Blue Scilla from Celia

     The day I lost Celia, I too lost my faith.  I lost faith in fate, destiny, spirituality and most of all G-d.  I was, prior to my loss, a spiritual person with a slightly eclectic belief system.  Yet since losing my daughter, I have found it hard to believe that any higher power could allow such a thing to happen;  that a child's life could be taken before it truly began.  I have heard many say that Celia's death was part of G-d's plan.  I did not want to know a G-d who made plans like these.  I have found myself enraged at what most of us call G-d.  But I also have found myself feeling confused and disconnected.

     I have been brought up in the Jewish faith.  That means I have been taught, and teach others, about the extensive customs, rituals and traditions that the living do when a person dies.  How we treat and take care of the body, what we wear to show we are in mourning, why we have funerals and say prayers; were all part of what I have been brought up to know.  However, in Judaism, at least in my experience, we are not taught about what happens to the person who has died.  Sure, we know that their body no longer goes on living and we are taught to believe in the neshama, the soul, going somewhere else to await the arrival of the messiah.  But we do not know where that place is. Unlike in Christianity we do not speak of Heaven only of the heavens.   For that reason, as well as others, I find it hard to identify with the idea of my child as an angel.  I cannot picture her with feathery wings laying on a cloud somewhere high above us all.  

     This loss of faith has left an even deeper emptiness that adds further isolation to what I have already been experiencing.  I, therefore started asking friends what they believed happened to a person when they died.  I heard touching stories of dreams of their loved ones assuring them everything would be alright, of feeling a person's presence in the wind, of signs their loved one had sent in the way of orbs or hearts and so many other stories that were meant to warm and reassure me.  But I didn't feel reassured.  I felt lowly.  I have not experienced any of those things.  And so I began to feel that I was undeserving of such a feeling of peace and connection.  Some might assume that I have not been exposed to those types of experiences because I have been "closed" to the idea of such signs, yet I feel as if the opposite were true.  I so desperately have wanted some evidence that Celia's soul had survived and she forgave me for not being able to save her.  

     

     Yesterday I went walking.  As I walked, I tried to keep my mind occupied by listening to an audio book.  If you ask me what it was about, I would be unable to tell you as all I could concentrate on was what the next day, what is now today, meant.  April 2, 2013 would be, is, six months to the day since Celia died.  This amount of time seems significant to me.  I am sure, had she lived, instead of writing and sharing this blog, I would be sharing photos of her smiley face with some sign showing everyone that my baby was six months old today.  I would take pride in all the "ooh'ss and aww's" of how adorable my daughter was.  But instead of pictures of my six-month-old to share I have a six month old memory of loss, trauma and heartbreak.  My journey, so far, may be difficult for others to witness.  I understand.  Watching a person deep in grief, misery, shame, and guilt.  It must be difficult to bear witness to such seemingly self-distructive behavior.  As I walked, I thought of all these things.  Then, as I came upon my house I noticed a cluster of purplish-blue flowers blooming under what would have been Celia's side window.  I have lived in this house for seven years and have not once seen such a flower in or around my yard.  I sat next to the cluster of flowers and began to cry.

 

Blue Scilla from Celia

      "Celia" I whispered softly as the tears flowed.  Could this be the sign that I had been searching for or could it be some figment that I have created to ease my suffering?   I suppose I could choose either answer, but I choose to believe that these beautiful little flowers came from my daughter.  I choose to believe that she sent them here just for me.  After taking a few photographs, I continued with my day.
     When evening fell I listened in on a teleconference designed to help grieving mothers and the people who support them move forward with their lives.  I found it to be unhelpful and began to again feel the dagger of loss in my chest.  "What are your biggest challenges to healing?" The professional on the other end of the phone asked.  She instructed us to write two of these challenges down and be as specific as possible.  I did not even have to take a moment to think.  I instantly knew my biggest challenges were: 1) My incomparable sense of guilt over the death of my daughter.  If it had been my body that failed, then how could I move beyond that.  If it had been my midwife that failed, and I am not asserting this to be the case, then I am the one who chose her, so truly that was my failing too.  All the roads of what if's lead back to me.  2) Feeling pressured or shamed by other people's timelines and judgements, whether or not those judgements were true or simply my own perception or projection.  And 3) I have no desire to truly live.  I have no intentions of ending my life, but the idea that I should "move on" or be in the world knowing what could have been, what was supposed to have been, and is no longer, seemed impossible.
     Somewhere in the abstruse teleconference land, was another woman, who through our losses has become a dear friend.  She too had found the teleconference to be unhelpful.  I believe the term she used to describe the content was "plastic."  Instead of ending the eve of Celia's six month birth day with the uncomfortable, plastic words of a stranger, I chose to confide in my friend, Camilla.  "Tomorrow it will have been six months," I pointed out "and a Tuesday."  Celia was born and died on a Tuesday, my first surgery was on a Tuesday, I was readmitted to the hospital with an infection to undergo more surgeries on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday.  It seemed as if the day were always going to be a day full of suffering.
     Camilla offered empathetic words and then simply stated "That's your day...your's and Celia's..."  Until that moment I truly hadn't thought about the day in that way. Yes, Tuesday was the day I lost her, but it was also the day I got to hold her in my arms.
     I went on to lament of the cemetery being closed, the brick not yet being installed at the zoo.  Then I remembered the cluster of flowers beneath the window.  I sent the picture to Camilla and told her what I have already told you of their origins.  Camilla immediately identified the flowers  "Blue Siclla...beautiful" she went on to research the meaning of the sign my daughter had sent.  "Forgive and forget," was the message she had found.  She feared the discovery of the message would upset me. The forget part was certainly curious.  I began to wonder.  I started analyzing the easy one, forgive.  I am sure if I am to live a life at all I will need to move towards forgiving myself.  I will also need to be forgiving of others. The cliche' words some speak, the way in which some have retreated from my side, and yes, even the cruel things that have been uttered will all, in time, need to be forgiven.  The harder half of the message, forget, was strange in this situation.  Or was it?   I was never going to to forget my daughter, so that could not possibly be what was meant or what it would mean to me.  Perhaps forget was meant in the way of letting go.  Not, of course, letting go of my daughter, but in the letting go of the drowning pain I feel.  Letting go of the harsh words that I have snorted to myself and others have spoken to me.  As my mind raced to analyze such a message Camilla continued her research of the meaning of this flower.  "Bluebell," she informed "is another name that covers many types of scilla.  They symbolize humility associated with constancy, gratitude and everlasting love."  By this point in our conversation Camilla and I were both in tears.  Though these tears were different.  For the first time the tears I shed did come with the searing pain of loss.  Rather, they were a comfort a reminder of the love that I have for my child and the love she would have had and seemingly does have for me.  I was becoming incredibly warmed by these flowers.  Scilla, when uttered, even sounds a little like Celia. Camilla went on to find Cicely Mary Barker's Scilla Fairy.  She is a coy little sprite who comes with these words:

Scilla, Scilla tell me true, 

Why are you se very blue?

Oh, I really cannot say

Why I'm made this lovely way!

I might know if I were wise.

Yet-I've heard of seas and skies,

Where the blie is deeper far

Than our skies of Springtime are.

P'r'aps I'm here to let you see

What that Summer blue will be.

When you see it, think of me!

Cicely Mary Barker

     Am I cured now? No, I cannot say that I am.  But am I better?  Yes, for the first time, in six months, I am better than yesterday.  

   

Going Home...

      I saw a discussion on Still Standing, the online magazine about living after losing your baby.  They posed the question, "What did you do with the nursery?" I was going to respond.  I was going to speak of how I left it exactly as it had been before Celia died.  I was going to write of the fact that when people offer to pack it up and store everything away, I begin to cry.  I was going to share that I think I cry because packing everything away is final, or maybe it is because I can't bear the thought of all her things sitting in dark dank room somewhere away from me.  Yet, as I began to write of theses things, I was struck with a larger question.  What do I do about the house?  To some this may seem like an odd question.  But I my labor happened primarily in my home, I had planned it that way.  When I lost my child in the trauma of birth, I not only lost my future.  I lost that safe serene feeling one should have in the comfort of their own home.  In fact, for a time, I could not even enter my house for fear that the memories of loss and pain would envelop me.
     I first reentered my post apocalyptic home, the site of the bloodshed, the site of my loss, in early December.  It had been two months since my daughter had passed and that day was the first time I could cross the threshold and bathe in the pool of emotions that occupied the structure.  Once inside, somehow, it all looked so different.  The home in which I once felt comfort, now felt empty, still.  I walked gingerly through my home afraid to step on and perhaps shatter a memory of the life that had been growing inside me.  The light shone through the small cracks in the bamboo roman shades and gently illuminated the tiny specks of dust dancing through the air.  It felt as if I were standing amidst the fuzziness of a movie's dream sequence.  Not the kind when you, the audience, know everything will be ok, more so the dream that left you with an overwhelming feeling of confusion and uneasiness.  With each step I took, my heart ached a little more.  My eyes, dripped with tears and searched every inch of floor, wall, ceiling, and furniture.  The home, Celia's and mine, seemed familiar yet not; a destination on the opposite side of the looking glass, a sepia colored memory.  I noticed every new scar that my home possessed; the gouges in the walls from the stretcher's clumsy pivots, the broken picture frames that had been knocked to the floor, the paint chips that sprinkled the doorway from the stretcher's frenzied exit.
     My dogs entered behind me.  They stepped as gingerly as I had.  They carried the heaviness of the event on their backs.  Perhaps they remembered the horror.  After all, they had both been present on that day, when life changed, when time stopped.  The two did not know how to behave once inside and therefore chose to lay in the exact spots where they had been when tragedy struck.  After I had completed walking through every room, I was struck with confusion.  Do I stay here now? Do I dare stay at the scene of the trauma?  Or do I return to my parents' house where I feel eyes on me even when no one but my dogs and I are present?  I sat on the cream colored oversized chair in my living room.  I thought about everything and yet nothing.  I gazed off into the room that would have been hers.  I felt a crushing feeling of emptiness.  I wept, then sat silent, then wept.  This cycle repeated itself for hours.  How many hours?  I cannot say for sure, but so many hours passed as I sat there that morning light turned to to evening dark.  And still, when darkness fell I sat longer.  I made no calls that day.  I only sat in my loneliness.

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.