Graduation

Recently, I went to my kids' graduation from their respective grades.  I had no idea that such a benign activity would lead to the kind of trigger I mentioned in last week's post.  As I watched the kindergartner's sing their song, it occurred to me that my little girl would have been one of them.  I usually think of my angel as a baby.  But the reality is babies don't stay babies for long.  It was one of those moments like in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty," where Maleficent scoffs that for years, her servants have been searching cradles for a princess that would long since outgrown them.  My imagination keeps searching cradles for a baby when children the age she would have been would have just graduated from kindergarten.  The tears sprang to my eyes when it occurred to me they were missing one of their number and always would be.  It was meant to be a moment of celebration, but for me, it was a moment of mourning.

I imagine there will be more moments like that as I notice more and more events she would have been part of had she still been here.  At the same time, I believe in the resurrection.  I believe I will raise her one day.  She will come back and do all of these things that it feels like she will be doing now.  But in the meantime, there will still be a hole in my heart, and I will still hit triggers like this.

Triggers

I imagine most people in mourning know what triggers are.  Those are the things that remind you of your pain, make you feel like your loss happened just now.  Triggers open the door, bypass all defenses, and confront you with the full force of your pain.  When I had just lost my baby, her blanket triggered a sobbing fit.  Pictures, especially the ones I didn't see often, had me curling up in a ball.  Words, items, anything at all can rip off the emotional scabbing built up to protect you from feeling.

This week, it was her song.  I fell in love with the first Josh Groban song I'd ever heard, "To Where You Are."  Unless I'm in the mood to cry, I can't listen to it at all anymore because it became tied to my pain.  It's a direct, visceral time warp.  It doesn't matter what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what is going on.  If that song comes on, six years have not past.  I'm there.  I'm feeling that pain as if it were yesterday, and the tears are streaming down my cheeks.  That's just how it works with triggers.

When my loss was new, I was surrounded by triggers.  Almost everything was a trigger when everything around me reminded me of the day before or the week before when I still held my baby in my arms.  It seemed wrong that the world marched forward normally, that the walls and the floor and the furniture were exactly the same as they were before my arms became empty.  Now, so many years in the future, there are few physical reminders around of my baby, and the ones that I have are those I've seen so often, I have emotional scabs against them, too.  They are rarely triggers anymore.  But when her song comes on, I'm there and then again.

On one hand, I don't like triggers.  I don't want to cry without warning.  On the other hand, are they such a bad thing?  Mourning is healthy.  Forgetting or blocking the one we have lost out of our world entirely can lead to festering pain and a bigger emotional explosion when it comes.  It's okay to let ourselves feel, if only for a little while.  Triggers are okay.  We all need triggers, which is why they exist in the first place, as an outlet for our bottled up pain.  It's just easier when we don't hit them very often.

Healing Conversation

I have had healing conversations before, chats with people who make me feel understood and my concerns appreciated.  This week, I had one of the more healing discussions that I've had in a while. Just after my baby died, I joined all these support groups online and in person because that's what I needed at the time.  I haven't needed that for a while.  But I've also been a bit stymied about what else I could do to seek healing.  I have done everything I knew to do including reading books on healing, studying scriptures, sincerely praying, joining support groups, talking it out, and writing my pain.  I purchased a book I have been told I need to read about healing spiritually, The Infinite Atonement, so that's one item on my to-do list.  But otherwise, I was at a loss as to achieve forward momentum.

Then through a series of Providential events, I ran into my sister's friend who had lost her baby less than a year ago.  I was impressed with how much peace and joy she was able to attain immediately.  She had sacred spiritual experiences that helped her, but it seemed like a gift from God that she was able to accept and find peace with her loss before she even left the hospital.  Within a short time of her loss, through angelic visitations and inspiration, she was at a point where she could find joy in the memories rather than ache over her loss.  I'm sure she still has down times, but her healing process was nowhere near as rocky as mine has been.  I am 6 years out and still haven't found the joy and peace she received right away.

She hit upon a possible cause for this.  Just after our baby died, the state attempted to tear apart our family.  Through purjury, tampering with evidence, and other unlawful actions, they put my husband and I through hell for power and financial gain.  I won't go into details at this time, but needless to say, the situation made graceful, immediate healing impossible.

Through a series of miracles and divine interventions, we were eventually delivered from their power.  But whenever we start to think about our baby, the pain of that series of injustices we suffered eats at both of us.  I read these books about healing and finding consolation after loss, but the authors don't talk about complicated healing.  They don't talk about how to find joy and light when your world is plunged into darkness beyond just loss.  That's the book I need to write one of these days, particularly with the help of my husband since so little has been written by fathers of angels.

My new friend suggested that we write out the events of those months in all their lurid, ugly detail and then burn that record, bury it and let it go, forgive the people and events involved.  I thought I had let it go, but when she made this suggestion, it felt right.  Even though the supervisor was removed from ongoing cases for breaking laws in another case, even though the direct "investigator" who committed so many crimes against us is no longer in the area or even working for the same organization, we are still haunted, fearful, angry.  Every knock at the door feels like a threat.  It's hard to trust or feel safe.  There is so much pain still beneath the surface, and not all of it loss.

I pray I can find a way to follow this friend's very wise and inspired advice.  I pray I can let that part of my pain go, so I can continue to heal.  I also pray for those who suffer like this, who go through a loss complicated by family, legal, financial, or other considerations.  I know I'm not alone in this.  I know others need my voice, and one day, the Lord will guide me to a way I can use it.

Happy Mother's Day?

Mother's Day reminds me of those I cannot hold.  Mother's Day is supposed to be a day to celebrate motherhood.  But that day can be complicated by so many things.  Some people have lost their mothers, so Mother's Day is a reminder of loss and emptiness.  The same is true for those who have lost a child.  A mom can have 15 children and still have a rough time on Mother's Day because of the one she cannot hold.  That's where I am today.

I love the children I can hold, but I'm feeling the ache of today more than on most such holidays. A really good book I read on the topic is Josie Kilpack's Unsung Lullaby.  It's about a couple who wants nothing so much as to hold one of their own children and yet who face nothing but hardship and pain when it comes to bringing one into this world.  Mother's Day is a hard day for them because of it.  I think a lot of people can identify with that.  

I wish I could call Mother's Day a time of joy, but I can't.  I can still hug my mom, which is great.  And I've brought live children into this world.  I still have two I can hold.  But I have a fleet of angels, Allie and those I never got to hold, whose losses haunt me today.  It does not help that my brother, my best friend all through childhood, died on Mother's Day.  It does not matter when Mother's Day falls.  It will always be, for me, the anniversary of his death and a time of mourning.  

Tomorrow, I will feel nothing but gratitude for my children, my mom, all the many things with which I am blessed.  Tomorrow, I will remind myself that families are forever, and I will hold all of my angel babies and my brother again.  But today, I will feel the loss, allow myself to mourn, and look forward to better days.  

I Believe Gratitude is the Key to Happiness

After Alamanda died, I longed for another baby to fill my arms.  It made sense that if sadness came from empty arms and the absence of baby warmth, cooing, and the smell of fresh baby breath and even the sour smell of tiny baby diapers, all it would take to make me happy was another baby.  I knew another baby could never replace Alamanda, but he or she could fill the empty spaces and relieve the pain.  But instead, I had to learn the hard way that the key to happiness is not from getting what I want but from gratitude for what I have been given. 

When my baby died, the loss left a massive, bloody hole in my heart and my life.  I wanted to get my smile back, but in a world plunged into darkness, my smile was hard to find in a way that wasn’t fake.  Looking at babies, pregnant women, and ultrasounds caused nothing but agony, and in Utah, they’re everywhere.  I kept reading LDS books on healing that showed all you had to do to find healing from the pain worse than any I thought possible was to study scriptures and pray.  Both of these brought peace, as did prayers of friends and family.  But above all, the formula in these books demanded I have another baby for my healing and happiness to be complete.  However, as much as I studied scriptures and prayed earnestly, my rainbow baby never came.  Pregnancy after pregnancy for 13 in a row, I met with more heartache, sometimes a quiet ultrasound with no heartbeat, a hospital visit or other medical intervention, but no baby.  Each time, we bought another porcelain angel for my kids to name, so we could put him or her on the shelf to help them feel the connection and to help them understand the reality of their siblings.  But despite testing and medication from the doctor to prevent another loss, there it came.  I started buying porcelain angels in advance because I figured chances were I would need them.  Every time I prayed about whether to keep trying, I felt like it was not yet time to quit. I have come to believe the reason I was guided this way was because I needed that time to hope in order to heal.  I emotionally needed that crutch, so the Lord let me have it. 

Eventually, I started noticing a pattern in the scriptures and in spiritual thoughts, LDS General Conference Talks, and other places.  Again and again, I heard that joy came not in the getting such as getting a baby but in the gratitude for that which I’d already been richly blessed.  I did not need a baby to complete me.  The Lord would heal me and make me whole, or as whole as I will be until I hold my angels again.  Elder Bowen’s talk from the October 2012 General Conference Really struck me.  He told the story of his journey of healing after his baby died.  He talked of the joy I can have even in spite of the pain, the healing that comes when I realize “How grateful I am to my Father in Heaven that He allows us to love deeply and love eternally. How grateful I am for eternal families. How grateful I am that He has revealed once again through His living prophets the glorious plan of redemption.”  I realized healing is a gift from the Lord, and it comes, in part, through gratitude. 

The Lord has given me so much.  I was blessed with four blissful, though sometimes challenging, months with my angel baby, Alamanda.  She was a truly special spirit who will be mine forever because of Heavenly Father’s plan for families.  I have also been blessed with an army of guardian angels who will watch over me until they can come again and fill my arms.  I have been blessed with a loving husband and two wonderful, warm, vibrant children I can hold and love.  We have been blessed with several pets to fill my days when the kids are in school, including a cat sent specifically to be a hug from Alamanda to my little girl, who still misses her sister.  I have been blessed with talents and opportunities to bless other lives through them. 

I will likely never hold another baby of mine until the Lord comes again.  But I can still find joy and happiness because of gratitude for my blessings and the knowledge that the separation isn’t forever, just for now.