I’ve been trying to be proactive when it comes to my “grief work”, as our social worker put it the other day. There are moments when I don’t want to be, moments when it all just comes crashing down… then I let the tears flow, and move back to feeling like maybe I can handle this tragedy if I take it moment by moment. It really is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to face this hellish situation, all the while missing my baby more than words could ever adequately describe. Oh how I miss her, and how my heart aches.

Chris and I are trying to be good to ourselves these days, and always good to each other. In spite of this shitty situation, I know that we are lucky in many ways. We do have each other, and we will eventually be okay. It will be a month tomorrow since Lucy was born and her short little journey of life ended so abruptly. It’s hard to focus on being good to ourselves when there are constant reminders of what we’ve lost. The moment I start to feel guilty about this, I try to remind myself that I have to get to a point of “living well” again someday because Lucy cannot. I have to do it for her. Easier said than done most of the time, but I continue to make myself get out of bed each day and give it my best shot, no matter how lame my efforts may be at times. I have been taking photos the past few days here and there when I see something that makes me feel Lucy’s light and posting them… the sunset sky, our dog Waggs enjoying the outdoors, the shoreline, even Chris… again, I feel that everything beautiful has Lucy in it. This makes me feel a little more connected to her, and reminds me to appreciate the beauty, just for her.

I have my first meeting with a therapist scheduled for Wednesday. My plan is to meet with her once a week, especially for the duration of time while I am at home and Chris is at work. I hope this helps. When we spoke with the social worker at the doc’s office, she mentioned that both Chris and I are doing very well considering the circumstances. So, we went from being a “textbook” pregnancy, to “textbook” grievers. And apparently, I am ahead of the curve on my healing for my C-section too. Go figure. Once again, we are ‘ideal’. What good is any of that when our little girl isn’t here? I am nervous, but hoping that therapy will be of more help. Chris seems to be doing a lot better than I am, but he is feeling it all the same. I mentioned this to him the other day, and he said that it’s okay, Lucy was physically with me for her whole life, so of course I’m probably struggling with it more than he might be from moment to moment. I’m in awe of his understanding, and thankful that we both get that we’re going to be dealing with this differently.

Today has been a strange, turbulent day. It was a rough beginning due to a bad night’s sleep, putting me in a sullen mood… as if my mood is rarely something other than that these days. The heat outside is smothering, and the storm that’s allegedly supposed to roll in gives everything a sense of impending doom. But, in spite of that, Chris and I took the dog over to Lake Michigan today to breathe in some nature and let the dog play fetch in the waves. It was good to get out and just *be* for a little bit. I kept scouring the sand for interesting rocks and stones, a habit I’ve always had, and I found myself looking for heart shaped rocks. My aunt and my mom have been going to the same location quite a bit this summer; it’s a relatively secluded part of the shoreline with a creek that runs into the lake and not really frequented much by the tourists. They’ve been finding all sorts of rocks; at Lucy’s memorial, my aunt gave me a collection of rocks she’s found since Lucy passed, and many of them are heart-shaped. I found a few to add to the collection today. There’s something very special about that, though it’s tough to explain exactly why. It’s easy to feel like Lucy is all around us, in all of the simple things that we treasure. As my mom has said, I felt connected to my little angel while there, listening to the breeze and the waves kissing the shoreline, watching the clouds roll across the sky, letting the sunlight caress my face. In moments like that, I feel her more than ever.

Before leaving, Chris and I decided that we needed to go pick Lucy’s urn up. It sounds terrible to write that we received the call several days ago from the funeral home that we could go get her… the long weekend happened right after that, and today is the first day we’ve really had a chance to make that voyage. I will be honest and say that I was torn. I wanted and needed to have her home with us finally, and was feeling terrible that we hadn’t been able to get her. On the other hand, I knew the finality and permanence that it would bring. Holding the cloth bag that contained her little urn on my lap on the way home, I was overwhelmed by the horror of it all. It was another one of those “I can’t believe I’m doing this” moments. I couldn’t believe I was actually sitting in the car with my baby daughter’s ashes in an urn on my lap. There is nothing in this world that could possibly be worse… if there is, I certainly cannot imagine it. It is all so intensely screwed up, and I can’t believe this happened. I almost feel numb, but there is a turbulence just under the surface of everything, simmering and threatening to boil over. The tears have passed, for this moment, but there are so many more that are sure to come.

Yesterday was the first day I haven’t cried. I don’t know why. And I don’t even know why that’s noteworthy. It isn’t. I thought about Lucy and all we’ve lost, all she’s lost, every moment of the day… the grief felt so heavy, and yet, no tears. The hurt just hangs upon me like a weighted chain; sometimes it’s hard to breathe, it’s so heavy. Sometimes I don’t want to breathe. I am in the thick of the sadness, and I’m not seeing a break in the near future. Or ever. My love for her grows more every day, and in turn, so does the grief. I want more than anything to fulfill my promise to live life well because our baby girl cannot, but I am just not there yet. And in creeps the guilt, because I can’t yet. I know that grief and joy can coexist- someday. But I don’t want to let my little girl down.

Right now, I just keep looking for Lucy everywhere, clinging to the idea that she is in all things beautiful in my world. The way the sun filters through the trees, the way the wind moves the leaves, the butterflies floating through the yard, the birds flitting here and there (birds and butterflies remind me of her lately), the stars winking in the night sky… all the beauty is my little Lucille Rose. There is some comfort in this idea; I really embraced it after a conversation with my best friend on Friday. My mom has also talked about the idea of the energy that animates us, and how energy never dies, therefore it is always there. Lucy is always there. Sometimes when I feel like she is near, I can almost feel something like an electric current, and then I wonder if her energy just went straight back into me after she passed. She is still part of me, still there. It is hard to know what to feel and believe… I wonder if she can hear me when I speak to her, if she even knows who or where I am, but then I think about the amount of love I feel for her… if she exists still within me somehow, how could she not know? I start to feel like a raving lunatic when these kinds of thoughts filter through my brain, and I can’t help but wonder if this grief and sadness is already making me crazy.

I keep going back to the thought of how unfair all of this is. I am so sad and angry that Chris and I have been handed the cruelest of life lessons. We already knew to appreciate our daughter, we were already willing to make all of the sacrifices (and then some) to make sure Lucy was going to have a great life; we already thanked our lucky stars that we were blessed enough to even be given one child. We were ready, we were willing. We loved her immeasurably the moment we knew she existed. And yet, she was stolen from us. How do we pick up the pieces and carry on? How am I going to get through this? Part of me wants to press a fast forward button to a point beyond the roughness of this early grief, but losing Lucy has certainly taught me the dangers of wishing time away. At the end of the pregnancy, all I wanted was for the pregnancy to be over with so we could meet our baby. Look how that turned out. Our meeting was so fleeting, so brief, so final. And now it’s all we have of her. Those brief memories that will stay with us for a lifetime. It just isn’t enough.

I did alright yesterday for the majority of the day. There isn’t a minute that goes by in which I don’t think of Lucy, but I held it together for most of the day. I felt okay about that. Then, I took apart the gorgeous flowers that my mom had gotten for Lucy’s memorial… they were wilting and dying in front of me on the table, and I just couldn’t handle it any longer. Maybe it’s the English teacher in me, but I read into the symbolic meaning of pretty much everything; it was suddenly as if the wilting flowers were representative of my beautiful Lucy, dying quickly in front of me in spite of their beauty and robust health. And then the floodgates opened. I couldn’t shut it off. Luckily, Chris was out mowing the lawn, so he was none the wiser (until I told him later), and no one could hear my wailing except for the dog and the cat. I cried on and off for the rest of the night. Sometimes it feels like relief to succumb to the tears and grief, other times it feels like the most acute form of torture. I know I am going to be okay, I know that I am going to be okay. Right? It’s this limbo I’m in right now that makes this even harder. I know it’s never truly going to go away, how could it? The amount of sorrow one feels is representative of the love that exists, and since my love for Lucy is endless, so too shall be my sorrow. It is hard to see a point at which I might be able to move ahead, especially right now. I can’t go back to work yet, I can’t really exercise yet until the Dr. gives his nod… I’ve got the telltale marks of pregnancy all over me still. I keep wondering if it will get easier to ride through the grief after these constant physical reminders subside. It feels like right now there is simply no escape or break from it. Constant reminders. My logical brain and emotional brain are at odds with one another. Logic tells me the factual pieces of what has happened. Logic tells me that this is the cruelty of nature- things happen and there’s no changing it. The logical thing to do is to continue moving forward, continue looking ahead. Looking back won’t change it. Being angry can’t fix it. Logic reminds me of the awful statistic of 1 in 4, which of course I was unaware of until it happened to us. Logic tells me to accept what is. I have accepted that we have lost our child. It has been three weeks, and I’ve accepted it. My emotional brain is howling in agony, still wishing away for the chance to take it all back, to trade anything and everything to get our baby daughter back. My emotional brain continues to twist and squeeze my heart, making me miss my daughter more every moment, making my arms ache for her, the emptiness in my soul continue to become more vast, seeing no end to this pain. How can it be that I am still able to just get out of bed, to keep standing, to keep breathing, when all I really want to do is sink into the darkness? There’s no escape from feeling this, not when the emotional brain is the ruler of my heart.

I know there is still much to be grateful for, in spite of the sheer awfulness of this situation. Nothing about this situation is okay, right, or fair, BUT- I keep trying to see the goodness in spite of it. I am so thankful that Chris is my husband, my partner, my rock. We talked about it yesterday, that a situation like this would send weaker couples on their way. We are strong together, and together we are going to be okay. We will only continue to grow stronger, I know that. We are surrounded by so much love and still have so much love to give. We have hope, and we have faith that we can make it through this dark time in our lives. We are going to be okay.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
….

I’ve always loved this poem by ee cummings… for years, if anyone were to have asked me what my favorite poem was, I’d have said this one. I used to think I knew what it meant, but now it has taken on an entirely new meaning. I asked my sister to read it at our wedding; I thought it was about the love I have for Chris. It’s also now about my love for Lucy. I could go on to explain how this ties in to my feelings for her, but I think it is clear. She IS my heart, she IS the moon, she IS the sun.