Grief Wears Many Faces

Had she lived, our daughter would have turned thirteen on December 9th.  I'm sure we would have celebrated such an auspicious occasion with a party, since it's not every day that a child becomes an actual teenager.  There would have been cake, of course.  And many hugs, kisses, and joyful tears. 

But Zoe did not live.  She died before she was ready to be born, and she only lives in our memories and some sonogram pictures these days.  For many years, December was a horrible, horrible month for me.  The weight of unbearable grief, on top of my usual seasonal depression, would pull me into a dark place starting December 1st.  It was a fight just to get out of bed, and sometimes I just called that a victory.  It was even difficult, especially before I had Zane, to see a pregnant woman and not just break on the spot.

Even if my battle is all inside my heart, I'm a fighter.  In the years since, I've pushed and pulled my self out of the darkness every December, because the alternative was not an option for me. And in my inner battles, something happened. Slowly, the face of my grief has changed, melded and molded by time, into something else.

This year marks the first time in thirteen years that I haven't dreaded December 9th.  Instead of feeling a fist squeezed around my heart, choking me with grief, this year I acknowledged her passing with a quiet moment of love, sent out into the world, a prayer whispered into the wind.   My grief has become...bearable, at least for now. Maybe for awhile, maybe not.

A mother never truly gets over the loss of a child, no matter the circumstances. The bonds that join us are never broken, only changed.   People want to think that grief is a finite experience, with a beginning and an end after a particular time period.  It's not.  Grief wears many faces, and lasts forever, and you never know how it will show up, or when. 

On this day, I am grateful for that.

100 Words: Habit

Garrett hit the alarm as it sounded, at exactly six in the morning.  He sat up, the same as every other day.  The dark quiet seemed oppressive, and Garrett drew breath deep into his lungs with difficulty.  Then it was out of bed and into the kitchen for breakfast.

Except the coffee maker was empty and cold. The kitchen was dark. His beloved wife was not standing at the stove, pink curlers in her hair, spatula at the ready.  Her kitchen was bereft, as lost and alone as he was now.

Garrett sat down at the kitchen table and cried.


Written for the 100 Word Challenge.  Go check out Thin Spiral Notebook and read the other entries.

Stargazing

Carolyn, Jake, and I had been sharing our dreams almost as soon as we could speak. We would spend hours during the summer, our backs on a blanket in the backyard of our homes, watching the stars turn in the sky and whispering our dreams, our hopes, our prayers.  Mostly it was just the three of us and our dreams.

Carolyn's dreams of a storybook marriage were shattered by an abusive husband with a gun.  We lost track of Jake. And my dreams died silently inside my womb on a beautiful winter morning.  My despair annihilated what dreams I might have had left, turning my consciousness into a silent, dense bleakness.  I stopped dreaming, grateful for the oblivion of sleep.

I had come back to the summer house because I wanted to be alone with my grief.  I wanted to wrap myself in a shroud, suffocate my anger, and quietly fade into the background.

It was sheer bad luck that Jake was renovating his parent's house next door.  Once a shy boy who never said a word, Jake was now outspoken in his insistence that I rejoin the world. He invited himself over. He brought me dinners, and fussed until I ate.  When I finally hollered that he should leave me alone, Jake had grabbed a blanket from the couch and dragged me into the backyard, where we now lay.

"Do you ever dream anymore?"  Jake asked.

"No," I finally answered.  "I don't dream anymore."

Jake wasn't looking at me, he was looking up at the night sky.  He pointed at some distant constellation, and my eyes followed.

"Some of the stars up there died a long time ago. They're nothing but cold, dead rocks now.  But the light they once gave keeps shining, night after night. There's comfort in that, I think."

"So?"

"So, Lisa," Jake squeezed my hand, a lifeline in the darkness. "Maybe you should start dreaming again."

Photo courtesy of http://writeonedge.com/

I am trying some rearranging out for size, well, just because.  One of those things is making sure that I remember to link up with Write At the Merge.