Note on Dentist's Chart

Had an emergency-of-sorts appointment at the dentist's today. I woke up Saturday morning to find that I was crunching on a bit of my own tooth. Even though I use a mouth guard, the gnashing, clenching, and grinding has gotten worse. Doesn't take much of an introspective look at why it's increased. Caitlin's 2nd birthday is coming up and with it the season of her life and the season of her death.

I sat in the chair and the dentist makes "small" talk, about his sister who just had a baby and who doesn't want to go back to work, about his wife's second pregnancy and how she had little to do at home, and about babies and babies and babies, and I'm thinking, "Scheezzzeee, can't we just put a note on my chart that reads--Dead baby mama."

As I sat there unable to respond, I found it not-so-amusing that I had to endure conversation that prompts the kinds of thoughts and emotions that likely cause me to slam my teeth together as I sleep. Then an ever so slightly amusing visual played out in my head like a silent movie [Cue music] and I wryly smiled to myself as I had the urge to slam my jaws together! For the good doctor's sake, we should really get a note on the dentist's chart!

He's Grommit to My Wallace

With all this lack of sleep and restless sleep and grief-infused sleep, I've been feeling exhausted during the day. DH and I watched Wallace and Grommit shorts last night. The DVD included additional segments of "Cracking Contraptions."


The snoozatron had me in stitches. Perhaps I need a snoozatron and an understanding dog or . . . a loyal companion or . . . a loving husband?! Heh heh, sometimes DH must feel like Grommit when I have these tossoturn nights.


You can see the flick here. I highly recommend buying or renting these highly creative and funny videos. It gets my safe for babyloss mamas stamp-o-'pproval!

My Friend Has a Teenage Daughter

My friend has a teenage daughter
And I think, "How ordinary. How amazing."
I see her sometimes
"How ordinary. How amazing."

When me and her mom work together
I see her look at her mother
With her mother's eyes
I hear her speak using the timbre
of her mother's voice
Softer and more innocent
"How ordinary. How amazing."

Her mother and I work at the Gazebo
in their yard, inside the house
Daughter plays her guitar rock style
She gets going on her summer reading list
"How ordinary. How amazing."

She's bored perhaps
Wishing her mother were done
And walks across the wet green grass
To where we are
"How ordinary. How amazing."

"Did you have lunch," my friend asks?
"No, I'm waiting for you to have a sandwich."
"How ordinary. How amazing."

I wish I were dead, then I could
Walk across the wet green grass barefoot
Into the House and have a sandwich with
My daughter who waits for me.


Please, don't worry about me. I am not suicidal. I am bereaved, and sometimes when these stories come to me written in loose poetic form when I'm between sleep and wakefulness, the thoughts come out raw. I didn't know that this encounter was weighing so heavy on my mind, until the words came. But it's true for me that some of the most ordinary happenings of my life have profound meaning to me because of the absence of my daughter. This is another example of an "and-both" phenomena with the coexistence of wonder and banal.

Just so Tired Sometimes . . .

I'm just so tired of trying sometimes.

That's not to say that I won't, only that I get so exhausted from trying to give a shit about the little things. And by little things, I meant paychecks, and house payments, and nice things to say to friends and family, I am just so tired. That's not to say I don't love, it's just that I'm tired and I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail at a good lot of what I'm supposed to do in the very near future.

'Cause I'm sucking at regular life right now, you know, the life where you're living a dream life with living children and not at dead child. This sucks. I AM SO GDamn TIRED.

This is one of those nights where I feel I have nothing left. But then the AM will come without my calling and I will rise again, and do the mundane as I always do. But I hate it more and more each day. But will do it none the less.

Making a List of Mother's Day

Here's the thing about lists, they give us a sense of control. When I make a list, I feel like, "Hey, this is doable" and "Now, it makes sense." Well, as many can imagine Mother's Day for me feels out of control. How can I make it doable? How can I make it make sense? I've made a list.

1.) We sent my mother flowers and she got them from me, DH, and Angel Caitlin
2.) I cried in church today because:

• The readings talked about asking God for what you desire and if you keep His commandment (belief in Jesus), then you shall receive--well we all know that doesn't apply to bringing a dead baby back to life after over a year
• We sang an anthem to Mary. One my mother sang to me, and now I imagine Caitlin might be singing
• A walking toddler in pink walks up the aisle and stops to stare and babble at me before she toddles off 

3.) I got hugged by a couple of women today, because they knew how hard it was for me. "Not my favorite day," I say. And their reply was not that platitude "in the plan" stuff, but a sincere hug and a "I'm thinking about you." 

4.) My DH greeted me this morning with "Happy Mother's Day" and then we hugged for a long time. 

5.) DH and I commence our routine of watching "Sunday Morning" on CBS. We skipped the tribute to and story of moms--I'd had enough. 

6.) I listened to my messages on my cell phone--My mother will send me a Mother's Day Card---that made me tear/smile up. 

7.) I didn't sleep last night. I listened to the frogs, took a picture of the moon, watched the White House Press Core speeches, and wondered is there anyway I would write this all away? Write grief all out of me, so I could be done with it. 

8.) No, it's forever. Fitting that this is list item number 8. 

Dream Explained

I wrote about a dream where I saw myself sitting on a blue marble bench. Because it stuck with me in my waking hours, I wrote about it and that helped me release its hold to me. I have a personal conviction about dreams. I believe they have meaning. I believe that if I work at it, I can discover the reason why my mind needs to work on something in my unconsciousness, because I'm unable to work on it in consciousness. Sometimes that's because I don't have time or it's too difficult. Here's what I discovered about the blue marble bench.

1) It exists. In fact there are four of them outside the building that houses the preschool where I volunteer.

2) My volunteer work is teaching young children music, and I sing many of the songs I sang to Caitlin when she was alive.

3) I love teaching young children music. I teach them to use their voices, to learn to move creatively to music, to pay attention to life with their ears not their eyes, and to express themselves through creating their own songs and musical sounds. It's rewarding work, when teachers and parents tell me that their children love music, but more importantly when they tell me that they see that their children are musical (when they never were before). Of course they are! Music develops as a mode of expression long before speech, but I digress.

4) My heart was in deep sorrow every time I sang those songs and watched little precious faces light up -- faces that were not my child's face. And one of those cold blue benches was where my heart sat, while the rest of me nurtured other people's babies. I don't resent that nurturing, it's the kind of mother Caitlin has. I am, however, distressed that I nurture my child's memory and no longer nurture her in this physical realm.

And that I believe, is the meaning of the dream of the blue marble bench.

DH, Dreams, Work, and PLEASE Sleep

Thoughts not related and yet, connected.

1. DH is expressing more grief, more tears, and more reflection of the death of his only child. It makes me sad. I don't know what to do. So many watch me and assumed he was "OK," but he was taking care of me.

2. I'm in a state of numbness and random violent disturbing dreams. Childhood nightmares all grown up. Dreams that reflect that my mind is over stimulated with world troubles and fear of the future. I long for the dreams of Caitlin, but those do not visit me.

3. UGH. Work. Whatever. Must do it. I do it. UGH.

4. Excited about our summer travels with family to see in the West. Whoo Hoo.

5. In a new state of no sleep and when I sleep, it's those blasted crappy dreams. Why can't I be like the majority of the population and NOT be a lucid dreamer.

6. Politics. Getting me down. Aaaack. SNL makes me laugh, though. Anyone see The Rock Obama. Very funny.

7. "Hey, don't mess with how my brain works!" My response to students today, who mocked my process for remembering some detail in class. Seriously, they have no idea how much I've worked to get the gray matter to work at all.

8. The End. Will try sleep again. Hoping for No Dreams.

Pouring another's Pain with My Own

Somehow, it's comforting.

I asked a friend who had lost her mother, if I can expect to do this again. What is this? Pouring another's pain with my own. I don't know why, but it helps. I suppose because I feel less lonely. Perhaps, it dilutes my sorrow? Feels more like immersion, so that's not really it.

Well, it's no sleep night. I'm in a familiar, but different grief place. I watched all of Caitlin's videos and cried and stared and felt my heart hurt. The poetry has subsided, but what still helps is the community of other bereaved mothers (fathers too, but I know so few). I read the blogs of others, scattering a few comments, and then read some new blogs--a mother with a baby with DS who died, a mother who feels the pain of seeing a mother with her living child, a mother who expresses her anger for remarks that ignore the birth of her child, and so many more.

I read until I feel better? No, it's more than the comfort of knowing I'm not the only one whose baby died. Some comfort comes in being understood, but it's not a particularly warm comfort knowing others hurt this much. It's horrifying actually.

Let's see if I can describe this phenomena with an analogy. It's like I have a cup of liquid pain. I get another's cup and pour it into an already full vessel and then it happens, my cup expands and makes room. With each cup I pour, the vessel transforms into a boat to keep me safe and help me navigate this now ocean of grief. And the wind in the sails that moves me across this expanse, is the knowledge shared, and the expressions of love for our children in story, poetry, song, painting, and sculpture and photography.

And now, sweet sleep, as I have arrived on my home shore safely.

And, my friend? What was her answer? "No, expect something different." I'll be honest, even after Caitlin's death, I still have this sense that those I love will always be with me. Perhaps this irrationality is evidence of my "healing."

Sitting on a Cold Marble Bench

I don't know where this image and sensation comes from, but yesterday I had a dream while awake. Not a daydream, though, I was dreaming and I was awake. There's a difference, trust me. It's odd, but not, I suspect. It's likely many fellow bereaved parents and others who experience great loss could share a story of when their unconsciousness is too eager to get started and visits before consciousness releases its hold on our minds for the day. I don't know, I base this assumption that others have had this experience solely on my average-person-ness. I've done no research, I'm basing this refusing to believe it's at all unique, but here it is none-the-less.

I have this sense that I am sitting on a cold marble bench with my legs crossed and tucked under a thick slab of blue-gray marble. I'm hugging myself to this bench feeling the cold of it seep through to my legs. I rock myself to get more settled in. The edge is rugged and rough, though the top is smooth and polished. It's a simple bench, no back and two square legs fused to the ends providing a sturdy resting place for the seat. There's room for three adults at this bench, but I sit here alone and in the dead center. I'll be here a while watching, what, I don't know, but I'm seated, arms crossed and legs tucked under. I suck a good portion of air in as though I had just remembered that it was there, and rock a bit to get settled until I remember to exhale that breath. I'm not particularly sad, or sorrowful, anxious, or feeling anything really. I'm not waiting, but I am watching the grass, perhaps? ground? I seem to have no purpose, but to be sitting on a cold marble bench.

No Sleep

[I wrote this about 5 months after Caitlin's death. I'm finding myself, not back in this place, but experiencing this phenomenon again. I have healed much since those first breaths, hours, days, weeks, months, since her death. And now it will soon be a year since my heart was torn out of me. But, tonight, I am without sleep again, and I wonder, when will I feel again? And when comes sleep?]

No sleep


I feel this dead calm, but I have no rest
My thoughts drag through my mind
Pulling the sludge of the day with them
I can do nothing but hurl the glop to its pile
Where it settles

No sleep
If only my thoughts would wrest
Loving images of Caitlin from its mass
If only my thoughts would summon
Musical sounds of our lullabies from its silence
I beg my thoughts to wrest
Soft cheeks and baby hair for me to stroke
And conjure Caitlin’s grasping fingers
For Mama’s thumb to become captive
I draw a breath and hold
No joy
My thoughts awaken nothing
Continuing their drudgery

No sleep
If only my thoughts would wrestle
Meaning from her absence
If only my thoughts would propel
Weeping for our loss
In disbelief I plead for my thoughts to
Strike me with the pain of her death
So I may mourn
I breathe and wait
No grief
My thoughts persist in numbing my mind
And there is
No sleep