Goodbyes are so hard

My Grandma Lock passed away a week ago yesterday. It's hard for me to write about this particular loss for some reason. Maybe it's because she never liked to be the center of attention. Maybe it's just because I'm not ready. Since I know I'll never be ready, I'll just give it a go.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe that it's hard to write about her because she was too essential to describe. It's like trying to describe the ocean just by talking about the waves. Or describing a quilt just by using color. I can't find the right way to describe what she meant to me because every time I try to pin it down, it slips away. Here are my best efforts.

Grandma was as constant as the stars. Always there with a cup of tea and an ear when you needed it. She was the best listener. It must have been the practice of living with an epic storyteller. She always seemed to know when you had a story to share and just how to draw it out.

I will miss her whimsy the most. When we were kids, she loved to tell us stories about the fairies and the sprites. All of her favorite recipes included a good story as their most important ingredient. With the practical, and sometimes hard, life that is farming, my grandparents - especially grandma - made sure to take time out to have light-hearted fun.

Service was her daily bread. I don't know that she went a day of her life, at least as long as I knew her, without doing at least one thing for someone who needed it. She was always thinking of others, trying to ease the burden of someone else. It's what did the most to ease her own.

The surface has been scratched. I hate saying goodbye. Sophia and I are baking up a storm and sharing it with our world. Grandma made the world a better place every day, and I'll try to do the same.

Homesick

I thought this would be the week that I started focusing more on the new world than the old, but it turns out the old one wasn't finished with me yet.

Remember a long while back when I shared a lot about my ideas on grief? We're right back to that. With all the busyness and distraction of the actual move and settling in, not to mention visiting the old world a couple of times, I realize now that I had managed to feel the minimal amount of loss associated with this life twist. (I'm still searching for the proper term to describe what just happened as "move" and "change" don't seem to fully embody the situation.) I still had plenty of feeling, but it was just a pressure release of the feelings beneath.

This week, I have slowed down. There is little or nothing to do to continue the settling process. I knew I was stalling in putting up those pictures, but I didn't realize I was stalling the grief.



But here I am, looking out at a view that I genuinely appreciate. The animals were placed strategically by Sophia. In a room that is warm and feels like home. With a girl playing quietly with her animals on and around me. And here it is. Loss. Grief. Confusion. Hope? Yes. I've got it all. With a stuffed nose and a clogged ear. There is no point in describing what I feel here. You have all felt it at one point or another. A sudden recollection of an unfulfilled dream. A sweet memory of a moment impossible to recapture. Eyes filling with tears for no reason in particular.

It's going to be a long winter. Strap in. I'll try not to drag us all down. There is plenty to share that is beautiful and funny and exciting. I'll let you in on all of that too. But I have to be real. I'm homesick. For my sick neighbors, for my healthy neighbors, for my friends, for my church, for the gym I haven't been to in months, for Sophia's preschool, for Hy-Vee and my stove and my back porch. To name a few. Okay. I feel better. Here's photographic evidence that I feel better. Sophia took this for you.



Hope I didn't make you feel worse.

Revisiting the Topic

One of the things that is more challenging to talk about in the discussion of grief is the way in which our lives change for the better in some way, shape or form. Sometimes this isn't true, but other times it is true. It's painful, but then again I don't want to miss the good things in life just because they were brought about by sadness.

Anyway, a few weeks ago when I started to realize how things are different than we planned, I couldn't help but detest the new conveniences of our lives that wouldn't be true if things had gone differently.

So here are a few things that I hated (and am working on being grateful for).

-In July, we're going to Orlando for vacation in a year that was supposed to be travel-free to save up for the coming baby.

-I don't feel the need to rush Sophia into potty training.

-Or getting into a big girl bed.

-We'll be much more financially prepared to have a second when the time comes.

-I can enjoy adult beverages and hot tubs this summer.

-I won't be swollen (literally) to twice my normal size by September.

-I can exercise all I want and get a better swimsuit body (I'm not really taking advantage of this one, though)

There are more, but you get the point. These are all things that I am grateful for, but the alternative would have been exponentially more to my liking.

Back to the Battle

Nope, we're not through with this discussion on grief. I definitely have some more things to say about it. I just needed to process some first in my head before I bare them to the eyes of the world (yeah, right, the world).

Simply stated, my current grief has changed my state of mind. This particular loss, with its slow, draining march, has combined with the recent loss of two grandparents, along with other peripheral losses and reminders of loss to produce a marked effect on my state of mind, or attitude. Is that the same thing?

My predisposition is one of contentment and laughter. I am certainly not saying that I'm happy all of the time. I am saying that my state of mind is typically one of seeing the humor and of choosing to focus on the brighter side of the human condition, even while venturing into the darkest of places. Over the past several months, I have experienced consecutive losses of varying degrees. My inability to take the time between to experience these at a deeper level has left me in a darker state of mind.

Those of you who know me at all know that sarcasm is a natural bent of mine. Many would suggest that sarcasm is never appropriate, but I still enjoy it. However, at times like these it becomes my enemy. I have to be more careful of my tongue because it tends to deal a larger dose of hostility. When I am in this state of mind, I tend to think of myself as a "realist," which is to say a pessimist. I see the negative more clearly than the positive in the photographs of daily life. It's not really depression, although that tends to kick it off. It's just a general state of malaise.

I am not afraid of this current lack of positivism in my life. I've been through it before. I'll get through it this time, too. Exercising my mind and my emotions. Using words to express how angrily I meet this loss and all the losses of my past. Reminding myself of the joys of being a human. These are the remedies for my soul.

I don't know if this is typical of grief or not. How about you? Does a particular state of mind accompany your grief? Is grief a state of mind of its own?

Healing Words

As many of you know, this is not our first loss in pregnancy. Before Sophia, we experienced another, dramatically different loss. In November of 2005, I found out that I was pregnant about three hours before I was in surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy (an embryo that implants and grows outside the uterus).

We were shocked at the depth of our grief over a child that we had never known about or anticipated! With that loss, our grief spiked early and hit us like a ton of bricks. This time around, it was a slow march to an inevitable black hole. I stifled all feelings for weeks. Grieving this loss has been a much larger challenge in itself than our previous loss. This process doesn't "look" the way I feel it ought.

I guess the truth that I have found nestled in this drastic difference is that grief cannot be predicted. I kept expecting to have some sort of dramatic end to all the waiting. I thought my d&c would leave me devastated and finally able to feel. Quite the opposite. After coming home, I felt even less than before. I comforted myself that it was due to the pain meds, but it was really just emptiness. Emptiness that I have to live with.

Along with the difference in circumstances surrounding this loss, is the fact that we are different people. In the intervening 3 1/2 years, we have experienced much life - both beautiful and dreadful. Sophia is one very obvious change in our lives. While her presence has changed our grief, I can't say that it has made it easier. We no longer grieve the fact that we are not yet parents, but now we know from experience the unparalleled joy that is embodied in holding an infant that moments before was kicking me in the ribs. We grieve also for her in that she will have to continue to wait to know the joy of being a big sister.

This loss is different, certainly, but not easier.

Both times writing has helped. I write to process externally. Sometimes it's good, mostly it's just me. So if you like me, you like my writing. If you don't, well....

In 2005, I wrote often to cope with our family's first loss. Here is my favorite:

Yahweh, Hold My Baby

Yahweh, what do you call our baby?
Please, come whisper it in my ear.
I know that it cannot be heard aloud
At least not while we're still here.

Yahweh, can our baby see us?
Please let her sit by my side.
I don't need to see or feel her
Just to let her know we tried.

Yahweh, will you hold our baby?
She needs love like every child.
Please hold and kiss her now and always,
And tell her it's only for a while.

Yahweh, I'm so sad and lonely.
Won't you please come and stay?
I try to have hope for tomorrow
But all I want is yesterday.

Yahweh, you know all the pain.
You've seen mine and every other's.
With broken hearts and empty arms,
Our greatest desire, just to be mothers.


I am still sad when I read this, but the grief is just a shadow of its former self. Three months after my ectopic pregnancy, we found out we were pregnant with Sophia. Knowing that her life would not be possible had I carried this first child full term does not make that grief any less real or important in our lives. I think people want to move so quickly to what we have and what our loss makes possible that we miss the entire point.

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I have written while grieving our current loss as well. Something that is interesting to me and is evident in the words below, is that I am less personally invested. I am writing to a general audience rather than to God or our baby. I think this is the difference in my grief, and this will be the main obstacle to truly grieving the loss of my child. I have to say that out loud to myself far more than I did in 2005. This was my child.

On Sunday I felt for the first time in over a month, at least as it concerned our baby. I had long lost hope of a healthy pregnancy, although I hadn't admitted its truth. So I went to the cemetery next to Grant Elementary on Broadway. It drizzled, and I was finally alone. I was desperate just to feel something. I did.


-I came alone to the quiet cemetery where my tears could be understood. By whom, I guess I'd rather not know. My jeans got wet from the rain on a bench marked 'Windmiller.' I feel sure that Eugene's wife would forgive my intrusion. I assume she would recognize the posture of one needing rest. There is no grave of my own loved one to sit near and mourn. The tree in bloom between me and my car will have to do. Our baby was too small to merit a resting place.

It's too soon for peace. That is certain. But as I look around me at all of these monuments - some old, some new - meant to mark life and death, I feel an odd relief that our baby will never come here to cry alone. If a monument would help, I would put one right here, but it won't make my love more true or my loss more tangible.

Some may seek a cemetery to find God. I came here to escape him. Today's rain may very well be God's tears shed for my baby's unfulfilled promise. I know in my heart that my god did not have this loss in his "larger plan" for my life or this child. But I still cannot seek his face. It is too soon to experience the peace that I would find there.-



If you have written to move past your own grief and would like to share it, please do.

Starting from the Same Point

After a very good conversation with Erick last night about the topic of grief, I realized that today's post should be about how I define grief, particularly as I'm relating it to different areas of life.

Grief as people normally think of it relates to the large and often crushing losses of life: death, divorce, loss of livelihood, unexpected and unresolved end to relationship, disability, and the list goes on. This type of grief is large and takes up a great deal of our energy for at least a portion of our lives. Well, at least it does if we allow it. If not, we end up living only partially. Grief of this kind, most experts agree, seems to involve five stages: 1. Denial and Isolation, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression (Sadness), 5. Acceptance. I don't like assigning these stages numbers because each process seems to move in and out of all of these stages, even simultaneously. While all of these stages seem to be present after these greater losses in life, I believe they present themselves differently for each person, even within that person - differently for each loss.

The second point I was trying to make is that grief is often short-circuited, if acknowledged at all, in other areas of life. I would agree these other losses are not as threatening to one's existence, but they still have the potential to derail us. For example, I said that choices we make leave others untried or unexperienced. An extreme example that I hope will help others understand what I mean is this: When Erick and I chose to begin starting a family, we were ecstatic and joyful to welcome Sophia. However, we had made a choice that our lives would never be shared between only the two of us again. No more running out for pizza at 10:30. No more sleeping in till 10:30. No more freedom or ease or uninterrupted conversation. I would not trade our current reality for any amount of riches, ease or opportunity; however, if I don't acknowledge the choice we made, I could become resentful of Sophia's presence in our life. Marriage is harder when children are present. Is it worth it? Of course! But even asking that question is a form of grief - particularly of the final stage of acceptance. I don't think that all the stages of grief are necessarily present in this second type of grief. Even if they are present, it seems that they could be less apparent and vital to the process.

I wanted to address my definitions of grief because if you are reading this with another definition or confusion about the less threatening types of losses, then we can't get very far. I hope that this post has been less confusing than I think, but I welcome questions and the chance to further clarify my position.

Maybe in the mean time, I'll take some pictures of Sophia. Nothing like a little distraction to ease the tension.

Thoughts?

Good Grief

Earlier in this blog, in a post or comments that I'm too lazy to search for, I believe it was alluded to that our culture does not spend enough time actually talking about grief. Or death. Or pain. We let the artists take care of that. We shed a few unexplained tears at an emotional, even if poorly written, movie - and feel better. A book or song that holds no obvious emotion for us, gives us the excuse to let the waters flow, if only for a moment.

I am going to make an argument that we (humanity) do our best living when we are grieving. Not just loss of life, but of comfort, innocence, understanding, friendship, opportunity. The human experience is full of choices, paths taken and others not taken. Each choice we make leaves a whole path of opportunity that we must grieve. Of course there are many things that happen in life, which were not a product of choice, and those leave empty spaces that can only be filled with the tears of true grief. Now, I'm not the type that wants to live in a pit of blackness, reliving each misery or mistake of my own or others. I don't find satisfaction in dwelling on the losses of life, but it's my opinion that by actually grieving our losses, we give them far less power in our present and future.

All of that precedes my saying that I am grieving, and I am going to share it with you. This is a risk on my part. I hate leaving myself open to being pitied. Please don't do that, and if you do, keep it to yourself. I want to use my grief as a starting place for our conversation. I am not an expert on grief, although I (like each of us) have had many losses. I am not asserting that my loss deserves more attention than any other. On the contrary, my tendency is to remind myself of those who suffered infinitely greater loss than I and seem to endure with a tender spirit. That is true, and it's not the point either. I simply want to talk about grief. What better way than to walk you through some of my own process.

That's all for today, but I do want to set a few ground rules. Obviously, I want this to be a conversation, so please comment if you have something to say about grief. Please do not comment if you feel the compulsion to tell me that you're sorry for my loss. I know you are, and I appreciate it. That's not the point. So in the next days or weeks or whatever it takes, I'll share with you some writings and thoughts and random ways that I process. Enjoy. Or don't. Either way, you'll need to grieve the path you didn't take. ;)

Poop Stinks

This post has nothing to do with poop, but it just seemed like the only way to start.

I've been on radio silence for a while for one main reason. We've been having a rough stint. Last Monday, almost two weeks ago, I was planning a very fun post. I had an ultrasound scheduled to make sure that everything was okay in my - yep - early pregnancy. I was 8 weeks, and the ultrasound technician could only find an empty sac. That was not good news, but it wasn't necessarily the worst news. The basic idea was that I could have been off on dates and less pregnant than I originally thought or it could be something called a blighted ovum. That means that an embryo implanted but only the sac continued to grow. The only way to know for sure which we were dealing with was to wait nearly two weeks - until yesterday morning - and have another ultrasound.

Two weeks of waiting was pretty miserable, but we managed to carry on with life in the most normal way we could. I worked so hard not to think about what we were waiting on that I ended up not doing much thinking at all. That's why no I couldn't think of any posts.

So yesterday morning was the ultrasound. Poop stinks gives you an idea that it did not turn out like we had planned. The sac was still empty and hadn't grown at all. So this week I will need to have a procedure to end the process.

So that's where we are. After two weeks of stopping feelings in their tracks, we are finding it to be a challenge to access them now. It will happen when we least expect it. With people who care close and each other closer, we'll make it through this as we have anything else.

Most of you already knew about all of this, but it always helps me to get things out in writing. I appreciate you hearing me out, but I don't really need feedback. I've disabled comments on this post. I just don't want anyone to feel the need to find something to say.

Why I love Board Games and Candy

My dad's mother has always been Momo to me. During my summer visits as a child, we would play board games for hours and days on end. At the coffee table, on the porch or continued between. I always assumed the enjoyment was mutually great, but as an adult, I realize there was a great deal of patience involved, not to mention love. Somewhere along the line, another staple became m&m's. We'd eat them as we visited and get a few bags to carry home. Between the homemade donuts and the candy, I nurtured my natural love for sweets in Momo's house.

I described Popo in this earlier post when he passed away less than a year ago. After so many decades together, it was no wonder that Momo's heart was broken beyond repair without her partner. With each conversation after Popo's passing, it became more clear that her one desire was to be at home with Jesus and Popo. Selfishly, I wanted just a little longer. This week, I planned to take advantage of Mary's spring break by having her watch Sophia so I could take a trip to see Momo for a couple of days. We were both excited about the possibility, although she was disappointed that Sophia wouldn't join me. Every conversation started like this. Me: "How are you today?" Momo: "Oh, I'm okay. How's our little girl? What's she doing?" One of her favorite stories was about the time that we came to visit when Sophia was just learning to walk and how she toddled directly into Popo's waiting arms. It was a good memory for both Momo and Popo, and I plan to remind Sophia of how loved she was by her great grandparents.

I will make the trip to Illinois this week, but it won't be the one I planned. After having a stroke on Friday, Momo finally had her broken heart restored this morning. Now she is completely whole in the arms of Jesus. I wil miss her greatly, especially when I spot (and eat) a bag of her trademark m&m's.

Popo

Popo, my dad's dad, has been sick for quite some some time, and now he is finally free from all that pain. I have been thinking of so many things I needed to say about him - like how Sophia loved him instantly or his surprising internet savvy. So many stories I should share - maybe you should hear about his unique collections or how he taught me sign language fifteen years ago (I've forgotten most of it.) But only one thing seems to matter at the moment. Popo gave THE best hugs, and often, as I was leaving, he would take my face in both his hands to kiss my cheek, just before he said, "I love you, Sweetheart."

I love you, too, Popo.