Wishlist for my daughter

I finished writing this list for Coraline the day before we learned her heart stopped.  These are things I'll never get to do for her or experience with her, but I feel its still important to share all that we wanted for her, and the love we have.


Coraline, the things I wish for you:

That you feel just as comfortable in a tutu as in jeans and sneakers.

That the first boy you kiss regrets that he’s not the last.  Or girl, if that’s what you’re into.

That you understand we will never judge you based on your choices.

That you never feel the need to flaunt your goods, but receive sincere compliments on your poise and natural beauty.

That you learn to keep up with your brother, and don’t listen to anyone who says Legos are only for boys.

That you have a strong appreciation for what makes others unique, and strive to see that in yourself everyday.

That you express yourself clearly, hold true to your personal convictions, but remain open-minded enough to consider others.

That you inherit your dad’s thirst for knowledge and your mother’s love of the written word.

That you question everything, except when it’s time to go to bed or what’s for dinner.

That you have a diverse group of friends who support you when mom and dad “just don’t get it.”

That on those days when you’re running late, your hair still looks fantastic.

That you find those shoes in your size AND on sale.

That you never hear “please welcome to the stage” followed by a Motley Crue song.

That you grow to be a strong, independent but compassionate woman, with knowledge in your brain, love in your heart, and joy in your soul.

I love you Coraline, with all my heart.

Infinite Acceptance

Life never goes in a straight line.  What is “supposed” to happen and what actually occurs very wildly.  I was “supposed” to bring my sweet baby girl home, healthy and screaming, and raise her to the best of my ability.  But life betrayed me.

I was “supposed” to become a famous writer before I hit 30, not be stuck in a dead end horrible job.  I was “supposed” to marry out of love the first time, not necessity.  I was “supposed” to graduate with a bachelors at 22, instead of fighting for an associates at 31.

I put a lot of time constraints on myself, and judge my success or failures by them.  So many regrets.  I know I shouldn’t, because then I wouldn’t be where I am today, but so many things I would have done differently.  And I can’t now and it’s harder and I don’t know how to live with that.  I wanted to have my baby girl and then be done having children.  Now I’m desperate to have another, yes, in part to replace not her, but the love that was lost.  Now I’ll be pushing 35.  Now it’s getting scary.

The hardest obstacle in all of this is acceptance.  Acceptance that she’s gone  - that no matter how often I gaze at her picture, where she looks like she’s sleeping peacefully, I will never get to go home to her.  Acceptance that most people who know avoid eye contact, talk about me in hushed tones, or worse, don’t talk about me at all because it’s a non-thing to them, it has no effect.  I have to accept the entire time I carried her, and all my wasted plans, all the seemingly wasted effort and my wasted body.  I have to accept all the pain and anguish and horrible truth of this situation, with no answers.  I have to accept that I have to accept that.  And most times I feel like I can’t.

Nothing throws your world out of sync like sudden loss.  It’s the freezing smack in the face of ice water when you’re already cold – not cool and refreshing, but shocking and painful.  It throws everything into doubt – my future, my work, my relationships, my family.  Everything becomes suspect, when’s it going to leave me?  When will it end?  And then I spend so much time worrying about when it’s all going to fall apart that I don’t appreciate it while it’s here.

It’s the unknown that terrifies me.  Rational fear, but this is paralyzing.  I don’t know what to do with my life – what to study, what field to work in, what to prepare for, what to let go.  Where should Parker go to school?  Should we have another baby?  Will I be able to adapt?  I have before, but I lack the mental fortitude anymore to move forward confidently.  Every step is doubted, every action second guessed.  Will I regret this?  Will it be worse instead of better?  Will it change everything even more?

Two months

Two months.  It has been two months since I was sitting here, at my work desk, at exactly this time, debating whether or not to go to the doctor because my baby girl had not been moving that day.

Two months since I found out her heart stopped beating.  I feel like mine did, too.  I feel like someone ripped me apart at my already fragile seams.  I am spilling out, but it’s into a sea of dark water, so no one even notices.

And I can sit here making all the analogies I can type, but nothing will bring her back to me.  Nothing will put her in my arms again.  Karma. Jinx. Superstition. Foresight, hindsight, coincidences.  None of them have meaning.  This just happened.  It is a part of my history, a huge event on the timeline of my life.  It splits my life in two sections – the first is hope, the second despair.  In the first I looked  forward to a bright future, in the second I look back at lost hopes and dreams.

I don't leave the house after work.  I'm uncomfortable in public, I'm nervous around people.  No one warns you of the fear that comes with mourning.  No one prepares you for the paranoia and the constant struggle just to look others in the eye. 

I keep our vows in my jewelry cabinet so I can see them and remind myself that I promised not to leave when I was hurting, and to stay if Matt was hurting.  But both of us are hurting so deeply, so intensely, its impossible to know what to do.  I never dreamed I could hurt this badly. 

I guess I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this has redefined me as a person.  I was so careful (or tried to be) when I was carrying her - I had someone to care for, and I had to take care of myself to do it.  People look at a woman differently when they're pregnant - even with all the stupid comments and aches and pains, I would take that again over this.  Now I'm a mother of two but still only have one.  This is part of why I'm struggling with what I want to do for a career - I don't know who I am anymore, I just know I'm not the same.  I'll never be the same person, and part of the struggle is trying to find out who I am now.

An Encouraging Thought

“I wish none of this had ever happened.”

Oh, Frodo, you can be a whiny little bitch, but how truthful your words ring.

Yesterday I found myself driving home, staring at a picturesque sunset over the horizon, furious at its beauty.  I was angry at everything – the still flowering mid-January trees, the afternoon rush-hour traffic, the obnoxious radio played out song.  I inched forward through the sea of vehicles on the packed interstate, screaming and crying alone in my own car.  Probably not something to admit, but I’ve gotten very good at driving with tears in my eyes – driving is my time to let it out before I get home, my time between putting on the “productive worker” mask and my “happy wife and mother” façade.  I started asking “Why? Why why why why why?  Why her?  Why me, why us? WHY?”  I cried, I yelled, I pleaded for some understanding.

And the answer came.  From the sun that suddenly popped out from between the clouds, I had my answer.  I'm not one for visions or epiphanies, even though I've been hoping for some sort of supernatural or otherworldly sign, but I envisioned God holding her - wrapped in her pink crocheted blanket - holding her very tenderly.  I heard His answer - “because I knew you were strong enough to bear it.”  It wasn’t the one I wanted to hear, but it filled my head and I couldn’t shake it, so I knew it was truth. I never wanted to wish it all away – I don’t dream of life without her existing at all, or without having been pregnant with her, feeling her twist and kick inside me.  But there are days when the remaining pain is so much, too much. 

Gandalf, filling in as the classic God-like figure, sagely answers – “So do all who live to see such times. But it is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. … Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

Not that I’m comparing my daughter to the one ring, but the analogy of loss and destiny remains.  “It is not for them to decide.”  This wasn’t my decision, nor anyone else’s.  This is a tragedy in the truest sense, not even brought about by hubris (well, maybe my own in thinking I would have another perfect pregnancy and birth).  Fate and destiny are ultimately not up to us – things happen beyond our control.  This is one of many lessons I have had to learn.   Of course, you can say I chose to get pregnant in the first place, knowing the risks involved and the odds.  But this is one of those “once in a million” things that even medical professionals cannot explain – she was perfect, and then she was gone.  Giving up control of my own life was a slap in the face, but one I was forced to accept in an instant – my willpower, my desire, my perfect planning couldn’t save her.  It wasn’t even an option.  I’ve always been a firm believer that people shape their own destiny, by either their action or inaction – this was the first situation in which I had to admit absolute defeat and powerlessness by no means of my own.  On top of the absolute heartbreak of losing our precious child, this revelation was shocking.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”  Of course, that’s easier said than done.  Do we give up, and let the grief and fear consume us?  Or press on, leaning on our friends for strength when we can’t stand?  Do we simply sit and do nothing, waiting for death to take us?  Do we really have a choice, if things are not left up to us after all?  Is anything predetermined, or do our choices shape the future?  Time seems to drag on and fly by all at once - I wonder how I'll get through the seemingly endless minutes, while feeling that time is slipping through my ancient fingers, running out fast.

“In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”  I was meant to have her, no one else.  We were meant to be her parents, and shoulder the burden of her loss.  It says volumes about the kind of people we must be, the relationship we have, that we could endure this and still walk hand in hand, in love, and together.  We have the ultimate privilege of being her parents, of her being our baby, and sharing her perfection with the world.  We also have the benefit of this loss – yes, loss can be a benefit.  Without the pain, what can we compare happiness to?  Without the storm there is no rainbow.  Life is comparisons and contradictions and even extremes – it’s why day and night exists, why we live half in shadow and half in light.  It is an encouraging thought that we were destined for this, destined for something so precious that we could feel so deeply, that was ours alone.

The sun glared at me, but I remembered what our friends had told us, in those first weeks when the pain was so raw – it still is, but this thought gives me some consolation – “whenever we see a sunbeam, we’ll know its Coraline looking down on us”.  She is my sunshine, my light in the darkness.  And that is also an encouraging thought.

Frozen Shadows

There was a children’s museum I used to visit (as a child, obviously).  I remember only a few things from there – one of which was the dissection of a cow’s eyeball (gross).  Another time there were huge wire frames which made massive rainbow-colored balloons.  One thing that crept back into recent memory was the freeze-frame shadow images.  Several of us would go into the small, dark tunnel (not as creepy as it sounds), outfitted with bare walls and hidden strobes (still, not as creepy as it sounds).  My sister or cousins and I would act out our silliest poses, or jump into the air, aiming perfectly for the “pop” of the flash behind us.  The result was a lasting image cast on the opposite wall – a shadow frozen in time and action. Logic and learning have informed me that this was the result of a high-powered strobe stimulating a phosphorescent wall or photosensitive plates.  The child in me still marvels at “frozen shadows”.

This is what I exist as now – a frozen shadow.  Something that should follow me, but doesn’t.  Something that represents me in only one dimension, containing none of the unique, colorful features that identify me.  Something that is jerked into existence, then gradually fades into its surroundings.  I feel like I leave a part of me everywhere I go – a little piece of me that was either pregnant when I last visited, or visited in the height of our grief and is now emotionally tied to that place.  I make an imprint, but it doesn’t last.  As soon as it is captured, it begins to die.  I was here, but now I’m not, and the part of me that was is fading fast.  Coraline was here, and now she’s not, and sometimes she feels so distant, so past-tense.

I wonder what my shadow would look like now.  Would there be a gaping hole where my heart was, since my chest feels like it's caving in?  Or an empty space which she once filled in my womb?  Maybe a huge blank spot in my head, to signify the confusion of having every thought at once.  At any rate, I wish I could return to those innocent days, when I ran around and laughed with my friends, and was not aware how quickly everything you love could be taken from you in an instant.

Weakness

So, when people here aren't ignoring me, ducking into doorways to avoid me altogether or looking down when I come near like I've got a crimson "A" tattooed on my chest, they're discussing babies and pregnancies right. in. front. of. me.  Sitting right next to me, talking about "all my pregnancies were soooo easy!" "Oh, my darling little girl blah blah blah", "well, she took a bunch of tests but it was sooo easy for her to get pregnant", "I keep telling them to give me another grandchild!"   Looking. at. me. the. whole. time. O_o

People are thoughtless, heartless twatwaffles and don't give a shit who they offend.  Unless they're going out of their way to ignore me, then they don't say anything.  I shouldn't be surprised, even when I tell people repeatedly that I do not wish to discuss certain topics, they keep on like I've said nothing.  I want to scream-punch their faces through brick walls - maybe that would get their fucking attention.  It's so awesome how people use opportunities like this to make themselves feel better and walk on people who are suffering.

I get up every. single. day, put on my Joy-is-okay face and soldier on through all the shit that makes me want to crumble, and I'm still seen as too fragile to even speak to.  I know I keep saying I feel so scared of everything, but some of these bitches are such goddamn cowards they can't even look me in the eye.  So who's the weak one?

Nothing will ever be the same

Now I’m just getting irritated with my husband.  Why do you even ask if I’m crying anymore?  Why do you think I am?  Have you forgotten already?  I just want to scream sometimes – our daughter is dead – I’m more surprised I stop crying as long as I do.

I hate that he seems to be "over" it already.  It hasn't even been 2 months, and he's back to his same old happy-go-lucky self.  W.t.f.  I feel like I'm a completely different person, like I'm a stranger walking around in my own skin, and he's acting like it never happened.  Like I wasn't pregnant for 8.5 months, like we don't have an untouched nursery shut off from the rest of the house, like someone isn't missing from our lives.  I don't know if he feels differently than what he's portraying, because he doesn't tell me.  But I'm expected to tell him everything.

I know I shouldn’t be angry at him.  I’m just angry at everything.  Parents who don’t appreciate the blessings they have.  People who ignore me because they “don’t know what to say”.  Idgaf, you say something.  That’s a piss poor excuse for protecting your own fragile ego.  And then I’m pissed at everyone else for not feeling as terribly as I do.  And pissed at myself for being so stupid, so naïve, and so alone.

There's two of me now - Joy pre-Coraline and Joy post-Coraline.  I haven't decided who the latter is going to be yet.  I think it's going to be a work-in-progress for the rest of my life.  

I want to know why.  I want to scream "why my daughter" all the time.  Was it because I ignored that homeless guy begging for change that one day?  Maybe because I cut that woman off in traffic.  Or made a stupid drunken comment to someone years ago.  I always thought karma existed.  But I feel like even karma is shaking it's head saying "I got nothing."  What did I do to deserve this?  What did Coraline do?