment is downright heroic. before i knew justin, i made sure i used all of my sick days every year; i considered them a part of my comprehensive mental health coverage.

justin, on the other hand, had never in his life called in sick (starting with his first job at 15) until last summer, when we moved into our house at the same time we found out i was pregnant but bleeding, too, and it was all too much. it took me and two of our friends to apply enough peer pressure, but he finally caved. i was so proud of him.

my day has included sleeping, making chocolate chip scones, getting a tire replaced on the family wagon (for the family with no living children), web surfing, and in a few minutes dinner and drinks with my friend kristy. except for the tire part, today is a day i needed - a day of wastefulness to recharge my batteries. grief runs them down.

*****

i called my mom last night to describe to her dan and meg's wedding invitation, which arrived yesterday; it was made of orange and cream handmade papers and natural raffia and real pressed flowers (how much must those have cost???) and included pablo neruda poetry and a schedule of their wedding weekend events involving much champagne and gelato.

she was kind of unresponsive until she finally blurted out, when we talked last week i felt like i offended you, but i don't know what i said or did! i tried to explain a little but not too much, because she doesn't get it, and she still didn't; but i assured her that i wasn't angry with her and that i realized that she was trying to help me, but blindly, because i hadn't been talking things through with her, as she is accustomed. she said she felt i had shut her out of my grief; i agreed. i told her this experience is completely unlike any other we've had together, and it's become a very private process for me. she cried, which was weird, and expressed how desperately she wanted to help me; i told her she could help me by continuing to support me in my choices and by listening when i wanted to talk and by not trying to offer me advice. i think she was bewildered, but the best i could do was assure her several times that we were okay.

i suspect that her approach to her grief for hans (week one and two - take care of laura and justin; week three - feel kinda bummed; week four - decide to get over it and not let it get me down) is not working for her. but she'll have to figure that out for herself.

we're sorry, your life insurance policy has been closed. why? anxiety.

Yup, anxiety. See, the morning after Hans died, I had a life insurance mandated physical exam. The contracted examiner was a moron - and I'm saying this in the Quaker tradition of seeing the best in everyone.

Anyhow, I explained everything that happened, and she in turn asked me several out of the ordinary questions. A few of which convinced me that she has no business in her line of business. One of the questions posed was what prescription meds are you currently taking, xanax being the one most recently prescribed (just that morning infact). "Xanax? What's that for?" to which I say "Um, anxiety, see as I explained, our son died yesterday and I'm a bit anxious about this". "Oh, yeah - I told you that I'm really sorry about that, didn't I?" "yes, you did, thank you."

Then I took a whiz in a cup, and she walked off into the sunset.

Deductions started coming from my pay check, so I naturally assumed that I'd been approved. How wrong I was. Past Saturday I received a letter informing me that sufficient medical documentation had not been produced and insomuch, my life insurance policy had been closed.

POP, number 1. They are closed over the weekend, so I festered.

This morning I called and talked to a not so lovely receptionist named Doris - whom proceeded to tell me, after I had explained that I knew the precise date that I'd been examined because it was the same day as my son's birth/death date - that the reason I was being denied coverage was because of my anxiety.

POP, number 2. I guess that asking her if it was at all OK to grieve the loss of a child with a bit of anxiety - then asking her to kindly FUCK OFF, should she not follow the absurdity of this, is not making such a good case for my anxiety, but I digress.

After 20 minutes on hold, pacing, cursing, festering - I finally spoke to a supervisor type, who appologized for the ignorance of her co-worker. She then kindly explained to me that anyone on Xanax is subject to additional screening, as per the letter that (I never received) had been sent to me and my doctor (who never received). She then again appologized, stating that she'd been through something similar, something devestating and hat she'd gladly send out another letter, with a consent form for me to then take to my doctor, who could then release my medical history (including my reason for anxiety) to them, for further review.

I might call this POP, number 3. Believe it or not, I actually held my cool this time, with this chick, maybe because I trust that even if that last outburst wasn't recorded, this one certainly is.

So here I sit, not so much seeing the light in everything. I'm waiting on a fax from the insurance company to arrive at my doctors office, who will then fax my a letter of consent, so they can fax the insurance company a certified statement that I am anxious because I have a dead kid.

Now, how about that Xanax?

the effects of being hans's mother today

the immature co-worker is back, and she's mostly kept her mouth shut, thank goodness, except for some random comment about people putting their children out to die which i didn't fully comprehend but seemed uniquely insensitive, even for her.

for some bizarre reason she excitedly told me she picked the spot next to me in our new location. i think she may be immature and insensitive and irritating and insane. great combination.

*****

i heard from kristy today. she co-hosted my baby shower, and so i think it's been a little weird for her - that she threw a shower for a baby who didn't get around to enjoying the fruits of it. she came to the memorial service with her boyfriend and her mom, who was the first person to tell me, "it only happens to the strong" - i wanted to hiss at her, but i knew she meant well. thank god for xanax.

kristy called me while we were in washington state to tell me she and her boyfriend got engaged; i was grateful that i was occupied kneeling over the toilet when she called so i didn't have to respond immediately. her fiance is soooooo good to her, which is why i try to like him, but he is a stereotypical overprivileged white kid who is unintentionally (i think) obnoxious 90% of the time, a rabid republican (gotta protect that family money!), and doesn't know when to stop running a formerly funny joke into the ground.

i figured i had some leeway in responding to people's good news when it had only been three weeks since my son's death, so i waited to call her back until we got home a week later. i left several messages but never heard from her, so i thought maybe the whole thing was just too weird for her. and then she e-mailed today and we're having dinner tomorrow. i'm so relieved. i don't want to lose her.

*****

every time i have an unoccupied moment today, i've found myself asking, what does it all mean? what does hans's death mean? i don't know. maybe there is no greater meaning. what a waste that would be.

i do know it has changed things, both for the better and for the worse. i am closer to justin than ever. there is a new wedge between me and my mom. my college roommate and kindred spirit and treasured friend of 18 years admitted she didn't know what to say and then evaporated. i have a deeper appreciation for most of the rest of our friends, who have stuck it out with us, whether they knew what to say or not. i am terrified that my irritatingly-cautious husband will have a fatal accident. when someone offers to do something for me, i accept. i look forward to raising our children more than ever. any future pregnancy will be an adventure in anxiety as much as anticipation.

but do any of those things count as meaning? i don't think so. i don't think there is any meaning in his loss. that sucks.

maybe the scholarship fund is an attempt to make some meaning where there is none. but i think it would be much better for hans to be alive and growing and gearing up to have his own influence on the world than for us to try to do it for him.

i want some meaning, dammit.

what sound does a butterfly make?

I spent the morning with Emma, while Richard made a few of his calls. We had a blast, even if it completely wore me down - Emma's not only learned to walk since I have last seen her, she's learned to run and it's seemingly her purpose to test my run out. Giddiup!

When we both finally tuckered out from our run around the house, I took her for the grand tour, stopping to explain every intricate detail of our house. She was most mesmorized by our french animal calendar, something that we had bought for Hans when we were in Belgium. A few weeks ago, as we were packing away Johannes' things into his, other child, or stay in the house items we had to pause when we came to the calendar. On one hand, this was something special that we had bought for our boy, something that we had hoped to share with him: it has the days of the week, the months, seasons and animals - all in French.

It was our greatest desire to foster a multi-lingual child, being monolingual dolts ourselves. It fit so perfectly into his room: the animal theme, the color scheme, everything Johannes.

We decided that it's best to keep it out, in his honor, in the room that was once his and is now forever to reflect his personality. We've only kept a few of his things out: the calendar, his accordian, the butterfly's that just brighten the room. I think that the room is all the better with their presence, For anyone who enters.

Anyhow, as it went ... I would point to an animal on the calendar: monkey/singe and then I would make a monkey sound 'hoooo hooo haaa haaa', then I'd move onto the bird and 'chirp'. after several rounds of this, Emma was catching on, I would let her grab an animal and I would say the word, she'd then proceed to make her own sounds; she's got the monkey sound down almost perfect!

She then grabbed the butterfly, and I responded in kind butterfly - and she just stared at me, waiting on the butterfly sound. I'm at a loss, I can't think of what sort of sound a butterfly makes, so I moved on, grabbing the éléphant: 'ahooooooooo' or something rendered untranslatable into onomatopoeia.

Intrigued, she again grabbed the butterfly, staring at me, at a loss as to how I could be at a loss.

I'll get back to ya on that one, kiddo.

now, that's a big baby

orson aurelius

i got to meet orson in person today. he was incredibly alert, or at least he was after his sister zelda decided he was ready to wake up by manually opening his eyes for him. he was polite and agreeable and engaging (excepting a rather violent refilling of his diaper while my hand was under his bottom). i'm so glad to know him.

you can see the other blurry pictures from my visit here. i wish they were crisper - i should have learned from hans's delivery what happens when i don't use the flash. but it was bright, and i didn't want to freak orson out.

toni and i talked about the difficulty of being around other babies after calvin and hans, respectively, died, and i was glad i went with my gut and asked kath to bring charlie over when we came home from the hospital. i think the longer i put it off, the harder it would have been to see other people's babies. as it is, the babies in my life bring me a lot of joy.

another baby who has brought me a lot of joy is emma, and she and her dad are coming to stay with us tonight. it's been two months since we saw her, when we went to stay with richard and candice on our escape trip. she's not really a baby now - she turned one a couple of weeks ago. she started out on the petite side, but she is now off the size charts for her age. i know what it's like to be the tallest girl in the class; i think emma will be one of us, and i hope she is the kind of girl who likes feeling tall and powerful. i never understood the girls who even in elementary school wanted to shrink down and be shorter than the boys.

we were just outside the room where emma was born when it happened, and i held her not 30 minutes later. it was justin's birthday. i wish hans were here to meet her; i looked forward to them growing up together. but i will always make sure his picture is around when she is, and someday, when she asks, i will tell her about hans.

emma was on the verge of walking when we saw her in march; i hear she's practically running now. i can't wait to see her.

the week in review

justin told me something this week that he had been holding inside for the five years plus a little we've known each other. actually, he's never told anyone else, either, so he's been holding it inside even longer. he is inherently incapable of not telling me anything, so it was a little shocking. i'm so proud of him, because i know it must have felt like a huge risk, to tell me something so important, but he was brave enough to do it. it makes me sad for him, that he had this experience, and even more so that he's carried the weight of it alone for so long. i hope with all my heart that telling me is the beginning of something good, something better for him; and i hope that he has the courage to write about it here - i believe there will be great reward for him in writing about it.

he is still the most amazing person i know, not to mention the best thing that ever happened to me. hans's death has made it even more clear to me, and for that i am grateful.

*****

my sister and i had a long talk yesterday. she and my brother-in-law are going to try to work it out. after not getting what the fuss was all about (i didn't PLAN to do it, it wasn't INTENTIONAL, therefore i didn't DO anything wrong), he finally gets it. i hope for my sister's sake and my nephew's sake that he gets it for good and starts to grow up.

*****

my sister had talked to my mom just before she called me, and she recounted my mother's request to point out the woman my brother-in-law had been seeing if they ever ran into her - in a threatening tone. as if, what? my tiny, very religious, very ladylike mother is going to go kick her in the shins or something? oh, yeah - that would show her!

it's a funny thought, but also an uncharacteristic event. my sister also told me about a conversation they had last friday morning that my mother had clearly completely forgotten by friday night. we started comparing notes, and it was scary; my mother is the rock on which we all depend, and it looks like she's crumbling a bit.

i have suspected for years that she is pre-alzheimer's-y, but i've never told my sister. now she understands that our mom is slipping, too. our mother is only 62, and looks ten years younger. she is incredibly proficient and efficient and self-sufficient. she has always taken good care of herself. after 30 years of a debilitating marriage to my father, she overcame the mores that had been drilled into her for her entire life and divorced him, seven years ago last month. since then she has blossomed, and it has been a gift to get to know her apart from her role of holding my father's messes together. while my father has remarried, my mother has not, but i keep hoping for something more for her - if not a partner worthy of her, then something worthwhile and dream-fulfilling - something to make up for all those horrible years with my father.

but i'm starting to have a vision of her continuing to slowly slide. and nothing could be more horrible for such an independent person. she will not take it lying down. she will deny it and fight us if we attempt to protect her in any way. we will have to be the adults, and we don't have much practice at it. fortunately, she created a living will several years ago that gives my sister and me power of attorney. but i wish i would never have to use it.

*****

did i mention that the woman with whom my brother-in-law was involved is named after the virtue of sexual purity? it's true. she is also married to a man who is not the father of any of her four children.

i don't mean to be judgemental. frankly, with my history, i have zero right to be. but i would think if i were named for that virtue i would have a well-developed sense of irony by now and would try to avoid being such a cliche. maybe she's just trying to live down her name. or maybe she doesn't know what it means; i've realized the last couple of days that many people younger than me think it's just a name popularized by cher (sonny who?) and don't know what it means.

either way, it's pathetic.

*****

my co-worker, the insensitive, immature one who thinks she's still in high school, was on vacation all week. even taking on her workload in addition to mine was much less stressful than working with her. we just found out thursday our department is moving yet again (our most recent move was only four weeks ago), and i think this time i may be able to be far, far away from her. woo-hoo!

*****

i am so happy for the successful arrival of orson and looking forward to meeting him briefly tomorrow. i hope he likes chocolate cake.

*****

this morning i'm still processing orson's dad's play. as i review it mentally, i'm also reviewing hans's death, and the three months we've survived since we lost him. i still don't know what any of it means.

*****

i have two pills left in this month's pink compact. i would like for them to be the last two pills i take for a long time, because i want to have at least three menstrual cycles before i conceive so there is no question of fetal age for hans's brother or sister. it was a problem for nine months with hans, and i want to eliminate that piece of anxiety if i can. i know it will be an anxiety-filled journey, so anything i can control, any anxiety i can erase in advance, i want to take care of.

justin isn't quite ready this month to switch to alternate forms of birth control, although we did lay in bed yesterday morning and laugh our heads off about the various options, some of which were inspired by unambitious porn. i thought he understood my anxiety about hans's age, but i realize now he is still processing it and trying to understand why three periods are better than two. i have a week before i would have to fill another month's prescription.

*****

as soon as justin wakes up, i am going to wrap up this week with a long bike ride. and maybe a peach beer. and hopefully no more major events.

i saw "i hate this" but i didn't (hate it, that is)

this week's distractions (including but not limited to the arrival of orson, my brother-in-law's infidelity, and justin's revelation to me, about which he will have to write for himself when he is ready) gave the wound on my soul some room to breathe and scab over.

since i took today off, and justin is always off on fridays, we got to sleep in and spend some quality time together ("etc", as justin would say). we walked up to nick's ("gee, i don't know what nick's you're talking about!") for the $2.25 breakfast and then worked on our yard, getting the early tulips that have lost all their petals cleaned out and weeding and mulching and mowing. then we got the mud out from under our fingernails and went over to metro to see david's performance of his play "i hate this" about his son calvin.

i was blown away.

i had never seen him perform before, and the lights were piss-poor and the sound system dicey. but he was fantastic. we had heard the story of their son's stillbirth, but today was like experiencing the whole year with them. i laughed, i cried, i want to see it again and again. (no, wait - that was "cats")

seriously, i did cry - it was good i brought kleenex - we went through a few. but i did also laugh, and hard. he placed at least seven calls to gerber in the months after calvin's death, asking them to stop sending him congratulatory notices and coupons; by the last call, he warned them that not only would he never buy their food for any future child, but he would tell his friends not to buy their products; hell, he would even tell complete strangers. and he has. :)

the crowd was all social workers and hospital chaplains and counselors. there was a preponderance of down-market copies of eileen fisher separates and sigrid olsen sweaters, with a smattering of fruit-print jumpers and tie-dye. the men, without exception, had facial hair - goatees for the young, closely-trimmed beards for the middle-aged. i mock them for their earnestness, but they were very responsive - they gasped at all the right places (or right to me, as a parent of a dead child) and chuckled on cue, and i heard much sniffling.

we got to talk to david afterward; he looked drained - and how could he not, two days after orson's birth. he told us he wasn't certain he could even do the play today, but he found us in the audience and decided he would do it for us. wow. i feel so honored.

you should see david's play if and when it comes to a playhouse near you. in the mean time, his blog and site about the play are a good read. it's how i spent a couple of sleepless nights after coming home from the hospital without hans.

justin didn't have the benefit of any scabs today and i think he is feeling raw. so we are going to watch a potentially dumb movie ("team america") and indulge in a little wild cherry pepsi and just be alone together.

some disjointed rambling - blame it on the peach beer

after i thought my therapist was pushing me out the door, he reeeeeeeled me back in.

i decided to keep my appointment tonight, since i had organized my suicide options since last i saw him - it seemed the responsible thing to do. we did talk about it, but what we talked about for 45 minutes of my hour was my mother - how did grieving my son's death become about her for me? so we worked it over and turned it inside out and came to the conclusion that i already knew - that my mom doesn't get it (she actually lectured me yesterday about being angry - at all - about anything) and she won't, no matter how much i try to explain it, and it's not helpful to me to keep exhausting myself trying to make her understand. at least now i can rest assured that i've examined it completely and work on accepting that there is a gap between us - just another thing subtly changed by hans's death - and move on to things about which i can do something.

my therapist thinks i am pushing as hard as i can through my grief and that a turning point is coming for me, something subtle but obvious to me, and it will get easier for me, and sooner than i think. lovely thought

as we were wrapping up, he asked about my pills, and i found myself wondering aloud, if i still need the pills, should i be trying to get pregnant?

where the hell did that come from?

so instead of saying, so long, i'll call you if i need you, i'm going back in a month. i need some time to think about this thought and figure out what inspired it and see if i can jettison it (the therapist's strong recommendation), and i want to have my pre-pregnancy physical and know what the situation is before we examine this freak thought professionally.

*****

it's officially the weekend for me! i have taken tomorrow off to go see "i hate this" - coincidentally being performed at my hospital - by our friend david, father of calvin and zelda and now orson. and justin and i have from now until sunday noon together. woo-hoo!

it's about time, orson!

orson was FINALLY born this morning to our friends toni and david. i am overwhelmed. he is huge and pink and fabulous. see for yourself.

his intials are either OAT or OATH (depending on whether you treat the hyphenated last name as one word or two) - either way, he will have an awesome monogram.

*****

my sister went back home this morning. my brother-in-law was there; he decided not to go to work today. i haven't heard from her since she went home. i am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best - whatever the best is. i'm not sure what it is, frankly.

my mom called a little bit ago to see if i had heard from her, and she asked about my grieving, and i realized that she has no idea where i am because i haven't been processing things with her, which would be our old habit. i have been talking to justin, and to kath, and to david, and to jen, and blogging and talking to other bloggers, and seeing the therapist, but i haven't been talking to her about my grief since she went home after the memorial service. it was agonizing, because she was trying to encourage me, but it was all wrong. she would do anything to help me, and said so, but she can't help me this time, except to support me and to stop trying to fix it for me. i'm going to have to tell her so. it will hurt her feelings, but i think we've come far enough together that she can take it. i hope so.

*****

i did make it to a garbagey movie last night: monster-in-law. j-lo's acting consisted of shrugging her shoulders and tilting her head and making big O-shapes with her mouth and swinging her hair extensions (a multi-faceted performance!). but jane fonda - what a pleasure. she's old, but she's cool with it, and she's old in all her glory. she's still luminous and still has that quality of nervous buzzing just beneath the surface of her skin, and there is no one else like her.

my family further exceeds its tragedy quotient for the year

my brother-in-law is involved with someone else; my sister and jay have gone to stay with my mom. all of this has happened in the last three hours. well, not my brother-in-law's infidelity, but his admission of it. fuck.

apparently my future-ex-brother-in-law felt the spark had gone out of their marriage, so he turned to a woman he met in a therapy group to which my sister asked him to go before they got married in 2002. this woman, who incidentally is named after one of the virtues, had been calling/e-mailing/instant messaging him several times a day lately to talk to him about her marital trouble. how original. i suppose they deserve each other.

it occurred to me after i talked to my sister that if hans had lived, it could have been us. but then justin said some lovely, vile things about what a bastard he was to expect big sparks with a newborn at home, and reminded me that they have always seemed to have a boring relationship, which we clearly don't. and then he told me how he loved it when i crawled on top of him the other day but how much more he loves that i held him when he was freaking out about hans the other night and how i pack him little lunches and a million other things that add up to why he loves me.

when my sister and i got married within six months of each other, we joked that we should swap husbands. my sister is seven years younger than me; my husband is eight months younger than her, and hers is three years older than me. yeah, i'm glad we didn't swap, but i'm more amazed that justin gets that love changes over time, and that sparks require work and don't constitute love on their own, and he's eleven years younger than a man who once wooed my sister with flowers and perfume and walks on the beach and stopped paying attention and wandered off. it makes me grateful but sad.

my heart breaks for my sister. it almost breaks more that she has to rely on my mom and has to tell my mom what's happened. she has been working so hard the last year to have an adult relationship with my mom and not a mommy relationship, and this will be a humiliation and a setback.

the bright spot (for me) is that it was my brother-in-law who insisted that his son be called j.d. and not jay as they originally planned, so now all bets are off. i will call him jay to his face and in front of the whole world until he's old enough to indicate what he wishes to be called.

but i would rather that my brother-in-law still loved my sister, as she deserves, and that they were a happy family.

the human megadose of ex-lax

that's me, or who i want to be. i'm not interested in being correctol ("the gentle corrector") today; i want to correct some people violently, so they'll notice. i can hear these women in my workplace, all just out of college within the last year, discussing in a slap-happy tone their future pregnancies, and how they want to have c-sections and what a tiny scar they leave now. i want to SCREAM at them at the top of my lungs. a caesarian is a SURGERY, you idiots! you don't want to have one unless you must! scar or no scar, your body will never be like it is now! you have absolutely no guarantee your child will live, or be healthy if it does! fools!!!!!!! you make your plans laughingly now, but you have no idea how invested you'll be, how much your entire well-being will hang on every detail of that idyllic pregnancy you're planning! i want to knock all their heads together. i need to get out of here. i'm going to go see a movie. something garbagey and escapist.

note to justin: that means veggie corn dogs for dinner again. sorry. i promise i will cook a real dinner tomorrow night. it is just not possible tonight.

three months and counting

i delivered hans three months ago today. i wish today was a celebration, but three months of death - not so cheery.

*****

we've decided not to adopt lulu the dog. justin kept making excuses, and then i realized that we don't want a dog, we want our child. so we learned about dogs a little, and someday when we have a child who must have a dog or the world will come to an end, we'll be better prepared.

i've been thinking about my ob lately. it's not that i have any of my crush left (any remnants of crush not obliterated by going through hans's death with him were wiped out by the two-tone suede boat shoes he was wearing when we reviewed the autopsy); but i'm wondering if he should be my ob next time.

on the plus side, he has been through hans's gestation and death with us, so he knows where we're coming from (ugh - that grammar is so awful it makes me squirm, but the proper grammar doesn't sound right there, either, so we'll all just have to bear it together). and i love that he is thoughtful and thinks about what he says and doesn't just blurt out the conventional wisdom.

but i'm wondering if he will be up for the person i will be next time. i will be more anxious than the first time, if such a thing is possible, although i'm working on ways to lessen my anxiety, but let's be honest - it's gonna happen. and i will speak up more agressively when i think something is wrong. and not everyone can deal with it. i don't know if he can or will want to.

i'm also wondering if i should be with a specialist. the ob i saw the week after hans died, when my ob was out of town, was obscenely wonderful, plus he lost his son at 16 and "got it". i've since found out from their website that he's a high risk guy, but he's also just announced his retirement from obstetrics and is taking the summer off and then will come back just for his gynecology practice. grrrrrrrrr. then there's the dr who did my amnio, who i thought was a radiologist but it turns it is a high risk guy, too. he is world-renowned and could be my brother-in-law's brother, which i found strangely comforting. but he mostly does research and may not be taking patients.

i'm thinking that maybe i should make an appointment to sit down with my ob for a few minutes and discuss the next time. it would give him an opportunity to assess my situation and then either say, we can do this together, or, i think a high risk guy would be the best way for you to go. and if we did go with a high risk ob at that point, he could get us in with that person, rather than me begging and pleading with that person's secretary myself.

i have an appointment with my primary next month, to make sure my wacky malnutrition thing is worked out and to generally get worked over to make sure i'm in good shape to try again when we're ready, and maybe i can work in a visit upstairs to my ob then.

*****

i forgot to take my birth control pill yesterday morning. we had people sleeping all over the downstairs of our house when i came down and i was so focused on getting my stuff and getting out without waking anyone that i forgot to take my pills. i didn't realize it until i got to work, and i work a half hour from home. i took the pill when i got home last night - at 10 pm! at least justin didn't freak out. he said, what's the worst that could happen? you'd get pregnant, and that would be okay, wouldn't it? and it would.

an account of the weekend, wherein things were good, then got bad, then got very good

now that i've posted what i wrote saturday morning, i feel like i can write again. woo-hoo! i missed it.

not that i had much time to write. i woke up at 6 on saturday (of course - only on the weekends - it must be my inner seven year old), and after i wrote i got creative with what was in my refrigerator and made a butternut squash frittata, which was tastier than it sounds, and then we ran a million errands and ate lunch at chipotle (my favorite fast food!!!). by 1:30 we had even braved the crowds at trader joe's and were on our way home - normally we're doing good to be out of the house by 1:30 on a saturday. i think for me it was the relief of having dealt with hans's things that fueled my energy.

we got his room turned back into our guest room, although it's still hot pepper green and has his french calendar hanging on the wall, and got our house mostly cleaned before heading out to talkies to see fritz lang's "spies" and hear lingua accompany the film. the former owner of our house, who is now our friend, plays with lingua, so it was extra cool to be down with the band, although justin fell asleep. they're accompanying "metropolis" next saturday, which i'd really like to see/hear, but it may be a waste of time if my beloved can't stay coherent.

saturday night hurt. when justin got angry, i felt like he vented his anger at me, as opposed to to me; when he does it, i refuse to take on his anger and separate myself from him. but it was the one time when he needed me more than any time since hans died. it was kind of like when i babysat charlie thursday night, when he shrieked when i reached for him and shrieked when i walked away. after justin nearly put a hole in our living room floor, we managed to talk through it, and we're aiiight now. but those times wear me out. i slept like a log.

on sunday morning we played scrabble (feel free to ask justin who won, and by how much) before he had to go to work. when he left at 1:00, i started cooking. i made four whole-wheat, almost completely organic, totally vegan desserts - coconut cream pie, mocha almond fudge layer cake, apple and raspberry cobbler, and chocolate chip cookies. late in the afternoon, i made rice noodles with onions and black beans in a fig puree/balsamic vinegar sauce, and sesame tofu and peppers and mushrooms. randy and jenny, in from san francisco for a wedding, got there just as i was finishing, and jim came over, and we ate standing up in the kitchen, and then mike and kath and charlie and kath's mom arrived and then justin got home from work, and we ate desserts and drank wine and listened to lcd and charlie haden and ofra haza, and it was the best night i've had in a long time. it's also the most i've drunk in YEARS.

the guest room was already made up for randy and jenny, but before i stumbled up to bed a little before 1 i brought sheets and a pillow down for jim and put the bottle of ibuprofen on the coffee table and suggested that everyone pass it around before calling it a night. i felt a little foolish having to feel my way up the stairs, but i guess i can count it as my one big hurrah between pregnancies.

and what does any of this have to do with hans, besides the fact that i couldn't have consumed that much alcohol if he were alive and i were nursing him? i made hans part of the night. i talked about him. i started sentences with, "since hans died..." or "before hans died..." and i brought him up often enough that people stopped flinching so much when i said his name. or maybe the alcohol made it harder for them to screw up their facial muscle to flinch. whatever. i talked about him. i made it be normal. it felt good.

we're really sorry about your son, mr lauralu

We often joke about this: Laura and I have differant last names, and we can generally screen unwanted solicitations, or other nonsense, simply by who one asks for on the phone. Occasionally, folks who don't know us well, or who only know us professionally will address us as the Justin's or the Laura's - and this is fine, either way.

It's just that when we're speaking of Johannes, well, his name: Johannes Christian J, this means everything to me. As I've mentioned, it's a name (well, initials) that have been passed down from my own father to me, and me to my son - and lately, I'm realizing that this is all that I have with him. I'll never get to see his fingerpaintings on my refridgerator, but we'll always share our name.

Saturday was really rough: I'm finally feeling the anger that we all expect to come with grief and I've no where to place it. I'm one pissed off mofo, and it's about everything, anything, and nothing in particular, which pisses me off to no end. I guess I'm just a time bomb.

Anyhow, as I was laying on the coach, feeling sorry for myself, Laura handed me a copy of the HOPE newsletter (a grief group for dead baby mommas and dead baby daddies); on the back page of the newsletters there is always a memorial for the lost children from the group.

Some babies have names, others don't (which saddens me greatly, but then again, who am I to say how one grieves). The envelope was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Laura, hell, everything from the hospital is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Laura, some of which is directed to some chick named Amy. I don't think that I know her.

My greatest fear is that come February, our sons name will be memorialized by HOPE, and that it'll read Johannes Christian L, which would be a great name, for someone elses child, but that's not our son.

Am I being insane? I could call and insist that they don't fuck up our kids name, but I really don't want to make that call ... this is something that should just be, I have other things to freak out about, I just want what should be, to be, without any effort. Atleast not of my own effort.

I guess this is just a really long winded way of asking Laura, if you could do me a favor and make that call, or place that email?

By the way ... my anger thing is temporarily gone, as I'm pretty much simply trying to recover from the worlds worst hangover. We had a little dinner party last night, Randy and Jenny were in town and as is customary when Randy and I get together, we listen to lot's of music and get piss drunk. Good times, I am telling you ... our best count (and Laura and Jenny, as well as Mike and Jim were helping) was 6 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of port and two bottles of beer (the last of which I wish i would have said no! no mixing Einstein)

Between port and beer, we decided to put on an airguitar (and air basoon, and air oboe) show! It seemed like a good idea at the time, and from the pictures, it looks like we had a hella time. Děkuji Uz Jsme Doma, there is no band in the world that can make me smile, nor rock out an oboe, quite like you.

I'd also like to send my best regards to David, commonly known as Mr. Toni, as they play the waiting game.

jumper

gun - i don't like guns, don't have a gun, don't want to create a mess for someone else to clean up, don't want to leave such a horrible image with anyone i love.

rope - don't have one, have all low ceilings or rafters that are decorative and wouldn't hold my weight, another horrible image to lay on someone, plus i can barely tie my shoes - a noose would be impossible.

crashing into a tree/wall/off a cliff - would destroy the car, which would screw justin, since it's our only car.

slit wrists in tub - seems too slow, another mess to clean up and horrible image, plus too doomed movie star-ish.

self-mutilation - technically not any real end to pain, just a temporary re-channelling of it, after which i would think the pain would be back as sharp as ever, plus i'd have to always wear long sleeves, even when visiting my mom in florida in august.

jumping - quick, plus added benefit of the rush i get from dropping; would need to be from a bridge, as opposed to a building, as landing on concrete would be unwelcoming and create another image; much nicer to be enveloped by rushing water, and gradually carried out to sea, which rules out any of the bridges in my vicinity, which would only put me into the cuyahoga river (legendary for catching on fire, more than once) and at most carry me out to lake erie - not very poetic.

i've kept all this to myself for a while. i didn't want to burden anyone with it. but when i started figuring out the pros and cons of the methods available to me, it felt dishonest and irresponsible to keep it to myself. so yesterday morning i said to justin, i need to tell you something. and i told him. i know it hurt him to hear it.

i'm not going to do it, lack of readily-available ocean access aside. i love justin. i want to grow old with him, and i want to have more children with him. there are so many people i love and plenty who love me. there are so many things i want to do yet. apart from hans's death, i have an incredible life already - i'm not ready to end it. and i could not intentionally cause anyone else the pain i feel from hans's loss. but that pain is the problem. it's more than i can bear. i need some relief. kicking and screaming isn't enough. how in the world does anyone survive the death of a child? i know intellectually that people do - i know people who have - but i can't imagine how it's possible.

*****

i have been sitting on this post for a couple of days. on the one hand, while i write for my own benefit, i recognize that other people in various stages of grief read this blog from time to time, and so i wonder if it's irresponsible to discuss the pros and cons of various methods of suicide in their presence, when they could be vulnerable to suggestion. on the other hand, why the hell doesn't anyone discuss at least thoughts of suicide in any of the literature? i cannot be the only parent of a dead child who has ever allowed the thought to slink past her neurons or transmitters or whatever.

so i've decided, enough - i'm putting it out there. i write for my own therapeutic benefit, and it would be dishonest of me not to put it out there. plus, i haven't been able to write about anything else while i've been contemplating whether to post it or not. ultimately, i'm not suggesting that suicide is a good idea, which would be the immoral thing for me to do, and i really believe in my heart of hearts that i'm not planting any thoughts in any grieving parent's head that they haven't already had on their own. so here are my thoughts. they are only my thoughts and not a plan of action. let's stop pretending and start talking about it.

two boxes

we went through hans's things tonight after our dinner of veggie potstickers (hey, it's a pretty balanced dinner if you look at the ingredients!). i've been dreading it for so long, putting it off, until it felt so heavy i couldn't bear it any more, so we got it over with tonight. it was a challenge, but it wasn't as bad as i thought, although i think it was harder for justin.

we were in agreement on almost everything as to whether it went in the "hans" box or the "another child" box, which made it easier. we have more stuff than we thought, though, so we'll buy another "another child" box tomorrow. some things that went in the "another child" box were tough calls, because they were things like books or sleepers that were bought or given specifically with hans in mind but we felt shouldn't not be used. so we decided that if we put a sweater on our second child and it felt weird, we would know to take it off and put it in hans's box.

his alpaca sweater and cap were softer than i remembered, as was the green and white blanket my mom's friend's mom knitted for him. (the sweater and cap went in hans's box, the blanket in the other one.) we didn't think to dress hans in his own clothes we had packed and ready for him at the hospital, so the nurse put him in a mint green gown and a green and white crocheted cap and a multi-colored crocheted blanket, which i had folded and sealed in a plastic bag when i finally unpacked my suitcase from the hospital the day before the memorial service. on that day, i could still smell him in his clothes, but the smell is gone now. all that's left of him is a little dried bloody spot inside his cap and some vague stains on the back of his gown. poor little guy - he was falling apart. but he was still so beautiful - so beautiful my heart can hardly contain it.

fun at work!

there are very young and pregnant women EVERYWHERE in my building today.

apparently, someone thought to take me off the distribution list about the state-of-the-art day care center that opened in my building last week, as i haven't gotten any of the newsletters since i've been back.

there were two other pregnant women i became friendly with while i was pregnant. one of them had a miscarriage at almost five months in 2002. i didn't know her at all then, but i remember being shocked; i thought after the first trimester it was smooth sailing. (ha!) she got pregnant again a month after i did. once she got past the point at which she had miscarried the first time, she would drop by my desk all the time to ask if it was normal to be experiencing one thing or another, and i loved reassuring her. her son was born in march; she named him justin.

the other woman was due almost three months after me, and she used me as her beta mother, too. when she got her wrist brace for pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome, she came straight to me to show it off. her son was born on sunday - mother's day. she named him justin, too.

i wonder if either of them became worried that they had followed my advice after hans died.

another co-worker was pregnant with twins in 2003. one of them was tubal, and despite her complaints to her doctor, no one took her seriously until her tube exploded. they saved the other twin but she lost her tube. at the delivery, the ob used suction improperly and caused severe brain damage; her son died the next day. she and her husband sued the ob, and won, but their lawyer demanded that they not try again until the case was over, to make her appear more sympathetic. they could finally start trying again last month, but they knew it could be rough, since she now had only one tube. she will be four weeks tomorrow.

my sister called me in the middle of a conference yesterday afternoon to tell me that jay had just turned over by himself for the first time ever. after they heard that news, my co-workers all wanted to see his latest pictures, so i put on a little slide show.

since i don't live in a cave, i am surrounded by life going on. and i'm so torn - all of these new babies are so wonderful, but they don't seem right to me. it seems to me that in the aftermath of my son's death, all conception and birth and growth should come to a halt until i'm ready to rejoin that world, dammit. it would only be respectful.

little man with a big head

Mike had a meeting this morning, so I was able to spend some time, alone, with Charlie, age seven months. Here are a couple of random things:

Charlie has a big head, but his body is catching up. He is quite a darling chap, and a total character ... if not a bit fussy.

Charlie likes Dan Zanes, and can wiggle like a worm to the Hokey Pokey.

Music is fun, like many other things, but gets boring after about 2 minutes, so we had to find other things to do.

Charlie doesn't like to be sitting alone, so I had to hold him the entire three hours we were together.

I am in really bad shape, I need exercise.

When all else fails, play outside. Birds, squirrels, and later on the princess pugs next door were a non-ending source of amusement to Charlie.

i am in hell

and i'm not feeling like much of a pacifist, either.

what i'm missing at this moment

1. seinfeld, although i can hear it upstairs
2. the eloquence to succinctly express what i feel tonight
3. comfortable pink shoes (although i've got the uncomfortable kind covered)
4. good sense, apparently, because when i'm down is when i need to eat the most cleanly, and instead i gave into the desire for comfort and made that cheesy potato casserole that everyone makes, but everyone makes it a little bit differently; although it wasn't all bad because i also made broccoli and carrots and cauliflower (is that right? it can't be. it looks all wrong.) with figs and onions, and we ate slices of papaya, too, which justin advised reminded him of the aftertaste of vomit...lovely
5. hans

we've been offered two babies in two days

And it's not as if I'm out there looking for them or anything, it's really strange. A psychologist / case worker friend of ours has a client who's daughter carried to term, and delivered a child, without her parents knowing. This child was born, in good health and without issue, which is incredible considering that the mother ignored all pre-natal and pregnancy health.

The child is set to be sent home with her grandparents this week, and will be put up for open adoption as soon as a good home presents itself. Our friend immediately thought of us ... and if the timing was differant, well, we'd be all about it. It's something that we've talked about for as long as we've been together, and something that we believe that we will do in the future - but all things considered, it's not a good time.

Which is a shame, because this kid sounds amazing.

Adoption is something that I've always been keen on, and birthing our child, well one child, was something that I went along with my wife on: we'd envisioned birthing a child and later adopting an older child. Laura has a motherly urge to carry a child, something that we have each created and something that, until recently, I didn't completely understand. Conceiving and delivering Hans changed my life, and even though he died as soon as he was coming to life, it will remain, hands down, my most precious moment.

"Your 2-Month-Old, Fourth week"

that was the subject line of the e-mail in my box this morning when i got to work. when i first found out i was pregnant, i signed up for a weekly newsletter from baby center that told me every wednesday morning that my baby was the size of a peanut that week, or had started forming tooth buds that week. i loved it.

i wasn't accessing my work e-mail from home while i was on leave, and the firewall has kept these sorts of e-mails out of my box the last few weeks i've been back. but we had a problem with our e-mail server last week, and the firewalls are dicey, and the result is that i got this piece of crap today. according to baby center, hans would be smiling at me about now. not what i want to hear.

happy mother's day 2

what a beautiful day. really. as i've written before, i think of mother's day as a day when you do something for your own mother, and i didn't want weird pity cards. but i have been blown away.

besides the beautiful card from jen and laine this week, my mother called me yesterday afternoon to let me know she had been thinking of me and wanted me to know she honored me as a mother and loved me and was hoping it wasn't too difficult for me. last night dyan e-mailed me and said:
"Greg and I want to acknowledge you this Mother's Day. We hope you are blessed on this day.... It's supposed to be sunny and warm, so hoping your day can be sunny, warm and full of springflowering. We send our best."

this morning david showed up at our door with a mother's day card for me with an incredible and supportive message from toni inside and a gift card to nighttown. we went out to the car to say hi to toni, who can barely move, and zelda, who was ecstatic about heading to the zoo. today is their newest son's due date, so here's hoping the walk around the zoo makes toni go into labor today, and that whenever he is born, this son is completely healthy.

we had invited justin's mom and stepdad for breakfast, and they brought me a beautiful fuschia plant, which the menfolk hung on the porch while the womenfolk made breakfast. i felt bad that everything wasn't ready when they got here, but we lolled in bed this morning until the last possible minute, and my in-laws are so laid back that it made no difference to them, god bless them. we had chocolate waffles with raspberry sauce and tillamook cheddar and orange wedges and passion fruit juice cocktails and my own special blend of coffee (packets from hotel rooms all over the world emptied into the coffee can and shaken, which was how i recovered when i realized i was almost out of coffee). after breakfast we got out the lawn chairs for the first time this year and sat in the back yard and soaked up the sun and talked about bricking in the little grass we have and someday having a child do wheelies on his or her tricycle in the resulting courtyard.

justin's aunt called me just after my in-laws left and took justin to work. she and her husband were never able to conceive and eventually adopted a son; when hans died, she took it very badly, and realized she hadn't fully worked out all of her grief over it, and couldn't talk to us for a couple of weeks. she wanted to wish me a happy mother's day. then another of justin's aunts called to wish me a happy mother's day, and to let me know she was still working on a filipino baby for us. (insert long sigh here.) i told her we may consider adoption at some point, but we would probably look locally first, since there seem to be so many kids in need right under our noses.

the sun is shining, everything is in bloom, my house is clean, and i am surrounded by love. my mother loved the purse we sent her for mother's day, and justin's mom loved the birdhouse candle lantern thingy we gave her. i have the most wonderful husband ever in the history of the universe. i am the mother of a son who was beautiful and sweet-tempered and determined and loved punk music. and i will be the mother of another child someday, too, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. not much else matters.

i have a long ways to go. despite a beautiful day yesterday that included bike riding and gardening and sushi-eating and beer-drinking, i was as angry as i've ever been. i cried for my son for a long time yesterday afternoon. i feel pretty certain i will cry many, many more times for him.

but i also have all kinds of blessings in my life. and as horrible as hans's death is, as a result of it i appreciate beauty more. i better appreciate the relationships in my life, and the love justin and i have. i savor each good thing more. my life is richer. i'd rather have my son back, but there is a silver lining.

here are the tulips from our beds that are on our table today as well as other things that are blooming.

happy mothers day

I've been worried abit about mothers and fathers day. Laura and I had a good cry yesterday, which sort of 'cleansed' us and opened us up for an evening with Matt & Sara. It's always good to see them.

This morning we woke up early and spent some time lazing around in bed, etc. Etc. is always a brilliant way to spend any morning!

Later on, really getting a start on the day, the door bell rang: david, with toni and zelda ... they were dropping off a mothers day card for laura enroute to the zoo. It was such a pleasure to see them, this, perhaps the last time we will see them before the arrival of the fish. Good luck guys.

Now, breakfast time. Mom and Joe arrived soon after the David gang left, what a glorious day: sunshine, flowers in full bloom and Laura's delicious breakfast. Chocolate chocolate chip waffles with raspberry syrup, mandarin orange slices, sharp cheese and some gorgeous fruit necture.

We spent the rest of the morning out in the backyard, soaking up the first bits of spring sunshine and talking about all of our various plans for garden and porchville ... it's a good day, shame I've had to bring that feeling with me to work, rather than keeping it with me at home.

I guess that I shouldn't complain. A good day is a good day.

i could run a marathon

okay, maybe a lap around a track. okay, maybe half a lap. the point is i have an insane amount of energy i need to expend. if i can't take a bike ride again saturday, i will go nuts. other than green tea today i have had no caffeine all week, and i haven't had a caffeine withdrawl headache. there is this crazy, insane adrenalin monster that's taken me over. maybe it's just a bad case of spring fever.

we saw "ten minutes from cleveland" tonight, which inspired me to laugh more and harder than i have in at least three months and probably longer. but i was keenly aware that i am a west-sider and not at all an eastsider, not from the play about cleveland itself but from the crowd attending the play. i felt like me, only on the first day of seventh grade, in a new city and a new school, when i was so out of place i ate my lunch in the bathroom. i've never felt the east/west divide in cleveland more than i did tonight. i'm still sorting it out. but i loved the play.

tomorrow we are having lunch with justin's dad, in from vermont, if we can find a place that serves both bland enough food for my father-in-law and veg-friendly food for justin. then i hope to administer more self-therapy by working in my garden and riding my bike, if it stops raining long enough. my mother wants to get some flowering plants for our garden in hans's memory and i need to figure out the right place and plants for the little memorial garden.

i'm disjointed and jumpy and discombobulated tonight. nothing is right.

what i realized tonight that i wish i didn't

i have to be honest: what i want from therapy is not really fair to, well, therapy. i wanted a magic bullet. or if not an instant fix, then a way to accelerate the process. tonight the therapist asked me towards the end when i thought i should come back. i told him i would come back every night if i thought it would get me through grief faster. and then i realized that he felt there wasn't much more we could do there. ugh.

the whole hour, the feedback he gave me was, that's so healthy that you're doing that, that's just what you should be doing, keep doing that, that's a really good insight. i'm instinctually moving through grief, and my instincts are stellar, and there are no shortcuts, and there's not much more he can add, and all i can do is keep going. so i feel deflated - i wanted therapy to fix things, but it's not doing anything for me that i'm not doing for myself. dammit.

i cannot excel at grief. there is no merit award for "best griever" or "first place finisher of grieving". i cannot outperform grief. dammit.

i'm tired of grief. i'm tired of being isolated by it. i'm tired of being left vulnerable and oversensitive by it. i'm tired of all the changes caused by it. i want it to be over, or at least going somewhere, for pete's sake. grief is so stagnating. the only stagnation i want is for a couple of hours on sunday afternoon when i want to take a nap.

i still made an appointment with the therapist, in two weeks. i don't know if i'm going to keep it.

*****

note to justin: i'm listening to the "fresh air" interview with amy palladino, the genius behind "the gilmore girls", and i'm reminded that i still want the first and any other seasons now on dvd as a present, should you feel so inspired sometime. i'd also like a cool lunch box; i'm tired of putting my lunch in target shopping bags. hey - you could kill two birds with one stone and get me a gilmore girls lunch box.

montezuma's revenge, a reason to celebrate cinco de mayo

Frat boys and margarita girls across North America are celebrating and why not? Today is cinco de mayo, perhaps one of the most celebrated non-holidays this side of arbor day (which, by the way, was just last week - hopefully you've all recovered from your arbor day hangovers).

Contrary to popular belief, cinco de mayo is not Mexico's independence day. Simply, it marks the day in 1862 (in what was perhaps Corona's first cinco de mayo party) where a legion of aggressive French soldiers had a bout of Montezuma's Revenge. Caught off guard (and most certainly with their pants down) the French were chased out of Pueblo by a rag-tag, undermanned and poorly armed Mexican force.

A minor victory, yes, especially when considering that when the Frenchmen's bellies eventually recovered, they retook the city, but a victory none the less, and one that is often time credited as a turning point in Mexican moral, and in their eventual independence.

So today, on this 5th day of may, we shall celebrate. Laura and I plan to do so by donning sombreros as we dine on our traditional feast of spaghetti and soysauge.

damn elie weisel

i picked up bits and pieces of an npr radio special with elie weisel on the holocaust as i was in and out of the car on my way home tonight. it motivated me to make sure i remember to take cds with me in the car tomorrow so i do not turn on the radio.

one part i heard was about an older man who survived the holocaust but witnessed many adult jews being lined up in front of pits and shot down into them as well as children and babies being burned alive in ditches so as to save bullets. after he made it out, he wanted to tell people what he had seen and people sooooo did not want to hear about it. on the global horror scale, my son's stillbirth doesn't exactly compare to the whole freaking holocaust, but i understand the frustration of no one wanting to hear about the horror others have experienced.

in another part of the interview, weisel talked about the nazi officers who, when put on trial after the war, said, hey, i didn't hate the jews personally, i just followed orders. his point was that these officers had a choice; if they weren't comfortable carrying out orders to kill jews, they had the option of being reassigned. in his opinion the first moral value was to save lives. i started to bawl in the car. and i apologized to hans, for losing faith in his existence at the end of my pregnancy, and for not going to the hospital when i felt something was wrong the last time. he may have already been dead, or they may not have been able to save him, but he deserved my best effort to save his life, as much effort as i made the whole rest of the pregnancy.

when i got home i had a beautiful and sweet and powerful mother's day card from jen and laine, fellow parents of dead children. as wonderful as it was, it opened me the rest of the way up, and i sobbed for a long time. i would prefer coming home to hans to getting a card, dammit. it's a good thing i'm going to the therapist tomorrow.

thankfully, justin's on his way home. i gotta go cook supper.

being pg

i'd like to be pregnant right now.

if i were pregnant now, i'd be past worrying about whether we'll be able to conceive again, even though we did it on the first try last time and it's irrational for me to worry about it now.

if i were pregnant now, i'd have a little buddy with me all the time; i'd certainly love hans's company, as he proved himself a lovely companion for 40 weeks, but i'm willing to make a new buddy. talking to hans every day in the car was one of the best things about my pregnancy.

if i were pregnant now, i could get out of doing dishes.

if i were pregnant now, i would have someone else who would be directly and physically affected by my anger and stress, which would motivate me to let them go. i'm not doing so well at letting them go right now.

if i were pregnant now, let's be honest, i would be anxious anyway.

if i were pregnant now, i'd have a new life to hold close inside of me, to start loving already, to start taking care of and influencing to make sure he/she has the proper appreciation for elton john and understands that phil collins is essentially the anti-christ.

wherever you go, there you are

i realized as i replied to holly that i have gotten better at following my heart and not worrying about what other people think. but i've also become, if not exactly an introvert, then less extroverted than ever before. maybe these changes are part of feeling like a grown-up now. on the other hand, i've never been such a generally angry person in my life, and that doesn't feel like maturity, so i'm thinking it's more that post-hans i am becoming a different person. and the jury's still out on her.

my stillbirth booklist

just finished the highly-recommended "life touches life" by lorraine ash, for which i cared not at all. the author's way of dealing with the death of her daughter at 42 weeks is to maintain a relationship with her in the spiritual dimension. clearly, she's found a place that works for her, but it's not the place for me, and so i found it pretty annoying. the one thing i did like about her story is that the loss of her daughter made her more open and actively compassionate towards others, which is something to which i aspire.

yesterday i read the iconic (among parents of dead children) "when hello means goodbye", which one of the nurses evidently handed to my mother-in-law shortly after i told her to get that damn bear out of my face. she suggested that perhaps i wasn't ready to read the pamphlet and that my mother-in-law give it to me when she thought i was ready. either my mother-in-law forgot about it until saturday night, or she thought saturday night at justin's birthday dinner, 2 1/2 months after the fact, was the right time, which is kind of goofy since it's about dealing with the immediate aftermath of perinatal death.

it was pretty simplistic, but i did like that it included pictures of a mother with her stillborn son. i have a huge compulsion to show EVERYONE pictures of hans, but 99.9% of the population definitely does not want to see his pictures, so it was nice to see that someone else had pictures and they shared them. "life touches life" also has a picture of the author and her husband and her daughter, and that was the best part of the book.

the best thing i've read on stillbirth is "when a baby dies", which has many brief case histories and was far more therapeutic than any of the pantheistic or sentimental stuff everyone seems to publish, if border's rack-o-death-and-dying is any indication.

my therapist suggested the classic "on death and dying", but i've read it before (long, long ago) and didn't really feel too inspired to read it again. kubler-ross also wrote a book on the death of children, but it seemed to be more about older children and didn't feel relevant.

a new issue of "american baby" arrived saturday. i haven't opened it yet, just because i haven't had time, but i plan to read it tomorrow on the bus. the issue that arrived that day i arrived home from the hospital - the day i delivered hans, actually - i wasn't prepared to read and sent home with kath. but i read the last one that came, and i find that reading baby stuff, even the articles about clothing for toddlers that is more expensive than anything i own, to be hope-inducing, and i need all the hope i can get to keep my head above water.

and now i'm going to go spend the final minutes of my husband's birthday with him if i can tear him away from the crate of records our tenants put out for the garbage truck.

my life, summed up in minutes

12:10 - crud, time to shave and shower.

12:20 - brush teeth, dip a dee doo hair.

12:25 - get together snack, lunch, music for walk/train.

12:30 - leave house, "hello neighbor", walk the walk to train.

12:35 - "sorry, mate, I haven't a dime"

12:43 - arrive train station, pay fare, say hello.

12:46 - train arrives.

12:50 - "Hey, what's up? ... a whole lada nada here."

12:50 - 1:10 - look for new graffiti, read the paper, listen to tunes.

1:13 - Clock in.

1:14 - 1:25 walk, underground, to office, thus avoiding too many people.

1:26 - 1:38 fix snack, get a briefing about what's going on around the airport, log in to computer.

1:39 - "What's up 'net world?"

And so it goes, my life, sunday through thursday.

have you had that baby yet?

I knew the time would come, and to be honest I sort of fealt that it would be with the person that it happened with (among others). One of our vendors at the airport is this catty woman named Cathy; Chatty Cathy. She's a bit wound up: a kind person, but a real sticky beak.

Anyhow, I haven't seen her around since I've been back. Today, as I was running from here or there, and actually working on something, I almost bumped completely into her. We stopped, looked each other in the eyes and she asks: "saaaaaay, haaave you had that bay-bee yet?"

"Um, well, our son died and well, it's strange, but I really have to run, really, someone is waiting on me - I'll catch you later."

She looked at me, looked at the ground, looked at me again, hugged me, and not knowing what to say: "ohhh, i'm sorry, you can have another one - I know you can. Good luck."

may day

it's a new month, and it feels like a new start. maybe the return to spring-ish weather makes it feel that way. also, the fact that justin is feeling more positively about trying to have another child lifts a huge weight off me, which is contributing to my fresh feeling. that, and the red-orange tulips in the front of the house, which finally opened today. oh, and the fact that our cd player in the car started miraculously working on its own again, so i could drive around today with the sun roof open blaring bloc party. woo-hoo.

another contribution to my well-being: i cried my heart out last night before i feel asleep. i missed hans so much. i sort of dribble tears all the time, but i just let the dam break last night and boy, did it feel good when it was over.

we celebrated justin's birthday this morning; it's really not until tomorrow, but it's impossible with his work schedule, so i declared this weekend to be his birthday weekend. friday night, i rented "rushmore" for him, which he always wants to rent but we never do because i've already seen it several times. yesterday, we celebrated at his mom's house; she made him eggplant parmesan, which may be the finest in the world, and had a cake for him that said, "happy bar mitzvah, luigi!" it made him very happy; you'll have to get him to explain why.

this morning i made him chocolate chocolate chip waffles with fresh raspberry sauce and a birthday candle. and i made him filthy, greasy, fried (veggie) sausage patties, which thrilled him to no end. i also gave him a gold and bejeweled king's crown to wear, which he did put on, but he wouldn't let me take his picture in it, so you'll have to use your imagination. he loved his presents (accessories for his bike), but the speedometer/odometer i got him was messed up, which was disappointing, and then when we got on our bikes, something was wrong with my chain, so we didn't get far. but other than that, it was a lovely morning. and after i took him to work i got his speedometer exchanged, so hopefully it will be uphill from here.

we haven't had much to celebrate lately, but apparently we haven't forgotten how. i wish hans was here for the celebration, though. i would have loved to have gotten justin a present from hans. although i think just having him with us would have been present enough for all of us.