I can not believe how much that i have been going through with the year anniversary here.
I am basically a basket case.
I truly never expected to take it this hard and my grief surprises me over and over again.
I guess on some level, in my own mind, i think that i am a lot tougher then i really am. I think that i will just sail through things when in fact that is usually not the case at all.
I remember right after Truman died, going to my doctor and asking "So how long to you think that i will feel like this? Like 3-4 months?"
She just kind of stared at me shocked. and i'm finding out how absolutely delusional that question was. This is an on-going, evolving, complex grief. and it never fails to knock me off my feet no matter how much i think i have my shit together. I can pretend all i want, but really, i'm a mess most of the time.
It's exhausting even trying as hard as i do. I try a lot. More then anyone will ever be able to see.
At any given time I'm likely to change with the tides and be at the whims of whatever this grief wants me to do. Which feels very strange and out of control. But losing T has definitely taught me that we are not all in control as much as we would like to think that we are.

This week I have just been annoyed at anything and everything. I'm guessing that this is part of the anger phase of grief? It's been hard on me. I hate feeling like this and it's perpetuated a lot of self hate/guilt that i am such a miserable bitchy annoyed mess.

I'll be doing okay for a little bit, then something small will annoy me then it snowballs, the anxiety builds, i'm pissy, then BAM! a vivid memory hits me, and i'm a crying weeping mess. Or BAM! I remember kindness from a dear friend (Julie) during the whole ordeal and I'm overwhelmed with love and gratitude sobbing hysterically. or BAM! I remember his sweet little hands gripping my finger or his foot brushing and kicking against my hands and I am crying out of guilt and longing, because i miss him and that i got so much more time with him then so many mother's get.
It's a straight up shitshow. I am all over the place, every day.
I am confused a lot.
My memories of a year ago bubble up and i am left disoriented that this even really happened at all. The tangible proof is still the same but somehow i am always surprised that this really happened to us, to him, and this is forever a part of us and our story. The memories are so messed up and traumatic and they shouldn't even exist. He is what should exist. The pain is starting to seep out in the strangest of ways.

Today Jeff and I were brave. After my morning freak out of extreme levels of high anxiety and tears we decided to go through some things.
We pulled out Truman's clothes.
His red shoes.
The pregnancy shirts and pants.
Just going through his stuff helped in some way. Just to move it around and circulate it through the house. Especially together.
I heard Jeff say things like, "I love this shirt, we have to save that for the next pregnancy." and "This onesie is so ridiculously cute" while holding it up to admire the thought of Truman in it.
He should have worn those clothes and outgrown them by now. But instead they are tokens of our love for him little treasures to pull out and imagine all the snuggly sweet times that he should have been here, filling his own shoes.

Today a year ago was Truman's "almost birthday". the night that they rushed in screaming ER c-section because his heart rate dropped, the night that Dr. Rowan snapped cased on me, the night I called my Dad and Jeff in at 3am and then false alarm but just in case they starved me and wouldn't let me drink anything for like 18 hours and did not let me sleep. I was SO thirsty. upset. stressed. Jeff and my Dad slept on a cot in my room waiting for the ER c-section decision. It was the day that i broke down and put my foot down. Hospital life had begun to really wear on me. No more magnesium sulfate burning through my veins. Now more ER c-section talk. i made it pretty clear that it felt like torture and i was getting very tired. It was definitely the most intense day at the hospital before he born. I got out of bed and pulled the date off of the calendar and wrote "your almost birthday" on it for the baby book. A memory that i was sure that i would look back on and tell him about someday. The hell that we went through to bring him home. But we never got to.
Now it just sits in his baby box on the shelf with his elephant, waiting for a purpose or something.

As the wedding approaches, i am feeling less and less bride-ish and more and more deep dark depression-ish.
I just can not imagine celebrating our life together right now while missing him so much and feeling this heavy sadness. I don't even like life lately let alone feel like celebrating it. I have dreamt about my wedding day for SO long and waited SO long to have this special day with Jeff but i wonder if we will actually be able to truly enjoy anything in our lives without Truman here. Maybe i will end up with the world's most depressing wedding. Lol - it really wouldn't surprise me.

I saw something on facebook that made me laugh.

"I'm worried that my guardian angel is a crack head", it made me laugh out loud and scroll through all of the craziness that has happened to me in my 29 years. Not just the sad and tragic stuff but the ridiculous stuff too. Like my one co-worker (40 something yr old woman) who bit me at work once when i was about 19 years old. yes, she was a human being who put her mouth on my flesh and bit down leaving teeth marks-- in front of my boss--- and everyone went on with their day like it was nothing. when i spoke up later saying that i'd prefer if she never put her mouth on me again because it was kind of messed up, everyone ended up treating me like I'm that overly sensitive girl who is weird about being touched and would apologize profusely if they bumped into me or accidentally brushed by me, lol. Um, yeah, hello crackheads. It was all beyond bizarre. You can't make this stuff up.
It's just my life.
maybe it's everyone's? ........
i dunno.

queen of the lost boys.

I was joking this week that if and when i go crazy when i'm older, I'll probably be that creepy old lady who kidnaps children. Not really, obviously. But after you loss a baby, you can kind of see how maybe craziness/ grief might progress to a point where someone would do such a thing.

So today i was shopping at Kohl's. There is literally like no where to shop here in Hum and so Kohl's is pretty much all that i have to work with.
This particular Kohl's is connected to the "mall" which doesn't have much else in it.
Anyways.
I was shopping for work clothes because i've lost two pants sizes since I had Truman last year (running).
I heard an employee message to another employee that "she is searching for her baby"
"what?" he replied
"her baby, she is searching for her baby, she lost him."

obviously my ears caught this conversation.
I thought about the mother's panic and worry. I consider every single possible horrible scenario that could have happened. Including kidnapping or the kid getting outside somehow (which the mall is near a busy highway).
I continued to shop around the store keeping my ears open and watching all the employees circle the store like sharks searching everywhere for him.
At one point, I asked an employee "Did i hear that you are looking for a lost little boy?"
He blew me off, not wanting to share any information which confused me. Why wouldn't you want all the help that you can get? It's not a time to keep people's privacy.

After 20 mins, i thought that i heard someone say that they had found him. But apparently i was wrong, maybe they were asking if he was found instead of telling. I was in part of the store where there weren't many people and there he was. A blonde little boy. Hiding in the close rack. Peeking his sweet little face out from behind the clothes.
I bent down and said hello. Asked him where is mommy is.
My heart squeezing with pain when the question escaped my mouth. I know how it feels to be separated from my boy.  and the panic of it all at first.
He didn't really talk well. So i stood up and looked around for another adult.
It crossed my mind that there was a possibility that they would think that i took him. Maybe not, they don't know my story. They don't know that i am only half way to crazy town, not fully there yet.
I walked out of the section and grabbed one of the circling associates. "I found a baby boy, alone without his mother."
She looked surprised by my sentence even though you could tell that she already knew what she was doing, which was looking for him. "You did??" Her adrenaline was high.
"Yes he is right over here."
I led her to the boy and within seconds she was on her walky-talky and we were surrounded by store employees.
I started to choke up with tears. It's just not fair. I want someone to find my little boy in the clothes racks. I turned and walked away before anyone could thank me. While i was walking away i heard them say that the mother had took to searching the mall for him but was on her way back.

I'm surprised how emotional the entire situation made me.
I'm glad that i could help get him back to his mother where he belongs.
I just wish some one could help me in the same way.

At Random Visits.

I had an amazing day on thursday. I got to hang out with Josh, Kari, Stella, Margot and Leo that were here in town for a visit. It is SO awesome to sit with someone from the blog world and just chat. Just in case you are all wondering, they are just as cool if not cooler as their blog makes them out to be. Very awesome folks, awesome personalities, comforting presences to be around. I feel so lucky to have met them and get to know them even more. It was healing for me and fun.
I guess that is one of the benefits of living up here on the Lost coast, all my Cali baby loss bloggers travel up here to vacation and i reap the benefits.
The long lunch left me feeling so grateful for all of you guys. Don't know where i would be in this grief without you.

*****

My Dad is starting to grieve the loss of Truman more now that the year mark is here. 

It's funny how everyone reacts differently with grief.

I should have known because he was similar in his patterns when his parents died.

He has been talking more about Truman and everything that happened lately to me.

He has expressed that looking back now, he realizes that he was just in so much shock. Now that the shock is wearing away there is sadness.

I appreciate that he fills me in on his thoughts and emotions. It was a loss for him too. One that almost cost him his daughter, too.

As the days creep closer all I wish is that August 4th meant nothing to me, that it was just any other random day of the year, that he was still here.

We sold a painting this week at work... I glanced at it's name, which was August 4. That's when the wish hit me, I am so attached now to this day, the worst day of my life. 8/4/11. fuck.

*****

My friends Nate and Kayla live in Redding. They use to live here and travel back here quite often. They have a little girl named Rylee who is about 40 days older then Truman.

Kayla has been extremely supportive since Truman died. She has written and called and sent thoughtful gifts and really gone the extra mile to be there for me.

They came to town this week and asked me to be their daughter's "god-mother". Not in the religious sense, just in the sense that i will be a special woman figure in her life. I was honored and touched to me asked. 

There were some complicated emotions at play that i'm not really sure how to write about. 

It was the feeling of honor and pride and also deep missing of Truman and my other god-daughter, Coura, and wishing that she was still a huge part of my life. I hate that losing Truman has changed so many things. It changed my relationship with Coura and her mom and i hate it but it's not something that i know how to change, at all. I'm having a hard time accepting that i will know these children better then i know my own son. I'll have more time with them. and it's just not fair. it fucking hurts my heart.

Either way though i feel honored and proud to have a second god-daughter, Rylee. She is a cute bundle of feistiness, a little firecracker.

freeform mind release

With the year mark coming up fast, i have been reflecting a lot.
As of July 24th, 2011
I was being sucked up into the the vortex of this life... even on the way up, suspended in the air, strapped into the emergency airlift, i had a smile on my face, hoping
my innocence was a protective thing.
of course everything would be fine.
i just had to get over this little rough patch.
then that rough path turned into another and then into another.
August 4th, 2011.
he died.
I was dropped from my suspended place of hope and innocence and fell hard.
broke... shattered into a trillion little pieces.
everything changed in that moment.
The axis upon which my entire world turned.
the pain ripped through me like thunder.
deafening. loud. pain.
So loud that it still clouds my life today.
darkening even the sunniest days.
everything is dulled.
i cried out for him in my sleep. sobbed for my baby.
walked out of the hospital with empty arms.
an empty carseat.
not enough painful words to ever describe what carried me across the golden gate bridge and home and every single day up to here.

so i hid. from everything.
up here in my little bird nest that had made for us and our baby.
i cried. i slept.
my biggest move of the day was letting the dogs out and getting the mail.
there were days that i was surprised that i even woke up breathing.
there i was.

there i was.
not living at all really, for most of this past year.
just trying to breathe and find one pin drop of light
in a dark room filled with no hope

"I love him"
speaks nothing of how big my heart swells everytime i remember our time together, for how much i feel.
he is mine and i am his.
I love his name.
I want it there on paper.
in my ears, in my eyes, in my heart.
more then anything i want to hear his voice, as a child and then a grown man
calling me Mom.
such a simple gesture that has always caught my ears.
like for years when trying things on in fitting rooms... the mother's and daughters one stall over.
calling for each other, and my ears would perk.
so that's what I am missing. it's never came too easily....

I want to open the window and yell his name so loud that all the neighborhood kids can hear it.
I want his painting on my fridge
and his sticky sweaty head slumped sleeping on my shoulder
I want to meet his children.
I want to watch his life unfold.

everything changed, everything fell.
my family. my friends. my career. myself. the way i think. the way i feel about life.
Jeff lost his son and the girl he used to know. My Dad lost his grandson and the security of his daughters health. my friends lost me too, i am different in countless ways.
It's times like that when i can buy into the "we are all connected" bit
because there is no way that fall, that cannon ball, that bomb, didn't ripple back and forth.
through all of this. A mother's love is just way too strong big connection.
341 days without him
it sounds like nothing.
like no time has really passed.
it has been exhausting.
everyday it gets more complex
I have picked myself up every single day for 341 days
no mother should ever have to go this long without seeing or hearing from her child.

why haven't i dreamt of him yet?

the letters and the love and the gratitude and the caring has been large and loud too
but nothing is louder then that pain
nothing is big enough to justify it or make sense of it
no picture, no quote from some smart famous person, no bible verse.

the course of my entire life changed this year.
with him.
my little lion cub.

I have learned how to juggle my grief.
How to hush and soothe it for the time being, how to compact it into a time slot after hours,
so that i can smile for others.
Comfort them in being seemingly content.
that is mostly for the strangers and the assholes who say hurtful things. and the overall society.
I have learned how to hurt on this level and still some-what be socially acceptable.
but it is fake. it is acting. but selfish too. it's out of the kindness of my heart and also for the rewards of not being outcasted.

The price of love at this level is grief at this level.
and no one wants to hear the grief pains without the love involved.
i am grateful that some of my best friends love Truman too.
They love him enough to just let me move through this in the most un-graceful and un-stoic way.
the way i need to- kicking and screaming, bitching and complaining.
I am grateful for all of them... it hasn't been easy for them either, to watch and listen.

My time with Truman now-a-days is in the raspberry patch, in the garden.
my time in smelling the flowers, he fills my mind, every time.
it's in the sunlight hitting my face, he is there with me and every single time i wish it was in the physical form.
my time with his pictures, his baby blanket, his bag full of onesies
my time with Truman is in those few moments before i fall asleep.
and when i run.
I run for my hopes and my fears, equally.
I run because its a time when i can punish my body for betraying me.
I run because its a time where my thoughts run towards Truman.
I run because i am training for this life without him.
that's the heaviest weight that i've ever lifted.

this "new normal"
it's still a work in progress.

Today at work a woman walked in and said to me "my friend's baby just died today."
The words almost pushed me off my feet.
I have been having a rough past few days, with the year mark closing in, i feel confused, disoriented and grief stricken in that silent and wordless way.
I am a fake.
I fake happiness and okay-ness all day long, every single day with almost every single encounter that i have. It makes life here very superficial on a day to day basis, but no complaints... maybe all my customers are faking it too. You never know.

As soon as my customer confessed such horrible news, i mumbled out "my baby died too."
Next thing I know we are comforting each other as I listen to her story about her son who was born stillborn because she was overdue and no one would take her seriously enough to run a stress test on them. Unbelievable the shit that goes on. and i mean SHIT. Are you kidding me? Like how does this even happen? No one deserves this.

Her friend is down at UCSF too... her baby died because of an amniocentesis situation, her fluids weren't bouncing back and her son died.
She texted her friend while we talked that her breasts were sore and all she wants is him back.
Her statement sent me back to UCSF and the blur of it all. The pain. the confusion. it's so completely disorienting and it changes the course of your entire life.
I gave her 2 of my Humboldt Faces of Loss cards and told her to contact me whenever, that i'd love to get together with her and her friend. We spoke briefly about how the first few months after are just such a time on hiding and isolation, we both agreed that that was our experience at least.

Then her other friend came in and opened up that she had had two miscarriages.

Talking with them made me re-realize that SO many parents experience the pain that we know and live with. Everyone's story is different and sucks in their own intense ways.


****************

This in between state of being.... a mother with no child here..... is exhausting. I want to try to have another baby as soon as possible but there is just SO much more to think about now.
Not just their life, but mine... will i survive?
Will I get pre-eclampsia?
If so how bad?
What if i end up with permanent damage to my organs or worse, brain?
What if the baby lives but is sick or special needs?
Can we go through nerve wracking surgeries?
How can we afford that?
What if the baby dies like Truman did?
Can i go through losing another child?
I'm not sure that i can mentally or emotionally handle that.
What if the child lives and then dies at like 25? or 35? or 45?
Can i handle any of this?
Can anyone else really handle it either?
Or does everyone just throw themselves to the wind and hope for the best?
What if i try to get pregnant and can't?
What if Truman is the only child that we ever have?
How would I handle that?
Trying means having to face SO many of these questions.

I'm putting these questions on hold.
Jeff will be applying to UC Davis. That is step one.
If he gets in then I can start to face some of these questions because i will be close enough to doctors who can take me.