growing old is a privilege

Somebody wise said that once, and I totally agreed.

Which is why I was rather sane when I turned 40 yesterday. I was OK. I did not freak out, or go out to buy one hundred pairs of shoes, as R feared I may. I did not look up plastic surgery of any sort. I patted my soft little middle aged belly and took a second helping of the chocolate hazelnut cake that comes from an amazing, small Romanian bakery, giving thanks to their existence and contemplated begging for an internship. Or just to lick the bowls.

It is a privilege to grow old, to add another digit to my number of living years. My birthday is so close to Thanksgiving it is hard to not feel grateful when it rolls around. I am glad to be alive and surrounded by my immediate family, I am glad to be able to cook and clean and breathe with them, to watch the girls grow and to hear the garage door grunt open every evening when R comes home from work. I am glad to be able to shiver with cold and mutter bitter complaints when I go out in this chilly weather. I finally understand why the sun was worshiped.

But I am not wise yet.

I still think, why can’t he be here too? Why not give me one more thing to be grateful for? I still hated it when the server at the French restaurant gushed about our three beautiful girls. How grateful I felt! And yet how I hated the convenience of the phrase “three girls”! I sat and wondered, if there was one boy in the mix, how would those strangers have expressed their admiration? Or perhaps they would be dismayed that I was robbing the world of more resources than I ought to. Maybe they think I have nothing better to do but to stuff the landfill with more stinky diapers. Perhaps someone will say, “How do you do it with four kids?!”, with an underlying note of hysteric. And I only wonder, How do I do it without my missing child?

Nothing to do but to move on, and deal with the silent ache.

And the worst thing is knowing that S is still missing her little brother. Recently I stumbled across a page in her drawing journal and saw that she had drawn a picture, with a sign that said “Lost Siblings”, then a stand with a girl sitting there, a sign over her head saying “Questions ask here” and on the ground is an oval, in the oval a boy with wings, shedding fat tears, his word bubble declaring, “I miss my family!”

Don’t we all miss you too, Ferdinand! How I wish you were here. I mean physically here.

:::

My dear friends, thank you if you still read here. I apologize for the scant internet presence. I vow that one day I will go back to my Reader again, and catch up. This is my precious little corner, where I can come and shed all the tears I want, and I am forever thankful for all of you who had listened and offered comforting words. I think, if you have not done that, I am not sure I would have lived to write about my 40th birthday (which was actually pretty uneventful). While my priorities have changed, your place in my heart haven’t. If you would like to exchange snail-mail with me, please contact me! Otherwise, I am sure one day we will meet again.

this is what it is

Hold onto what is good

even if it is a handful of earth.

Hold onto what you believe,

even if it is a tree which stands by itself.

Hold onto what you must do

even if it is a long way from here

Hold onto life

even when it is easier to let go.

Hold onto my hand

even when I have gone away from you.

~Peublo verse

 

Often it is the wisdom of others, filtered through centuries of tears and hearts, that speaks best for me.

I hold on to what is good, I will never forget my gratefulness of the quiet support I have gotten here.

I hold on to what I believe. One day he will come a-knocking.

I’ve held on to life, and continue my journey inward to find the core of my core.

I hold on to your hand, my sweet child, even though you are away.

I never let go, I never will.

Happy 5th, Ferdinand

Five years.

I have nothing fresh to say. No new insights. No fresh relevations. No wisdom to share. I have walked but have not veered onto a new path. There are no shortcuts, no new vistas, little consolation.

To be fair, time does slowly exert her effects of a slow numb. Life inevitably piles on distractions so you sometimes forget about the wound a little. At times, the memory will seem so distant you feel you are looking through a frosted glass to a movie on the other side, the story of another, but not of yours. The screams muffled, the contours blurred. Only when the movie on the other side has ended will you realize you have your hand over your heart, throbbing and aching.

I still miss him, terribly much. But I do not always find the time or space on a daily basis to remember. I still experience disbelief. I still sometimes look around and wonder, where is he? Where are you? I still have the illusion that I have somehow absent-mindedly misplaced him, somewhere.

This is the first year we spend his birthday out of the country. Here, everyone wants us to forget and forge on. They want us to be whole again and to stop hurting. I did not make a cake, it is just impossible to swallow. Instead, I made a donation in Ferdinand’s honor to the Tibet Water Project to bring clean water to one of the poorest parts of Tibet. He was born dry. I hope others get to enjoy clean fresh water in his honor.

I am seeing a delayed grief response in S. She was almost four when Ferdinand was born, and did not fully grasp what was going on. I have seen her experience very intense emotions last year and this. She even wrote a story that to me was her effort to make reason of what had happened. Needless to say, it broke my heart. But there is nothing to do but to roll with the punches. I just hope she can find closure faster than I do.

I wish I were a better shiny example of how to walk this path, but here I am, just trudging on.

How we miss and love you, Ferdinand. Happy Birthday, our brave little star voyager! I am sure you are twinkling at us right this very second. We love and miss you, forever.

What I Learned from my Mother

What I Learned from my Mother

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

~ Julia Kasdorf

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

My head is filling up again.

Last summer the to-do lists took over with tyranny. Every morning I sat up in bed and my brain powered on to reveal a never-ending to-do list or decisions to make or stuff to think about. But finally, we are slowly settling into our new home, finding our feet again, and I am not using the GPS as much anymore, my compass re-set.

I found a page in my journal of topics I would have liked to write about- on three different blogs. The ideas no longer seem fresh, the intense moment gone, but can be re-kindled. I still have things to say. Thank goodness. I guess that means I am still alive. I finally exhaled.

I read Julia Kasdorf’s poem and I wonder what my children learned from me. I know that since the summer of 2007 their biggest lessons could be: bad things happen. It is ok to cry. Mommy can be weak. Mommy can be so in pain she swears and rolls about on the floor. There are kind people always. Friends come and go, at least some of them.

I cannot teach you anything, that’s what I tell them. I can’t teach you, you will learn by yourself, because you want to. So I am not sure what they have picked up, and what they have internalized.

But I sure hope, that there will always be this softness and this grandness in their hearts, to reach out to the grieving with humble open palms, to abide with sorrow, to walk gently along. To live with an alertness and wide-open eyes, because we don’t know when. The moment is now.

But you know what? How I yearn to teach: to hold Ferdinand’s hand as he makes his first squiggly line, to hear his voice repeat my words, to point to a bird, flower, and leaf and say the name.

Ferdinand. I still miss. He fills my entire heart today.

tribute

Over the past months I have essentially disappeared from the cyber world. No time for FB, or any of the blogs. Never mind the streams of thoughts marching through my brain, some hoisting exclamation marks on their shoulders, others dragging a series of periods behind their feet. I do not know how to find the time to maintain my blogs, or follow up on others.

Thankfully there are some souls who kindly keep them in their orbit. Among them the impossibly beautiful, amazing and graceful Jenni. Today I come back here to write because I am twisted with grief and sadness, my heart breaks for Jenni and her family yet uplifted in a most bizarre way because of the magnitude of grace with which she had faced her journey.

In February 2009 Jenni bid goodbye to beautiful Angel Mae. She had abide with her grief since then, while reaching out to the community in her beautiful gracious ways. Last year after many trials she finally found herself with child again. Except her baby son Owen Christian was diagnosed with Trisomy 18 a month ago. Does heaven not have eyes? Does fate not know when to cease the tribulations? Does mercy not exist?

Yet Jenni and her family decided to continue with their journey, and with love. They vowed to surround baby Owen with as much love as possible. And the community rose to hold them.

Today is the day of hello and goodbye for Jenni, her family and dear Owen Christian. May they be surrounded by impenetrable peace and love. May Jenni and her son travel safe on their journey today. I am sending love and strength, even as I feel what I have is so paltry, wondering what do I have to give to a beautiful woman experiencing a monumental loss.

Welcome, Owen, welcome and be surrounded by so much love. You are sorely missed already.

silent scream

I am fairly sure I have a tumor growing within me. I have four blogs and some days I still feel I do not have a space to say what I wish to say to the world. I read that is how you grow a malignant tumor.

First, you child dies. You learn about it, you scream in disbelief, you beg, you bargain, plead and holler. It did not change the reality. And then you feel there is nothing more to say, you have been silenced.

I remember how I wished to shake every person I met by their shoulders, to tell them about Ferdinand. I needed people to acknowledge his existence, I needed my tragedy seen and nodded at, faces of pity.

And then the well-intentioned but poorly executed remarks came, and then I realize I need to go scream someplace else. Otherwise I am deemed unwise, silly, incapable of moving on and too overly egoistic to think that life ought to go the way I wish it to be.

So I came here and I wrote. Mostly in screams, with clenched teeth and shaking fists.Grabbing dirt by the fistfuls and rubbing them them into my hair. Throwing myself in the dust and refusing to budge.

It helped so much, to be able to expend that pent up energy that is at once love, anger, missing, resignation, devastation, defiance and sorrow. I am forever grateful for the sympathetic listening ears and compassion I have found here.

And then, I moved on, as people said I ought to. Life inched back to some semblance of a norm again and then I embarked upon a journey of being randomly tossed about in the sea of grief. Sometimes it was high waters of bitter grief and isolation, sometimes it felt like floating upon gentle waves that gently lull.

As I inch out, day by day, away from that fateful moment of four years ago, my screams became less frequent, and I became less vocal. I  felt less the urge to inject into my answers that I not only had three living daughters but also one son who is not earth-side. I began to think, What is the point? It is never going to change a thing. I may just hear something stupid again or make people feel awkward. It will not bring him back to life, and it does not ameliorate my hurt and grief. This horrible gap between Sophia and Lyra will never be filled. This ache will never cease. People must get so sick of hearing the same old thing again. This grief and recurring feel of horror is not welcomed like the first hint of green in spring. I do not wish to feel that sense of dread when I talk to people.

And so, I walked on. Quieter and at times not even making the effort to part my lips to speak. It does not reflect the ebb of grief, but rather its internalization. First it was something that happened to me, now it is me. At least, a part of me. When I open my eyes in the morning he is there; when I toss about in my sleep, he is there. He is deep within, never here, never gone.

I still miss him deeply, but now it is a silent scream within.

++

Today four years ago was the day we found out he was dead. This post is inspired by Jess‘s wonderful post over at Glow in the Woods.