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.

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.
   

The Shame of a Childless Parent

     August 2012, I had entered my eighth month of pregnancy.  I had many friends, several of whom had children of their own, who were eagerly awaiting the arrival of my little one and even went so far as to claim "dibs" on baby snuggles.  However, the anxiety of possibly becoming a single mother was mounting and I craved community, even beyond the backbone of support that was my existing friends and family.  I wanted to feel a sense of kinship and belonging to a community of likeminded young families; families who believed in the methods of attachment parenting, natural home births, cloth diapering, breastfeeding, and the like.  After asking for guidance on the subject, my midwife's apprentice lead me to a support group with an online forum and an active real life presence full of potlucks, craft swaps, nights out, play dates, the works.  The parents, mostly mothers, were diverse in background, but all were drawn to the attachment parenting lifestyle.  The moment I joined I felt fully held by the members of this group.  An abundance of empathy, compassion, help, hope, laughter, and love exists there.
     I immediately felt comfortable posting queries with concerns and felt like a valuable member when I was able to weigh in on someone else's.  I even was able to put my social anxieties aside and I allowed myself to be present at Mom's Night Out gatherings.  I attended mother blessings for women, who like me, were soon to birth a life into the world.  A support group mother, pregnant as well, even shared her  own mother blessing with me so I too cold have the experience of receiving gifts, rituals, poems, stories, and blessings of strength and hope from heartfelt mothers.  In a short time, these women, many of whom I had not and may never meet in real life, became my sisters in a way I had never imagined. Therefore, when on October 2 at 4:30 AM I was kneeling on pillow posting my "ok, I'm in labor!" thread in the midst of a long strong contraction, I thought it to be a completely normal action.  Though I was in no position to read the posts at that time, I knew that messages of support, excitement and easy labor vibes were pouring in.  I imagined myself as a conduit to receive such blessings and let them flow through me to my child and thus into the world.  
     Somehow, all my preparations, all my imagery, all the support I had received could not protect me from the trauma of this labor.  Somewhere near the border that morning and afternoon share, the peace of birth died and took with it my beautiful child, my heart, and my hope.  My lack of activity on my support group labor thread was understood to mean that I was still working to birth my child.  Many eager mamas continued to post sending encouragement and good vibes.  At 4:55 PM my "ok, I'm in labor" thread changed names to read "ok, I'm in labor! UPDATE: Baby's here."  This is what was written by my midwife's apprentice, my friend: "I will let Lisa update more later.  Her baby is here but please send Lisa all of your prayers and good vibes." Vague as it was it sent the message that something was wrong.  Still, many had hope that perhaps I or the baby were suffering a minor complication.  Support poured in as fast as my tears could flow and on October 3 at 5:45 AM, I informed my online community of sisters that my baby, my beloved Celia Jane, had died.  
     I thought perhaps the death of my child might also mean that my affiliation with the parenting group would die as well.  However, the support from this group continued to flow both virtually and physically.  Threads containing prayers and thoughts for myself and my Celia checkered the online board.  A thread containing information on how to send money to help me cope with my financial burdens was started.  A still separate thread began where mothers could organize the preparation and delivery of meals to my home.  The outpouring of heartfelt and tearful support from this community of parents has left me touched and eternally grateful.  
     The truth of all that has been said about this online parenting support group makes it so much more shameful to say what I am about to say.  But, as does everything since the death of my daughter, this parenting group looks different to me.  Where once I saw a community with which I shared a kinship, I now see a group that has a bond I cannot share.  The members of this group are parents, mothers.  I do not know what that is like, not as they do.  These mothers have children they get to hold in their arms, snuggle with at night, children with which they can laugh, and create new experiences.   They have children who will draw them a picture, sing them a song, tell them they love them.  Yet, I am mother without a child.  It is this fact, this truth, the pain of mothering a dead child and having no others, that leaves me with the sting of envy.  I find myself jealous of these women.  I would never place any of them or anyone for that matter in the shoes that I now stand.  But still the jealousy of their lives, difficult and stressful though they may be, presents itself every time I see the pictures of their babies who were granted life.  I now struggle with my membership of this community.  Childless though I may be, I am still a mother of sorts and that longing for community has not left me.  Nevertheless, I fear the loss of my child and my true emotions, may prevent me from truly belonging.  
     

Time Heals All Wounds?

     Time has passed.  It is now early into January and still the only date I know is October second.  October 2, 2012 is when the linear continuity of time ceased to be.  Since that date time has moved both too slowly and too quickly all at once.  Often it seems as though time for me refuses to move at all while time for others speeds ahead out of control.  With the passage of time comes the responsibility to become a functioning member of society again; a member of society who can shop and cook, work and smile.  And so, I accepted that responsibility as my own despite the fact that the word "functioning" has yet to describe my post trauma self.   

     The decision to return to work was one that was made for me.  It was made by the passage of time.  I had taken my twelve weeks of leave afforded to me by the Family Medical Leave Act.  "Oh it'll be scary," everyone would recite.  "But, you'll find it to be a welcome distraction."  I thought distraction was an interesting choice of words to use. But, it was a word that everyone seemed to surreptitiously agree upon.  What I am sure people meant by stating that it would be a distraction was that I would be distracted from the agony of the grief that has engulfed me.  Be as that may, a distraction was something that drew attention away and distracted was exactly what I expected to be.   Some people have a job where a moment of distraction away from their duties, while not desirable, is still tolerable.  However, as a teacher of 35 first grade students at a Title I school, distracted is something I cannot afford to be.  Distraction was not the only thing making me apprehensive about my return to work.  I worried that I could not muster enough energy to give any to my teaching.  These children, who come from households where little to no attention is paid to the child, need a teacher who can give and I was afraid I could not.  They need someone who can show them what being strong through the pain looks like and strength was something I did not feel I possessed. I was afraid that now that I know what true emotional suffering feels like, I may get lost in the empathy for these children and be of no help to them.  I also intensely feared how I would be able to tolerate the intolerance of the parental community at my school.  Many, dare I say most, of the parents whose children attend the school where I work, have no appreciation for the wonder that is their child.  If you have seen a move that highlights the family life of a disadvantaged child and thought "no parent could act like that," I will tell you they can and they do.  There is a high level of apathy and even hostility towards children in these communities.  How would I look these parents in the eye and not command they do better?  Their children are gifts, after all, and they should be treated as such.  Lastly, I feared that I may have lost the ability to interact with my peers.  The other teachers at the school had all watched my belly grow and when my baby died, their world continued to spin.  They knew how to laugh without crying.  They knew how to have a conversation without mentally being somewhere else.  How could I be near them, speak to them, without feeling like a fraud?   

     Despite all of these fears, time had chosen to pass and so I found myself faced with the duty to prepare.  This duty brought me to Kohls department store to purchase clothing suitable for work.  I wandered around the store in a seemingly aimless fashion. What should have taken an hour or less took me two and a half at best and the store became the site of what felt like an unprovoked episode of uncontrollable tears.  I pushed through the tears, however, not due to strength.  I knew that the time and effort I had invested in shopping for clothing when I cared not about my appearance was not a task I could repeat anytime soon.  I waited in the checkout line hoping that someone's discomfort with the situation would lead them to allow me to move ahead of them.  Instead, I was met with silence and a lack of eye contact and acknowledgement.  As I reached the checkout counter the freshman college male cashier pretended not to notice my emotion.  "Did you find everything you were looking for today?"  He quoted straight from his training script no doubt.  What I was looking for?  Now what was that exactly?  Sanity? Purpose?  I surely did not know.  None the less, I nodded as I wiped a tear that had escaped my face and now was rounding the bend from my chin to my neck.  "Are you a member of our email club?" He continued to quote.

     "No?" I peered at him with narrow questioning eyes; eyes that were puddled and red.  I waited for him to show some acknowledgement that I was experiencing emotional distress.  Just as in the checkout line, no such acknowledgment occurred.  

     "Are you sure?  You'll get a $5 off coupon just for signing up today and you can use it on your very next purchase."  He continued to recite his script enthusiastically. 

     "No!" I replied more emphatically the second time.

     "Okay, well would you like to apply for our in store credit card and save 20% today?"  It was shocking to me that he kept so close to his script. 

     "No! Please just ring me up."  I am sure our exchange puzzled this young man, it certainly puzzled me.  But my goal was clear.  Get the clothes, pay for them and get as far from the inside of that store as possible.  

     Again, without my knowledge or permission, time passed and the date was January seventh, the day that was to be my first day back at work.  I awoke at 5:40 AM unaided by an alarm clock after having slept on my oversized chair in the living room.  I fed my dogs and let them out.  I showered, brushed my teeth and got dressed.  I packed a lunch a friend had made for me and made a breakfast shake from a pre made powder pouch.  All of these things, these preparations seemed like they were happening to someone else.  Like I was just an observer in my own life.  It struck me, how calm I felt. As I drove to work I felt nothing.  Truly nothing.  It must have been cold because the temperature gauge in my car read 35 degrees fahrenheit, but I didn't feel cold.  I rode to school in silence, no radio, no phone.  I thought, perhaps I had gone numb.  Then, I pulled into the parking lot.  When my car came to a complete stop I began to cry, then I began to sob, then wail.  Breathing was suddenly difficult.  I could hear other cars pull in and I could see the glare of their headlights on the snowy lot.  I shielded my face from them.  I didn't want to be faced with conversations with staff members.  I didn't want to admit that I had been sitting there paralyzed by grief, unable to leave my car.  The word had spread that I had arrived and so two staff members approached me tentatively; one on either side of my vehicle.  As soon as they got close enough to see that I was crying they backed away and retreated inside.  Twenty minutes after I initially parked, I walked into the school building accompanied by a friend.  I thought perhaps the tears would stop once I entered, but I misjudged myself.  "Are you okay?" someone asked.  No, I certainly was not okay.  The weight of being inside the school became overwhelming and too heavy to bare.  I entered what had been my classroom.  I don't think I wanted to enter the room at all, but my need to escape the vulnerability of the hallway overrode my choice to enter my classroom.  As I stood there looking around, it all felt unfamiliar to me.  The classroom no longer felt like it was mine.  The school's director came to welcome me back and all I could do was stand and cry.  She lead me down to her office where I cowered behind her locked door as she alerted the principal and HR coordinator of my state.  After only being in the school for a few minutes I left defeated by grief and four days later have yet to return.  

     Rose Kennedy once mused "It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."  I am left to wonder, however, does the pain really lessen?  I think it is more likely that I am faced with a perpetual choice to find more ways to mask the pain, more ways to walk as if I do not feel pain with every step and every stop.  Sometimes my efforts to disguise my pain, however vigorous,  are for naught and the pain overtakes the moment.   

     

Polishing a Lost Smile

     I went to the dentist for my biannual cleaning.  The last time I had been, my overly friendly hygienist noticed my protruding belly and asked me a barrage of questions about my six month gestated baby.  "What are you having?" "Is this your first?" "Have you thought about names?"  The excitement of others about my pregnancy always had the ability to rub off on me and I smiled a proud and ecstatic smile.  A smile I have since lost.  She told me stories of her first pregnancy and shared musings of when.  When you have your baby...

     The days leading up to this dental appointment, were filled with an awful dread that someone, most likely my jolly and friendly hygienist, would ask me about the baby.  When I mentioned this dread to friends, most of them would reassure me.  "Well," they'd protest, "they probably won't remember.  I mean, they see a lot of people."  I tried to adopt their order of thinking.  Regardless, I still felt uncomfortable and tentative when I walked into the office.

     I signed in and sat down in the waiting room as usual.  I could feel my nervousness begin to take root.  Trying to calm myself, I took out a book and pretended to read.  I had tried to read this particular book on infant loss several times.  I had even gotten a few chapters in, however, if someone asked me to tell them what the pages of the book explained, all I could tell them was that it was a book on infant loss.  I could recall no further details.  I stared at the words on the page and even flipped pages to avoid another waiting room patient from decoding my facade.  Finally my name was called.   I could feel my dread grow as I was led into the patient room.
     "How are you?" the hygienist blurted out from behind me as I gingerly hung my purse and coat on the provided hook.  I didn't quite know how to respond.  In the months after my daughter died I have been very careful when responding to the How are you? question.  I am careful to not say things like "I'm fine." or "well" or even "okay,"  because none of those things are true.  I don't want to recite some seemingly prerecorded response in the interest of saving everyone from  an uncomfortable moment.  But, I was suddenly dumbfounded.  My usual "I'm breathing" response may raise some suspicion from the hygienist and her overly perky assistant who otherwise, according to my friends, didn't remember that I was ever pregnant.
     "Okay," I responded tentatively.  I felt slightly sickened by my generic and dishonest reply.  My hygienist glared at me as if she knew I were not telling her the truth.  She knew I was a fraud.  I was sure that she remembered the x-rays I was supposed to have received at my last visit were postponed due to my pregnancy.  I could feel my stomach contract and the heat of the blood rushing to my ears.  I knew she was going to ask it. The dreaded question about the baby.
     "So...what did you have? A boy or a girl?" She asked.  She stood there glaring at me with an open mouth grin on her face much like a child would appear when she were about to receive a lollipop.  There is was, the question.  It seemed to linger in the air like a dissonant out of tune chord and in that moment it felt as if time were standing still.
     "A girl, she died." I spit out the words as quickly as I could.  It was almost as if the words had come from someone else's mouth.  Perhaps it was my sub conscience attempt to state a fact unattached from emotion.  When in reality this fact was one that stabbed me like a twisting knife that reached into the core of my being.
     I could tell she felt ambushed by this news.  She and her assistant exchanged uncomfortable and horrified glances before she cautiously responded with "I'm sorry."
     "It's okay,"  I countered.  The response from me was automatic as if the hygienist had pulled the I'm sorry lever on a conversation machine and the words its okay printed out of my mouth.  Its okay?  What?  Really, its not okay.  I tried to rationalize that perhaps I was letting her know that it was okay that she had asked the question.  After all, how could she have known.  This must have been it, because, of course, it was not okay that my daughter had died.
     "Oh...why don't you just go ahead and take a seat.  We'll, uh, we'll get you going on those x-rays."  She frantically blurted out.  She seemed to feel an urgency to move away from the awkward moment that had just formed. "Just sit tight..." and with that she left the room.
     I pushed back the tears I could feel forming in the ducts of my eyes and the bridge of my nose as I slowly sat on the dental procedure char.   The once perky assistant hurried to prepare all the films for the x-rays.  "I really like your earrings," she chattered.  "I have never seen earrings like that before."  I was wearing the same earrings I had been wearing the day my daughter died, other than for the surgeries I received, I had not removed those earrings since that day and even a few days prior.  They are copper brushed spirals that incorporate the post as the end of the spiral.  I had almost forgotten that they were even there.  Normally I would respond with a polite "thank you" and even offer explanation as to where she could get herself a pair.  But, on that day, I knew she was merely looking for things to talk about that didn't involve my dead child.  I silently nodded and then obeyed as she recited commands as to how I should open or bite the x-ray films.
     When the hygienist returned to the room, she laid out all her instruments, lowered the back of the chair and examined my teeth and gums.  "Looks good in there, seems like you've been doing a good job with the brushing and flossing."  This must be something she recites to most of her patients.  I certainly was not doing a good job with anything.  In fact, on several occasions, I had forgotten to brush or floss my teeth at all.  The latter may surprise many of my close friends and especially past roommates as they would be aware of my odd affinity for flossing.  However, now, none of that seems necessary.   As she cleaned my teeth she would inform me that there was some bleeding or plaque build up or even pocketing (though I am not sure what pocketing means).  Every time she would inform me of such things I would furrow my brow in confusion.  Didn't she know I didn't care?  In fact, being at the dentist's office at all seemed superfluous to begin with.  Why did the appearance of my teeth matter at all now? Now that I had lost my smile.
     After the appointment ended I went through the motions of scheduling my next cleaning.  In six months my child will still be dead and I may still not have found my smile.  But in six months, I will return to the dentist's office and get my teeth cleaned and polished, smile or not.