So I just watched this news clip, sent to me by my contact at Share.
OOf. The pit of my stomach has turned over.
It is just amazing to me how high functioning I am on a daily basis, and how much stuff is so conveniently packed away even in me, an emotionally out-there person. I am open about my feelings, I talk about Charlotte all the time, my work is to deal with grief and grieving people. I am there.
Yet I think how I do this, is that I also avoid the trigger points that personalize this for me. The points that say, that was YOUR baby who died. YOU were the person saying goodbye to your baby. The points that make me remember what it actually felt like to hold my little, still baby, to have just one day with her, and to say goodbye to her. I remember the feelings and I describe them all the time in my writing, but I'm not feeling them all over again, necessarily, whileI do that. I'm just telling.
Yet I think how I do this, is that I also avoid the trigger points that personalize this for me. The points that say, that was YOUR baby who died. YOU were the person saying goodbye to your baby. The points that make me remember what it actually felt like to hold my little, still baby, to have just one day with her, and to say goodbye to her. I remember the feelings and I describe them all the time in my writing, but I'm not feeling them all over again, necessarily, whileI do that. I'm just telling.
Then, I'll watch something like this. And suddenly I am just like that woman sitting in the chair, weeping copiously into her daughter's little face. I can feel that feeling she has in her heart right there, one I could never hope to describe to you. It is temptation beyond all explanation, this beautiful, perfect child, right there in your lap, sitting in front of your face, but you know she will soon be gone. It is this love so huge and enormous that you feel like you are being swallowed, but instead of the jaws swallowing you they rip you in half and throw the pieces of you into the wind to blow around and resettle elsewhere. It is the feeling of the impossible, of the thing that cannot possibly happen to you, of the event that simply can't happen to your little baby. It is deep, hurting, painful sadness. It is wanting to run away because you just can't do this. It is knowing that all the beauty of the world, and all the love that you hold inside of you, will be unknown to this little child, this tiny baby who has just missed out on her entire life. Her entire life.
I'm sad now. I miss my baby. And I wish I didn't have to be that woman. When that sadness comes out of me I just don't know quite how to put it back.
3 comments:
I watched that video too. It hurts so much--so much. And you are right, it is a hurt you can never, ever explain to anyone. And there it is, in that mom's face and in her dad's face. I know it. And once it is out, it is hard to put back.
I'm so sorry for your grief, always, and especially in these clear poignant moments.
Thank you for posting this. I emailed the link to the director of the family support services in my community (who happens to be a relative) and to a wonderful CNM.
I, too, am sorry for your loss.
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