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.