Grieving

When you are on the maternity ward and you don't have a baby they put something on your door so everyone knows.  This is to prevent insensitive questions, like someone coming in to ask where your baby is.  Everyone stays away for the most part and your door stays closed (I guess so you don't hear the babies).  An older lady came to see me.  She was a volunteer and she had lost a child 40 - 60 yrs ago.  I could feel her pain, still.  I wish I could thank her because what she told me was so simple and yet so profound.  I had to let myself grieve.  As she puts it, back in the old days people would say, "time to move on".  Well I have news for her, people still say that.  They are well meaning, they are hoping to bring you out of the fog.  The problem is, it does not work. It's like putting a 2" bandage over a 12" knife wound.

I had to be very understanding with my family and very uncompromising.  I took that lady's advice and let myself grieve.  I refused to participate in gatherings I felt would upset me.  Once we went to someone's b-day dinner at the same place we had went while I was pregnant and they were seated at the same table, I ran out crying and we left.  By then my husband understood and did not say I need to move on or get over it.  He just drove me home. 

Our first Christmas came just 2 months after baby boy died and I refused to do anything for x-mas.  Everyone whined but I told them, to go without me and have fun for all of us.  I knew I would ruin the day for everyone  by trying to go out and pretend nothing was wrong.  I convinced them all I would just fine, it was what I wanted.  It all worked out fine they had a good time.  I went up to the room that would have been  his bedroom and looked through his things and cried a lot, it was what I wanted to do.  I thought that might be the day I look at his ashes but it wasn't and after 12 yrs I figure that day will never come.  But that's OK, there is no rule about looking at ashes.

I saw a counselor for 3 yrs and was on and off different meds for 3 yrs.  Then one day I stopped taking them, I told the counselor I was done and that was that.    if I had not done all these things until I was ready to move on, I can't imagine where I would be today.  I'm not sure I would have survived intact.  The woman who came to see me was trying to say if I did not let myself grieve till I was ready I would grieve in the worst way, forever, like she still does.

Everyone is different, some will take longer and some will be shorter.  It took me 3 years of grieving to move on. :-)  "Move on" is a good phrase and "get over it" is a bad one.  You never get over losing a child, never.  You grieve daily until you can find a way to cope and this allows you to move on, to grieve less.  I also took great pleasure in the small things I did get to enjoy with  him, all that kicking up to the very end.  The warm showers, the waves, and we made it to the end, he was born alive.  It's the most you can ask for when birth, means death.