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6/2/18

Geneseo, NY.
Our place of origin.

It was the first weekend of June and it was freezing. Unexpectedly so.

Your dad was going to Geneseo for the night, and your sister had never been on campus. Since I wouldn’t be staying overnight, a family day trip was definitely in order. She explored the dorms and was naturally obsessed with the little beds that Uncle Pat and Daddy would be sleeping in. This is when some of our friends started to, unofficially, know about you. If only because my absence from a night in Geneseo was notable.

6/2/19

As I sit here today, I think about the alternative. How could you not have gone? If I had a bucket list of family activities that I wanted to do with my children, going to Geneseo would be near the top of the list. It only seems right that you were there with us. In one of the places that means the most to us. It was your sister’s first trip like that in her 2 and a half years, and you just happened to be there at 2 months along.

My life will always be physically lacking you, my family always incomplete; I’ve accepted this. But one of the places I feel most at home is not without you. I have a memory of being there with you. Our first and only trip as a complete family. I cling to these memories of you, with you.

“Not a night goes by, I don’t dream of wandering
Through the home that might have been.”

Mother’s Day

5/13/18

Your dad gave me this necklace for Mother’s Day – from him, your sister, and presumably you. I remember quietly smiling when I saw the opal birthstone. But I just said thanks and moved on with the day.

We still weren’t in celebratory mode. The last year of our lives  had so completely revolved around death, that it was hard to think in any other way. This was a nice gesture, a gift, and I didn’t want to diminish it.

Later that day the topic of “Mom” necklaces came up in conversation with your dad present. He learned that the birthstone on these symbolic pieces of jewelry is typically the birthstone of the child, not the mom. Being that your sister was born in August and you’d be born in January, this was neither of our children’s birthstones. Opal is my birthstone. He said “whoops” and laughed it off, as he does most things in life. He didn’t know.

What he also didn’t know, what no one could have known, is that he got it right. You died in September, but you were born in October. Opal is your birthstone. This necklace was my very first keepsake of you. Something I had and wore with you. I will continue to wear it, not only because it makes me feel close to you, but to show you off to the world.

Look world, I had a baby in October. Go ahead and ask about him.

You, Me, and NYC

5/9/18 – 5/11/18

Your first trip.

Less than a week after finding out I was pregnant I had an annual business trip to NYC. I was just barely starting to feel a little queasy at times.

I told your Aunt Sara about you on our walk from the train to her apartment. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her for a little while, and I wanted to be able to tell her in person. She was the first in our family to know.

I took this picture the night of my event and sent it to your sister (via dad), to say hi and show her that it is fun to dress up.

It’s silly, but I’m glad I have it now. The early stages of you and me.

This year, on this same trip, I’ll certainly be thinking of you. I will enjoy it, for you. I’ll take some time to sit quietly, to let the bright NYC sunshine thaw the palpable chill that has enclosed my life since October. I’ll find you as I drift off to sleep in the gigantic bed, in that place between wake and sleep that you’ve claimed as yours for eternal existence.  I’ll spoil myself a little, and I will genuinely enjoy life.

For you. For me. For everyone surviving the relentless daily battle of life after death of a child.

Positive

5/3/18

Your dad was out of town when I took the pregnancy test. This is the same way it happened with your sister. (This must be a good omen, right?) I saw it all working out in my mind.

In 2014, I had told him we were expecting your sister by tying a note around the dog’s neck that said I’m going to be a big brother. For you, I used the same note. I crossed out brother – wrote sister – and told her she had to give it to daddy as soon as he got home.

She obliged.
But it did not work out as perfectly as it had in my mind.

He arrived home in the usual post work trip fog. Excited to see us, but also out of touch. I had just turned the oven on to start dinner and apparently there was a particular oven smell to the house. His senses were alerted.

“What is that smell?”
“Nik, do you smell that?”
“How long has it smelled like gas in here?”

He frantically began searching the house for a gas leak before letting me speak. (To his credit we had just replaced the hot water heater, and catastrophe was always in the forefront of our minds). It was an odd scene. Your sister was two and she had a job to do. She was persistent in trying to give daddy the special note, but was being ignored. By this point I was frustrated and raised my voice.

“The oven is on, stop freaking out. Kiera is trying to give you something special.”

Note taken. Note read.
Oh. Yay?

A positive pregnancy test doesn’t equal a baby. This is not unique to us, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss. We had already learned that fact of life and we already knew the statistics. We weren’t sure if we should celebrate, or prepare for another go around of the rockiest three months of our lives.

This, my dear was the start of you. Fortunately this single hour was just a glitch, not a precursor to my pregnancy with you. We got over it because things in life, other than death, don’t effect us for that long. We had a date night scheduled for that night, and I forced him to take the awkward “we’re pregnant” selfie.

The next 27 weeks went by without a single issue. You were a strong healthy baby, and we were a happy family.

5/3/19

In this moment on this day, at my very core, I am happy. Happy to have known and loved you for a full year. Privileged to be your mom. You brought so much joy into our lives. You brought hope to our family when we needed it the most. You made me a mom of two, and turned my favorite girl into the very best big sister.

And you brought tragedy, there is no denying that. I will always be sad that you died. My body will always physically ache for you. Our family will be incomplete forever. My little burst of sunshine turned into a dark, looming, gigantic gray elephant in the room. But I love you equally either way; when you are the sunshine and when you are the elephant. The love that grows for a baby who dies is exactly the same as the love that grows for a baby who lives. The world doesn’t celebrate you in the same way that it celebrates living babies. But I do, and I always will.

I’m very positive of that.

Take Me Back to the Start

I’ve stared at this blank page so many times.

I know this needs to happen. I know this has to be part of my process. Forcing myself and all of my thoughts back into this space is as necessary as it is painful. Mandatory masochism. So much has happened, where do I even start?

The memories give me no choice.

After the unexpected death of a good friend last year I heard a lot of advice, remember the good times. While unhelpful at first, those memories are indeed what I cling to now. His laugh. His voice. His hug. He lived as much as anyone has ever lived. Those memories, the same ones that used to overwhelm me, now make my heart swell with love and happiness over a life well lived.

After you died no one told me to remember the good times.

But that is precisely where my brain went; to where you still exist. Birth is synonymous with the start of life itself. Your death date precedes your birth date. You have no dash. Am I left to conclude that you never lived? I heard your heartbeat, I felt you move, I watched you dance across a screen and my belly many times. Of course you lived.

I have dozens of material mementos from you; footprints, teddy bears, hospital bracelets, pictures, necklaces. Anything that physically touched you will always be sacred. But the memories mean the most. Regrettably these memories will fade. In that lies my greatest fear.

If all I have of you are six beautiful months of life, and six bittersweet hours of death, I will choose to relive them until the day that I die. I want to remember you, I will revel in this space. You are my son, I am your mom.

So that’s where I’ll start.
I will start, with you.

What Was Your Favorite Part of the Day?

It’s a question our family of three asks each other as a part of our nearly nightly family dinner routine.

It started a long time ago, not exactly deliberately or purposefully. Mostly we were trying to find a way to provoke conversation about the time our daughter spends away from us. As a hands on mom I like to think I know what goes on at daycare, but I really don’t. And I can’t begin to imagine how the toddler mind interprets day to day events, so I’ve learned to just ask.

For a long time the generic answer was “playing at Becky’s”, and that was always good enough. Sometimes even my own answers have been very superficial. But as she gets older the answers are getting more thoughtful and varied. A little seed has been unknowingly planted. She now gets excited to ask us about our day and, every once in a while, I can see that she is starting to understand that her parents are independent people. Different from each other and different from her.

Looking back on what is now more than a year of asking each other this nightly question, what I didn’t realize at the time was that I needed it more than her. As the clouds are finally starting to part it has become easier for me to see that even on the darkest days of this past year, there was still a best part of everyday. Admittedly they were often trivial, miniscule, and definitely did not hold a candle to the best part of our best days, but they were there the whole time. It’s about as cliché as it possibly could be; there is always a silver lining, even if you have to look for it.

Bad Lip Reading 2018

Everlong

It happened again.

Last week we took a family outing to drive through a Christmas light display. Since we were in the area, we took a trip down memory lane and drove through the village of Avon. After looping around a couple of side streets, we slowed down to look at the Avon Inn. As if she could grasp the concept, we explained to our two-year old that the big building with pretty lights is where Mommy and Daddy got married, and then we told her that time before her existed. As we laughed at ourselves and slowly pulled away, that’s when it happened.

Our wedding song started playing on the radio.

I noticed it first, this time. We smiled at the fluke, feeling eerie in the coincidence. Our smiles were immediately followed by heavy sighs. The not quite silent acknowledgement that this relentless clash of emotions is a substantial weight to bear. Things that once made us so happy, make us sad now. It’s the consequence of a tarnished memory. Our wedding song, for example, makes us a little sad now. Life in general, is a little sad now.

And that’s where we exist today. Within that subdued pause between the smile and the sigh. Where everything is left unsaid, because there are no words. On one hand we have this amazing life, happy moments abound, so much to be thankful for. On the other hand, we have loss. Loss of a dream, loss of a friend, and the loss of a life that we once considered normal.

Happy moments still exist, of course they do. They’re just as present as they always were. But I’m not as present as I always was, I can’t be. The truth is I’m tired of hearing about the good things in my life, as if they somehow make up for the bad. “You have a baby so that should help with losing a baby”. “You are lucky to have so many great memories”. And the kicker “it could be worse”. Obviously life can always get worse. It already has, a couple of times. But knowing that doesn’t make this phase better. Happiness cannot be exchanged like currency. That’s not the way it works.

So I’ve arrived at a crossroads. Naturally, it has felt a little disingenuous to write about happy moments while standing knee deep in shit, but I do miss it. Writing. Sharing small, silly, and seemingly insignificant instances of my life. Noticing if only for myself, the ordinary moments that combine to create an extraordinary life.

Hearing our wedding song on the radio did remind me of good times. Better times. Not of our wedding, but of the last time this chance occurrence happened to us. On the way to our 2^nd anniversary dinner, around the same time I started the blog. When I eagerly proclaimed that “this phase will not last forever, and that tomorrow might be a really bad day.” The irony is not lost on me.

Until next time, I’ll leave you with the lyrics that keep bringing me back to where it all began.

---

And I wonder when I sing along with you

If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

She sang

---

 

Crack

For one reason or another I always seem to take a hiatus from writing at this time of year. But I’m here at last to share a quick story.

Allow me to set the scene. I’m sitting on the couch, my husband is on the adjacent couch. We’re in our appropriately dark living room on an inappropriately sunny afternoon. My phone, which rarely rings, starts buzzing with an incoming call. The number is not familiar, but it is my area code, so I answer. The conversations follows:

“Hello?”
“Hi, is Kiera there?”
“No, this is her mom. Who’s this?”
“Oh, well is she there? Can I speak with her?”

I linger here a little because at this moment my phone starts chiming in my ear with a couple rapid fire texts. I glance at the screen quickly but do not recognize the number, so I return to the conversation more adamantly, albeit a bit confused.

“No, Kiera is at daycare. She’s 20 months old, I’m her mom. Who is this?”
“20 MONTHS!? It says here I should be speaking with a 20 YEAR old.”
“Well, you’re not. Kiera is my baby, who is this?”
“I’m so sorry, I must have the wrong person.”
“WHO IS THIS?”
“This is for a patient referral.”
“Oh… but the person you’re looking for is named Kiera? And is 20 years old, not 20 months old?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“That’s weird though, right? That’s not a very common name.”
“Right, I’m not sure how this happened. I’m so sorry to bother you.”

And with that I hang up the phone. I look over at my husband who had been following along. His expression, initially puzzled and confused, had now resolved into a smile with just a tinge of WTF? I shrug my shoulders, laugh, and then look at the texts I had missed. I find this:

What in the Sam Hill?

(Which I thought was sam hell my entire life, until literally right now.)

This was the most peculiar 3 minutes of my life.

It was as if someone saw me sitting there on the couch and said “hi there, I see someone kicked you while you were down. Here’s something to laugh at; think about nearly impossible coincidences, 20 year old Kieras, and crack for the rest of the afternoon.”

Admittedly I took the needed opportunity to do just that.

And I feel better knowing that if all else fails, at least I know where I can get some crack. Phew.

Bad Lip Reading 2017