Unimaginable

Each year as October rolls around I can feel the grief settling in. Not that it isn’t always present but it becomes extremely heavy. My mind becomes foggy. Fatigue sets in. 

I have learned over the last twelve years to embrace this time. To lean in to my grief season. I take off work the entire week of A’s birthday. To tap into the grief, I go through his photo album, re-read sympathy cards from 2011, watch movies about death and dying, read books about babyloss and grief. I want to get those big, stormy emotions flowing. I’m going to be lethargic and emotionally fragile this time of year no matter what (it’s like my psyche remembers even if I try to distract myself) so I might as well make it therapeutic. 

This year, with a two-year-old at home, I have packed up my grief kit and left the house. I cannot fall apart when my toddler is nearby constantly needing me and my maternal spidey sense is on alert. So I’m here at the public library, stifling my crying while I sit in a corner with soft instrumental music coming through my headphones and reading Brooke D. Taylor’s memoir, “Unimaginable.” 

Maybe you know Brooke and her story from her blog - by the brooke. Either way, it seems like every other page she hits me right in the heart. Her ability to verbalize the experience of stillbirth and the aftermath is such a gift for me. It affirms what I’ve been through, how I have felt (and still feel). It crystalizes my own experience in ways that deepen my comprehension of it.

I haven’t even finished the book yet (I likely will before grief week is over) but I absolutely recommend it. Thank you Brooke for being brave enough to publish your most vulnerable times and feelings.

Grief Doula

Doulas offer support services during labor and delivery and also postpartum when parents are physically and emotionally spent. As I lay in bed reading Dear Cheyenne and connecting with my own grief eight years out, I thought how nice it would be to have a grief doula. The doula would cook soul soothing food (for me, rich soups, pork in any variation and plenty of sweets), make tea/coffee, cover me with a heavy blanket when I sat down to read and journal. The doula would also be unfazed by the intense emotions pouring forth from across the spectrum; quietly moving breakable things out of the way when rage sets in and I physically lash out. Sitting with me while I howl in anguish and choke on my tears. Tucking me in for a nap after all the exhausting grief work.

I think this fantasy stems in part from the solitude of grief; how alone I sometimes feel with all the thoughts and feelings; with the weight of grief. Part of it, obviously, is inspired by how vulnerable I feel when I surrender to my grief. The idea of having someone take care of me when I’m feeling shattered instead of the status quo - me taking care of everyone else in my household.

Maybe there’s a business venture here…

Grief Quotes #8

"In a sense, the process of mourning is an outward expression of that love that now has no physical or interpersonal place to be enacted."

- Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

From Bearing the Unbearable

Grief Quotes #7

"Grief can be terrifying.

And why would we not be afraid? Deep in grief, we look up and see the reflection in our mirror is not our own, not us as we have previously known ourselves. We are changed, and we do not recognize the stranger we have become. We long for our old lives, our old selves; we crave meaning and belonging - we ache for them.

The yearning is unquenchable.

And that sense of emptiness propels us toward unsuccessful attempt to fill that person-shaped hole. The distractions we use to take us from our feelings are one way we try to state that emptiness.

The only alternative to distraction is being with grief - one painful, terrifying moment at a time."

- Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

From Bearing the Unbearable

This passage resonates with me. Because A was our first child, I had the luxury of throwing myself into my grief. I didn't have living children who needed me to be functional. E stayed home with me for the first two weeks. After that, I had another 4 weeks of maternity leave to hole up and relinquish myself to the waves of emotions. It was exhausting; it was ugly and most of the time I wondered if any of the grief work was having an effect.

In retrospect, I do believe that those early weeks and months of devoting myself to processing A's death and being with the grief put me in a better place when Dragon came along. Once we had a living baby, there was hardly a spare minute to cry and breakdown. If I hadn't faced my grief head-on in those early months, I wouldn't be the functional person I am today.

Not that there isn't a place for distraction in traumatic grief. E and I binge watched every season of The Big Bang Theory (online shows meant no chance of diaper commercials triggering a meltdown). I guess, like most of life, it's about balance. Balancing distraction and "being with grief." And, like most of life, it's easier said than done.

Grief Quotes #6

"There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms."

- Charlotte Bronte

Grief Quotes #5

"The thing about grief is that there isn't a place or time at which we arrive once-and-for-all at peace, or healing, or completion."

- Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

From Bearing the Unbearable

Grief Quotes #4

"It's typically American to equate healing with doing something. When we have a problem, we fix it, and we prefer to do it quickly. But fixing is not the same as healing; in fact it can easily get in the way of healing...Healing happens not through doing but through feeling."

- Elio Frattaroli