Our one year mark...Happy Birthday Brayden

So many times these last few months I have wondered what I’d say on the day of Brayden’s birth - the day of his death. I imagined I’d write something that came from the depth of my soul, something powerful, insightful or profound. I don’t think I’m going to do any of that today.

My time with my son was limited, but I like to think I knew him better than anyone could have known him. So here are the things that I know about my son that I hold close to my heart.

Brayden was born on September 22, 2009 at 6:32 p.m. He was 8 lbs 9 oz and 21 inches long. He had tons of brown hair that I would have hoped turned thick and wavy like his father’s, but would have most likely stayed stick-straight and fine like mine. He had my hands, my nose and my mouth…but undeniably daddy’s face. Those chipmunk cheeks came straight from John. So did his tiny ears.

We were in love with him the moment we knew we carried him. Double that for John when he found out we were having the first boy in the family to carry on his name. A son. Someone he could watch grow up to be the kind of man he was – good, kind, honest and loyal. Nicholas was finally going to have the sibling he’d been wanting for years. The perfect baby to round out our family.

Brayden did that - he completed us. He was everything we ever wanted or hoped for, save for the fact that his stay with us was terribly brief. Stillborn, but born still.

Today, I feel no resentment. I refuse to today - it would ruin it. For the first time since we lost him, I can cry and it’s nothing but pure sadness. There’s no confusion, no anger, no bitterness at what we’ve lost. There are no questions as to why. I can shed tears without the silent apologies I offer to Brayden or the secret guilt and shame I feel from his loss.

Today, I’m simply a mother who has lost her child and it’s that simple. It’s not gut wrenching, I don’t feel like my soul is ripping or even that I have a build up of grief that needs to be purged. Without the silent accusations in my head, the sadness I feel isn’t consuming and it’s almost…peaceful. A peaceful sadness…who would have thought?


At the same time, I can’t help but to think - at around this time last year, John would have passing out those little blue bubblegum cigars at work and pulling out that wonderful hospital pic from his wallet. I would have been wondering what to dress Brayden in for Halloween – the infant pea costume I thought was cute, but wasn’t fitting for a boy according to John. Thanksgiving would have been spent with family, and we had looked forward to seeing Brayden’s eyes light up watching the lights on the Christmas tree.

By our anniversary in February…we’d be ready for a sitter ☺

By today, had he lived, he would most likely be taking his first steps. I’d be anxiously waiting for him to say ‘ma-ma’ and be secretly jealous when he said ‘da-da’ first, knowing in my heart John must have been secretly bribing him behind my back. We would have had a wonderful summer, with John toting him around as any proud father would…still gagging over dirty diapers and probably have gotten to where he could pass all of those to me without me realizing it…or pretending I don’t.

He would have had his first haircut. He would be blowing kisses. Bubbles would still be entertaining, and he would be tormenting the dog and cat by pulling on their tails and ears every chance he got. He would be aging his parents horribly by putting everything he could find in his mouth and hurling himself with reckless abandon towards the stairs. He’d be sleeping peacefully through the night.

John and I would have had hectic lives – between karate practice, homework, soccer, jobs, home, daycare, bedtimes and naps. We knew it and we welcomed it. I’m devastated none of it happened like we planned. Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.

In a way, this last year hasn’t been without our little man. We’ve remembered him every step we took without him. He was there in the sense that he was missed. As painful as it was, our lives moved forward with him gone. He was with us in our hearts, and always will be. I still love him deeply, and wish he were here with us…that will never change.

Living without Brayden has been painful, and moving on with our lives has been even more so. You don’t read that in the books. How do you move on when you’ve lost a child? Life moves on whether you want it to or not…you can move with it or it will leave you behind, which is a death within itself. Brayden wouldn’t have wanted us to have life pass us by simply because he couldn’t join us in it.

I’m not saying an official goodbye to Brayden today – that won’t ever happen. But starting today, as a gift to Brayden (and myself) on his birthday, I’m letting go. No more anger or guilt or questions. No blame. No more ‘I’m sorry’. Just simply loved and missed, for the rest of our lives.

Happy birthday, Brayden. Although this is not how I envisioned spending your first year, it doesn’t change how much we love you. Your family misses you terribly, little man.

Donations

Leaving the hospital was a blur last year. In fact, it was months before I got around to going through the things we came home with. Pamphlets on grief, paperwork on drying up breast milk naturally, a few pics of Brayden that a kind nurse thought to take…and lots of other meaningless paperwork I can’t remember. I walked away with surprisingly little to show for having a baby. And why would I? I didn’t walk away with the baby.

One thing I did have, though, was a blanket. They were donated for loss babies, so the loss families could have something to remember them by. Our pictures of Brayden show him wrapped in that blanket. I treasure it beyond words. It’s the only thing I really walked away with that makes me feel like I had a baby, and for a brief time…he was mine, linked to me through the blanket that I still have and can hold.



I’ve been compiling a list for months, ideas of what I would like to donate in his memory for the loss families to follow us. When it comes down to it, baby blankets are what I want to do. I’ve got my quotes narrowed down, maybe a poem or something to add. But when it comes to our experience, our blanket means by far the most to us.


My friend Angela nabbed the blanket from me last December and returned it with our Christmas gift - an ornament she made, replicating the blanket in miniature. I can’t express what that meant to me, and I never did take it down. She had it monogrammed with his name, birth date, length and weight.



We are renovating our house, and are very close to finishing our walk in closet – which will include room for my sewing machine. Working on baby blankets will be my first project. I hoped to have a few done by his angelversary, but I don’t think that will happen. That’s okay with me. It’s enough that they will get done eventually, and possibly one family – if only one – can find the immense comfort that I did.

I already feel one step closer to peace.

The struggle for hope

I cried at my doctor’s appointment today.

My regular doctor had an emergency at the hospital, so I saw the midwife for the first time. She was incredibly nice and upbeat, but came to a pause when she saw this was my third pregnancy with one living child among them.

“Do they know what happened?”

That’s all it took. The tears were streaming down my face before I knew it. I didn’t know what to say, so I just shook my head and swallowed a few times before I could tell her that the final diagnosis was a cord accident…but no one knew for sure.

My sudden tears took her by surprise, I could tell. It was a necessary question, but one I was unprepared for. And, here I thought I was handling things so well. It struck me then that I hadn’t talked about my grief out loud in quite a while. I’ve blogged about it, thought about it some, shed a few tears. I thought it was testament to how far I had come in the grieving process these last months, the fact that I didn’t really need to talk about it anymore.

In reality, the band aide of my silence had been ripped off unexpectedly – leaving my festering and previously buried pain wide open, exposing it even more to the plain fact that I’m afraid. A fact that I had ignored with the help of my silence. If I don’t talk about it, maybe it isn’t real. If I don’t speak the words out loud, they won’t have an impact this time around.

It’s time to put my big girl panties on and face reality. Today’s unexpected breakdown was of my own making and not only unacceptable to me, but probably unavoidable as well. I can’t expect to avoid situations like this while acting as I do.

So, now for another truth: I am currently in “coin” status. I’d like to think I’m a quarter, but with the respect I’ve given to the loss of my son these last few months…I think a penny would be more apt. A wooden one, at that.

One side of me is the happy every day wife, mother and friend. I’m not the woman who lost her child; I’m not a grieving mother. I’m functioning, pregnant and looking towards a bright and happy future.

The other side is the side left unturned: I don’t show it anymore. Because it hasn’t been exposed to sunlight, it’s become dark, dingy and ugly. I don’t look too closely at it, but I know it’s there…I can feel it. Just beneath the surface. I can hide it, but I can’t erase it – so, I ignore it.

The result? Days like this, where me – the coin – suddenly gets that unexpected flip, that slap in the face that my reality isn’t what I made it to be in my head. I AM a woman who lost her child; I AM a grieving mother. These things cannot be divided from me or hidden, because they are now a part of who I am…and cannot be separated. All of me.

So, then I ask myself…how did I let this separation happen? Honestly, I get tired of being “the loss mom”. I don’t want that to be all that I am – most days, I don’t want that to be any part of me. That’s not realistic. What I’m dealing with here is the struggle between moving on without leaving the past behind. Who does that??

WE do that. Loss mothers do that. It’s a fragile mingling of our future lives while incorporating our loss into it in a healthy way. Remember without being devastated. Look back without losing it. Make our lost children a cherished and loved member of our family without reliving “the day” or the months following.

I’m not there yet, obviously. I’m still learning how to intertwine these two events – past and future – without becoming disillusioned, set back or grief struck.

The day will come when peace will find me. I still search my heart for forgiveness every day. I beg Brayden for forgiveness. I hope with everything that I am that I won’t have anything to ask of this new life we are creating, save that he grow big and strong and fight with everything he has to overcome my fear that I will fail him.

Tonight, I’m going to let the side unturned be turned. I can’t promise anything beyond saying I’m going to keep trying to find my balance. Maybe there isn’t one…but it’s worth looking and fighting for.

I’ve read blogs and stories from loss moms who are years and years out from their loss…and thought, “I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to feel this way for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live each day remembering the horror and sorrow.” But, how to avoid it? Maybe I can’t.

This is my journey to find out. I started this blog to give other mothers hope that life does continue after a devastating loss. There is hope. Now, I’m realizing that although I’ve been candid and honest throughout this process, hope doesn’t come so easily. Time doesn’t just hand you a basket of hope after a while. Before hope, there is peace; before peace, there is forgiveness; before forgiveness, there is acceptance; before acceptance, there is anger; before anger, there is sorrow.

Sorrow; anger; accept; forgive; peace; hope.

I still battle between the first two…sometimes visit briefly on the third. I still have a long way to go, and rushing it will do no good. Time is a factor that bounces in-between these things, so in the end…only time will help give me what I need, if I have the courage to work through the rest.

Hope is there waiting for me – patiently - and I’m slowly making my way there.

Another day in loss world

I’m going to be honest here…these last couple days haven’t been going so well. I’m not sure what’s going on. Another down day? Pregnancy hormones? A combo?

I wasn’t going to blog today, I would really rather talk to a RL friend…but I find myself not picking up the phone and calling anyone. I’m tired of talking about my grief and really think there’s nothing new to say. There’s only the hurt that still resides deep within myself. No one can say anything to make it better…and I certainly don’t need someone to just listen to me cry.

So, once again, my blog will be my therapy for today.

I came very close to holding a baby at my husband’s company picnic this afternoon. I can’t remember the last baby I held, but it was long before we lost Brayden. I wanted to very badly, but I knew I’d lose it. My arms ached to hold him, and I literally bit my tongue to stifle the urge to ask. He was three months old and so beautiful. I forgot how soft a newborn’s skin is and how good they smell. I settled for stroking his little tuff of hair and made small talk with my friend who was holding him. Surprisingly, my thoughts were not of the new baby we’re having in a few short months. My only thoughts were of Brayden, and what should have been.

It’s all just so tragically sad.

Every time I’ve gotten in the car this last week, I’ve heard the exact same song on the radio – this afternoon was no different. It’s a popular song, so I shouldn’t be surprised…but the chorus hit me like a ton a bricks, even though the song isn’t really about loss grief at all. Regardless, I turn it off every time it’s on.

Tell them all I know now
Shout it from the roof tops
Write it on the sky line
All we had is gone now

Tell them I was happy
And my heart is broken
All my scars are open
Tell them what I hoped would be
Impossible, impossible
Impossible, impossible

Those lyrics just tear at me. I was happy. My heart is broken. My scars are open and raw, most days. What I had hoped was impossible has happened to us.

My husband’s coworker and his wife are expecting. She’s due in October, about six weeks before me. She always wants to talk to me at these get-togethers, which I don’t mind, but it conversation inevitably turns to our loss. They are on baby number five, and she told me today she panics every time her baby doesn’t move because of what happened to us. She’s terrified, because she now knows a loss like we experienced doesn’t happen to “other people” – it now happens to the people you know, in your immediate circle.

I’ve actually heard this a few times from friends who have recently had babies. That they thought of us during delivery, or the final stages of their pregnancy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a good way. It was in a “that could happen to me” way. And it scared them, badly. I do my best to reassure them, but it’s hard when I harbor the same exact fear. I don’t have words of comfort for them, other than telling them it will be okay - words I, myself, don’t really buy. Because I know that sometimes, it’s not okay.

Ugh, I don’t know where to go from here. Like I’ve said before, my grief is mine and I deal with it the only way I know how. I try not to control it (unless I’m hit with it in public) and just let it wash over me, as it will. These last few days have been really trying. I’m hoping after this blog I’ll feel better, like the weight will be lifted from me for a short time. I try not to sensor what I put on here, but it’s hard knowing some of my friends read this blog and I’m not exactly honest with them sometimes.

Maybe, when I’m asked how I’m doing, instead of saying, “Fine” I’ll just say, “Read my blog”. Then I’m covered.

10 Months

Sometimes, it feels like longer. Sometimes, it feels like yesterday.

I’m really not sure that I have anything to blog about at this point today. I just didn’t want to let the day go by without a nod to my little man. He’s not forgotten. He’ll never be forgotten.

I feel myself going back up the grief roller coaster as his first year comes closer to a close.

I’m just now understanding that Brayden is about to be a big brother before he got the chance to be a little brother. Our lost baby will soon be a middle child. The hole he left in our family and in our hearts will now be felt from all sides. I can’t describe how this makes me feel. I really can’t.

There just are no words for the pain at this point.

I love you, Brayden, and miss you each and every day. Every single day.

True Friends

“A true friend is someone who sees the pain in your eyes when everyone else believes the fake smile.”

I don’t know that a truer statement could be said.

I am lucky enough to have a friend in my life that knows me well enough to see through my fake smile to my pain. I don’t always like it; sometimes I wish I could fool everyone. I sincerely wish that all loss mothers had someone in their life like this. It’s unfortunate that we feel the need to fake a smile, force a laugh or converse when all we want to do sometimes is run screaming from the room. We don’t necessarily do it for us; it’s also for the benefit for those around us. And sometimes it gets really, really tiring.

I’ve lost track of how many plastic smiles and mindless conversations I’ve had these last few months. Times I can’t recall what I’ve said because “auto pilot” me has taken over. It’s not as bad as it once was, but it’s still a battle.

I get resentful at times. I resent those people who are so happy that I’ve “moved on” or “gotten over it”. No one has put it in those terms, but I have gotten “I knew you’d be just fine” and “I told you time would take care of everything”. Same thing. Sometimes I half expect a pat on the back while being told I'm such a trooper.

On the flip side, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in about a year. I knew the instant I ran into her that she had heard our news…she gave me “the look”. All loss moms know what I’m talking about. The softening of the eyes, the pursing of the lips into a smile that’s not a smile, head tilted to the side and the hands that are held out, inviting a tight hug or a strong hand squeeze.

I gave her “the treatment”. Something I’ve used for this type of occasion to divert late condolences or people in general who don’t take a hint: tell some happy news, change the subject and then make a quick exit. I have no need for more pity at this point, and I sure wasn’t ready to have a break down at the grocery store. So, I instantly perked and greeted her. I told her we were expecting again (happy news), told her we were on our way camping (subject change) and acted like we were in a hurry to get to our destination (quick exit).

She kept opening her mouth to talk between my ramblings, but in the end I think she could see what I was doing. So sad, because she was someone I honestly enjoyed talking to in the past. One day, maybe I’ll get the chance to. I know, knowing her, that if we ever really get the chance we’ll have to have “the talk” so she can hear it all. That’s okay, but it won’t be today.

Now I feel like I’m in the in-between. I don’t want to wear my grief openly, but I can’t ignore it, either – it’s part of who I am. I have a very select few friends (for sure one, maybe two or three…maybe) that fall in the in-between with me on this journey. With that kind of friend, I have balance. I’m okay to be fine; I’m okay to have a bad day. I’m okay to talk about whatever it is that’s on my mind at any time without worry of bringing them down or feeling like I’m burdening them.

These friends, I’ll keep forever. I sincerely wish that others like me have at least one like them.

Other people

Sometimes…I feel like such a fake. An alien dressed in human skin.

I still struggle occasionally with public places. Honestly, I don’t think it would be so bad if I didn’t live in such a small town where everyone…and I mean everyone…knows your business. It doesn’t help that I grew up here, so I also get to hear about the skeletons in my parents closets – and to a point, their parents closets - as well as my own.

Sometimes I feel like I have “LOST A CHILD” branded on my forehead. I catch people looking at me, but at first eye contact they look away. Most times, I know them. Lots of times it’s a friend of a friend, or an acquaintance from work or family.

Most people aren’t brave enough to hold eye contact and smile. No one approaches me, not any more. It happened a lot in the beginning, but now that some time has gone by and I’m not the new story in town it doesn’t happen so much.

I’ve lost a few friends…more than a few. I would be lying if I said that doesn’t hurt. It’s not like most of these people were close friends, or I knew them from way back. Just families that we use to get together with that conveniently don’t call anymore.

I feel ostracized, and there’s something I’d like to tell these people.


I want to say: Yes, it’s me. The woman who lost her baby. I’m not contagious; you can approach me. I’m not crazy; you can talk to me. It’s okay if you don’t know what to say; I may not either. Yes, I’ve changed; time does that regardless of what life throws at you. Get to know me again, if that’s the case. My arms are empty and so is my heart; be a friend and don’t ignore it, help me to heal. We experienced a loss of a child, not a loss of sight or hearing; don’t pretend like you did, either. If you see me, say hello and don’t turn away.

You may not understand what we’re going through, but you don’t have to. Ask me, if you want to know. It’s okay if you don’t. Maybe I don’t want to talk about it. Approach me and find out. Don’t cut me out because of an awkwardness you want to avoid; it may be for nothing. I’m still a person, not a leper, so please treat me like one.

Sometimes, I’m still sad; that should be understood, not feared. Sometimes, I want to pretend that my life is normal, just for a second and that this tragedy didn’t happen; that’s where you come in. Tell me about your life. What are you up to? What’s new with you? How’s your family? Because, maybe I don’t want to talk about me. Maybe I’m done talking about me. I want to feel normal so cheer me up, take my mind off of it. Be my friend.

If you can’t do these things for me then please, just keep walking. If my presence makes you uncomfortable, then go; the last thing I want is to bring someone down. But, if you want to talk to me, know about me or update me about you then please…do so. Don’t stand in between. Don’t stare at me and wonder; that hurts us both. Don’t look away as if you don’t know me; that achieves nothing. And, if I approach you, don’t be skittish; I’m not looking for a fresh ear for my grief.

A friend would be good right now.