Commencement

Today we are going to the SHARE Walk. We will be walking in honor of our precious Anika. Her name will be on the shirts we are given, and her name will also be called out in the Roll of Names. This will be the first time we've been there, so I imagine this to be like a Commencement ceremony. Anika's name will be on the graduating class's t-shirt, and when her name is called, it will mark her leaving our world and commencing her life in Heaven. Except instead of all the parents crying tears of joy or cheering when their child's name is called, they will cry tears of sorrow, and possibly moan or sob when they hear their baby's name.

How strange that in normal life, it's babies who cry all the time. In our world, the babies are gone, and it is we, the parents, who are crying.

Four of my friends brought their living and healthy babies in to the world this week. It has been rough. Two boys, two girls. Anika would have been their friend. Still when I imagine visiting with them in the future, I see Anika there. I imagine watching our future children and their cousin (maybe cousins some day) all running to the Christmas tree at Grandma and Grandpa's, tearing open their gifts, and I see her among them. When I picture our kids playing in the back yard, there is Ani, kicking the soccer ball like a champ. I still imagine teaching her silly songs on the piano and singing in the car with her. I can't help but to see these things because they were in my head for so long. When I remember that she will never be there, my grief is made anew.

When people don't understand why I'm still sad, or why this is such a huge loss, I wish I could express all of that to them. I dreamed all those things and so much more since I started thinking about what it would be like to be a mom, so probably when I hit my 20's. But those dreams were a future reality for 8.5 months. All that besides, I was pregnant for 8.5 months, and Ani only passed away 4.5 months ago. She was with me almost twice as long as she's been gone.

So today, we go and recognize Anika's class. Some of the parents we will meet today have children who have long since graduated from this world, but others will be parents of "newbies" to Heaven, just like us. There's a part of me that is excited to see her name on a t-shirt and hear her name spoken by someone I've never met. Today is a huge acknowledgement that my dear baby girl existed. The rest of me is anxious and sad. I don't know what to expect. But I have packed a lot of tissues.

Anika's commencement, and she won't be there.

Hearing In a New Way

My students' recital theme this year is Music From the Screen. I always do one or two pieces at the recital. This year I am doing one score piece - "Dreamcatcher" by Alexandre Desplat from New Moon (yes, it's from a Twilight movie) - and one soundtrack piece - "The Call" by Regina Spector from Prince Caspian.

"The Call" is about the Pevensie children being called back to Narnia when the time is right, how they will remember everything because for them it's only been a year, but Narnians will forget because it's a new era in this magical land.

But as I was working on it today, the lyrics took on a new meaning for me. Here they are:

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
Till it was a battle cry
I'll come back when you call me
No need to say Good-bye

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say Good-bye

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
Till they're before your eyes
You'll come back when they call you
No need to say Good-bye

This is a war I'm fighting. Anika started out as a tiny cluster of cells, and grew larger and larger, until I gave birth. And believe me - there were definitely "battle cries." Then she was gone, but some day I'll be called back to her.

I worry about people forgetting about her. How long til some people do? Because they will. I think some already have. People who knew me through the entire span of my pregnancy or for years before that, who were at her memorial, and who used to be fine at the mention of my previous pregnancy or Anika's name now seem uncomfortable when the subject comes up. While they felt pain for us when she first passed, it's no longer new for them. It's old, past tense, and it doesn't need to be discussed further. So I'll forgive them. But I will never forget Anika, and some day her beautiful smile and loving eyes will greet me when I return to her in Heaven.

The Thoughts That Keep Me Up At Night...

Every night, I pick up Anika's picture that's sitting beside my bed. I stroke her face, and kiss her, and say, "I love you, Sweet Girl," or something along those lines. I put the picture back down, look at it a moment longer and bid her good night.

Then I roll over and think about how my day would have been different if she were here. And sometimes it keeps me up into the wee hours of the night. Tonight, since I was thinking about her so much, I decided to make a new entry here.

My thoughts range from how to answer questions from new people about whether we have kids to about how we should tell our future children about Anika. I think about the future events where we had made preparations for her, and I wonder how I will feel at them since she's not going to be there. I also think of my friends who have lost children either to miscarriage, SIDS, or another way, and I compare what we've all gone through, and wonder how I would have handled their situations.

The more I think about that, the more I realize that God put us through exactly what we could handle. Down to the tiny details. It would have killed me to go in for my 20 week ultrasound, when I was so excited to find out my baby's gender, only to find out that they'd passed away. Would I have wanted to know the gender? Probably. ...I would have been a permanent wreck if Anika had lived for a few months - I'd have had her cry, her eyes, her smile, her coos all memorized - and then she was gone. I would have woken up to echoes of her cries at night, and I imagine that other babies crying would effect me much more than it does. ...But I can't figure out how I'd feel being told my baby wasn't going to survive, then being told she would, only to watch her life leave her before my very eyes, in my arms. There's a strange beauty in that scenario, an eerie peace, a devastating grace. I think it would make a most painful and beautiful painting. I see Jesus standing there, next to the parents, with His arms out, to bring the perfect baby home. There are no tears in this painting, but no joy either. It's just pure love because everyone in the painting loves this child.

Maybe this speaks to me because I don't know when Anika left my womb for Heaven. I have my reasons for believing it was mid-evening the day before we found out she had passed, but I will never know. And I have the feeling it won't matter enough when I get to Heaven for me to remember to ask.

The Hope Bubble

Well, I'm not pregnant. It just seems so crazy. We barely touched each other and Anika was conceived; but this time it's been months that we've been trying, and we've got nothing!

That negative sign maimed my hope. There are so many things in my life this month that would have been so much easier on me if I were pregnant. I'm going to a friend's baby shower on Saturday, and one of my closest friends is going to be induced any day now.

Then I got the obvious negative sign, and this one killed my hope. This sign says, "You're going to be crampy for the next week, and those cramps are going to not only remind you that you're not pregnant, but they're also going to be so bad that they'll remind you of contractions and giving birth to your lifeless baby!" ...If Anika were alive, I probably wouldn't have a period at all right now because I'd be breastfeeding.

Anika would have been 4 months old in two days (the day of the aforementioned shower, by the way).

Andrew and I plan to release some balloons into the sky on May 10, 2012, the day Anika would have turned one. I pictured us standing there, Andrew holding 3 balloons - one from him, one from me, and one from Anika's newborn brother or sister. This didn't seem far-fetched to me. Most people I talked to were pregnant with in three months of their loss. If we had conceived a baby this month, the due date would have been May 5, and the doctors said they wouldn't let me go full term next time, so my vision would have easily been feasible. But now, IF we conceive this month, my due date will be June 14, and I doubt that the new baby will be out by May 10.

But I still worry - what if I'm not meant to be pregnant again? Everyone is praying for me to be. But everyone, including me, prayed for Anika's health. And "dead" ain't exactly healthy, is it? God doesn't always give us what we want, what we think we need.

I guess right now I just feel as though all hope is lost. I know that in a week, when we start trying again, I'll be full of hope.

The bubble has burst today, but tomorrow I'll start mending it, and soon enough it'll will be blown up again.

Out of the Grief Hole

Every post I've made so far has been made while I was in my grief pit. Right now I'm out of the pit, so I thought maybe I should post how I feel when I'm not so "consumed."

While I was pregnant, I kept a journal. After Anika was born "sleeping," I continued to write in it. I had intended to give it to her one day, but now I don't know what I'll do with it. I want to share something I wrote in there. It's a list of wonderful things about Anika that I wrote down so that I could look at it and feel more comforted. Well, it didn't help. When I'm in the pit, I'm IN the pit, and no list of good things is going to make me feel any better. BUT on the days that I feel good, I can look at it and feel even better.

I write these with "My baby..." so that if any of you, my readers, have ever lost a child to miscarriage or stillbirth, you can put your child's name in there.

1 My baby knows God - she's "shaken His hand" and everything!
2 My baby hears the music of Heaven everyday. (I often wonder what that will sound like!)
3 My baby has never known pain, sorrow, or cold. My baby has never experienced hatred or cruelty.
4 My baby has never sinned; my baby is truly perfect!
5 My baby is MY baby - that makes her pretty amazing, no matter what!
6 My baby has never cried for anything because all her needs are supplied for her in Heaven.

And this is really just Anika -

7 Anika was born in the sac! If she had lived and grown, being our child (and having some mixture of our personalities), she would have thought that was hilarious!

Chocolate-Covered Car Crash

We all know someone who sugar-coats everything. They tell you:

Everything's fine!
I'm just trying to stay positive!
Yeah, I'm bummed, but it's all for the best!

But you know what they really mean:

I'm so upset that I'm surprised all my hair hasnt' fallen out, that I haven't gained/lost 50 pounds, and that there's no gaping hole in the middle of my torso.

Well that's me. I'm just a big mess with pieces all over the place, but I dowse myself in yummy candy-coating. I do this for you because I don't want you to feel awkward or worry about me, and I do this for me because I don't want to become a disaster in front of you.

No more.

Today I make a promise to myself and to you that I will feel what I need to feel when I need to feel it. If I'm feeling dark and depressed, I will let you know, so you can help me. I value our relationship, and I know you want to be there for me.

I will no longer be a chocolate-covered car crash.

Forgive Me, Anika

Yesterday at the grocery store, I'm minding my own business, and a voice next to me says, "You don't have children, do you?" My first thought was that I must look pregnant, but I know I'm not. And I don't know where that thought came from because I know I don't look pregnant anymore. Then I realized I needed to answer this woman's question. I thought that saying "Yes," may lead to other questions, so I said, "No." Turns out this woman just needed help buying diapers for someone else's kid and had no clue what she was doing. I told her I know a little about diapers, and helped her out.

I cried the whole way home - I denied my daughter's existence. Something I said I'd never do.

When I'm in a group of women I've just met, and they're talking about pregnancy and babies, I just don't say anything. When I was talking to the man painting our apartment and he assumed I had no children, I was silent. Some may say this is denial by omission, but I believe it's just keeping an uncomfortable subject to myself. I knew the day would come when someone would ask Andrew and I if we had children, but I had assumed it would be at a dinner party (or something along those lines) and we would have been talking with them already. In my mind, it certainly never came from some random woman at a grocery store who I hadn't even seen standing there.

I was almost mad at this woman - why couldn't she just have asked if I knew anything about diapers. That's all she wanted to know, after all. Lots of people know about diapers without having any of their own kids. Doesn't she know that for some people, kids are an emotional subject? What an idiot.

But I can't be mad at her. She didn't have much tact, but she had no idea that babies are a tough subject for me, let alone that I had already spent half the day crying about my daughter's death. To her, I was just some random woman at a grocery store.

I apologized to Anika in my head. I asked for her forgiveness. I know she forgives me, that she understands, but I still feel terrible.