Understanding

In the almost three years since we lost Maxie, a lot of people in our lives have lost a lot of people.  People have lost grandparents, parents, siblings, friends, and there have even been a few children lost over these past years.  Loss is something that none of us can escape, even if we believe that bad things only happen to "other people".  The fact is - some day your parents will die.  You may be lucky enough to never suffer a tragic loss, like we have....i.e: maybe you are lucky enough to only lose people who have lived long and full lives.....but it still might feel tragic to you.  Your mother, your father, your grandparent might be the closest person you have on earth.  Even if they die at 100 years old, it might feel tragic.

Over and over again, people reach out to me and say "you are the only one who understands what this feels like".  They are talking about grief - and sadly, I am actually NOT the only one who understands - but grief has a way of making you feel like you are alone, in a world of wildly happy and superficial people who don't have a care in the world.  I know that I often feel like the Abby that my non-grieving friends see is an entirely different person that the grieving ones do.  I have a split personality and each side has only pieces of authenticity.  I am neither entirely one nor the other but I cannot seem to exist as both at the same time.  I am constantly choosing sides.

People tell me,  "I didn't understand what you were talking about until I experienced it myself" - meaning - they didn't understand that the pain is so excruciating that it feels impossible to escape, to distract oneself, to imagine any kind of a future at all without the person you've lost.  And when I hear this, it is almost never in the context of losing a child. Grief is grief  - it is a kind of universal pain.  Still - losing a child?  Take that grief that you finally understand and multiply it by 1000 or 1,000,000.  There can be nothing worse.  I am still convinced.  Not to belittle anyone's grief - just to say that losing a child has to be the most unnatural thing I could ever imagine....and I've imagined a lot of worst case scenarios in my life.  Well before losing Max, losing a child was always the worst one I could think of.

I guess what I am saying is this - before you judge, before you think to yourself "I would do this better than she is doing it", before you nod your head in knowing that you are the lucky one - think about this - one day you might be reaching out to me to say, "I never understood until now".

Unpacking

I finally just unpacked my bag from Georgia yesterday. It was a really big bag. I had already unpacked most of my own stuff when I got home but was happy yesterday to uncover some clothes that I had forgotten about (and had been looking for these past weeks - like a moron!) Most of the suitcase was filled with stuff for the baby - cute little pink and purple onesies, a frilly little baby dress, tons of soft swaddle blankets, cloth diapers and teeny tiny socks. I unpacked slowly, and over time, not wanting to feel the full weight of the disappointment all at once. 

Emotionally unpacking this experience is something I really didn't want to have to do. It's something that I still don't really want to do.  I want to bundle it all up in a bag and forget about it.  I want to leave it on the bedroom floor, like I left my suitcase, and just pile other stuff on top of it.  I want to forget what is in the bag and maybe even pretend it didn't happen - because there is just too much to unpack and it is too intertwined with the much more crushing loss of Maxie. If he hadn't died, I really don't think this experience would have happened at all.  And packing up baby stuff - looking for places to put it all - and wondering, with a heavy heart, whether it will ever be used, is all too familiar.  Much different - but still familiar.

When I got home, several people offered to put me in touch with their friends who could talk to me about their failed adoption experiences. A few people told me that they knew it was "like a death" - words that stung to hear.  Not bringing home this baby was not like a death.  The death of a child doesn't only mean an end to the fantasies that the parents had for their child but it also (and much more horrifically) means the end of that child's life. The little girl I fell in love with in Georgia still lives - she has people who love her, an older sibling, a bunch of experiences waiting for her in the future. Do I wish she was mine?  Yes!  Totally.  Am I completely turned upside down by having to leave her there?  For sure.  But, all this really is is the end of a certain dream of mine. It doesn't even compare to having to know that Max will never have dreams of his own - but I'm still sad.

I have finally unpacked the contents of that suitcase but I need to leave almost all of the emotional stuff packed up.  There are so many layers of hurt and I just haven't gotten to the point yet where I can look at it at all without becoming completely unglued....and unglued was exactly how I felt on my last day there. It was awful and I am scared to let myself go there again. I've definitely learned by now that all wounds, great and small, take time to heal.  I guess I will have to postpone the healing with this one (and so many others that have come over the last few years) because I am still working on trying to heal (as much as possible) the heartbreak of Max dying.  I do know that leaving Georgia without that baby girl opened up the Maxie wound.  When I have allowed it to surface, even momentarily, it hasn't been pretty.

I have no reason to be posting the photo below except that my grandma used to always tell us grandkids that we were her best medicine.  I never really thought about the meaning.  I just thought it was one of those grandmotherly things to say.  But, just look at this kid!  It pretty hard to stay sad with this guy around. 

Mosie - he really IS my best medicine.

Conflicted

I've been feeling very conflicting lately about my blog. I fear that by writing about our experience and our profound sense of loss and horror, that I've somehow cheapened the experience or commoditized Maxie's brief life. I worry that I somehow threw Maxie's death into a bucket with all of the other disappointing and upsetting things that happen in life, where I meant to set it apart. What I've meant to say is that Maxie's life was more precious to me than even my own and that any thing that could ever happen to ME would pale in comparison to what happened to HIM.

My life's disappointments before and since losing Maxie don't add up to even a small pile compared to the mountain that is his loss of life. They are the things that happen to us all because sadly, life is messy. What happened to our lives the day that Maxie stopped breathing goes so far beyond "messy".  But, words are inadequate.  Woefully inadequate.

Because there is no explaining & there is no imagining, there is no way to verbally elevate the loss of our son to the degree at which it stands - "outshining" all of the awful and horrific happenings I could have ever imagined happening to me, anyone I love, or to the little boy - the person - who meant more to us than anyone ever had before.  I feel almost embarrassed that I've even tried to explain it and I am not really sure what to do moving forward.

At Once

There is a theme of questioning that keeps coming back, which almost sounds like an accusation, even though I don't think it is meant to be.  It's "Have you allowed yourself to really love and attach to Mo?"  It seems like a crazy question to me but I get asked this all of the time - almost always by people who've never really seen me with Mo.   I guess when people hear me crying and feeling so helpless and destroyed by Maxie's death, they assume that means I must not have enough love leftover for Mo.  I'm pretty sure that if Max were alive, nobody would ask me that question. 

I know plenty of people with more than one child, and somehow, they manage to love them all.  They can actually go through periods of being a little more worried about one child, or attending to the health of another - but nobody ever bothers to wonder whether they have enough space for all of the children.  There is no question because we know that it is biological and completely normal for a parent to love each of their children with equal passion and enthusiasm.  There is no question because we can see them loving their children equally.  If you saw me with Mo, I don't think there would be a question.  I love him completely - with my entire soul - with every cell in my body.  He acts like a child who is given boatloads of love too.  I never worry that he doesn't feel our love.

What is funny is when I really button up, when I focus all of my attention on Mo and put thoughts of Max out of my mind, I get, "Have you allowed yourself to grieve?".  As if I am somehow emotionless because I am not crying right then.  It's actually a somewhat hilarious conundrum.  If I am not sharing and crying all of the time - I am cold.....if I am sharing and crying - I am stuck. 

I know, better than most, how possible it is to be fully sad and disappointed by life and at the very same time - in the exact same moment, in fact - feel completely filled with joy.  It is hard to imagine.  I know.  I hope you never ever feel it.  But, when I cry about Max...  When I talk about how much I miss him...  When I sob over my broken heart and his beautiful life that ended much too quickly - it doesn't mean that I've forgotten the perfect, hilarious, smart, interested, lovely little boy that is his little brother.  He is the light of my life - the one I am able to give my whole heart to - the most special person in my world. 

Don't worry - Mo is loved.  Completely and thoroughly. As is Maxie.  Forever and ongoing.  To the Moon and back....and back...and back.