The day before Thanksgiving, we crammed our car full of belongings and began our trip down south to visit the family. We were ears deep in holiday traffic when my cell phone rang. I recognized the phone number right away. I briefly contemplated not answering. My daughter was in the car and I have worked hard to protect her from certain conversations I’ve had to have this year. But things have gone on too long. I needed to wrap this up. I was desperate. I answered the phone. It was the detective.

He stated that our son’s eyes had finally been cremated. I asked what day, exactly, had they been done? “Monday,” he answered.

“Monday, OK”, I repeated. I told him I was on my way to my mother’s house. He sounded both surprised and pleased. Apparently he was trying to figure out the best way to get Jay’s eyes to us, and he lives in the same town as my mother. He gave me his pager number and told me to call him the day after Thanksgiving and he would personally deliver them to me.

I couldn’t believe it. This was finally coming to a close. I told my husband we would be getting a package at my mom’s house. He knew what I meant. I spent the rest of the drive down to my mom’s completely engrossed in thought. I thought about what it would be like to actually meet this man who has been holding my son’s eyes for almost 10 months. I replayed what it would be like when we met. What would he say? My husband told me he’d take our daughter to the beach before he came over so she wouldn’t have to know Jay’s eyes were in a box.

Thanksgiving came. We spent the day cooking. I felt tired, but brushed it off. We traveled to my uncle’s house and spent the evening chatting and catching up with the family. It was fun, but I was completely distracted. Some people I hadn’t seen since the Thanksgiving before, the only Thanksgiving my son ever attended. It’s always weird when you are thinking about your child who died, and the person talking to you is thinking about your child that died, and you’re chatting about something completely different. But I can see it on their face. It’s like having a conversation about the weather when you’re in the middle of a house fire. It’s scary and sad, but no one has any water to put it out so we just keep talking about nonsense. I don’t blame them because in situations like this, I can’t go there, either.

By the end of the night I was completely run down, apparently taken over by a horrific cold. I drove home with watery eyes and a cough and collapsed in bed, knowing that the following day I would finally be in possession of my son’s eyes. What a bizarre holiday.

The next day arrived. I was bedridden. I didn’t even know how I would get dressed. For some strange reason, I just didn’t want the detective to see me like this. I waited until the afternoon and paged him anyway. I dragged myself into the shower and put some clothes on.

He didn’t initially call back.  I paged him again. Nothing. I waited all day in bed for my phone to ring. I turned up the volume so that I wouldn’t sleep through it. There were no calls. I couldn’t believe it. On Saturday, we drove home from my mother’s house eyeless.

I called Monday and left a message. I was angry. I couldn’t believe that this was still not resolved. I know everybody waits months for an autopsy report (which we still hadn’t received) but this was turning into torture. I was so mad I didn’t even want to write about it. It was like this was going to go on forever and I would never be able to move on from this investigation. They would always have a part of my son.

Finally at work this morning, the detective called. He was mailing them today. He said I should get them by tomorrow or Thursday. God I hope so. He emailed me the autopsy report. Our printer isn’t working at home, so I actually printed it out and read it at work. I don’t know what I expected it to be. It wasn’t as hard to read as I thought it would be. We have had to have so many conversations about our son’s brain and organs, detaching ourselves from the reality of what we’re really talking about in order to be able to convey information to important people. Reading it was a much easier task. I will give it to my husband tonight. He will read it silently and fold it back up. He won’t have any comments. It’s a story that we lived, retold by someone who wasn’t there. I can look up the various medical terminology that I don’t understand, but the end is the same. My son fell, and then he died. No one will ever know exactly why he sustained such a horrible injury from such a short fall. Every doctor I’ve talked to has the same explanation: If you hit your head in just the right place, it can cause a fatal injury. Nobody knows what that exact place is. If you die, that was the spot for you. For my son, it was a posterior, low, occipital, midline contusion.

Tonight we are decorating our Christmas tree. Deciding to not celebrate Christmas wasn’t even an option. Our daughter lost her brother this year. There’s no way she’s losing out on Christmas. She’s excited for Santa and presents. She can’t wait to decorate the tree. We will put up our ornaments that we’ve had for years, including the ones we got last year when our son was still here. We’ll put up the “J” salt dough ornaments we made a few weeks ago. He will always be a part of our Christmas. A part of our everything.

Posted on December 10, 2013 by A Life After Loss | Leave a comment

When Everything is Nowhere

Posted on November 21, 2013 by A Life After Loss

When I was little, I had an occasional babysitter who was also a religious zealot. She had a bratty daughter about my age who embodied zero Christian qualities. The babysitter would sit me down and play recordings of religious figures playing records backwards to show that the bands worshipped the devil. The one I remember was hearing Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” backwards and hearing “smoke marijuana, smoke marijuana” over and over. I also remember her taking me into a quiet room and having me recite a prayer that, according to her, would guarantee me a spot in heaven no matter what I did. My God, this lady was nuts.

But something she once said stayed with me for decades. One day I had lost a toy and couldn’t find it. “It’s nowhere!!!” I exclaimed. “Everything is somewhere,” she reassured me. That phrase gave me hope that anything was findable. This pretty, long-haired hippy gone completely wrong had come up with a life tool I could use.

Turns out she was wrong on that one, too. If there is one thing that has driven me crazy from the day my son was cremated was the fact that some things disappear forever. Sure,  you have the urn with the ashes in it. The ashes are composed of mostly bone. They also include ashes from what my son was wearing and the things they put inside my son’s body to prepare him for the viewing at the mortuary. If you aren’t sure what that means, maybe I’ll write about it later. I just tried to explain it right now and found I can’t yet, so I deleted it. The point being, there are a whole lot of things that just disappear.

There is tissue, hair, neurons, neural pathways and organs that are just plain gone. They can’t be found anywhere. Not that I ever got to lay my eyes on one of his neural pathways, but I saw them work. I look at his pictures constantly and whisper aloud, “Where are you??” I look at his arms and head and toes and legs. I look at ultra close-up photographs my husband took of our son’s hands. Tiny, original paths of lines covering them. He is not just dead. He is quite literally gone.

I got a call from the detective coroner yesterday. He had to call around and find a mortuary that would cremate only my son’s eyes. Our local mortuary here who handled his remains stated that they do not cremate single organs. One day I’m going to review those bastards on Yelp. Zero stars for those assholes.  The detective did find a local mortuary in his area who would do it. They will also put the eyes in a box so that I will actually have ashes.  As we learned several weeks ago, eyes are organs that would be essentially vaporized, so the box is used to give you some ashes to hold onto. Yes, we will be getting box ashes, but I’ll take it. They will put them in a little urn and he will ship it to me.

There are questions I wanted to ask the coroner, but didn’t. They were questions he would have hated answering. I wanted to ask what the eyes looked like. One of the very last pieces of evidence of my son. He has been gone 9 months now, and I still would have pressed the phone hard to my ear to know what they looked like. I also wanted to ask if anyone ever really thought we did anything wrong, or if the investigation was simply a matter of protocol. I wanted to tell him other things, too. He has held those eyes for 9 months. For at least two of them, he tried to figure out how to dispose of them in a way that would satisfy me. I am grateful. It feels strange to know that I will probably only speak to him a couple more times. This very strange, sad relationship that only had to do with my son’s death is coming to a close.

The other night I couldn’t sleep. I opened up the drawer by my bed and pulled out a clear plastic bag with the word “BIOHAZARD” on it. Only a few hours after arriving to the Children’s Hospital, we were told that not only would our son never be the same, it was incredibly likely he would  never wake up. I asked if we could cut his hair. We were given scissors and a biohazard bag. A doctor and a couple of nurses looked on as we wept and chose different pieces to cut off. We made sure to choose areas where the hair was lighter or darker so that we would have a complete collection. Everyone in the room cried.

Lying in bed, I took the hair out. I don’t normally do that for fear of losing any strands. I grabbed a bunch tightly between my thumb and forefinger and lay my own hair on top of it. It was the same color. His lighter skin tone, hair and obvious left-handedness made him my little twin. Not that he looked much like me, but I always loved those similarities.

I sat and stroked the hair and cried, trying not to get any tears on his hair. “It’s here,” I said to myself. “I can’t believe his hair is right here.” This hair was not destroyed. It was not even examined by any strangers. We cut it before they took him away 3 days later. Before detectives came, separated us and interviewed us alone. Before my talks started with the detective at the coroner’s office, talks with just-in-case independent autopsy consultants and just-in-case lawyers. Talks that took my son from a loving, living human being into discussions about disposition and body parts.

The eyes will be cremated today. But the hair is here, with us. The last real, untampered bit of my son. It is at home, where the rest of him should be, but isn’t. The rest of him isn’t anywhere at all.

Posted in Dealing with the details | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Why it’s Good to Be a Bad Parent Sometimes

Posted on November 12, 2013 by A Life After Loss

Before my son died, I was a schedule nazi. My daughter awoke hourly at night when she was a baby, and getting a schedule together (as well as money spent on a sleep consultant) made me into a drill sergeant of time. I would admonish someone for putting my child down 15 minutes late for a nap. Hell would rain down from the skies if my husband, or any relative, woke my child up before the allotted time. Construction work, car alarms and unsuspecting visitors were my arch enemies. Travel to my mom’s house? We better be driving during a scheduled nap and the kids better get to sleep on time. Want to invite us to a dinner party? It better be at 4:30pm, and we’ll be leaving by 5:30. If my kid falls asleep in the car, we’re never visiting you again. Having a birthday party? Don’t just give me a bowl of Pirate Booty and call that lunch. And by the way, I don’t think those strawberries you’re serving are organic. Typing it all out here, I understand what an asshole I was.

Then my son died. My world stopped, and parts of it never started going again. It started at the very beginning, when we drove back home from my mom’s house with an empty carseat in the back. I often wonder what it was like for my daughter to look beside her and see that empty seat. We stopped at In N Out on the way home. I didn’t give a shit that my daughter was on her 12th grilled cheese for that week. She missed several days of school. When we returned to her class, I carried her instead of having her walk by herself. She hugged me tightly, one arm around me and another arm clutching to one of my son’s shirts. I gave no one eye contact.

Over the next several weeks and months, things became “normal”–a new normal. Our new life. But the Time Nazi was gone. We go out to late dinners sometimes. I don’t care what she eats at a birthday party. If she wants to go to town on 25 pixie sticks, go for it. I knew I was a changed woman when I voluntarily taught my daughter how to shoot a pixie stick in one go and not get the top of the straw all spitty so that the artificially colored, processed, chemically treated sugar gets stuck in the straw. You celebrate, baby, and I’m here to tell you how to do it right.

Last summer, we all went for ice cream. My son wasn’t even a year yet, and had to watch while his parents and older sister dug into delicious cones right in front of him. He desperately wanted a taste. I had gotten a dark chocolate scoop. In a moment of chill-the-F-out, I leaned my cone over to his mouth so he could have a taste. Oh my God, he went crazy. He loved it, continuing to beg for more until it was all gone. That was the only time he ever had ice cream.

There is a balance now that I didn’t have before. I let my daughter have a real life, not one dictated by my own geographic social norms and the expectations of random moms. There was this pressure I used to feel before that is just gone now. I do what’s important to me and for us. We go to late night things sometimes. We live a little. She’s already lived harder than I ever would have wanted for her. She will never be the same. None of us know how long we have. So yea, eat a god damn pixie stick at a party. Go nuts.

We went out to dinner the other night with friends in the city. We went to a nice restaurant and didn’t even sit down until probably 8pm, when normally she would be in bed. I would have had a heart attack a year ago over this. We walked along the city streets at night. She saw the energy that I used to enjoy in my 20’s. We smelled stale urine on the sidewalk and I warned her not to drop her teddy. We heard a blood-curdling scream far off in the distance. It was an adventure. She ate food she’d never had before and had dessert. Yes, she was tired, but she did well and had a great time. I ate most of her pasta and all of mine, reveling in the rich taste of high quality morsels while simultaneously not paying for a babysitter. We put her to bed at our friend’s house while we sat and chatted for awhile. We got home at 11:30pm. She was tired and grumpy, we skipped brushing teeth and taking a bath and she went right to bed. She woke up the next morning happy and healthy, with a fun life experience under her belt.

I still put her to bed on time most days. I still make her try new vegetables and sneak an exorbitant amount of chard in her pasta sauce. We brush, we floss, we read, we playdate. We do all the things we did before our life changed. I just do it without the stick up my ass. Most of the time, that is. If you wake my child up from a nap, I’ll still cut you.

Posted in Raising Your Living Children, Staying Alive | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eyes

Posted on October 29, 2013 by A Life After Loss

When I started this blog, I told myself I would write once a week. It is immensely therapeutic and it forces me to do something I enjoy, which is write. I missed two weeks in a row. Well, that’s not entirely true. I actually did write a post last week. It was about our recent vacation to Hawaii and the inability to shake certain fears, like sharks. But I didn’t post it. I’ve already written about PTSD in other posts and didn’t really feel like I was adding anything new except to say “Yep, this shit follows you everywhere.”

It seemed like old news. I thought about those fears and thought it would be better to try and talk a little about how the fears originate, and fester. Obviously, losing a child is not only devastatingly traumatic, it’s also scary. It’s a peek under Life’s skirt, a place that most of us pretend doesn’t exist. We pretend not because we’re wimps, but because the truth, which is that anyone can die at any moment, is really too much to handle most of the time. Living with a veil over our eyes is just plain necessary to move on with your day. You need to get in cars, or on planes, or a bike, and yes, sometimes you do just want to swim in the ocean without thinking of a Tiger shark biting your arm off.

But there is something more. Most people think of someone dying as a singular event. It usually isn’t. The entire situation is made up of dozens and dozens of smaller events that culminate in the full horrifying experience. It’s all those little things that get to you, that sit in your head and make you terrified to go snorkeling. I am going to tell you about one of those events. This is not going to be an easy thing to read. I know because it’s taken me a very long time to write.

When a child dies, especially in a home with only family present, there is an investigation. There is an autopsy. It’s protocol; they need to make sure that what you say happened, really happened. When a child turns up at a children’s hospital who is brain dead, they don’t just pull a sheet over the body and tell you they’re sorry. They need to make sure you didn’t do it.

Our sweet boy was taken for an autopsy. It took less than a full day to complete. I got a call from a very sympathetic detective who worked at the coroner’s office who stated he was done and they were releasing the body. And then he said, “I need to tell you that I retained his eyes. We needed to send them to an off-site lab for more testing.”

“How long will that take?”

“Weeks.”

I was stunned. This investigation would go on for weeks? That’s a whole other post right there. He went on to tell me that he, too, had lost a child, that this was protocol and normal, etc. I asked him if he would send the eyes to the mortuary when they came back from the lab. He sounded uneasy.

“Uh…they aren’t going to look the same.”

“That’s fine.” We were going to cremate our son. My son donated his heart, liver and both of his kidneys. Those were gone. I wanted the rest of him.

Months went by. The investigation concluded just as the detective said it would. But I never got a call from the mortuary about  my son’s eyes. I texted my friend, livid and destroyed. “They just threw them away! Like garbage! My baby’s EYES. I made those fucking eyes!”

Out of the blue, last month, I got a call from the detective at the coroner’s office. He again sounded terribly uneasy, like he had been dreading this call. “The autopsy report is done. I just need to know..what  you would like me to do with Jay’s eyes.”

He had them. Thank God.  They weren’t thrown away like garbage. I told him I wanted them cremated and the ashes sent to us. He told me there wouldn’t much much. “Like, would they not fit on the head of a pin?”

“No, there would be a bit more.”

“OK.” I started crying. He apologized for having to call. I told him no, I wanted to hear from him, that I thought they had been thrown away, that we didn’t have those other organs. He told me things would take 1-2 weeks. So I waited, thrilled that such a special part of him would be back with us.

Every day I expected a Fedex package, which is what the eyes were to come in. Take a moment and think about what that would be like. Try to say it out loud: I wonder if I’ll get my child’s eyes in the mail today. These are the kinds of things we do now.

They didn’t come. We had planned a vacation to Hawaii. I called and left a message asking for an update. I didn’t want to be out of town when they arrived, fearing that they would just be sent right back to the coroner. The detective called me back the next day.

“I talked to the mortuary. There wouldn’t be anything left at all.” I told him I needed to talk to my husband, even though we weren’t left with any options. He said he understood and to take our time, and we hung up. Within weeks I went from being crushed, to hopeful, to crushed again.

My husband was traveling for work. After I put my daughter to bed, I walked as far away from her bedroom as I could get so that I could have this conversation. I put the lid down on the toilet seat in the master bath and cried. I told him that we would never get our son’s eyes after all. They were gone forever. Eyes that had been made inside of me and that I looked into everyday were going to be disposed of as medical waste. My son’s eyes were considered medical waste.

“Fuck it,” my husband said, “Add it to the list. Add it to the list of shitty things that happened this year. Those aren’t his eyes, his beautiful eyes, anymore. They are sitting in some jar, sliced up and ruined. It doesn’t matter.” He was angry and sad, but he meant what he said. What’s one more terrible thing? And what’s worse than losing your child at all? Once you’ve traveled down 7 layers of hell, what’s another layer? But it still killed me. My body convulsed with tears at every word he said. My sweet, teeny boy’s eyes were gone.

It has been two weeks. I still haven’t called the detective back. I will call tomorrow. I will ask if, even though they will be vaporized into nothing, if they can be cremated on their own. He deserves at least that. But I am preparing myself to be disappointed yet again.

So, yes, when I’m floating in a gorgeous Hawaiian ocean, with sea turtles swimming majestically around me, do I enjoy it? Yes, I do. And do I think  of the Tiger sharks? Yea. I think about the Tiger Sharks. We have lived far more horrifying things. It makes a shark attack, or a plane crash, or a car crash, or a kidnapping, or anything else, really, seem not so fantastical.  Another layer of hell that can come to pass as easily as everything else.

Posted in Dealing with the details | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Going Back Home

Posted on October 9, 2013 by A Life After Loss

My mother just turned 70 (apologies to my mother for putting that online). She had indicated she wanted to have a birthday party. She hasn’t had a real party in….I don’t even know how long. If you’ve made it to 70, you certainly deserve a party, particularly if you are simultaneously battling cancer, as she is. And particularly if your grandson died at your house.

I grew up in the house where my mom still lives. All of my teenage angst was melodramatically acted out by me in that home. Countless late night conversations were had, a few arguments and triple the amount of laughter all occurred there. As a mom, I’ve been carting my kids there for years and taking them to the beach where I learned to boogie board and pick up touristy rednecks from the valley (easy targets, you can’t blame me). No matter how many years I have been gone, when I drive past the last rolling hill on the side of the freeway, where the view gives way to a sparkly blue ocean, I have always felt home. “Hello, my ocean,” I have always thought to myself.

After my son died at that house, I have been terrified to return. My mom asked if it would be too hard to come back. I lied, initially. I pretended it didn’t matter because we were going to have a party. I sent out the invitation in haste. Better to get the ball rolling irretrievably. My uncle offered to host the party at his restaurant. I bought a few decorations. I ordered 20 cupcakes. And I dreaded the moment I would walk into my mother’s house and lay eyes on the spot where my son’s life ended.

Over the weeks approaching the visit, I kept checking for clues that my daughter didn’t want to go. There weren’t any. I told my mother that if things were too difficult, we’d get a hotel. I thought about it most of the way down. What would it be like? How am I going to serve breakfast to my daughter at the same table he fell back from? How screwed up is that?? I thought about how I used to love that table. I did my homework at that table. I invited almost every boyfriend I ever dated to come sit at the table and watch my mom pretend to like them. Sometimes she even did.

We arrived. I walked into the house first while my husband got my daughter out of the car. My mom wasn’t home from the store yet. The house was dark and quiet. I flipped on the light, my eyes falling right on that table. It did feel sad. I couldn’t focus on it long, though. My daughter came in and it quickly turned into bath/books/bedtime. When I walked upstairs to put my daughter to bed, I remembered getting up with my son the morning he died. It was just he and I; everyone else was asleep upstairs. He wanted to crawl up the stairs, as he always did. I followed him slowly. He was happy and excited, making way too much noise for 7am. “Shh,” I told him, saying it more for me than really believing my 13 month old would actually listen. He turned around, put a very uncoordinated finger in front of his lips and said, “Shhh!” back. He looked like a tiny drunk teenager coming back from a party. He was so funny. As I walked up that stair this time, I felt him and that moment we had. My heart broke a little. I’m not trying to describe something definitive or other-worldly. It was that his memory/energy/whatever wasn’t at that table. If it was anywhere, it was on the stairs. It was where he lived that mattered, not where he died. Every time I passed by that stair that weekend, I felt it. I felt him. It was bittersweet. Shhh.

The following day we took our daughter to the beach. She ran back and forth from the water hooting and hollering like a madman. So excited. My husband and I stood by the water, watching our girl drag seaweed around and pick up dozens of treasured bird feathers. We talked about the concept of coming back. He talked about the beautiful beach, and the fact that this was my old home. He touted the benefits of being able to come down there and that what happened with our son didn’t have to define how we look at this place. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he told me he never wanted to return, but he didn’t. Instead he was a cheerleader with a better perspective. It was him who was convincing me that what happened there didn’t mean having to hate the place. I looked out at my familiar blue ocean. I had been so scared to come back. But looking out at my old sea again, I felt relief. Everything didn’t have to be ruined. The things I used to love, I could still love. Seems simple, I guess, but I had to live it first.

The weekend wasn’t the horrifying experience I feared. I spent all of my teen years at this house, not to mention countless visits throughout my adult life. Even my son had good times there. All weekend I watched my daughter play with cars on the living room floor, the same cars he used to put in his mouth. And yes, I served her meals at the same table that he died at. It wasn’t traumatic. The day he died was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. But it wasn’t the house. It was the event. It was a relief to know I could keep the two separate and, apparently, so could my daughter.

The birthday party was a huge success. A grand total of 19 people attended. I was glad I came, even though it scared me. I drove down there thinking that if things were too hard, I’d fake being sick at Thanksgiving so I wouldn’t have to return. I left the party looking forward to coming back.

I did go into the room he used to sleep in and I talked to him. I looked at the office chair where I used to nurse him. I kissed the edge of the dining chair where his head hit, just trying to connect with the last thing that came in contact with my still living son. I touched the part of the table where he ate his last meal, moments before he fell. You do those things, too. You hold it all in one big ball. I’m sure every time I pass by that stair I’ll hear that funny sound again. A sound of him alive. Shhh. It hurts, but it’s OK, too.

Posted in Staying Alive | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Benefits

Posted on October 2, 2013 by A Life After Loss

The proper protocol at work after losing a child is to notify HR within 30 days and remove them from your health insurance policy. A few months after Jay died, I went on my company’s intranet and looked up how to do this. I needed to contact the office, inform them of my child’s death and send over a death certificate.

The web page warned me that any costs incurred by my child after his death would not be covered. I wondered what costs my child might incur, with him being dead and all, but decided against asking any hard-hitting questions on the matter. Our HR department is not comprised of the most sensitive, knowledgeable employees. No one there has a passion for human resources. There is not a great deal of tact over there. I recalled the situation where I asked if I could email a copy of my son’s birth certificate to get him on my health plan, only to be told that I would need to fax it because the woman didn’t know how to access the attachment on her email.  The thought of calling them up and telling them the worst thing that has ever happened to our family seemed overwhelming and emotionally self-defeating. I also didn’t want some stranger looking at his death certificate. They didn’t know him and didn’t care about him. It was private. It is a piece of paper that I have a hard time even looking at. I couldn’t imagine faxing it to someone for their perusal.  Week after week I told myself that I would do it. Next week, I told myself. Next week never came. I ultimately decided that I couldn’t do it. I was not going to put myself in a situation that would hurt more than it would help. So, he stayed on my policy. He stayed on my husband’s policy as well.

A few weeks ago I went to get my haircut. In perfectly stereotypical fashion, the hairdresser asked me a zillion questions about my life, including how many children I had. “Two,” I replied, sticking to my unofficial philosophy that I will never pretend I have just one kid. We had also just returned from the memorial and I didn’t have the strength to go into things.

She asked how old he was. “Thirteen months.” The questions didn’t stop. It was obvious she was really into kids. “Do your daughter and son get along? Oh, that’s wonderful. Is he a pretty good kid….?” I was fielding what felt like endless questions. The situation went from me just acknowledging the fact that I had a son to me just sounding like the crazy lady who pretends her son is still living. It started to feel totally dishonest, even though I took pains not to elaborate whatsoever on any question. The hairdresser was also giving me a great haircut, ensuring that I would have to go back there now (you know how hard it is to find someone decent). I finally understood completely why my husband just tells people he has one child. It is precisely to avoid situations exactly like this. I decided if I returned that I would just have to tell her the truth. I tried to avoid a weird situation and now it was going to be even weirder. She turned on the hairdryer. I watched her in the mirror, thinking that she was imagining what my life was like. Me, at home with my two kids, aged 4 and 13 months. He was alive and doing great in her mind. He was actually alive in her head. She styled my hair and I wiped my eyes before she could see me crying.

There is something very difficult about being forced to acknowledge the death of your child, whether it’s walking into the mortuary (one of the most traumatizing moments I’ve ever had) or having to tell someone out of the blue while getting your hair cut.  Like the event itself, you can’t control it. It happens. Yes, I could just tell people I have one child. I hate that, though. No, he’s not living at my house. But there’s an urn in my house. There are pictures in my house. Who’s in the urn? Who are the pictures of? My son. My second child. Denying it makes me angry, and acknowledging it in unexpected situations is crushing. It’s a lose-lose situation.

A couple weeks ago I received a package from the human resources department. It is open enrollment season. I reviewed the paperwork. There are 3 people listed on my policy besides me. I looked at Jay’s information. It listed his full name and his birth date. There was a short form to complete in the event you wanted to add or remove anyone from the policy. The package sat on the living room table for days. I finally sat down and read the form carefully. It didn’t ask for any explanation or verification to remove someone because it was open enrollment.  It didn’t ask for the death certificate. I quickly filled out the form, stuck a stamp on the envelope and mailed it off. “I love you JJ,” I whispered as I stuck it in the mailbox.

I felt OK when I did that. Today? I’m not so sure. At the moment it feels good to know he’s still on my husband’s policy. Acceptance is a hard pill. It doesn’t go down easy, or even at all. And it’s a pill you are given over and over again. Sometimes you swallow it. Sometimes you cheek it and spit it out.

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The Memorial

Posted on September 23, 2013 by A Life After Loss

Last week we went to a memorial held by the Children’s Hospital. All of the families who had lost a child in the last year were invited. We received the invitation months ago and I anxiously anticipated the day we would once again drive to that hospital out in the middle of Nowhere, CA.

The day finally came. We dropped our daughter off at her aunt and uncle’s house and drove the rest of the way there. I checked us into a super cheap hotel for the evening. We dragged our bags upstairs to our room (no elevator), changed clothes and drove frantically to the hospital, barely arriving on time.

As soon as we approached the main entrance, I saw a white reception table with the word Memorial taped to the front. I started crying. We were attending a memorial for our son. It was so overwhelming, to be simply doing that thing. As a person who has lost a child, you often need to go through life as if it hasn’t happened because you have to get on with things. You can’t live in a state of trauma 24/7 if you want to get anything done. But with these kinds of things, your brain can’t cover it up. It’s just right there, in all its horror.

The staff led us and about two dozen other families into the hospital, down some corridors and out the back to white chairs on the grass. We were handed a program and a candle. I was a disaster, that is, until I looked around and didn’t see anyone as upset as I was. Why was that?? I think I was looking forward to just letting go, and I found myself stuffing the tears away because everybody else seemed to have it together.

We sat down and I immediately searched the program for the picture I had submitted of my son. I finally found it on the last page at the bottom. It was so teeny I almost missed it.

The service started. There were some prayers, some songs. They released “doves”, which I later learned are actually homing pigeons. My husband and I looked at each other when dozens of doves exploded out of a cage and flew above us in complete confusion. Is this really supposed to make us feel better?? My husband quietly made a joke about a bird of prey swooping down and eating one of the doves and I silently shook with laughter. He can always make me laugh, even in that moment.

After the bird thing we went into a reception room where cake and punch were waiting. We then sat down and listened for 40 minutes to a devout Christian recite scripture, play Christian songs and paint pictures of Jesus Christ with glow in the dark paint. I am totally serious. They obviously knew their target audience, because the guy got a standing ovation. I sat. Whether I believe in God or not, I’m not ready to go for the “God works in mysterious ways” thing right now. Not 7 months into this nightmare that will last until I die.

Afterwards my husband and I took a walk in the dark to a place not far from where the memorial was set up. It was behind the hospital, in the back at the end of a wide stretch of neatly cut grass where a lone bronze horse was erected sometime before we ever knew about this place. We sat on the bench, where we sat and cried and made phone calls all those months ago, when this was still new. I looked up at the same tree and the same leaves that I stared at while lying on the grass crying. I looked back at the hospital and was sad that I could no longer remember which window it was that was his room. A window I looked out while sitting with my son and wondered who my husband was having to call that time. Which family member was he having to tell that our son was brain dead.

We sat in the dark and talked about those horrible days, and the days afterward, and everything that’s happened between now and then. Just going back there to sit in the dark with my husband and talk about that time was worth the 40 minutes of scripture and glow in the dark paint.

We touched the bronze horse one last time and made our way back to the car, my heels sinking into the muddy path. I knew this was the last time I would ever come to this hospital. I don’t feel anything negative toward that place. They tried to help my child. He just couldn’t be saved.

We drove back the next day. Back to our beautiful daughter, our new life, and his empty room. I wish I could say that it provided some closure, or that things are a little better now. They aren’t. But once things stop getting worse, I promise I will let you know.

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A Trip

Posted on September 12, 2013 by A Life After Loss

I just got back from a business trip. I used to like these things. The subject manner is usually mind-numbing, but I love my coworkers and it used to be a chance for me to get out of the day to day for a little while. Staying in a nice hotel, going out to eat without having to hurry back home to pay a babysitter, and having a few drinks with people that I normally never get to drink alcohol with was pretty fun.

Now I’m just too screwed up.

I checked into my hotel room and, truth be told, it really was a crappy room. I didn’t sleep well at all and was a bitchy, tired mess the next day. I normally would have lightly griped about it like everyone else, but I had an especially big chip on my shoulder all day. I even started annoying myself. I didn’t really notice that maybe something else was going on with me until the very end of the day. I got into the elevator with about 10 other people. It was jammed and I was all the way in the back. Someone asked me what floor I was on.

Me: The 15th floor.

Other Person: Oh, that’s cool, that’s an executive floor.

Me: Yea, it’s a real SHIT HOLE.

I got off the elevator and walked to my room, realizing that I just said that in the middle of a bunch of strangers at the very same conference, and yes, I was totally sober.

The next day we went out to lunch, all 17 of us. There was one person in the group who didn’t work with us and didn’t know me. She was incredibly friendly and started asking about my kids. I told her I had two. The questions kept coming. Everyone else in the group knows my son died and they all could hear this conversation slowly nose diving into terribly uncomfortable territory. I gave no eye contact and no indication I was excited to keep going with a deep analysis of my family dynamics. My boss’ boss saved the day at the last second by making some random statement about the new stadium being built. Thank Christ. Normally with a stranger I can just go along as if my son is not dead and say he’s 13 months. I didn’t know what to do when everyone around could hear every word. Everybody would have understood, but there’s a level of embarrassment, oddly, about other people listening to you lie about your awful life.

I slept better the next night, but by night 3 I was a disaster again. I stayed up way too late crying and missing Jay. I’m just not a good traveler anymore. I brought his teddy bear, but it wasn’t enough. I just felt lonely and horrible, and I didn’t want to sleep because sometimes feeling that shitty is the only way to feel close to my son.

The next day was a class on how to deal with stress. Do aerobic exercise. Eat a banana. Don’t sweat the small stuff. I could not have have attended this at a worse time.

I was able to leave after that class, and I surprised my daughter by picking her up from school on the way home. She gave me an incredible hug. It felt like she was healing my heart. I cried a little. We got in the car and One Republic’s “Feel Again” was playing on the radio. It captured my feelings perfectly.

That evening we headed to Marin’s Country Mart to have dinner. We circled around to find a spot, and my husband and I noticed a man lying on the ground with two people kneeling over him. The ground behind his head was soaked in blood. Someone was crying.  I can’t even describe the feeling of horror mixed with the thought “You have got to be shitting me”. After we parked I told my husband that I wanted to go back and make sure an ambulance arrived. They had. A few people were standing around watching, and I hated to be included in the group of looky-loos, but I needed to know. I asked someone if he was OK.

“No, he’s not. I wish I hadn’t seen this,” he said,

I hesitated. I wasn’t going to ask, but I did. “What happened?”

“He came out of the bar drunk. It looked like he had been fighting with two other guys. But I don’t think he was fighting when it happened. I think he passed out and fell and hit his head.” Oh my God.

“Is he dead?”

“Yea. I think he is. Blood was just pouring out of his ear.”

I walked away.

He hit his head and died. If there is a God, why in the world would he have me see this again? What are the chances that I was there and that I would see someone else die from hitting their head? Something broke inside me when my son died. And another chip just came off when I saw this. A chip of what, I don’t know. Maybe sanity, or hope. Yes, it was hope.

I feel like it’s a miracle anyone is alive, ever. During dinner, I sat and watched all these other people laughing and eating. Living. I ate a pizza and thought about the timeline of this man’s death. “Right now his parents are probably at the hospital. Right now they’re looking at his body. Right now they are in shock. They will be spending this weekend making arrangements. Nothing will ever be the same for those people. They are thinking about giving birth to him, who he was as a little boy and all the events that led up to this accident.” I looked at my daughter and wondered what kind of random miracle kept her alive this long, and how long do I have with her?

It’s too much.

Posted in Having a Baby After Losing a Child, Rabbit Hole | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

One of the best things about modern technology is the ability to track your entire life via photography on your camera phone. Take a tour through your iPhone’s camera roll and see everything you’ve done in the last several months, or more depending on how many pictures you take.

It was and continues to be terribly sad to see our old life and our new life displayed in vibrant color on my phone. I can scroll up 5 swipes (they have to be hard swipes) and see our old world, the family of four. Pictures that were taken less than 24 hours before my son died. The last picture of my son before he fell. My son in the hospital. My son in the PICU. And then the beginning of the new life, with him very obviously missing. It’s awful to have no new pictures of him.

It was more awful before I learned how to get creative. I have dozens of videos of my son on my phone. Every picture and video on my phone is meticulously watched and analyzed over and over again. File that in the “It’s all I’ve got” category. My analysis of the videos includes pausing at various moments to catch micro-expressions that I would never have seen otherwise. Beautiful windows into his little self that would have no doubt gone completely unnoticed forever. I started pausing and then clicking a screen shot, giving me a brand new treasure trove of new pictures. Pathetic, you say? You don’t even know how pathetic things can get over here.  My micro-expression project is called a viable solution.

On one of my micro-expression journeys I came across a really great new photo of him in a baby bathtub. He has this look on his face that seems to be full of wisdom. It’s impressive to be able to pull that kind of look off when you’re sitting in a plastic bathtub with your hair soaped up and slicked into a mohawk that has lazily fallen to one side. It has become a kind of inspiration for me when I’m at my lowest. It’s like he’s looking at me and saying, “Yep, this sucks, but you have to do it and you’re going to keep doing it because I know you can.” I know the thought that must have been going through his mind was “Mama!” but this expression has given me encouragement to move forward during those times when I feel myself going down the toilet bowl of grief.

I’ll include it here. I think he’d be OK with that.

“Good luck, Captain. We’re all counting on you.”

Posted on September 4, 2013 by A Life After Loss | Leave a comment

Drowning

Posted on August 28, 2013 by A Life After Loss

I am not doing well. I don’t know how else to put it. Last week I was talking about that feeling of utter horror that arrives when it arrives, and after that it decided to pay me an extended visit. It won’t leave. With other terrible situations, the passage of time seems to soften the pain. But day after day I wake up and see the ever present urn on the dresser, and seeing it every day doesn’t soften anything. It’s a big, flashing billboard that says “Yes, that really happened and this is real. It will be real forever.” It’s like slogging through an endless river of shit, only to find out the river goes all the way around the Earth and you’ll be walking in it forever. Your view from the middle of the shit river is the banks, where you used to walk and will never walk again.

Alright, now that that paragraph is written, I’m going to force myself back into what therapists call “Healthy Grief”. That phrase cracks me up. It sounds like it was invented by someone in Britain. It’s fine to be sad, but just keep it cool, OK?

I heard this phrase most recently when I was talking to my daughter’s therapist about how she’s doing. She’s really using her time in the room well. I’m proud of her ability and willingness to discuss as much as she does at her young age. I sincerely believe she is doing as well as humanly possible.

I explained to the therapist how we show grief in our home. I described how we talk about him a lot, we keep pictures around, his bedroom door open, his toys in the playroom. He’s just around in general, and while the fact that he died is right in our faces, he’s still our son, her brother, and a member of the family. I explained that I cry in front of my daughter, but it’s controlled. I let myself tear up and show emotion without running around the house sobbing and breaking dishes. “That’s great,” the therapist said, “the way you display healthy grief for her. The way you can be sad and show emotion, but that you then can pick up and make dinner, or play a game and still get on with your day.”

Don’t get me wrong, I get on board with this. I need to have myself together when I’m with my daughter. I don’t want her to think that crying all day isn’t acceptable, because it certainly is. But she needs me more than I need to cry all day. It’s just the truth, whether you (as someone who has lost a child) really believe it or not. Rule #1 as a parent who has lost a child should be to keep your living children close and be there for them. You lost one already. Don’t lose another one. I feel this way 100% even though I’m kind of drowning in the shit river right now.

This weekend my daughter came downstairs to wake me up. She always does this now, as my son is no longer there to wake up at 6am. I’m not proud of the fact that she gets up first, but that’s the deal right now. I got up, got dressed and asked her if she wanted to go on a nature walk. It was a ridiculously beautiful morning. I noted (as I always do with stuff like this) that it would have been truly glorious had it been a beautiful day and my son was still alive. We walked up our hill and she found half a dozen “treasures” to take home — random acorn-thingies, bird feathers, rocks, etc. Every time she found a treasure, she’d put it in a little green bag she brought for the occasion and immediately slip her hand back into mine, without me ever asking. Afterwards she asked if we could go out to breakfast. We went.

At every turn she is waking me up in the morning, asking to play a game, we’re going for walks and to restaurants. She forces me to live. She’s slogging in this river right next to me, but instead of crying all day, she’s asking if we can play Chutes and Ladders and when are we going to that place called Tahoe. She saves me in every sense of the word. So yea, I can cry all day if I wanted to. But I owe it to her not to drown in that river. She’s four, and she’s managing to keep her head up in that river, so shouldn’t I?? At the depths of my despair, when my lips are hovering dangerously close to the river, I need to keep my eye on the prize. And the prize is her.

Posted in Rabbit Hole, Raising Your Living Children, Staying Alive | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment