Second Birthday

I've heard from some people that the first year after losing a loved one is the hardest. All those "firsts" you go through--the first birthday without her, first Halloween, first death anniversary. I made it through those. It's been over 18 months since my daughter's death, so I've made it through two of some things.

Her birthday is on Monday. She would have been four years old.

All week, I've been looking forward to getting the DVD of the movie Eclipse, to curling up on the sofa under a blanket with a bowl of popcorn and relaxing with my husband after a long November. But thinking about this last night, I remembered that I had planned to start movie nights with my daughter when she turned three. We'd never really let her watch TV until she was over 2, and even then she was never all that interested. But a movie night, my girl sitting on the sofa with me and her dad, I thought that was something she would enjoy. The first movie I planned to show her was Mulan, because I think of that as one of the more...feminist Disney movies.

She never saw it. We never had a movie night. Thinking about that got me started thinking about all the other things she hasn't done.

Lately, I've been worrying about my toddler trying to get out of her crib. She's never actually tried, because it's just not her nature and also she slept in a sleepsack until she was around 15 or 16 months old. My older daughter climbed out of her crib at 15 months and again at 20 months. That was one of the reasons we moved her into a bed a couple of months after she turned 2. In my mind, that is one of the reasons she is no longer with us.

I don't know what to do about her birthday. Because it's on a Monday, I'm not really planning anything on that day. Knowing how I feel now though, we may end up having to go to dinner just to distract me. Friends have offered to be here on that day, or whenever we want. But I just can't even figure out this year what I want to do.

I don't want to observe it, because she's not here. She's not getting any older. She won't be here to blow out a candle, see the balloons, or open presents. I can't do nothing though. I have to acknowledge and celebrate the day she came into the world, as I always tell others they should do on the birthday of someone they love.

The conflict and confusion I feel is tearing me apart. I'm exhausted from the events of the past month, year, year and a half. Right now, I'm just hoping I can once again hang on by my fingernails and make it through the day.

Identity

Right after I lost my daughter, I remember saying over and over that I didn't want to be "that woman, the one who lost her daughter." I know I literally meant I didn't want to be a woman who lost her daughter, I wanted to be the woman who had all the children she'd given birth to, alive, healthy, and one day, grown-up. A friend of mine looked at it another way, a way that I didn't consciously consider at the time but probably did already have in mind. I didn't want to forever be looked as that poor woman whose daughter died. I've lived my life to be so much more and felt so reduced to that.

But then, how could I not? How could this one event not weigh upon every thought, action, feeling, moment of my life forever onward? My friend said that this would define me, but that I could choose in what way it defined me, and to what extent.

I don't know that I have chosen it, other than that I made the choice in those first hellish days to get out of bed and get through each moment as best I could. Forget one day at a time, I lived 10 minutes, or even a moment at a time. There were moments when I couldn't escape the memories of her death, and all the events that followed.

As time has passed, the times when I am haunted by those memories have become fewer and further between. Other parents who'd lost children told me I would one day feel guilty about that. And of course they were right. I feel disloyal--as though not feeling horrible is somehow a betrayal of my daughter. It's no longer something I try all day to escape from. It has changed--it's this strange nagging feeling, like a pebble in my shoe that I can put out of my mind when I'm otherwise occupied. But then I get up and am walking around on that pebble, and am thrown back into all the realities of her death. I see her again, see the EMTs trying to save her, see the funeral home...

I am thankful that those memories have faded somewhat while at the same time that I have lost some connection to my daughter. Her birthday is coming up. Last year, my husband and I invited lots of people to a park where we used to take her. We did a balloon release there, and then most of the people came back to the house. It was almost like a real birthday party.

This year, we're thinking we might just have a couple of families, the ones who knew her best, over and have a belated Thanksgiving feast/birthday celebration. I was reading another blog (http://thebigpicturelawyman.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html) in which a mother talked about not wanting to mark her daughter's birthday or death anniversary the same way as time passed. I'm beginning to feel the same way, and it's definitely affecting my identity.

Thus far, all I know is that my identity continues to shift. Someone who never saw me when my daughter was alive probably wouldn't think I was all that different from when we last spoke. So in some ways, I have come back to myself. The people who were with me and continue to be here for me know that I'll never be the same.

As always, I do believe that I have a choice in the matter. My identity is a combination of what's happened to me and what I decide to do with that. I wish sometimes I didn't have to make those choices, or work so hard. I have to believe it's all worth it, especially when I look at my daughter, who rode to her sister's memorial service in the back of a limo with me but seems completely normal.

Baby Born and the Waves That Keep Crashing Over Me

Baby born in winter's sleep
Snowflakes fall, snuggle deep

Baby love, a year old today
Up with the sun, ready to play.

These are the first and last pages of a book I read to my daughter. I bought it when I had my first daughter. It tracks a baby born in winter through her first year. I hadn't read it for a while, because it always made me cry. I tried tonight, and found that the last page still makes me cry.

It's a fact, my daughter is gone. Daily life doesn't bring despair. I am, as I thought I would be, used to her death. It's horrible and yet a relief. I almost have to convince myself that she really was alive, that I really did live through that horrible day when she died. But I am relieved that I can't feel every moment of that day, and can't feel the way I did then.

The past week has been tough. Two days after I found out about my mother's breast cancer returning, my dad went to the hospital. He fell a couple of months ago and didn't tell anyone he'd hit his head. His speech was slurred, he was sleeping a lot, having memory problems, and even started dragging his foot. My mother finally convinced him to go to the hospital. Turned out he had a massive blood clot. They operated twice and he finally returned home two days ago.

I spent several days in limbo, trying to find out whether I needed to fly out right away or not. My brother, single and living much closer to our family, flew out the next morning. For me it was of course a matter of trying to figure out what to do with my daughter, whether my husband could be out of school for a couple of days, and whether we could even get a ticket for the day we needed it.

So Sunday night, we'll be flying out to see my parents. I am so relieved my dad isn't in the hospital. I hate hospitals. When I was 17, my mother was in a very bad car accident, and I suppose the trauma of seeing her there stuck with me. About 6 years ago, a friend of mine was in a bad accident, and while our husbands convinced me to go see her, they were both stunned when I burst into tears waiting to be let into the ICU.

I said goodbye to my daughter in the hospital. My friend (the one in the accident) tells me that doesn't even count as a hospital visit, really. But the mere thought of walking into a hospital makes me very anxious. So I am grateful I likely won't have to do that.

And yet I am still wondering, how often are the waves going to come crashing over my head? How many more times? I learned years ago to never say things can't get any worse, because they always can. They have been even worse (at times) in the past 18 months than I've written here.

I am still here though, still plugging along, and I guess that's all that matters. And if the only thing that has brought me to tears recently is Baby Born, then I guess I should consider myself fortunate.

Learned Helplessness

Yesterday morning I ran a 5K, my second, both in support of the Susan G. Komen foundation that funds breast cancer research. Last night, I learned that my mother's breast cancer is back. Tonight I talked to her and she's supposed to have a mastectomy. She wants to have both breasts removed, but my father is against that.

She had breast cancer 10 years ago and thought it was all over. She wants a bilateral to avoid all those fears, all those possibilities that it could come back. My father doesn't want her to do this. Both times, the lumps were small, and the first time, she had radiation, a lumpectomy, and more radiation. Her youngest sister also had it, but her case was much worse. It required chemotherapy, mastectomy, and more chemotherapy.

My first thoughts were of that race. I ran in their honor, and to help raise money so my daughter and I never have to face these types of decisions. When I run, I feel positive, energized, like I'm doing something strong and positive.

Hearing her news, I felt weakened. I remember reading about psychology experiments on subjects who couldn't control their lives and environments. A quick Google search shows that Seligman is apparently the big name in learned helpnessness.

I used to say, things have to get better because they couldn't get any worse. But I learned over and over again that that wasn't the case. Not only can things get worse, they usually get worse in ways you would never imagine.

Now all I can wonder is, how many times will circumstance, biology, accident, chance attack me? How many times can I get steamrolled before I finally decide to just stay on the ground?

Caffeine and running. For now, those are my antidepressants. Those and other people. I foresee needing lots of all three in the near future.

In My Daughter's Eyes

When I was pregnant for the first time, I was considering staying home with my child after s/he was born. After 3 weeks of not working, I realized that wasn't something I was cut out for. I remember sitting on the sofa, holding my tiny baby and crying. I apologized to her for not being able to stay home with her, and wondering aloud what I would do. I didn't want to put her in daycare. I returned to work when she was 3 months old, and as I told my husband, I just couldn't imagine handing her over to some person, saying "Here's my tiny, defenseless person," and then having her be in one crib out of four or more 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

In the end, we hired a nanny. I got to work from home and spent nearly every day of my daughter's (and her sister's) life with her. I am so grateful for that.

During those days when my girl and I were home alone, me recovering from an unexpected c-section with no family nearby and my husband working long hours, I would sometimes hold her and dance. A CD I often played was one by Martina McBride.

When my daughter passed away, I put one of the songs from that CD (She's a Butterfly) on the DVD played at her memorial. It contained pictures of her from throughout her life, and that song is the first one that plays. At the memorial, I was happy to see those pictures, and the songs I'd chosen fit so well. In the weeks that followed, we showed friends and family who weren't at the memorial that video and others.

After a while, I couldn't stand to see the memorial DVD, or any other videos of her. I also couldn't listen to that CD. I haven't listened to it since she passed away even though I liked most of the songs on it. It just reminds me so much of her, and of us dancing together, first with her in my arms, and then both of us standing in the old house together.

Last week, I heard a song from that CD, In My Daughter's Eyes, on the radio. I immediately wanted to change the station, but held strong and listened. And the first thing I thought of was my toddler. Somehow, I suddenly realized that the line "She was sent to rescue me" was about her, not my older daughter.

Well, it could be about either. They have both rescued me, from myself, and from other things. But in this case, my younger daughter has rescued me from the numbness, the shock, anything about her older sister's death that might have kept me from living. For her, I get up and don't just survive, I live. I run, I fight, I'm here writing. The whole song, suddenly made me think of her.

And it made me cry. I cried because I missed my big girl. I cried because I sometimes fear the weight of the world is on my baby girl's shoulders. And I cried because I felt as though suddenly life was what came to me first, before the death that has seemed to surround and drag me down for the past 18 months.

Sensitive

I've been away, both figuratively and literally. I was out of town last week with my daughter. My first trip ever alone with a child. We both did really well. I thought I'd post while I was gone, but it was nice to get away from pretty much everything about real life, so I barely went near a computer. Before that, I was swamped with work, and life, and couldn't pull my thoughts together.

A year ago, being alone with my daughter for long stretches of time (e.g. on a plane) would frustrate me, make me incredibly impatient, and at times I'd even scream at her. It was a horrible combination of sadness that my other daughter was gone, and anger at myself for not being more present for my younger child. Somehow, I don't feel or react that way these days.

Early on, a friend gave me a book, a sad story in which about half the characters are killed, but told me not to read it. She said I was "sensitive," and to wait a while. Which I did. I couldn't figure out what she meant by that word.

Now, I realize that many of the things that made me sad or angry before don't affect me, at least not the way they used to. It's like the desensitization that supposedly occurs for teens and violence. Watching one violent movie after another tends to make us more aloof towards actual violence. Being sad and angry day after day, seeing other children my daughter's age, coming across her pictures or clothes, all of this seems to have gradually desensitized me.

As I've said before, I do think this is a choice, like many other things. If I'd chosen to preserve her room the way it was before, to stop working and try to live in the past, then I probably would still be sensitive. As another friend said, we're just not equipped to live in "alt" forever. We can pretend only for so long. I admit, I do sometimes imagine her with me, walking along beside the stroller as I push her sister through a store. But it's a brief flash, a wish, a daydream. It's limiting myself to only that which I believe has made me less sensitive.

Having said all this, there's a part of me that wishes I'd started blogging much sooner. It was of course hard to function at all for a very long time. But I wish I had something from then that would show me, show you how much things have changed.

There is one thing. I was keeping a baby journal for my second daughter during her first year. Just after my firstborn died, I wrote a very brief entry there and in my personal diary. One of these days, I'll look them up and post or summarize them. I've always believed there's value in looking back, to see how far you've come, especially when you felt you could barely take a step.

Desensitization. The word has been absolutely ringing in my ears lately.

The Yellow Brick Road

In a March post about Stages of Grief, I described the stages as a spiral. I've been thinking lately about my reluctance to participate in the three groups I belong to and it's led me to thinking about this path I'm on as a spiral. At first, I imagined myself falling off a cliff onto a new path, but now it's more like a tornado picked me up and dropped me somewhere else entirely.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I started out in the middle of a spiral. When she first gets on the yellow brick road, it's a tight spiral, and she walks it surrounded by all the people there cheering for her because her house fell on the witch. As she keeps walking, the spiral opens up and takes her away from them.

This is exactly how I feel--like the spiral slowly took me away from all the people that surrounded me. Or at least it took me away from near-constant surveillance, from the phone calls and visits of people making sure I was still alive, had gotten out of bed, and fed myself and my baby.

Slowly I've moved back out into the world, back to work, back to stores. The first time I left my house (to go to breakfast with friends and family) I nearly fell apart. I looked around the restaurant and saw so many people, but my daughter's face wasn't among them. And while I hated my house (because that's where she died) I also felt as though by leaving it, I was leaving her.

I'm at a point now where I feel safe in more environments, but I'm still not quite on the open road. I almost want to run back to the center of the spiral sometimes. And I guess I do--I choose to be with the friends who gathered around me during that time. I was at one friend's house and there were several other women there from the group we all belong to. A couple of them have girls my daughter's age and it pained me so much to be there with them, and not see my daughter playing with them.

So for a while, I avoided them. The women and their children. Now I'm back to seeing the mothers, but am still avoiding the daughters. And so it goes, with that group and the others.

I'm planning a tentative step towards one, maybe seeing one of the groups in about 10 days. We'll see how that goes.