LIbraries, Foot Massages, Grief Judgments and a Shout Out

I have been hanging out in the library lately.  I am thinking I need to do it more often.  I work better in the library and I like feeling totally anonymous there.  There ARE kids but they are usually in a special room that is really like a library of their own.  There are books about grant writing and fundraising for my workly pursuits and books about life after death and grief for my sadly pursuits.  Today I got up to use the bathroom and lost my seat.  When I came back, I got a great seat in a little cubicle next to some AWESOME books.  I wanted to pull every one of them off the shelf and read them right then and there.  That's when I realized I was in the Young Adult Section.  Twilight, Gossip Girl, and other teen romance stuff.  I am not incredibly mature.  Next time I need a breather, I should probably just follow my impulse and pick up one of the teen books.  Anything to give the grieving brain a rest.

The coolest thing happened in my therapy last week.  My therapist stood up and came over to my chair and said that she thought I looked tense.  Then she started giving me a shoulder massage.  She has STRONG hands.  "Man Hands" even!  All I could say was, "Have you had these hands the whole time I have been seeing you?  We have lots of time to make up for!".  I have now received two sessions with shoulder and FEET massage as well. So, I get to do regular talk therapy and get a rub down.....TOGETHER!  All therapists should combine the two practices.  Perhaps that will be my next professional pursuit - combo therapy.  I have left feeling lighter two weeks in a row now!

I had a really yucky realization this week.  I think that some people say insensitive stuff about moving on and whatever because Max was a baby.  I mentioned it to another bereaved parent who lost a three year old and he agreed.  He thinks people probably don't consider a baby to have had a full personality or as deep of a connection to us.  He even had an example of someone who said something about how SIDS babies aren't as big of a loss as other children.  The realization came on the heels of reading about a woman who participates in the same online SIDS forum as me.  She said that another SIDS mommy, who also lost a 9 month old, made a comment about not relating to parents of SIDS babies who weren't as old as her 9 month old.  From what I gather, she felt that her loss was more significant because her baby was older than most SIDS babies.  What I can say is this: while I feel angry all day long that Maxie lost his life to SIDS, I am grateful all of the time that I got him a few months more than the average parent gets with their SIDS babies.  It breaks my heart that someone lost their baby at 7 weeks and never got to do the stuff that Max and I did together and it breaks my heart that someone lost their baby at 3 years old and built so many memories with their child.  It breaks my heart that we have the shared experience of having our dreams and hopes for our futures with our children that we loved devastated.  What breaks my heart even more is that these beautiful, deserving, well-loved children didn't get to do everything that they were put on this earth to do.  It kills me that we, who LOVED our children, who wanted our children and felt so blessed to have them, lost them.  Our grief therapist says to "Compare is to Despair" - it doesn't make you feel any better.  While Max may have never uttered one word, I communicated with him better than I have with anyone else in my life.  We got each other - that's love!

Hey - I got a "shout out" on my new friend Molly's blog.  She also posted a photo of us.  I think it is the first photo that has been taken of me since Max died.  It is NO BUENO!  I am looking much worse than I even thought.  I could have sworn I put on my awesome emphasEYES liner and Color Me Beatiful mascara on Tuesday.  I think I need to work on my hairstyle next.  It's BAAAD.  Anyway, she looks cute - I think she is naturally photogenic too!  Check it out - you can see all of the cute photos of her trip to California: http://jacksonparkcity.blogspot.com/2012/02/schizophrentic-vacation.html and you can see what I mean when I say it is obvious how crazy they are about their little boy (because he is SO super cute) and how much their darling Lucy is still with them all of the time.