disorientation

morning sunlight

shining on

my angel baby

There's an absurd amount of effort put into suppressing thoughts and feelings just to get through every day, so much it is exhausting. I think it explains how Rohan and I are able to sleep at night, we're so drained, physically and mentally.

When we first started seeing Hugh Walker for grief counselling he made it pretty clear that there was no going forward until we were able to face, confront, deal with the images, flashbacks, and memories that haunt us most. I've tried, I really have - in so many ways I can't avoid it...

It's not easy; I fight it, play mind games to throw my thoughts somewhere else, but it all comes back to me one way or another. Not a day goes by with agonizing tears. I'm either unable to get off the floor or I'm locking it all up so tight I shake - I can feel it in my hands, and in my jaw when I try to talk. Leaving the house requires too much of me most days; I know I can't hold it together and the anxiety brought on just by thinking of having to say anything out loud or look anyone in the eye is an absolutely frightening feeling.

Every day I try to put Sarah's tools to work, the exercises she's taught me to take controlled breaths, to relax my mind and my body. I breathe deep and I try (so hard) to think of something else, think of myself as something else, somewhere else. I try to just think of my breathing - through my whole body like she's taught me..., but lately all I hear is Alejandra Ribera's lyrics, there's so much labour just in breathing lately...

It's all so exhausting. 

Too many competing emotions, all wanting to take center stage: grief (unthinkable grief), confusion (about everything from aforementioned grief to tying my own shoes - or skates), sadness (with me for life), loneliness (but not a kind anyone here can cue), anger (with no direction), disbelief, I could go on..., name an emotion and I've it. Each of them need tending to. 

There are times I feel happiness when I think of Finn or of being pregnant with him. It's a strange kind of happiness though, and I'm not sure I know how to describe it yet (brings us back around to that confusion).

The work it takes to concentrate on anything other than Finn, or Finn and my mother together is merciless, and I feel enormous guilt for trying so hard to get away from any thoughts of him. I just don't know how to get by otherwise...

With my mother, I'm not as conflicted; I understand why she died and as I've said before: we expect to lose our parents. I'm sad that she lost her life so early (she was only just 71) and I'm sad that she suffered in any way, but I understand why she's gone. What gets me all wound up is thinking about her and Finn - and the bizarre connection of profound life events they shared in 2013. 

Still, I can't help feeling like an orphan, an orphan and a childless mother all at once, overnight it seems. Learning to live with this uncomfortable empty feeling which I know is never going to leave me makes me I feel like I'm caving in on myself ...and starting to understand that this is simply the new me. I get these very brief moments of feeling ridiculously powerful for this, but those moments aren't often and I usually get rid of them pretty quick. The only powerful one here is grief. 

Time ever since Finn's death has gone by very fast (you'd think it would be slow...) I don't notice days going by, all the details just become part of the blur. Add that to the confusion. There is routine, sort of - I get up every day, I see H off, I stay up, I watch sunrises... 

It's hard to return to things I used to do. It's the messed up mind again: I can't remember basic things - like plant names.. ugh.. You'd think turning to gardening would be therapeutic - perhaps when I can physically do it, because mentally I'm lost. At H's birthday party I was talking to someone and blurted out a couple plant names, surprising myself, reminding myself it's there, somewhere. It's just all boggled up. I'm not going to stress it right now, just shelf it. We'll see what happens in spring. 

I still can't seem to cook or bake with the ease I used to. Part of it is a complete loss of appetite and a confused (there's that word again) palate. Everything tastes salty to me (no I'm not dehydrated) (deficient kidneys, yes), but bread and grains also taste off to me - and have since I started eating again after losing Finn. Everything changed. My postpartum grieving body is not accepting food with ease, more and more I'm starting the day throwing up; and the pain of digestion is causing me to ponder pros and cons of eating - usually resulting in a meal of water. I hate this. I used to love food.

In an effort to try to do something else (something different) I pulled out H's sewing machine yesterday - the one we gave her for Christmas a few years ago which I don't think she's ever used. Ahem.

I used to sew all the time, making quilts and clothes and toys for H. I thought maybe I'd try to make things - tangible things; I don't really know what's going to come of this. Staring down the machine's needle - a new to me machine, much fancier than the reliable (and heavy) (almost 50 year old) machine I inherited from my mother years ago (currently MIA) - I realized quickly that I have no idea what I'm doing. Google brought me to the 72 page pdf manual, which I'm convinced was written by someone who understands English as a third or fourth language. I think I'll get it though; it's a change of scenery but still familiar territory. My mother taught me how to sew.

I'm not entirely sure where to end this post...

not my life

Sometimes I think about what happened - to Finn, to us, to me, and I think there's no way that's real. It couldn't have happened. Photos of him and us look like somebody else's. That couldn't haven't happened to me. I couldn't have had that and lost that.

Too many people don't know how precious it is to get pregnant, to stay pregnant, to birth a healthy baby, and keep that baby for the rest of their life. It's so, so precious. So fragile.

....

The Little Red Crayon ...and other colours of life and loss

We had no idea how life changing our experience at St. Joseph's Hospice would be; we understood the obvious, obviously..., and all the difficulties we had with space aside, the real experience was something no one could expect or prepare for.

My mother's first few hours in St. Joe's were spent listening to me petitioning the staff for more privacy, a less dreary space. Anything. She had been put between a dingy looking wall, not unclean - just old, a part of the hospital that hadn't been updated in forever. The curtains were hospital blue and the bedding looked like something out of a 1970's hunting magazine (I'm not kidding, there were deer on that blanket...). The space was so tight my sister and I couldn't sit on either side of her, we had to squeeze (quite uncomfortably for being as pregnant as I was at the time) two clunky, stiff chairs beside the dingy wall. 

The other side of the wall was the bathroom, the bathroom for the four dying people in the room, only one of whom could actually get up to use it - which she didn't often, but when she did it was always a production (nurses, wheelchairs, lifts, blue canoes, stage managers, lighting...). Anything that happened in that space was a huge production - these people need more care than any I've ever seen and when the nurses gathered for one of these (a bathroom visit, a bath, bedding changes..) everyone else cleared the room to make way.

I went in there with my mother's plea for privacy in mind. I tried not to look anyone in the eye. An impossibility in that space, in the middle of all that. There was no getting away from death, heartache, sadness, grief. It was in everyone's eyes, faces, in the sounds in the hallway. The nurses were all gentle about it, but you saw it in there eyes too. I expected that - it's really not that different from being on 1A.

It was in all the shuffling just before one of these productions that the curtain opened up between my mother and the bed beside her - just enough for me to see what I didn't expect ...completely and utterly naively and I still don't understand why I was so taken aback. She's so young, I thought - oh my god, oh my god, she's so young I thought over and over again. 

I don't know why I was so shocked by that, people die at every age...my poor baby boy lived only ten days (11ish) (I still don't know how to count it...). For some stupid reason I went in there expecting everyone to be old. I didn't even think of my mother as old, ...and thinking of friends like Helen and Lisa even younger and younger. So, I can't explain it.

Kim was beside my mother or across from her for most of my mother's stay in the hospice. She had a beloved golden retriever (who even visited her in hospice!) (I'm still damning that I missed that.). Her mother has/had bassets, and it was clear early on that we were comrades. It was often difficult (both ways, I'm sure) to know when it was appropriate to be in each others space, and with it being so tight we often couldn't help it. It often made the days go by a little softer. 

Kim had just become an aunt (again) twice, and often these little babies would visit - completely changing the air in that place. They sent my pregnant imagination soaring. Watching Kim nap with her nephew was the most beautiful thing - and I still recall on that moment to remind me of when things weren't that bad. I tweeted about it, and wound up connecting with Kim's brother (because that's how Thunder Bay works..)..

All the commotion near the end of my mother's life, the room move, the battle it was to get the private room... the final days with her were so wrapped up with her care that I only remember blurs and flashes of conversations with anyone else. When she died - within a couple hours - we were somehow packing up her cards and paper flowers and moving out. Again, something I wasn't expecting... it was like we were being kicked out. No longer a part of that club. Take your stuff and go. It wasn't cold in any way, the nurses were (and continue to be) wonderfully compassionate. We could take all the time we needed - but ...what for? Suddenly, we had no reason to be there and us much as we all (me, Rohan, and my sister) wanted to run out of there and never come back - it was impossible to deny the feeling of, I'm really going to miss these people, and strangely - missing that place. 

I thought about Kim a lot. Always wanted to visit but - along with every other strange feeling, as much as I missed the people and the place I could not step foot back in there. I tried - a few times. Even tried to drop off forms for Dr. Miller but chickened out and sent Hannah and Erica instead. I tried to write notes, but never got around to sending anything... 

Thinking back to those final months of pregnancy - after losing my mom I sent my head straight to babyland, and did my best to think of nothing but. I trusted those day three hormones would take care of any grief lingering around. 

We drive by St. Joe's and I look up (I always do) to quickly glance at the three windows I know, and in a flash the whole experience runs through my head. I haven't forgotten a single face. It sounds like I was affected profoundly by this - and I suppose I was, ..but I think about people like Kim, who spend many, many more months there. That was her home. She was lucky, in a sense, to have such a loving family around her, being with her, helping her. There were some people there with nobody. I still can't wrap my head around that.

It was a lot easier to shelf all this when I had a baby growing inside me; when I held him. Nothing could touch me when I held him. I begged for my mother when Finn died, and I've said many times I can only hope they're together somehow - that she's holding him. If I can't she's the only one I would want... The months between then and Christmas are a blur, yesterday is a blur, ... today will be too. I'm much more aware now though, that I'm pretty messed up. 

So the other day when a small package arrived - not unusual with all the Etsy orders coming these days- I was thrown. Lost for words because there were too many swirling around my head. It was addressed so beautifully, and local, and a name I didn't recognize immediately. I choked a little, feeling that feeling of knowing something inside was going to trigger some tears. We've received unexpected kindness in all forms, it's been overwhelming..., but this took that whole experience with my mom, those flash of images - seeing Kim so young and out of place in that hospice, pregnancy in the hospice, babies in the hospice, losing my mother, losing Finn - wrapped it all up in a small colourful book and said, here, I hope this makes you feel better. 

Kim's sister found a way to make some sense of it all. It's a lovely way to honour her sister - and put it in perspective for the baby who slept in his aunt's arms across from me to understand as he grows. I read the book over and over again when I first received it, but it's been tucked in a cloth bag with the photo book M sent since. I can't look at it right now. I will though, many many times - I'll always remember Kim, and I'll think of my mother ...and, of course, my baby boy. It was the most timely gift, when the slowness of this time of year is beginning to send me in too many directions - even if I can't look at it... I can think about it. 

Both Rohan and I were swept away by her card, the thoughtful words, and of course the book.., completely unexpected. The experience that connects us seems so profound to me right now, and knowing that Finn's short sweet life connects to this, and is thought of - possibly as profoundly, well.. I have no words.....

You can learn more and buy your own copy of The Little Red Crayon through Michelle Kolobutin's website: mugsywrite.ca
..and I believe she's got a booth at the market ;)
I think she's done a pretty amazing thing.

Kim passed away in October. I missed any announcements, so consumed by my own grief. In the blurs and flashes of images in my head I do remember the colours of the season; there was so much colour around Thanksgiving this year it was impossible to ignore - even in my condition. Like the pink sun that rose on the walls of my mother's room as she took her last breath, it's the colours that I see most in my memories.

an open book, a new chapter

I find dark, slow to start mornings like today's difficult. Even in a good year I would find it hard to get motivated. Sunny days make me want to hit a trail, go for a walk, run the dogs at the tree farm or something - just to see the lights through the trees. A walk around the neighbourhood - through the towering cottonwoods of Waverley works too when in need of an urban tree fix.

These cloudy days make me want to sleep the winter away.
It's too easy to sit here and imagine the way it should have been.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I wake up every morning thinking of Finn, feeling confused, wondering where he is, ..sometimes I can hear him. Then, I open my eyes and I see him, framed on the wall beside my bed - all my trinkets on the table below. You'd think I would just burst into tears every morning..., but I don't. Sometimes I do. Most days I just lose my breath for a while, tremble... the tears come but so silently.

I break down, we both do. It gets ugly. This grief is unlike anything I ever imagined. I had thought about it - what parent doesn't; it crosses your mind for a second and you push it away because nothing could be worse, you can't think about it. You'd die yourself if anything happened to your child.
I feel like that every day - like I'm dying ... not in a suicidal sense, just dying. Slowly and painfully. I have to learn to live feeling like this for the rest of my life.

In the first weeks after Finn died it seemed everyone around me was worried I would kill myself. The subject came up with doctors, with counselors, directed at both Rohan and I, I'm sure, but mostly at me. Those postpartum hormones gave me a bad rep. I understand why the subject came up because believe if I didn't have Hannah to consider the idea sounds like a pretty good option. I used to think I would - if I lost Hannah. I always wondered how people survive this.
I remember being quite angry, twice, when the subject came up in those early days - just because I didn't get out of bed didn't mean I had forgotten that I still have a daughter. I can't control the grief that makes me unable to move, and I trust that Hannah, though young still, is mature enough to understand. She's the most compassionate person I know - she always has been, naturally.

Early on Dr. Atwood said to me, "..how you carry yourself though this is going to affect Hannah for the rest of her life.." I'm sort of paraphrasing, but not really - those words have repeated themselves in my head every day since.
She's sixteen, and "knows everything" so talking isn't always easy - I often get the eye roll and the yeah yeah mom, but I hope - I hope - somehow my messages sink in somewhere. She, like so many others, didn't know how to talk to me at first..., I know it scared her - seeing me in such shambles. Not that she would admit that.
I think the loss of Finn is going to affect her deeply as a woman, and someday as a mother. I try to think about that when Dr. Atwood's words replay in my head.
She grieves quietly and privately. Losing my mother, her beloved Nana, was really hard on her. She doesn't talk about it much, but I know she's hurting. Losing her brother, and all the commotion around it - so much attention on me - I think it must be really confusing for her. She says no, but how could it not.

It's hard to turn her over to our (amazing) counselor, Hugh Walker - and not know what is said behind that closed door. I still see her as that little girl in a pink jumpsuit and pig tails. Somehow she's old enough to do this on her own..., and I have to let her. Some day I'm sure we'll be able to talk about this in a different way.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Finn turned all the sadness of losing my mother around during his brief stay with us. I hadn't seen Hannah so happy and excited in a long time. One of the best memories is of being in labour with Finn that morning, September 18th, being in the labour room with moderate contractions (I wasn't screaming yet) while Hannah (taking the day off school) worked on her chemistry homework with Rohan. I felt somewhat ignored - for equations. It was like my dad was in the room. (Maybe he was?)

It was Hannah's job to take the first photos, send them to my sister, and post an announcement on Facebook.
I'm so saddened by the thought that she lost that chance at being a big sister. She was great. She wanted to hold him all the time - until she realized that babies cry a lot, and I think she was a little put off that he would stop crying when I held him. I kept telling her to have patience. He was just being a newborn: hungry and needing his mum...., soon he would have longer breaks between eating and sleeping, and he would stay with her longer as he got older. She didn't get to experience that - she'll never really know.

The 2:00am - 5:00am parties rockin' from the nursery did not impress her. For a very brief moment I, as a mother, got to experience sibling resentment. It was great. Poor Hannah wasn't prepared for sleepless nights.

For a little while we were a family of four. Only once did it ever really hit me - when I overheard Rohan on the phone talking about something to do with the move, and listing our family members, "...our daughter and our son.." I had that my family is complete feeling that I lost when we lost my mother. I was going to be okay - we all were. It was a new start.

Well, it is a new start indeed.

How is one supposed to start this way? I can't even find my footing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You go through life with the understanding that someday you'll lose your parents, your grandparents - friends even. I've been very well aware for a number of years now that I was going to lose my mother. There was time to prepare. It's strange how I think of it now, what it was like when it happened... it was beautiful, her final moment, that is. Dr. Siren had gone on about it at an appointment a few weeks before, telling me that death was a beautiful thing - as I sat there nearly 25 weeks pregnant with my little boy. At the time I was pissed, like, what the fuck - my mother's dying, this wasn't beautiful, this was sad, and St. Joe's was the saddest place on earth. I was not seeing the beauty.
Now - now I see the pink sunbeams in her room, I remember the light,  remember how soft she felt. It was beautiful.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the time I've been rambling the light outside has changed; it's brighter, the trees have turned themselves off, and it's beginning to snow. It's kind of pretty.

This is the kind of day I had imagined - sitting here by the fire, dogs sleeping in dog beds on the couch, baby Finn in my arms or swinging in his swing by the window. It was just going to be him and I, as Hannah and Rohan are off for the days. It would be new mom time for me and I was going to enjoy every second of it - knowing so well how fleeting it is.
In our time together I would stare at him and have to stop myself from thinking about him growing up because I didn't want to jump too far ahead, I wanted to stay in every moment.

This winter was going to be all about baby snuggles and watching days like these go by beside the fire.
We'd sneak out now and then to swim somewhere, maybe a kindermusik class some days...
we'd go for strolls around the neighbourhood for a breath of fresh air..

I lose my breath when I see strollers now, car seats too. Especially walking around here. Avoiding those stroller mom groups is nearly impossible, and absolutely terrifying. I have to walk in the middle of the night to avoid strollers and even then it's been known to happen.

Every week day when I see the school bus pull up to pick up the little boy a few doors up I sink a little further into the sand. I can still see so clearly, an imagined moment with Finn as a little boy sitting at the end of our walkway waiting for his bus.
I can see perfectly his face and the way his little boy self would be at about four. He'd have the Millar look with blonde hair that curls in all sorts of wring directions, his knees covered in scrapes from climbing fences and skidding down Hillcrest hill. Sometimes I see us sitting at the piano together, his little legs dangling from the bench, same blond hair. His profile is the same as it is in his ultrasound photos, a little underbite...

How can I see him that age so clearly? Why no older? Why so little in between?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sometimes I imagine losing him other ways - having him with us longer, but losing him more tragically, or suffering in someway, something worse. I don't know if it's my mind playing some sort of sick, twisted game to rationalize how he did die. I hear and read about all these young kids with cancer, suffering, slowly dying before their parent's eyes and I think, oh god I could never live through that, that would be so horrible. Just as I used to think about a parent living through life in my new shoes.

I'm trying so hard to hold my head up it physically hurts. All the stuff going on in there - horrible thoughts, images I never want to see again, terrible earworms, it's a nasty mess in there. It's hard to hold it all at bay to maintain composure as a mother, to set an example. I often don't do a good job. There's no invisibility cloak for this, I can't hide.

September charms and trinkets

The sapphires came from a Mining Matters silent auction, Rohan gave them to me for my 39th birthday. Always loved the dainty little blue bracelet, and thought of it as a lucky charm for no reason at all. Sapphires are September's birthstone, and I've always loved September.

The baby I miscarried in 2012 was due in September; Finn was born in September ...and lost in September. 

It was just a silly joke throughout my pregnancy..., to make it to September so our baby would have a sapphire birthstone. I don't like the August peridot ..and being married to a geologist, these things matter. Or, at least they used to. 

As a gardener, September is the month of harvest, of lushness in late summer plants; beginning deep in greens and ending washed in colour. With most leaves still hanging on to their branches, September trees are the best trees - even better than spring blossoms, I think anyway. It's an absolutely beautiful month. A combination of flip flop and warm sweater temperatures perfect for days in the sun and nights by the fire...

 ...That's what Finn experienced in his short life, sunny days and cozy nights. I'd say that makes me happy if it break my heart so painfully.

When Finn was born there was apparently a great scramble to get some baby boy charms for the Pandora bracelet Rohan had already - waiting for the right time to give it to me; which he did on the Friday after Finn was born (with day two postpartum hormones kicking in). He and Hannah enjoyed poking fun at my tears of boy joy, it being at the time a moment we would laugh about for years to come... ..how could I ever have imagined what those charms would come to mean. When Finn died, when he was taken out of my arms, I remember asking Hannah to take the bracelet off. I couldn't look at it...

I put if back on for his service and will never take it off again. The charms I wear are all for Finn.

Yesterday the little dragonfly bracelet I ordered inscribed with my little boy's name arrived and has been added to my wrist, falling near one of the little dragonflies that surrounds his hand-print tattooed on my arm.

I've ordered a number of lockets and charms with inscriptions, dragonflies, asters, sapphires, anything blue, his beautiful name... they dangle off his photos that hang around the house. I'm not sure I understand why these trinkets matter so much, but they're here and I want to see them and hold them. 

I want to see him, and hold him. 

Alejandra Ribera - I Want

dragonflies

We picked up this little pencil drawing of dragonflies on September 30th 2012 when we drove down to Lutsen and back exploring the artist studios open for the Crossing Borders Studio Tour. The drawing is by Betsy Bowen and is an original illustration from the book Hawk Ridge by Laura Erickson. I didn't know at the time where we would hang it, and for many months it lived propped up on the bookshelf in the living room. 

When I started decorating Finn's nursery it was a natural fit in the room, and thinking back it would have been the first thing I chose to hang on the wall (that and the giraffes playing in the pond painting)... 

September 30th 2013 was the first day I had to learn to live without my little boy. I didn't open my eyes.

~ 

It was some time in late summer, I was home alone, hot, hiding in the living room which seemed to be the coolest room in the house with very little, if any, direct sunlight with the fan blowing on me. I would bounce on the exercise ball while listening to satellite music streaming through the television... when Cradle Song (Holy Nazan) by Norma Winstone began to play I was mesmerized. I quickly downloaded the song and added it to my lullabies playlist. It was such soothing and beautiful music I listened to it repeatedly for the rest of my pregnancy to relax, fall asleep, and dream of holding my baby. When in labour it was the song I listened to most. I imagined these little pencil dragonflies fluttering around to the music...

I haven't been able to listen to the song since.

That is why there are dragonflies surrounding my two tattoos - ten in total for the day's Finn lived.

The Chinese characters came from Sarah (my acupuncturist - and very special friend). In the first few weeks home after losing Finn I was such a mess (obviously)... Sarah would come to the house to treat me, absolutely life saving sessions, not just for the needles but for her calming and healing energy. I'd fall into the deepest sleeps after being with her for an hour. When I told her I was getting Finn's footprint tattooed on my foot she told me about this acupuncture point - located on the dorsal aspect of the foot, between the fourth and fifth metatarsal bones - known as Zu (foot) Lin (to face forward, to arrive at, to overlook) Qi (tears, to weep, [silent tears]) 'Foot Overlooking Tears'

For how important Sarah has been on this journey to have a baby, and for how much she has helped me heal, it was really important to me to include her. The characters are in her handwriting (as best copied by Remy the tattoo artist) and will always bring me back to those early days when the grief was so deep. It's all part of me now.

I'm not ready to share my other tattoo yet. Someday...

the sunrise this morning

9:29 am

9:49:05 am

9:49:57 am

 9 January 2014

every day is a new challenge

I woke up with a bad feeling today. I've been feeling so numb and disconnected lately that it's been awhile since I woke up with that sinking feeling, that deep internal emptiness that comes with grief. Its one of those days I can't glance at Finn's photos on the wall without losing my breath and balance.

It's going to be one of those heavily medicated days.

Thank goodness for Marie and Fred - and Jenn for texting me this morning reminding me to have fun on our "double date" tonight. They're coming for dinner - our friends who share the same horrible living nightmare we do.The air is a little easier to breathe when they're around.
I remember very little of the first few days after Finn died - most of which just comes to me in flashes of images, faces, murmurs of voices, darkness. I remember noticing I was moved to another room when the light came from another direction, but I don't remember what I was seeing - if that makes any sense. The first voice that comes through is Marie's, holding me and saying, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I was so far away but I knew she knew where I was - even in that moment. I thought of her baby, Lily, who earned her baby angel wings when she was just eight days old. That was the first time I realized I was not alone.

Marie and I share the experience of holding our babies in our arms as they died. What a thing to share.

So many people have been thoughtful, generous, compassionate. Finn's death has brought a number of old friends closer, my circles have expanded and tighten around me - everybody wants to help take my pain away ...which of course no one can, but all the effort is so appreciated.
Which is why I find it hard to understand how in in the last week I have received two messages from people on Facebook with congratulations on our new baby - one was a comment on a photo where every other comment included some sort of 'so sorry for your loss' or 'thinking of you' ...I guess she didn't read ANYTHING on the page. Another came in the form of a private message today. A long congratulations message, with an "oh, did you move" along with liking a number of recent photos. Again, obviously this person did not bother to read anything on the page, or any comments of photos. Or pay attention to anything I've posted since JULY.
Now, I don't go around studying every bit of information on everyone's page - but I do pay attention. It's not that hard.

sigh

I've been shaking since I woke up. Had another meltdown over my camera. Let's hope today turns around.

the moon

8 January 2014

6:08 pm

How

Regina Spektor ..with butterflies for Ava

window bird

The house is too quiet today, well... was..    I'm now playing Regina Spektor's Don't Leave Me (Ne me quitte pas) on repeat hoping to kill the nasty earworms that echo so loudly though my head. From the time Finn died I've hear the worst songs in my head - like Bryan Adams' When a Man Loves a Woman over and over and over ..and I don't even like the song, would never listen to it. I've never understood - why that song? It plays like I'm sitting long in a gymnasium and it's playing on a record player in a far away corner. Creepy. I've tried everything to get rid of it - playing songs on repeat until I think I've absorbed enough of something else..., but the next day while I shower (always in the shower... why?!) there he is again, Bryan fucking Adams and that cheeseball song. I hate it. And I.Don't.Understand.It. 

Story of my life now..I don't understand much of anything anymore. I don't feel like the same person I was before Finn while at the same time feel like myself amplified - if that makes any sense. I feel bizarrely creative, full of ideas (mostly of things to "make for Finn" ...which I haven't yet decided is something unhealthy or just a natural need to keep "doing things for him"... ) so I've ordered a odd assortment of paper dragonflies, felting wool, and fabric (among other bits) ("Etsy" is our new word for "mail") and we'll just see what comes of it.

So far I've been completely useless at the things I used to do naturally - camera controls are still foreign to me; completely lost it the other morning when I couldn't get the shot of the tug leading in one of the last salties of the season. When 'the shot' appeared of the front page of the paper the next morning I lost it again. Something tells me I should just put down my camera for a while.

Watching the harbour activity has been a saving grace - I think both R and I agree. I can't deny the beauty I see all around me. As much as I miss Pearl I am grateful for this view, the light in this house, and the distraction of a constantly changing window view.

In the few days I had with Finn, in the few times we sat in our chair in his room I would talk to him while he nursed, tell him all about what I could see - all the boats in the harbour, tugs leading them around, the trains we see shuffling back and forth, planes coming in, all the activity in the park... I couldn't wait to play I Spy with him. Even the snow ploughs are interesting to watch as they clear High Street in a choreographed street dance early in the morning. A little boy would love watching this I think to myself as I stand alone in the window.

Finn's photo book

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created using Shutterfly's photo books.

Finn's Giraffes

Finn's giraffe wall sconces, newly installed in an empty nursery.

We hadn't got to unpacking yet. His nursery was just in the process of being painted when he died. It was going to be identical to the nursery we put together for him on Pearl Street, the trim was done, and the walls were prepped. The ceiling was already blue waiting for the clouds. 

After we lost Finn I begged that all the baby stuff was taken out of the house and the nursery painted plain. Slowly recently I've been requesting some of his things back... the chair, the giraffe in the elephant chair, the pictures for the walls, and the sconces.

Rohan installed the giraffes on the boring-beige walls yesterday. 

We picked up the sconces from the border in early September, when I was 39 weeks pregnant with my precious Finn. I was so excited to see them for real after falling for them online (much bigger than I expected but that's okay). The ride to the border was uncomfortable, my belly was heavy, my legs were swollen, but I was blissfully happy and filled with anticipation of new life. I imagined all the nights I would be in the light of the giraffes looking into my baby's crib. 

I think I'm going to have the blue sky and clouds painted again. 

Finn 8

Sometimes I wonder if he was even real, was he really mine? He was in my arms for such a short time - born at 5:39 on Wednesday, September 18th and gone by 3:17 on September 29th (though he was recessutated and fought for for nearly another day, in my heart I knew he was gone when I found him). After he was born I said over and over that I couldn't believe he was mine. He was so beautiful, every little bit of him was perfect. 

It's impossible to try to accept that his perfect little body is gone now. He grew inside me for so long, he was part of me. I can't physically adjust to it, I can't emotionally understand. All those beautiful, perfect parts as ashes, some of which hang around my neck in a locket I'll never, ever let go of.

My precious baby boy. 

The photo of the photo above, on our dining room table after his service. It was taken in our room together for the first night sine he was born. It was Saturday evening, September 21st.

He was wrapped in his blue blanket (I'll keep it with me always) and wearing one of my favourite soft cotton hats - which I had thought was so small before he was born but it was actually way too big for his little newborn head.

At the moment of the photo I think we were both grateful to finally be together. He had been in the NICU since his birth on Wednesday in the late afternoon. I was so happy to have him there snuggled against my chest.

He spent most of the night either crying or nursing, and I think I got about two hours sleep; it was a real welcome to life with a newborn kind of nights. Not easy by any measure, but I was actually excited about it. 

I never really got to the point of the ugly sleep deprivation. He left too soon.

Finn 7

I remember this day, sitting in the same chair I'm in now by the fire. Finn slept against my heart between nursing sessions and nothing else mattered. I'd give anything to be back in this moment.

He was so content. I was so happy. I've remembered and cherished these moments from when Hannah was a baby and had been looking forward to the feeling of a baby sleeping on my chest again for so long.

How can he be gone? I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I miss him so much.

Finn 6

Yesterday I had so many words swirling through my mind, today - nothing. Blank. I can't even remember simple keyboard commands, or how to download the photos off my camera. It has taken me hours this morning to accomplish anything.

I stood on the doorstep trying to take a photo a photo of the sun rising. (Apparently I've also lost my ability to operate my camera. I stood there in the doorway as the sunrise began with my camera staring at the controls - I knew what I wanted to change but not how to do it.) 

Today's was the second sunrise I've seen since that last Saturday. 

I've been sleeping through them all, until yesterday.  

I know that had Finn not died 

I would be on that doorstep every morning 

with an infant in the Moby 

and a camera in my hands. 

I've imagined that image for a long time. 

Watching sunrises (and moon-rises) with Finn was something I was so looking forward to. There is so much to watch from his window - every window. I imagined playing I Spy with him, and told him so. In the few days we had together in our chair by the window I talked to him about all the things I could see - that he soon would, and how much fun the two of us were going to have watching the world go 'round before our eyes.

his hair
his precious precious hair
look at how perfect his little head is

"Finn watches freighters from the front door." was how I captioned this photo. Edie commented that I should take the same shot every year of his life - I thought that was such a great idea. I imagined so many years of sitting on the steps with him, watching cars go by eating popsicles.

My head is full of all these imagined moments; I think of all the things I was going to do with him and sink when reality reminds me he's gone... and I'll be doing these things without him. For so long the only thing I've imagined myself doing was being a new mom again - the walks we would be going on, the swim classes I had eagerly looked into in August, Kindermusic, and all the mommy and me activities ...not only all of those things, but the images of how I would be going about daily tasks with a young person again, and looking forward to simple things like having him in the swing in the middle of the kitchen while I cooked, or trying to take a shower when there's nobody else around. Doing these things now feels awkward ... it takes me a few seconds to realize why it feels awkward - again the sinking feeling sets in. It's that emptiness again. I miss him so incredibly much.

I was awake around three this morning. Couldn't sleep, head swirling with too many horrible images. Images I'm to be facing and dealing with, but hurt too much right now so I keep trying to cover them up with memories of Finn when he was alive, when he was home, when everything was so good. The painful memories haunt me in my sleep, wake me rattled, weak, disoriented. 

I've been having regular acupuncture sessions with Sarah since Finn's death which, as always, have been extremely helpful and healing. It's not just the needles but her compassion, friendship, gentleness, and calming presence. She's been working a lot on breathing, and how to use concentrated breaths to help pull me together when images and reality make me fall apart. I've been holding my breath - I catch myself doing it often, only realizing what I'm doing when my body suddenly gasps for air. I immediately think of Finn, his death, and I panic. Sarah's breathing techniques don't stop the breath holding from happening, but if I can get it together in time hopefully I can eventually learn to take a concentrated breath before the panic sets in.

I tried to breathe last night - just breathe.. I told myself to think of nothing but breathing. It's so much harder to do than it should be. 

I tried to think about nothing but my breaths and the steps I took on a walk yesterday, trying to tune my body, get some rhythm back. It was impossible. I probably looked drunk stumbling along the sidewalk. My postpartum body doesn't know how to sort itself out. My hips are still sore, shifting. My incision is still open and being packed every day by VON nurses and distracted me the whole time I walked. It hurt through it's numbness - kind of like all of me. I'm in a fog, I'm numb, I hurt.  

Finn 5

Of all the special knit hats I collected for Finn,

this was the only one he ever wore.

Nobody would have ever have seen this photo if he hadn't died.

I was just playing around with the hat and the backdrop,

seeing if I liked the two together. 

I was just preparing for a photo session, 

this was taken with my iPhone. 

I never even got to take a single photo of Finn with my camera.

I love looking at his little body,

the little wrinkles on his back,

his eyes open, him all curled up

still used to being inside me.

Finn 4

He was so alert and had such curious eyes. I loved watching his work to focus on things and look at me. I could feel him studying me. I wondered who he was going to become, what kinds of things he would like, what he would study, ...I could tell he would be an interesting person, intelligent, a thinker, involved.

Finn 3

I'm feeling such disbelief over what has happened that everything now seems like a dream, or a movie that I'm watching. I don't even think things sound right to me, like everything around me is being filtered through something. I'm a part of it but not at the same time. Every now and then reality hits and the pain washes over and through me just like it did when I was told he was going to die, that he was already gone. It's like somebody dumps a bucket of ice water over me but it washes over me internally, a hot/cold sensation. It hurts.

He was only six pounds two ounces at his first, and last, doctor visit when he was a week old. He was so little but I was still trying to memorize the so many little bits of him - I worry now that I won't remember, that I didn't have enough time, there aren't enough photos.

I remember commenting to Rohan about Finn's knees 

and how big they were 

and how I thought he was going to be tall. 

I can't believe he's gone. Sometimes I can't believe he was ever even real. Was the time with him all just a dream?
I'm so outside of myself right now. This can't be my life, this couldn't have happened.

We met with Hugh Walker yesterday - grief counselling. (I can't believe I'm going to grief counselling for my baby.) He talked about the absurd, and the impossibility of accepting the absurd as truth (I should go over the notes he sent us home with) and that things like this aren't meant to make sense so trying to understand it is pointless. I think I knew as soon as it happened that I would never reconcile this.
It was helpful yesterday, the session with Hugh. I have pretty much no recollection of what was said right now (helping me understand why he gave us the notes) but do know that what was said made sense - at a time when nothing is making sense to me.

The days and weeks following Finn's death are all a blur to me. I remember every second of his final hours, but after that it's all just jumbled. Now fuzzy.

It was the morning of his last day with us that I took the photos of his feet. It was more challenging than I expected to take photos of baby feet with an awake baby - he was kicking and stretching and I marveled at how familiar his movements were. I could remember him moving like that inside me. After having imagined those feet for so long, there they were kicking before my eyes. They were perfect.

Finn 2

I knew I would miss being pregnant before he was even born. I loved being pregnant - ailments and all discomfort aside, I loved it. I knew I would. I loved the feeling of a baby - a new little person with so many possibilities growing inside me, watching my belly grow, and documenting it all with almost daily belly shots.

Sometimes, now, I wish he was still inside me. I miss the anticipation and excitement. I miss feeling him move (Really move - I'm still having phantom feelings of him inside me. Perhaps they're real, just twinges as my postpartum body sorts itself out, trying to return to "normal"...).

I've been feeling really homesick for Pearl Street. I haven't been there since the early morning of September 18th, leaving in labour and thinking nothing of it - just of a new baby and a new house - a new life. Now I really miss the old everything. We have had some good times there - lots of them. Lots of difficult times too, but when I think of the house I think of over crowded tables with too much food (and wine?), lots of noise, lots of silence, beautiful evenings on the balcony, beautiful mornings on the balcony. I miss watching and waving to my neighbours - having Heather at arms reach, T and T's boys paying on the street, the playful sounds of the back lane ...my garden.
This house sort of lacks the neighbourhood feeling that Pearl Street had. My view now is great - can't beat it,  right(?), ..but I find myself longing for the familiar view of the street, the trees, the people nearby. I feel like everyone is so far away now with no sidewalk directly outside my door even though we purposely moved away from that, thinking the distance was better. It's really hard to say what's "better" sometimes.

I think I'm equating a lot of my homesickness with missing being pregnant. The memories that flash most through my head right now all have to do with being pregnant - everything from morning sickness and days on the couch with headaches to trying to induce labour by bouncing on the ball in the living room, decorating that incredible nursery, waddling out to the balcony (I can still smell the air from that balcony, feel it... that balcony was some kind of magical), bellyshots around the house and garden...  .

I have more memories of being pregnant with Finn than being with Finn. 

I think about it constantly now. 

So much happened in the time I was carrying him, life changed so drastically. I credited my pregnancy with saving me through the loss of my mother. As hard as it was to face having a baby without her, my baby gave me reason to take care of myself and not fall apart.
Sometimes, now, I wonder if she had to die so that she could be there (wherever there is) for Finn. I like to imagine them together - with my father too. Sometimes I picture Finn as a little boy between them holding their hands. I like to imagine him safe with her, learning from her. Were their lives and deaths somehow connected?

How completely unfair. My heart is so broken.

I think about all the places 

Finn and I 

went together while he was inside me. 

When I go out now I find myself remembering

"I was here with Finn"

"I walked this path with Finn"

and when I'm in my own world thinking 

I remember trips we went on - to Ottawa (and one of the first bellyshots on Parliament Hill)

and to Duluth, twice, to get the car we needed for our expanding family.
I think about all the places Finn and I went on my scooter (breaking my promise to my mother that I wouldn't ride while pregnant).

I so badly want to turn back time, have my belly back, have my baby back. 

The emptiness is painful and is going to slowly swallow me for the rest of my life.

The last bellyshot, 

taken the day before he was born 

during the final walk-through of the new house before closing:

Finn 1

I was instantly crazy in love with him. He was cuter than I could have ever imagined. 

He was perfect. 

I love this photo of him.

Our first skin to skin time.

Forty weeks plus five days of being together with him growing inside me, 

and this was the first time (finally) I got to see his face. 

It had felt like it was the longest wait. We've been waiting to see this face for four years.
After having miscarried twice, I worried the whole pregnancy that I would lose the baby; but he was here now - he was laying on my chest and he was healthy and beautiful.
(Obviously a whole new kind of worry sets in after a baby is born, but you don't usually let your wildest nightmare think those thoughts.) 

I remember squealing and crying, saying over and over again that I couldn't believe he was mine, ...he was so, so cute. His resemblance to his father is so present in this moment - he looks like a Millar boy - I had a little mini Rohan resting on me in this moment.

It was a long labour he and I had just gone through together. He didn't like it much (neither did I); so after just a few attempts at pushing and watching his heart rate drop on the monitor it was decided a cesarean would be best. I just wanted my baby in my arms alive.
He had swallowed meconium and was wrapped in his cord and was not permitted to cry when he was born - and act that undoubtedly saved his life. The only part I saw of him was his feet while Rohan was given the chance to announce our baby's gender, which he did by saying, "We have a Finn!"
I couldn't hear him or see him after that, it was just a blur of doctors after that hovering around Finn to the right of me, with Rohan still behind me by my head holding my hand, and a lot of disorientation (and the shakes) from the surgery I was still undergoing. I kept asking if he was okay, but even then I didn't think anything would go wrong. He was born.

The time spent in recovery is now a blur, and now seems like it was just a short time (I don't think it was). I remember Rohan and Hannah coming in, showing me photos of Finn, telling me how cute he was. Even Dr. G. took photos with her phone and showed me.

(Finn was in the NICU after his ordeal, and would spend the next three days in there recovering and balancing his sugars.) 

When they wheeled me in to see Finn for the first time I was ready with my iPhone (bride cam turned baby cam). This photo is one of the first photos I took of him. 

Morden Sunrise

27 June 2013

Watching Things Grow

The garden this morning: it looked good, everybody's growing, not over planted like in other years. I left the urge to go overboard for the baby's nursery.

John Davis (far left back against the back porch) is tall and lush. It's going to look incredible all covered in pink.

Peas, leeks, beets, carrots, kale & chard), beans, zucchini, cucumbers, Brussels sprout, tomatoes, hot peppers, garlic, herbs. I think that's it.

The west side garden is billowing over the walkway - exactly as I imagined. I still have some planter boxes & pots to fill, but it's all coming along nice. The Lophospermum that followed me home the other day is actually hanging on a hook the holds a ladder - not an actual plant hanger. I'm not sure where it will call home, but the best light for it (partial shade and either early or late sun, avoiding blazing heat) is along the west side, so somewhere along there it will live.

I filled the three tiered bucket containers with torenia and leaned it against the house, and it is quite happy there, so there it stays.

The baby's nursery, a room put together with well washed garden hands, is complete. I think I can finally say that. I've been dreaming of this room for three years. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I feel so at peace when I sit in the nursery chair (which swivels and glides, and is a little slice of down filled heaven). With eleven weeks to go I just want to sit here and enjoy being pregnant.

Dear Garden Diary,

Odd couples...

This mystery rose (adopted mislabelled last year) was thought to be dead earlier this season, but here it grows. Never one to give up on a plant too soon, I left its dead looking remains in place and planted the Thunbergia snug beside it. Now the two are happily (and quite vigorously) growing together. 

I'm extremely curious to see what colour the rose chooses to bloom. It was thought to be yellow, but bloomed a deep pinkish red instead. I can't even remember the breed-cultivar it was thought to be - but it certainly wasn't what I thought. I'm happy it survived.

In other yellow news, R chose a 'Lemon Boy' tomato on a recent rampage through the Vanderwees vegetables. We thought we were done adopting tomatoes, but apparently not. I planted it today in the large vegetable bed next to a zinnia. 

My baby belly is getting big (and dirty) now. Toes are disappearing. I have finally concluded that I'm not going to be able to keep up with our garden on my own this year. R loves the work, but is out of town too often - and has a very long honey-do list of other baby preparation things to accomplish on the few days he has off. So, I have decided to hire a gardener. 

Crazy! ...but necessary. There's so much weeding to do in every bed - especially around the junipers in the 'dog forest' ...I get exhausted just looking at it. I figure if someone can come in, weed it all and put down new mulch, I think I can handle the rest. 

I've also hired someone to build us a dog poop compost (oooo fun!), and someone to replace the sod in the middle of the yard...which will soon become a small play area for our baby. 

I have accomplished a lot myself this year, especially considering the belly. The front shade garden is looking good - I weeded that yesterday, and filled in some holes with a new Heuchera, another cranesbill geranium, and some blue lobelia to fill in the gaps. 

Everybody else is coming up nicely in shades of blues and purples, pale yellows, and lime green foliage.  

The west side garden is also looking lush and tended. Both vegetable beds are planted and relatively weed free... I've managed okay. 

I'm just daunted by the big perennial beds. The help will be so appreciated, and make all the difference.