Thank you Jake
August 12, 2012 at 9:52 pm | Posted in after death?, Grief, twins, why I write | 12 CommentsTags: child loss, dark days, death of a baby, gratitude, hope, Jake, Jewish customs, quotes, Sawyer, twins
“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together
keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
Dear Jake,
It was 7 years ago today when I was admitted to the hospital. The doctors said there was no other option. You were not ready for this world. I suppose the world was not ready for you. Your dad and I were terrified when the doctor told us my contractions were 3 minutes apart. I could not believe at 26 weeks it could possibly be real. I did truly believe you would live. You held on for 2 more days before we actually got to meet you.
I still cannot understand how it is 7 years later. I do not need a calendar to tell me the time of year. My tears are much closer to the surface. The lump in my throat is back. My irritation and impatience have also risen just below my skin. My nerves are so raw. I wish to lock myself away so that I do not snap. I already have apologized to your daddy. If only just for a few moments I could be with you and your littlest brother. I know that it is not possible. However, this time of year I frequently seem to find myself back on the island of denial.
Your Yahrzeit was this weekend. (The Yahrzeit falls annually on the Hebrew date of the deceased relative’s death according to the Jewish calendar as opposed to the secular calendar.) Your dad and I lit a Yahrzeit candle for you.
You have 2 new cousins! Welcome to the world Eli and Owen!! I wish you could meet them. You probably already know this but your sister asked if she could have one of the babies. She desperately wants a baby brother. She talks about you and Sawyer almost every day. This morning she brought me two blankets she found for each of you. She is so sweet and thoughtful. I am trying my best to keep it together.
Thank you for chosing us as your parents. Thank you for the time you were able to spend with us. Thank you for sending us your baby brother and sister. They are shielding us from all the rain.
I miss you so much. I love you to the moon and back baby boy. I will look for you in my dreams.
It is complicated
August 8, 2012 at 9:26 pm | Posted in after death?, Grief, life after loss, Love, normal? | 10 CommentsTags: child loss, death, grief, hope, Jake, quotes, Sawyer, twins
It is complicated to explain. Or maybe it is not. The twins are doing and will continue to do things that Jake and Sawyer never did and never will. This is a fact. A bittersweet part of our lives.
There will be no first days and no last days. And nothing in between. Sometimes I play the pointless “What if” game. What if there were more time with Jake and with Sawyer?
I just read True Compass: A Memoir by Ted Kennedy. He included a letter his father Joseph Kennedy Sr. wrote to a friend whose son had just died:
Dear Jack,
There are no words to dispel your feelings at this time, and there is no time that will ever dispel them. Nor is it any easier the second time than it was the first.And yet I cannot share your grief, because no one could share mine. When one of your children goes out of your life, you think of what he might have done with a few more years and you wonder what you are going to do with the rest of yours.
You never really accept it; you just go through the motions. Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself a part of it again, trying to accomplish something–something that he did not have time enough to do. And, perhaps, that is the reason for it all. I hope so.
Sincerely, Joe
I hope so too.
August Again
August 4, 2012 at 10:54 pm | Posted in Anniversaries, Death, Grief, why I write | 10 CommentsTags: child loss, death of a baby, grief, quotes
No matter how far the distance you have traveled nor the failures that have gathered, hope would still meet you anywhere. – Dodinsky
August comes every year. Right after July. I have lived through these anniversaries of deaths and births before. There are happy days this month too.
Unlike the first year after Jake died not all the days are dark. I will try my best to take care of the twins, keep busy and smile. I will not always succeed.
I have learned that part of my journey since Jake and Sawyer died is that grief at times sneaks up and knocks the wind right out of me. Grief does not take me by surprise in August. I know that it is there and I will brace myself for it.
Birthday Wishes
July 30, 2012 at 9:50 pm | Posted in Grief, life lessons, Love, silver lining, twins, why I write | 9 CommentsTags: gratitude, happy, life after loss, twins
Happy Birthday!
As I wrote last year on your 4th birthday I am so very thankful for you two. I am sorry that I did not take you to see your brothers on your birthday. I just could not this weekend. I promise that I will very soon. Then I will take you out for ice cream (thank you Daphne for the brilliant suggestion).
I wish that you had a chance to know your brothers. I wish that I did not have to explain death to you at such an early age. I wish that some of your first sentences did not include “don’t cry mama.”
I wish I could find a picture of you from your 3rd birthday. I will confess to you now that we almost did not have a party for you that year. After Sawyer died the thought of planning a party was so daunting. We realized that you no matter how sad we were you 2 deserve happiness (and a birthday party). We did plan it and if I remember correctly we sent out the invitation the week before. You both had a great time. I just wish that 2010 was not such a blur of grief.
I wish that I could have protected you from my dark days. I wish that you will always know how much sunshine you both bring to me.
I wish that you will continue to look for rainbows where ever you both go and that I can go with you. And hug you both tightly. Love you both to the moon and back.
Boy with the dragon tattoo & his sister
July 26, 2012 at 10:57 pm | Posted in Cemetery, Grief, life lessons, normal? | 9 CommentsTags: baby loss, Charlie Brown, Growing Up, parenthood, quotes, Sawyer, twins, unexplainable
Thank you for all the well wishes. The cast has not slowed him down one bit.
Here he is with his toy green teeth chasing the girl with the butterfly tattoo around the house.
Ok, the cast did eventually tire him out. . .
Blue casts can really weigh a boy down
Now that he stopped chasing her she was free to accessorize a bit more.
Tattoo, a Crown & a Ring
What could be better?
They are making the most out of their last days as 4 year olds. She caught me off guard yesterday when she asked, “Will you take us to go see Sawyer and Jake for our birthday?”
“Yes, sure. Why?’ I responded while trying to figure out what happened that made a visit to the cemetery pop into her toddler brain.
“I love them. You don’t take us to see them often enough.”
She is right. I have not taken them to see Sawyer and Jake since the spring when she carefully arranged stones for her brothers. Over the past 5 years Evan and I have made the decisions about when and when not to bring the twins to the cemetery. Now that they have their own opinions I did not imagine we would be discussing trips to the cemetery.
“In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.” – – Charlie Brown
Kindness
July 24, 2012 at 8:58 pm | Posted in Grief, life after loss, normal?, silver lining | 2 CommentsTags: child loss, dark days, death, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, MISS Foundation, new not so normal, perspective, quotes
I, along with the rest of the world, do not understand the horror that took place last week in Colorado. There are no words which seem adequate for such a tragedy. The families left behind have a devastating hole in their lives and way too many unanswered questions. Life is not fair. However, a few things I read gave me some hope:
1. An article about the “Tales of Heroism. . .”. “Even as a masked gunman kept firing a hailstorm of bullets in a Colorado movie theater, acts of selflessness and heroism sprouted from all across the room. Three of the 12 people killed died while shielding their girlfriends from the gunfire. And a young woman risked her life to aid her wounded friend, refusing to leave her side.”
2. My friend Kelcey over at Mama Bird Diaries focused on the helpers in the tragedy. Kelcey posted the following quote she found through Ann Imig.
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” -Fred Rogers
There is so much darkness in the world that sometimes it is hard to see the light. But light, hope and rainbows are there, just some days you have to look much harder than others.
More kindness. The MISS Foundation’s Dr. Joanne Cacciatore started the Kindness Project in 1996 as a way for families to cope with the tragedy of a child’s death. Since then, more than 1,000,000 kindnesses have been committed around the globe in memory of children, gone too soon.
Anyone can participate in memory of anyone!
Here’s what you do:
Visit the MISS Foundation’s International Kindness Project Day website:
www.KindnessProjectDay.org
The boy with the dragon tattoo (and the blue cast)
July 22, 2012 at 8:36 pm | Posted in life after loss, normal? | 8 CommentsTags: motherhood, parenthood, perspective, twins
Thursday I was at work and saw that I missed a call from the twin’s camp. One of the twins had fallen. If I had placed a bet it would have been on her. Her mind has always raced far ahead of her body which often causes her to fall. However, I was wrong.
Here he is before getting an x-ray. If you look very closely at his hand you can see that it has a dragon tattoo. Well at least most of a dragon tattoo. Putting on those temporary tattoos in not one of my strong points. They somehow are always missing part of the tattoo – in this case it is a dragon body with not so much of a dragon head.
The x-ray showed a small fracture. Now the headless dragon is covered up by a blue cast. . .
Wonder what the dragon will look like in few weeks?
Odd but Ok
July 20, 2012 at 2:34 pm | Posted in Cemetery, Grief, life after loss, normal? | 6 CommentsTags: child loss, death of a baby, Jake, new not so normal, parenthood, quotes, Sawyer, unexplainable
Ever since Sawyer’s unveiling I have been watching the earth move farther and farther away from Jake and Sawyer’s headstone. Ground settles. No big deal. I kept checking. I thought about bringing some dirt and trying to fill it in. Stones started to fall into the crack. The split grew larger and larger. I decided to ask about it. I went to the office at the cemetery. The groundskeeper explained to me that a combination of ground settling and rain can cause headstones to sink. Not what I wanted to hear. He asked if I could show him the headstone and then he could determine the best course of action. Great. Action is good. In fact, fix it right now, please.
We drove out to Jake and Sawyer. I showed him the crack. He told me that they would lift up the marble and pack it down with more dirt. Ok. I asked, “Can we do that right now? ” He replied that he would put in a work order but it would not get done for a week or 2. I thought about it. Ok. Jake and Sawyer are not going anywhere. There is no urgency. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I was actually taking care of something for them. I will never give them a bath, brush their hair or help them get dressed. Oddly, I felt good about placing the work order to fix the crack between the earth and the headstone.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme,
and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Life is about not knowing, having to change,
taking the moment and making the best of it. . .” – Gilda Radner
Sibling Rivalry?
July 16, 2012 at 5:46 pm | Posted in Grief, life lessons, Love, normal? | 14 CommentsTags: child loss, death of a baby, Jake, parenthood, perspective, Sawyer, twins, unexplainable
On any given day our twins will be arguing over who is “bigger”. She is 3-4 inches taller. He is 1 minute older. I have explained these facts over and over again. So technically they are both right. However, in their 4-year-old (almost 5) minds this is not a satisfactory solution. I am not sure why but I continue to feel the need to unsuccessfully rationalize with them. Sibling rivalry at its finest.
The other day I was driving. The twins were in their seats in the back. It had not been a particularly good day. There had been arguing between the 2 of them. There had been time outs (or as it is known in our house, “the zone”). All seemed to have calmed down as I drove along until the question was asked. I have always known this question would be asked one day but somehow I was not prepared.
“Do you love Jake and Sawyer more?”
Silence.
“Mama, who do you love the most?”
More silence.
I realized that if I did not answer quickly this line of questioning would continue possibly forever. In case you did not know, 4 almost 5-year-olds can be very persistent.
“I love you all the same. I just miss Jake and Sawyer more. I can not hug them the way I hug you both.”
Avery’s Bucket List
July 10, 2012 at 5:40 pm | Posted in after death?, life after loss, Love, normal? | 2 CommentsTags: Avery's Bucket List, child loss, death of a baby, hope, parenthood, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, ways to honor the memory of your child
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Plato
I recently stumbled upon Avery’s Bucket List. It is a blog by Avery’s parents. Avery was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Her parents decided to create a bucket list for Avery and spread the word about SMA.
According to FightSMA.org, SMA is a genetic disorder which ” refers to a group of diseases which affect the motor neurons of the spinal cord and brain stem. These critically important cells are responsible for supplying electrical and chemical messages to muscle cells. Without the proper input from the motor neurons, muscle cells can not function properly. The muscle cells will, therefore, become much smaller (atrophy) and will produce symptoms of muscle weakness.”
Throwing the first pitch at a baseball game, have a bad hair day and party like a rockstar are just a few of the items Avery crossed off her bucket list before she died. Avery’s parents have continued her bucket list. Every day she is continuing to raise awareness and funding for a cure for SMA.
What is on your bucket list?
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