Tag: loss

unforgetting…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

Last week was one of those weeks… you know the kind. The ones where your schedule is lined out perfectly, and if it weren’t for the very worst week of awfulness the week before, you’d be in great shape–but then… THEN it turns out you’ve rescued a very high-needs kitten, have a new puppy who keeps needing medical attention, and suddenly your great-shape week becomes a string of sleepless nights and cancelations…

Thank God for a new week.

And so far, for Monday, it’s been pretty ok over here. I slept great, managed to tackle a few small areas in my crazy-neglected house, and knocked some stuff off the list. I was feeling pretty accomplished and proud of my productivity and time management when the mail showed up. I was already taking Elenor for a quick walk so I grabbed it on our way into the house before the chilly sprinkles turned into full rain.

We all get the same mail these days… Bills, junk, ads, more bills, and “special offers” that really aren’t that special at all. Mixed in the middle of all of that nonsense was a card addressed to me from a return address I didn’t know. Curiously I opened it to find a beautiful card with a note from my mom’s hospice provider. Suddenly I was right there again, this time last year, sitting vigil at her bedside waiting. Always very soon the nurses said, but waiting for death can truly take forever.

It’s weird to sit here, nearly a year later, and realize this oddly-orphaned feeling will celebrate its first major milestone next week. If you’ve read my book, it may not even make much sense to you that I just then felt like an orphan after the journey I’ve had. Life is funny like that… It’s like my mother’s lack of mothering gifted me neglect and abandonment issues, but it wasn’t until her Alzheimer’s progression that I really felt the true, unreachable depth of that. Once she took her last shallow breath it sealed the deal. Things that, to the mind, shouldn’t feel one way often surprise us.

Over these past six years I can recall these stepping-stone moments that altered me to my core. Each one reminded me that I would, from that point on, never be the same again. Sometimes this was a very good thing, while other times it was simply the way life works sometimes.

In the card from my mom’s former hospice provider was a seed packet for Forget-Me-Nots. Perfection. I’ll tuck them away in my potting bench, for when it is time to sow them. I’ll be tucking the card away too. It may have caught me off guard, but I don’t need it to remind me she’s gone, and therefore a part of me left too.

{If you would like to receive my weekly Love Note, a brief reminder to check in, nurture, and connect with ourselves, you can subscribe here!}

written in the cards…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

In the back of my mind, as I navigate the waters of grief and the immense amount of things this calendar year has held, I’ve had the pressing reminder that I need to begin working on our holiday cards. The truth is that I really love writing out these cards to send to loved ones. I especially love receiving them. (then again, I’m a sucker for any form of mail that is neither bill nor junk) Anything that nods at connection will likely be a favorite for me.

Even so, I’ve been dragging my feet…

In most years past, I’ve had my gift shopping, decorating, and cards done by the last weekend of November. This is not true this year.

My tree sits illuminated and decorated, while everything else lives in shambles. Autumn prints framed on our ledges, the super-soft pumpkin throw pillow tossed on the sofa. The tubs of Christmas decorations sit cold, just inside our sunroom. Untouched.

It is like our home represents the hodge-podge in-between state my heart has been dragging for weeks now. If I were to say these words aloud, so many would reassure me that grief looks like this–and I get it. I work with clients navigating grief and trauma, I really do understand. This might feel a little like that, but it’s different too.

Something other than the loss of my mom. Something bigger than the impending loss of my only other close relative. Something other…

Finally today, amidst an annoying customer service call due to an overbilling, I sat down to write out our holiday card list. Thumbing through the address book I haven’t opened in a few months, I began to see it there–

The accumulative reasons for this state of purgatory I’m suspended in–beyond the continuing pandemic:

loss.

There are nine people on our fairly small card list, who I won’t be mailing cards to.

Nine people whose names to erase in my address book.

Nine.

Nine people I wrote to, this time last year, oblivious of the fact that would be the last. The cursor of our relationship blinking, blinking, and then gone.

Gone.

Nine gone, and the number seems incomprehensible.

And that’s just it–maybe I simply haven’t caught up with the gravity of it all yet. When I realize, of those left on the list, how many have also lost people, buried pets, lost jobs… We may be the ones left, but this list of card recipients is stitched together of the damage left from this brutal year. I’m finding myself quite unprepared for the words to fill cards of happy wishes and joy-filled thoughts when we the wounded– the left behind– haven’t quite gotten it figured out yet…

rainy day in october…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

This morning I sat in my yard crying, out in the rain.

Several weeks before this weeping crumble, my husband and I returned from vacation to learn one of the stray cats who hangs out near our yard had given birth to two kittens. By this point, the kittens, though adorably dependent on their mama still, seemed to be coming into their own. We were shocked. We hadn’t even known she’d been pregnant.

To tell you the truth, we had actually thought she was a he, a he whom we have aptly called Arthur for nearly two years.

Once we realized our mistake, Arthur became Bea Arthur, and we both became smitten with Bea’s adorable babies…

There was a bit of drama not long after, when we learned the babies had been trapped in a neighbor’s garage for three days. We rescued them and everything seemed great. In fact, on the last day of September, as I folded laundry neatly into my suitcase, I saw them following mom around and trying their first attempts at nibbling some of the food we set out for the ferals. In a life season of so much unknown, these two little clumsy kittens brought much joy…

The next day I drove to Michigan to sit at my mother’s bedside for her last days. The week before she’d been hospitalized. On the day that I scrambled to pack my suitcase, she’d been released into hospice and the prognosis was days left, at best. For ten days I held her hand, brushed her hair, laughed with her as she rallied, and cried silent tears as she lashed out. Alzheimer’s is an ugly monster. Many friends who’d lost mothers reached out with advice drawn from their own experiences. A commonality among their words was how, though hard, the process of death and closing those days could be truly beautiful. It seemed crazy, but then for four days she rallied and I saw the sunlight of beauty everywhere. It was after the rallying faded, when her illness once again consumed her and the memory of my face was washed away, that the beautiful was replaced by something I can only surmise as sinister.

Like a switch, we transitioned into a dark and triggering time.

After ten days, I make the trip home. The dark days were difficult. I’d said my goodbyes. There was nothing left to do.

My first day back, as I went out to feed the cats, I saw Bea Arthur and her baby-daddy Tom. Something seemed off, so I tuned in and watched. Seeing the two of them show up, (at their safe, comfortable, feral distance) was not abnormal. As Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday sightings, walks, and evening encounters seemed to still be just the two of them, we began to wonder if something had happened to the kittens.

We have wildlife around. Raccoons, skunks, foxes, and a rogue coyote from time to time. We’d been concerned for them from the beginning, but when we’d stumbled upon Bea and her sister nearly two years ago, they were starving babies themselves. They wouldn’t let us near them, and everyone we phoned said if we caught them they’d be euthanized. Instead we built a heated shelter and feeding/watering station at the back of our yard and watched them grow up.

We did what we could. Even so, it is devastating to think of something happening to those two babies.

Through last night and this morning Bea Arthur stayed hovered beneath a bush near the shelter. Rain came, puddles formed, inching closer and closer to her. Still she stayed there.

Perhaps it is the weight of stagnantly waiting for my mother to leave her life. I was exhausted before that journey began, but now I am feeling so much more so. Also though, there is this other season of loss forever tattooed on my insides. The miscarriages, lost children, aching and empty arms…

There we were, rain falling all around us, this lost mother and me. Her babies seemingly gone. Heartbreak. I tried to pour love into her, as our gaze held tight, a sea of rainwater and grief pouring all around us as we sat suspended there. A cat and a woman, both having lost. Both knowing such struggle.

Was I projecting onto her? Probably. But also, she seems to have been through a hurt that led to the scars of which I’ve carried for so, so long.

Today, October 15th, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. This evening marks the International Wave of Light, where candles are lit at 7 pm, light casting globally in remembrance of significant loss. The dark, dreary skies of my city today feel appropriate. For the stray mama tabby and for myself. For the many other women who’ve lost, falling asleep beneath these street lights–expanding unfathomably beneath this entire sky.

Loss is hard. Waiting for it and surviving after it.

I don’t have anything wonderful or wise to say. I’m sad. I remember. I remember the hopes and dreams of motherhood. I remember the few beautiful moments with my own mother, amidst the sea of abuse and trauma.

I remember two clumsy kittens climbing all over their mother…

I remember and I’m sad. It’s terrible. Some days are like this, and that’s ok.

Even when it is hard, we have to pause to remember.

October 26th, 2000

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

I was twenty-four years and seven months old, to the day.

The doctor who had saved me with a shot six long years before had been the one to tell me, with saucer wide eyes, that my uterus had been the biggest mangled mess he’d ever seen.

That poor piece of me had survived through so much brutality. I was sad that she was gone, but also relieved too.

My eighty-nine year old soul was tired…

The thought of never having to wonder if I was pregnant, or if I’d lose a baby again, was something only alive in my past.

Seven little babies who would never know me, my arms or the beautiful bits of this world, had become in that pocket of me. The excruciating loss of those seven little heartbeats would forever be the ugliest bits of this life, for me.

I had a scheduled procedure which led to an emergency hysterectomy. In the course of one day my body experienced the equivalence of a catastrophic train wreck in my endocrine system. As I lay, half drugged, in my hospital bed, the doctor tried explaining to depth of it all to me.

I could barely comprehend the reality that my uterus was gone, much less the information about my last ovary being taken too, the discovery of cancer cells, screenings for the rest of my life, or the hellish journey that lay ahead due to the sudden halt in my hormonal system.

My second day in the hospital resulted in the worst migraine I have ever known. While I screamed and throbbed, begging for help, the nurses had to restrain me because I had an abdomen full of sutures and staples that needed care. When I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t help my head pain, they expressed their matter-of-fact answers about this being what happens when a woman loses her ovaries before her body is ready.

I was warned nearly every time that a doctor or nurse visited my bedside, that I was at an incredibly high risk of breast cancer now. I was also being automatically put on HRT (hormone replacement therapy), which they cautioned would increase my odds of breast cancer significantly.

“It’s a little scary that you’re so young and you’ll take it for so long. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared for you.” one nurse muttered, one morning as she took my vitals and changed my bandages.

In so many ways it seemed like there was a community opinion that I were there as some consequential result of a horrible decision I’d made.

There had been so many hospitals, so many nurses and doctors, over those years. SO MUCH negative, so much pain, and so little compassion… When I was wheeled to the car, the day I was discharged, I was filled with relief at the closing of that horrible chapter.

It has been twenty long years since that day. Two decades of life and loss, love and light. So much time has passed, so many things forgotten, and yet…

And yet, I can travel back to those moments where my aching heart fragmented over and over again, in an instant. Trauma is like that.

I could be both the woman who had lost her babies, and the woman who flourished beyond those chapters of my life. It is possible to be both, because I am. Remembering the big, dark things, is as important as reminiscing about the brightly lit ones too. Life is a balance. Acknowledging the hard does not mean we won’t move on.

“Getting over” a horror, is not healthy. Let’s stop expecting that of grieving mothers. Those babies, though the other side of heaven now, are just as much a part of me, my story, my purpose and my every breath, as anyone’s babies are.

~~~

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. Miscarriage and pregnancy loss is something seen as unacceptable to talk about, by more people than not. The silence translates a disregard and implies that we should know how to deal with this trauma… Cliche’ sentiments tell us that this loss of life was meant to be.

It is imperative for women’s emotional health and well being, that we share our stories and normalize our experiences with loss. It doesn’t matter if the mother was a teenager, or forty-two, loss is LOSS. There is grief and trauma and so many things that are so misunderstood and, tragically, so many things that women are encouraged to bury and ignore.

This month I have shared my stories here, and others via the podcast and social media. I will use my voice and platform to spotlight resources. I will adamantly state, for the record though, that I believe the most powerful resource we have is that of connecting and empathizing with others… Through one of the most isolating and lonely experiences in this life, I want to be a voice that tells others this: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

On trend…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay8 Comments

I am an enneagram four. It is literally NOT in my wiring to follow a trend. Growing up, seeking love, I might have dabbled in a music or apparel style only to get all cringy when I realized I simply could not commit. All of those weird 90’s kids, angsty and flannel clad, wearing our docs or converse, listening to music that made us FEEL- we were the real kids in America… The kids who didn’t want to follow the pattern, or color inside the lines. Most of us were Fours, only we didn’t know what that meant then. We found confidence (usually) in our need to find our own rhythms, and we found immense value in accepting all of the other “freaks” who weren’t trend followers either. We also, I’ll admit, still likely felt as though we were on the outside, always looking in; on the brink, but never really belonging…

When I was a young wife I developed a deep affection for Classic Pooh things. They were artistic and obscure little trinkets, hard to find, with steep price tags, when we did stumble upon them. Just before I turned twenty-three, a trend was emerging where every adult woman in the world wanted Disney store apparel themed in Classic Pooh. Dish-sets emerged, followed by entire kitchen ware collections, and household decorations, of the gently sketched little bear and his friends. Honestly, I was lived. Ironically, I was also on the verge of a shift, so as much as I may have wanted this trend to matter and wound my consistent strive for individuality- it didn’t.

When I feel in love with that sweet little bear, I was in this stage of my life where I deeply wanted a baby. In the way that I have always designed and decorated a room, within my mind, I imagined a nursery filled with unique little treasures featuring the gang. Those classically drawn images represented all things innocent and nurturing. They seemed to embody a heart full of aching, and my desperate need to hold my baby in my arms. As time passed, with each miscarriage I endured, the room filling my mind became more intentional. Whenever I’d stumble upon a new piece, I’d buy it, whether I could afford it or not. These were the things that I could do to control my shattering spirit. It wasn’t ever about Disney or trends, or anything other than the symbolism of something imaginary come to life- something cuddly and so incredibly love-able. My heart’s desire…

My seventh miscarriage had me so incredibly disheartened with doctors. It was the 90’s, and while women’s health medicine is still filled with frustration and horror stories, that decade really had this special way of making a woman feel like a complete piece of crap when she managed to have any fertility problems at all. (I have horror stories. I have small surgical procedures in a hospital hallway, by an eager (almost giddy) male doctor, while I was given no anesthesia or pain killer… I have football sized blood clots slapping onto a hospital floor, with a nurse saying “well, that happens! Hopefully the baby is there so we can be done with this and you can get some rest.”, I have promises of how I “definitely will not be losing this baby”, from the experts, while I sat miscarrying 3 hours later. The brutal times were significantly impacted, for the worse, by the medical industry of the time.) Each loss experience was completely different from the others. It is one of those bizarre, indescribable things… And so, when that stick showed a plus sign, in the autumn of 1998, I swore I would not see a doctor until I knew I was halfway through.

You see, in that same way that I was attempting to will God to give me a baby by creating a space for said baby to live, I was needing to blame someone for the lack of babies, thus far. The doctors seemed like the obvious common denominator in each messed up instance. No one would argue that they were not to blame for some terrible things. All of the people consuming my support network, at the time, would also wager that these doctors really did not care about me, my vagina or my future motherhood. The ambivalence with which I was handled was sickening… So, I blamed the doctors and I stayed away.

I ate saltines, took prenatal vitamins, and relished in the mornings I spent on my knees over the toilet. Everyone loved to reaffirm that the morning sickness was a good sign. The breast swelling came once again, the only consistent symptom with my pregnancies before. We slid gently into 1999, and my baby bump was slowly rounding. I had made it, I knew. This was it, finally. We found a highly recommended specialist, for at risk pregnancies, and I reluctantly agreed to see him. (By my rustic calculations I should have been 19-21 weeks along.)

It turns out that hormones are an odd duck. I wasn’t pregnant. My baby bump was a lovely nerf-football sized tumor, which had consumed an entire ovary and made a gigantic mess in my entire uterine area. The rise in some sort of something (this is how well I get science) had convinced my endocrine system that I was pregnant, and so symptoms mimicked pregnancy. It all sounded VERY Twilight Zone and I just knew the doctor was lying, and had disappointingy joined the big conspiracy against my babies, but eventually had to realize this was true. On a Wednesday night, in late January, I downed my first every peach bellini, and the next morning they sliced me open to bring that fat tumor into the world. I lost all of one ovary and a portion of the other.

Then March came, and I turned twenty-three. We had a big party, with a lot of friends, and I wore a denim Winnie the Pooh jumper as we paid a 90’s arm-and-a -leg for glow bowling. My white stitching was radiant beneath the black lights and while our beautiful friends were celebrating that I was alive, I wanted nothing more than the opposite. The doctor had said I could try and have a baby in the following year, but that the condition would happen again, and next time I’d probably lose everything. He had been encouraging, and internally I questioned how I hadn’t already lost everything. I didn’t understand how each bloody puddle that I’d sat broken in, upon ice-cold tile floors were so insignificant to everyone else. Hadn’t they been everything? Hadn’t those little heartbeats at least been something? The world was encouraging. Everyone acted like this had somehow solved the mystery of why I couldn’t carry a baby, and suddenly all roads pointed to a child of my own. I knew they didn’t. I knew that it was over. I couldn’t celebrate. I couldn’t find the happy, there within my inadequacy. I couldn’t have anything to do with that silly old bear again.

Just as the trend swept the nation…

I am an enneagram four. I feel things deeply. I process. I grieve. I march to my own rhythm, never following a trend. I, by nature, feel like an outsider aching to be a part of something. I couldn’t have a baby.

I got swept up in the fastest growing trend among American women…

I am an infertility and miscarriage survivor, and this is my story. One story, lost in the sea of millions.

(On the Collective Podcast this week I come together with four other brave women, vastly different in their own stories. They share their journeys and unexpectedly we find there, despite our differences, the commonalities of of both shame and hope. We find real. We would love for you to hear these stories. This is a safe space if you feel the need to share your own. Here is the link and it is episode 57.)