On Mother's Day I got an email from a friend that said " I would have sent you a card but I couldn't find any that said Crappy Mother's Day, Life Sucks." I would have loved that card. I definitely appreciated the email. I am really touched by all the people who reached out to me that day in kindness and wished me a mother's day. No one said it in a celebratory way, but in a we love you and acknowledge you are the saddest kind of mother way. Thank You.
I recently got back from a trip to New York. I went into the trip aware of all the potential triggers since New York was one of the last places I was in when I was pregnant, and I stayed in the same apartment with the same people. Never would I have imagined going back there without my baby. Overall I think I did pretty well. It helped that I talked about it before hand with my support group and with my therapist and with some friends. I understand why people move away from places where traumatic events happened to them. I never drive by the hospital where I gave birth. I never sit in the same restaurants I ate when I was pregnant. Because those things didn't happen in Orlando. I am not triggered in the same way many of the women in my group are. I knew that going up to New York would be hard but I really wanted to be there for my best friend's graduation. The trick was honoring the joy I felt for her while simultaneously grieving. It helped that my other friend who lives in New York, in the same apartment wanted to talk about Mateo. She asked questions and since she is a labor and delivery nurse she had some insight. I don't like pretending he isn't on my mind. I don't like actively not talking about him when all I want to do is shout I miss my baby over and over for hours. I don't like not having the space to cry. Sometimes I want to cry. Sometimes I need to. So I think I did pretty well on this trip, I celebrated when I needed to and I cried when I needed to. By the last day I was ready to teleport into my bed and hold my Mateo 's blanket I usually sleep with. Still, I am glad I went and witnessed such an important moment in my best friend's life. It wasn't about pushing my feelings to be there for her, with grief- that's impossible. It was about stepping out of the narrowness of my pain and being able to feel the full spectrum of what it means to be alive. Just as I weep in sorrow, I weep with pride. I am allowed to feel all of the things I do with reverence instead of judgement.
I am becoming painfully aware of the cycles my grief manifests itself through. Sometimes I feel like I will have worked through one specific area only to find myself needing to process it again months later. Sometimes I miss who Mateo would be today. How old he would be. What those cute little toes would like. I'll spend days, sometimes weeks wishing I could see what he would look like today. Then at other times I miss future Mateo. All the things we would have done. The trips we were supposed to take. The milestones. Graduations and Weddings. The pride of raising a baby into a man. I'll spend weeks mourning that. Sometimes I miss my pregnancy. The kicking and the round belly. The glow. Even the heartburn. And times like right now I miss the Mateo I knew. The little guy I got to hold. The baby I stood next to in the NICU for those couple of days. He had the sweetest face. And my nose. He was so little and soft. That's the only version of him I'll ever get to touch. I can't describe what it feels like to want to touch somebody with every cell in your body. I want to touch him, to hold him more than I want absolutely anything else in life. I don't usually use absolutes because I feel that there are exceptions to most things. But I can say with all certainty that I would do anything to hold his little hand again. To kiss his little face. And not even in heaven would I get a chance to do that because that would be then a different experience. Time does not go back. No matter how much I want it to. If sheer heartbreak and desire could take me back there I'd live in that moment. Holding him in my arms and kissing his face. I'd create some sort of Groundhog's day time warp, where every day I would wake up to the one time I got to hold him. I often wish that I would have held him longer. That they would have had to pry him out of my hands. But I was just so tired. And so sad. And his little body was cold and I knew it was time to wrap him up in his little blanket and let go. But now I am so sad that I didn't spend more time with his body because it was the one and only time I ever got to hold my son. What an awful thing to know and not be able to fully understand in the moment. This is the one and only time you will ever hold your baby- here you go. What an awful thing to do to a person's heart.
How do you ever come back from that? I don't think you do. A new version of you is born the moment your child dies. I will never love with reckless abandonment. I will never have a future pregnancy free of stress and heartbreak. I will never not expect the worst, because sometimes the worst happens and sometimes it happens to me. The day the new me was born at the mercy of my child's death I lost all innocence. I can't tell you what it is like to look at the world through this lens. It as though I have sobered up and now I see that there is no limit to the pain one can endure. There is no limit to the love one can feel. I am now a little more serious, a little more dark. I am sadder behind the eyes. I fear I'll always be. I am tainted by my heartbreak and it is though I leave a small stain on everything I experience. Nothing goes through me without being touched by my loss. It is the filter of my life. I hear it becomes less intense. That the pain dulls some. But the changes are permanent. I was born again the day my baby died and now this is the life I live.
“So listen to this fleeting world, a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”- Diamond Sutra Gatha
