For the past six months, as I’ve made the treacherous trek through the landscape of grief, I have been doing all I can to make it through each day still standing. Every day has had its challenges, but every day, I have somehow managed to get out of bed and make my way on to the next one. Most of the time, my daily survival is consuming enough to leave little room for personal reflection, or even to stop and notice how my world has changed around me. Losing our baby has irrevocably changed everything. It is easy to be so consumed by loss and grief that all of the other things that have slipped away from me go unnoticed for a time. Grief is selfish that way, demanding all of your energy, blocking everything else out. There isn’t a minute that passes in which my Lucy isn’t present in my mind somewhere. However, there are moments when the fog lifts and I become aware of what else I have lost in the wake of loss. That’s the thing about a loss like this- it doesn’t stop at the initial loss, there’s often more loss to follow.
Here are five things I’ve personally lost since losing Lucy:
1. My innocence. Never again will I be able to invest my absolute trust in anything in this world. I will forever step cautiously through my life because I know that at any given moment, no matter how ‘safe’ everything seems to be, disaster can strike. Nothing is certain. I find myself often jealous of others who have the ability to experience unbridled joy and hearty laughter; those days are gone for me. There will always be something missing, and everything will always be a little less than complete.
2. My tolerance. By this, I mean my tolerance for petty things, complaining, noise commotion, big crowds, insensitive comments, menial tasks, pointless drama, spending energy on people who’ll never return it, rudeness, and a myriad of other things. The one thing I’ve become the least tolerant of is hearing others complain about their children. I’d give everything to have my child wake me up out of a deep sleep at 5:00 AM, so I cannot stand to hear such utterances from other parents. They got to keep their precious child(ren), I didn’t. I used to be an exceptionally tolerant person, but now, my perspective on so many things has changed, and I know that life is too short to be spent in additional discomfort. My patience is simply not as strong as it once was, and I think that’s okay.
3. My previous ideas about faith. I’ve never necessarily identified with a specific religion, but I’ve always believed that there must be something greater than all of us. Part of me still does, but not in the way I once did. I also used to believe in the concept of karma; now I am absolutely convinced that it does not exist. What goes around comes around? Really? Nope, I don’t think so. My perfect baby died, but there are still rotten individuals who do terrible things walking around, wasting their lives, making the world a harsher, more awful place. My husband and I have done our best to live honestly, be good to others and try to make the world around us a better place, and we’re ‘rewarded’ with the ultimate loss. How does that work? For the past six months, I’ve been prayed for, encouraged to talk to god, encouraged to find god… and nothing. I won’t go into all of this now, but in spite of my own efforts and the efforts of others, nothing about my loss is better because of these things. Even if I did ‘find god’, would my situation change or hurt less? I don’t believe so. Now more than ever, I simply believe that there is energy within each of us that never dies, it just changes form. That energy is then a part of the bigger picture, a part of everything. That makes sense to me. That’s why I still believe that my sweet baby will never truly be gone… she’s gone from me, but never truly gone. At least now, I no longer need to argue with myself about whether or not to believe in certain things. What I do believe in, above all else, is love. It’s love that has kept my heart beating and the rest of me anchored. THAT is where my faith is at.
4. Connections with people. This is a tough one to approach, but if I’m being totally honest with myself, and anyone who reads this blog, it’s true that I have lost some connections with others entirely along my grief journey. Not all of them are completely lost or gone, but they have completely changed. For example, my two sisters have become strangers to me, and I to them. This is simply speculation, but I think they, along with many others, just don’t know how to approach me. So, we don’t talk. I can’t say that I blame them. No one is really at fault. I know that I’m different now, I know that not everyone is comfortable with that or even understands it. It does make me terribly sad, but I guess it just is what it is. When it comes down to it, I’ll always be more sad about losing my daughter. I can’t help that. I also can’t help the sneaking suspicion that some people think I should be “getting over it by now”, or think something is off with me because I’m still so heartbroken, and that’s a major bummer. Some of my changing relationships are solely my fault, because I just can’t handle some of the things that come along with them, like babies or pregnancy. This makes me feel helpless and out of control of my feelings. I absolutely despise myself for this weakness, but right now, I’m not handling those things very well. Those things were taken from me and I desperately want them back. It’s the worst feeling in the world to suddenly realize that you’re at all envious of someone you love dearly, and that you have an uncontrollable emotional reaction whenever they begin to talk about the most important, happiest things in their lives. Those people deserve every bit of their good fortunes, and they should be shouting it from the rooftops, but for some reason, it still hurts. Distance, for now, seems to be the only way to protect my heart from such things, but my greatest fear is that those precious people won’t still be there when this fog clears from my life. I just hope they don’t totally give up on me. That brings with it an entirely new dimension of grief and fear in the wake of baby loss.
5. The ability to just ‘BE’. This particular loss has pros and cons. The biggest pro is that I am never without my Lucy, she is always with me in both my heart and my thoughts. I’ll never be able to let go of her, no matter how much time passes. I don’t want to. The amount of grief I feel can be measured by the amount of love I have for my baby girl, which is endless. Therefore, I can never just ‘be’, because my thoughts will always be mingling with some amount of grief and sadness. Because of that, simple conversations and social niceties like, “How are you?” and “Have a good day” are no longer easy things to respond to. How am I? My go-to answer these days is, “I’m surviving.” Often, I get a sympathetic nod and sometimes a semi-understanding chuckle, but for me, it’s always this multi-dimensional, difficult thing. I may have good days, but they’ll never be quite as good as they were before our loss. Sometimes even well-meaning remarks can hit me in all the wrong ways, and I end up feeling hurt whereas before, I never would have even noticed. I will forever read into things differently than I did in my past life, which really can be difficult.
I know that there have been many other little losses following our Lucy’s departure, but I have learned to accept those things, no matter how much it hurts. Most of the losses I’ve mentioned here aren’t my fault or anyone else’s, I think it just goes along with the territory. Along with the additional loss, there has also actually been a lot that I’ve gained. I’ll focus on sharing those things soon. The certainty here though is that my life will never be the same. For most parents, the most important thing in their life is their child. The same is true for us loss parents, it’s just different. Lucy is still the most important thing in my life, but because she is no longer physically here with me, I’m forced to adjust so that I can still parent her somehow. It’s a tough path to be on, and one that will never end.
