Today I went on a solo shopping/browsing expedition to a couple of my favorite stores looking for crafty ideas, fun back-to-school finds, and some essentials I’d run out of. It was nice not being in a hurry, and I was happy to putz around and just look at things.

Of course, these types of excursions can be emotionally risky for me.
A few tears spilled out at Hobby Lobby when I stumbled upon a couple of the same decorations I’d bought for Lucy’s nursery last summer. I averted my eyes from the cute baby girl in the checkout lane. I speed-walked past the baby department at Target. My pulse quickened when I saw a mama blow raspberry kisses on her sweet toddler’s cheek. I pretended that none of those things truly caused me any pain. All of that is normal for me now, and it is what it is. I have come to accept the emotional risks of going out in public, and usually I can handle them well.

Sometimes though, something catches me off guard, and suddenly, I can’t handle it well.
I navigated down the greeting card aisle to search for the perfect birthday card for Chris, since his birthday is coming up. I fought the little waves of sadness that washed over me when I realized that many of the ‘Husband’ birthday cards mentioned family or being a great father. I brushed them aside and was determined to find the right one. With a sigh of relief, I’d finally selected the right card for my darling wonderful husband. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed right away, but somehow I’d missed the trigger. I looked just to my right and felt my breath draw in sharply as I beheld the kids’ birthday cards and the innocent “Cute little ONE” birthday card, just waiting to be picked up for a sweet cake-covered ONE YEAR OLD. A one year old that isn’t my Lucy.

Right there, staring me in the face, is the reminder of the day I’ve been in denial of…

Oh, my heart. My poor tired heart.

The lump clicked into place in my throat and my lower lip started to quiver. Right there in the aisle at Target, the tears of grief demanded to be let loose, and I obliged. I think I’ve been in a state of denial about Lucy’s birthday, but I felt the reality of it come crashing down in that moment. And you know what? I felt sorry for myself. I felt sorry for Chris, for Lucy, and for myself. Not because I was crying in public, but because I couldn’t pick out my first birthday card for my daughter. Because I won’t ever get to give her one, or celebrate her milestones with her. Because I’ve lived the last year in the grip of grief, depression, and with an ache that won’t subside. Because sorrow is what I feel when I wake up, fall asleep, and every moment in between. Nothing can change any of that. Nothing can bring our baby daughter back.

In spite of doing well, of healing, of moving forward and trying to live again, the pain still takes my breath away.
It still paralyzes me. I still find myself submerged and sputtering in the inevitable crashing waves of grief, no matter how well I’ve been treading the waters of it. This is my life now, and it always will be. It’s not fair.

How I wish with all of my heart that my little girl were here with me, where she belongs.

This morning, yet another clinical reminder that Lucy is gone came in the mail. The last payment for pathology services on the day Lucy was born; this bill seems to have fallen through the cracks because of a hiccup with her name. Because we were between two hospitals, some details may have been lost because of the chaos that surrounded our situation. At Bronson, they knew her full name was Lucille Rose Orlaske, which is also what appears on her birth certificate and our insurance. At U of M, she was referred to as Lucy, because that’s what we were calling her. Both are her names, of course. However, this caused quite a jumble for us in the early months after Lucy passed away because we had to figure this out… we hadn’t realized initially that there was confusion with her name, which led to all of the billing blunders that needed to be sorted out. Our insurance was rejecting bills addressed to us for Lucy, because they had it in their records that she was Lucille. Unfortunately, this led to us needing to have difficult conversations with insurance people, hospital billing, etc. The only one I ended up handling over the phone was the ambulance bill (from the transfer to U of M), and having to explain pieces of our story in order to clear everything up proved to be very difficult and emotional. I’ll never know how Chris had the strength to handle all of the rest of that… it was terrible. We did find that nearly everyone he spoke with (and me too, with the ambulance billing) was deeply compassionate and did whatever they could to help clear things up. I guess though, who could not be moved at least a little bit by our sad story? We also had our HR person at school going out of her way to help us fix it all with insurance. As horrible as it all was, having to make those calls, we were lucky to have been met with kindness on all fronts. The details that we had to tend to in addition to coping with Lucy’s death are simply horrific, and they aren’t things that most other people even realize must be dealt with. It’s not a quick or easy process, and each one continues to remind us of the unbelievable, unimaginable situation we’ve found ourselves in. Sometimes, the horror of it is still hard to believe… it’s hard to believe that this unthinkable thing really happened. To us.

Looking at that bill just now, seeing her name in print like that, reopened a few wounds that have been trying in vain to heal. That’s the name she would have written on her homework, or heck, on the walls of her bedroom in non-washable marker… the name that she would have shared when first meeting someone, or announced over the loudspeaker at her first athletic event. Just there, typed, in print. Part of me is truly comforted by seeing Lucy Orlaske on that piece of paper, just like that, in an ordinary way. Proof that she existed. It was hard to seal the envelope up and send her name away like that, the very last of the bills we’ll ever receive for her care. Funny how the simplest of things seem so monumental in a scenario like ours.

The last few days for me have been plagued by flashbacks of the time leading up to Lucy’s birth. Days I’d forgotten about this time last year are suddenly crystal clear in their details, sending me right back there to those moments. I look back upon myself in those days now with such pity, such sadness… that woman, my past self, had NO idea what was going to happen in just a short time ahead. I feel so sorry for her because her greatest happiness was about to be snatched away. She just kept moving through those days with the purest oblivion, only anticipating the happy moment when her newborn daughter would be handed to her, the moment when she’d get to look at her husband through joyful tears with a smile to light up the room as they met their daughter for the first time… All of which she would be cruelly robbed of. That person is now just a memory to me, like a heroine in some whimsical fiction novel with a happy ending I read long ago. I suppose she once existed too… where has she gone? Vanished into the wind.

As the days forge ahead to August 10th and 11th, I feel myself slipping. The grief, and its accompanying depression, is swelling, and the longing I feel for my baby only grows with each beat of my heart. Right now, the passage of time is not easing the pain, but magnifying it. I miss her terribly… both Lucy and the me I used to be.

Her beautiful name.

In my last post, I said I was doing okay, that I didn’t splinter into pieces at the knowledge that there’d be no rainbow this month. But the truth is, everything I experience is accompanied by sadness. While the darkness might come and go, the sadness remains. It remains because no matter what I’m doing, it’s not as it should be because of all we’ve lost; there’s always something missing. The coming and going of each month with no rainbow baby in sight only seems to enhance the sadness. Yesterday, the sadness hit me with a renewed intensity that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I never once felt calm throughout the day, always on the verge of tears. The emptiness threatened to swallow me up, and I willingly allowed it. That’s the thing about grief, it’s not linear. You can’t always predict when it will hit, whether it’s days, month, or years after the fact. As Lucy’s first birthday quickly approaches, I find that my grief seems to have been renewed, and along with that, I’m not reacting to additional setbacks all that well. I just can’t seem to catch my breath from grief, nor can I see Lucy’s light as vividly as I thought I could before. That scares me. It makes me feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, restless, quick to anger… I don’t want these things to be true, but it’s just how it is right now. I’m doing my best to see the goodness and the glimmers of light and love around me. I know that it’s always there somewhere, but it’s hard to see when the emptiness becomes so vast. I’d like to think it won’t always be this way, but I know that the ebb and flow of my grief will continue throughout my lifetime. There’s nothing that can be done immediately to soothe the pain, nor is there anything anyone can say to make it better; it will always be within me to some degree. For now, I just have to make it through each day as well as I can, trying to be the best person I can be considering the circumstances. In spite of how hard I’ve been on myself lately, I can at least admit that I’m doing a good job of surviving. To look at me, you’d almost think I’m okay, that I’m thriving even. I’m still doing good things, and some doors are even opening to new opportunities, like being asked to join the writing team over at Still Standing (truly, it’s the first thing I’ve been genuinely excited about). I don’t want to seem ungrateful for all of the wonderful things that still exist in my life, but I have to be honest and say that no matter what, nothing’s ever going to feel quite right without Lucy. This has all changed me so much, and there’s no going back to being the person I once was. For now, all I can continue to do is just keep getting by the best I can.

I really miss her today.

One thing has not changed a bit since we lost Lucy. That thing is disappointment. Obviously, losing Lucy was the hardest, most crushing disappointment of our lives. The weight of the disappointment that comes from knowing we will miss everything with our daughter is excruciating to deal with it on its own. The other repetitive disappointment we’re facing is our trying to conceive journey. Chris and I are desperate to become second-time parents to another child; it’s the only thing that allows us to look ahead to the future. We keep trying to remain hopeful and optimistic, but all we get is more of the same. More disappointment.

Month after month, I’ve come to simply expect that we will again be disappointed with another negative pregnancy test. I’ve gotten tired of squinting and looking in vain for a phantom line that could be there or not be there. I’ve gotten used to the sinking feeling that comes with seeing red yet again, signaling the start of yet another ttc cycle. I realize that putting expectations, like hoping to conceive again, into the universe is only making this more difficult and disappointing each month, but when you’ve been through something like we have, it’s the only thing that helps us see beyond the wall of grief. I keep trying to tell myself to have patience, to “relax”… others keep implying these things, so I guess I’m trying those thought processes out for myself. So far, it isn’t working any better for me in my self-talk than it does when other people say those things because they don’t know what to say. I guess I just don’t even know what to say about it anymore. I want to “move forward” and stop living my life in two week increments, but it’s next to impossible. We’re coming up on nearly a year here… and all we have to show for it is more of the same.

Another part of this that’s difficult is the question, “Are you thinking of trying for another baby?”. As if we haven’t thought of this novel idea yet. Enough time has passed so people naturally start wondering this, and I do know that they never ask with negative intent, but to have that question posed more and more frequently only adds to my frustration that we just haven’t been able to get there yet. It’s just one of those little things that rubs salt in an already festering wound. Again, more of the same.

I did not splinter to pieces this month, because honestly, I expected another negative outcome. It’s hard to anticipate anything else right now, because all we’ve acquired is disappointment. It feels like defeat. I’m fighting more cynicism, sarcasm, and irritation along with this frustration. I don’t want to be that person… I still want to become better, not bitter. SO, I’m doing my best to just accept that “more of the same” is where we’re at right now. I will attempt to maintain some positivity and optimism as I look ahead to another two week increment, but it’s more difficult to resist becoming totally jaded with each month that passes by. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from losing Lucy is that we simply cannot control what happens. The same is true for trying to conceive Lucy’s sibling- we can’t control when it happens, no matter how much we try. It must happen when it happens. It’s tough to let it all just flow, when so much has been taken from us already. But, I’m accepting that I really just don’t have a say or a choice in that aspect of our TTC journey. My plan this month is to focus on myself. I am still my own worst enemy but now it’s time to spend more energy on becoming my own best friend again. Maybe if I do that, it will be less of the same and more goodness instead. Lucy’s light continues to work its way into my life more all the time. I suppose it’s time to pay more attention to it, to let it help me become better, even through further disappointment.

A common sight in our trying to conceive journey… more of the same…