Hopeless Holidays of my First Year

Thanksgiving a Holiday of Thanks?
     Thanksgiving...it came just one month and three weeks after my daughter died.  In years past, I would spend the weeks leading up to this holiday teaching my students sweet little songs about turkey dinners and gratitude.  I taught them lines to plays, how to make costumes out of brown bags and construction paper, how to create darling turkey keepsakes from their handprints, craft feathers and paint. I would teach them to not covet what they could not have but instead to be thankful for the things they do have.  This year, however, I spent the weeks leading up to this holiday in a deeper mourning than I could have imagined even in the worst of nightmares.  I made no crafts.  I taught no songs.  And I had trouble being thankful.  I wanted, still want, will always want, what I could not have; my daughter in my arms.
     In any other circumstance, I would have been excited to spend the holiday with my family.  My parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew.  The children and I would have made a turkey out of fruit...dubbed 'Auntie Leesee's famous turkey.' My father and brother-in-law would watch the Detroit Lions lose as my sister and mother frantically but lovingly would make a delicious meal.  This year, I simply could not participate.  I knew that though this horrible tragedy happened to me, life for others would be going on, perhaps not as usual, but still progressing.  Everyone in the family would gather around the table to give thanks.  They would all tell stories and laugh and smile.  But I knew, that I could not laugh or smile or even be close to those who could.  I knew that all I would think about was that missing being from our family table.  So instead, I hibernated.  I tried so very hard to pretend that time was not passing and that this holiday had not arrived.  I tried to pretend that none of what happened was true.  That perhaps it had all been a tragic fictional story.

New Year, New Pain
     It was New Year's Eve.  As I wrote people were getting ready for an evening of whimsy, an evening of love and an evening of hope.  People would be smiling and dancing, toasting and kissing. They would count down to midnight and as they did they would dream.  They would think forward and wonder and hope.  They would be grateful that the transgressions of the year just past may be washed down by a flute of champagne.  They would speak of the beauty that was and hope that the coming year will bring more fortune their way.  "What will this new year bring for me?" They would think.
      For so many New Year's is the redo holiday.  It is a chance for people to start a new, regain perspective and think of all the new possibilities this new year will bring.  For me, this year, the holiday had become a painful reminder that all the possibilities of this new year were buried in a tiny shallow grave just three months prior.  This was supposed to be a year plentiful with baby benchmarks; the first smile, the first giggle, first time she rolled over, sat up. But instead it is a year that I will have to realize the truth that nothing is promised.


My Missing Valentine
     I have never been a person who has wholly bought into the ideals of Valentine's Day.  Of course I have always wanted to have someone I could call my Valentine, but really, the holiday seemed like a crazy charade to me.  That fact leaves me wondering why Valentine's Day has become so difficult now that Celia is gone.  I think about all the cutesy activities and crafts I have done with children in my classes.  I can imagine the joy on the faces of parents when their children come home and proudly present a handmade Valentine card still sticky with Elmer's glue and shedding glitter.  "Oh honey, I love it!" I imagine them praising just before embracing their child tight, professing their love and posting their cherished Valentine to their refrigerator.  My parents have drawers full of items like this from my sister and me.  I wonder if they rifle through them on occasion to remember a time when we were sweet, innocent and deeply in love with each other the way only a child could be with their family.  Perhaps my impression of myself is only colored by my loss, but if I had been given even one of these from my child, I would treasure it.  I would post it proudly, I would look at it, touch it, read it often.  On this holiday, perhaps I would have dressed her in red.  In her growing years, as she made me a Valentine, I too would be making one for her.  I would teach her songs about love.  I would let her decorate the house with pictures and cutouts of hearts.
     But...and there it is the negating word BUT...my child didn't get to survive.  My child will never know the beautiful, glitter and sugar filled chaos of this Hallmark holiday.  And I will never experience the bliss of receiving a homemade Valentine from her as she utters the words "I love you Mommy."

The Betrayal of a Grieving Memory

     As painful as all of it was, is, will be, I will always remember it all.  I will remember and feel every contraction, every tear (rip), every tear (cry), the feeling of my bag of waters as it emerged and retreated, emerged and retreated and finally emerged and burst.  The way my body felt as my legs were bent and pushed wide out to the side, my knees in my armpits, my hair wet with sweat.  I will remember how it felt when I reached above my shoulders and behind my head to brace myself against my wall expecting the force of my pressure to burst through the barrier.
     I will remember the way it felt when I delivered my child's head.  The sense of relief knowing that just another push or two and I would to hear my baby cry, hold my baby in my arms, and watch my baby suckle at my breast.  I will remember the sense of wonder I had, in that moment, at the marvel of birth.  I will memorialize the way my child's head felt when I reached down and smoothed my finger tips over her soft, hair covered scalp.  I will remember the moments of anguish that followed as my body betrayed both myself and my child.  The moments when I was forced to pivot onto my hands and knees in hopes that my body would release and my beautiful child would be born into this world pink and bewildered.  I will remember the intense yet defeasible pushing, my midwife's profanities, the impenetrable words NINE-ONE-ONE.  I will remember the sirens, the voices of the rescue team.   I will remember and feel the burn of every piece of my flesh as it was manually ripped open by as many as three sets of hands at a time.  I will remember the desperate disbelief as I was taken from my home and lifted into the ambulance.
     I will remember my final two contractions when my body finally released and my child was born.  The way I could only see the front of the ambulance as we raced down the road and the fact that I only discovered my daughter's gender from the pronouns that were used after she was fully delivered.  I will remember the hope, the fierce hope, when one rescue worker said her color was getting better.  I will remember the entry to trauma room, the extreme abandon I felt for my own safety, and my focus on my daughter's wellbeing.  I will remember having to deliver my placenta and attempt to be stitched without proper anesthesia all while a curtain was drawn between myself and my daughter.
     I will always remember when the neonatal doctor came to me, head shaking in defeat and I saw my daughter for the first time.  The nurses brought my limp daughter to me, intubation tube still in place, blood from birth still spotting her scalp. I will remember how, in that moment, I knew I would never be the same.

(Photo by Sherry Kruzman Photograohy www.sherrykruzmanphoto.com )
A picture that normally depicts the beginning benchmark
for the development of an adorable scrunched up baby.
For me, however, it has become this image above of my
breathless infant who's life outside my warm belly never
began. 

     The rest blurs.  I know I was taken to surgery where I was put under a general anesthesia.  I know the first words I remember after coming out of said anesthesia were from the lips of Patrick's mother "She robbed everyone of this baby," she accused.  I know the hospital was compassionate and allowed me to hold my daughter late into the night.  But the details, those fade.  The faces of the doctors and nurses who worked on both Celia and me that day, even those who came to visit are missing from my memory.  The Lisa I was before my daughter was born, before my daughter died is missing too.  Perhaps someday I will remember her, the Lisa who came before.  I will not be her again, I know this.  But I am told that I will meet a day that is not wet with tears, I will laugh a true laugh or smile a true smile that will not be followed with pain.  When will this day will come? I do not know, but I am told it will.