I had hoped to let this blog be an instrument of healing for myself and others, a way to process my grief over my first two babies and try to move forward. Unfortunately, agonizingly, I am forced to live a different grief for another baby, and you’ll see it unspool in real time. I had hoped to process grief from the safe remove of a couple of years; but that’s not what’s happened. I guess I could shut this blog down, and just fold my hurts into my heart in silence. It would be incredibly easy to be quiet now.
I’ve learned something about myself in the past couple years: I cry as silently as I can, even at home. I think part of that is left over from my youth, and some of it is from the Air Force. If you have to cry, cry alone in the bathroom like an adult. Unfortunately, I can’t really hold in my grief. I cry almost anywhere. I was crying in the waiting room of my doctor’s office, even before the ultrasound that told me my baby was gone. I knew, somehow, that I needed to be prepared for bad news. Maybe that was my anxiety firing off, but it turned out to be real.
Before the D&C my doctor came in for the pre-op talk. She sat next to me and cried with me for a minute, and then I made myself look her in the eye and nod at her, to let her know I know this has to happen, let’s go ahead. I felt a responsibility to make her job as easy as possible. What could she say? There’s nothing to say, nothing to do. This grief is my burden, and my God, it feels like my heart is dead in my chest.
One of my good friends told me she’s angry that we have to go through all this again, and I guess I’m mad too–but mostly, I’m baffled.
I don’t mean that I don’t understand, I mean I am baffled. My understanding is completely thwarted. All I can do is shake my head and draw back from this fathomless edge. I am completely at a loss. At this point grief feels as inevitable and permanent as gravity. Today it feels like the joyful part of my life is over.
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
Joys Are Coming Fast 