June in Black

It's June again.  I hate June.  My baby's angelversary comes up at the end of the month.  On that day seven years ago, my world and my life shattered.

I had a one-time job that morning.  I made sure my sweet baby was secure on the bed, away from the edge.  There was a stack of pillows to make sure even if she somehow rolled to that edge, she would not hit the ground.  I left her daddy watching over her.  When I left, I felt reassured life would be as normal.  Three hours later, I called home, and my husband told me to go to the hospital.  Alli had either rolled or crawled off the bed in her sleep such that my husband didn't hear more than a quick squawk.  She'd pushed away a heavy pillow on top and suffocated in the pillow below without turning her head to breathe.  We did not know until I showed up at the hospital that they couldn't revive her.  She'd shown signs of SIDS, times she'd slept so deeply it was hard to wake her.  I'd had no idea, however, that this was even a possibility.  I had never lost a child other than an early miscarriage, so I didn't imagine it could happen to me.

        At that time, I was launched into the deepest, darkest time of my life.  Between mourning and dealing with a corrupt branch of DCSF that falsified an investigation to try to ruin our family and our lives, we were launched into hell.  I would call it a nightmare, but you awake from a nightmare.  It felt like nothing we could do or say for ten long months could prove we were innocent.  We were liberated only through a series of miracles and the protection of our angel.

        Before all of this happened, June was just another month.  Now, June is a time to dredge up memories of tragedy and death.   Memories like that replay in our heads as if from a horror movie, badly disjointed and scarring.  Knocks at my door still terrorize me.  My birthday was two weeks after that most terrible day.  I went from looking forward to my birthday to dreading it every year.  Too many badly-timed miscarriages plus Alli's loss have ruined it forever.  It doesn't matter how good the month is.  It doesn't matter how many wonderful things happen at that time of the summer.  The colors go from vibrant to gray.  The day is always painful.  I brace myself to prepare, but it does no good.

            As I said in my last blog, I've been reviewing my poetry for a contest.  I think the pain I went through is best described through the one I wrote the day after I lost her:

****
“Day after Death”

Pain, 
searing, numbing,
erupting like molten lava,
clouding my vision
with burning ash. 

Food tastes like dirt
from the grave. 
I choke it down to fill the void, 
but the hole in my heart still bleeds. 

Everything I see 
connects to chubby toes, 
chunky legs,
petal-soft cheeks, 
pool-blue eyes
staring at me from around the breast.   
I reach out and long to touch 
peach fuzz across tender head, 
smooth skin on her body,
cold plastic bottle, eagerly slurped,
by a pink mouth that itches to smile.  

Where are you, my angel? I ache for you. 
My every thought reaches out to you, 
wondering how yesterday could have gone
if I had been more careful
with your fragility.

My only comforts, 
the remains 
of my family and, above all, knowing one day
you will fill my arms again.  
****

       Seven years have passed.  The loss doesn't hurt as much.  However, it still hurts, especially on the anniversaries.  I know I'll survive this one as I have all the others.  The Lord will help me through.  I know one day, I will hold my babies again.  I live for that day.  In the meantime, I will still have that hole in my heart, and it will continue to seep blood.

Old Poetry

I've been reviewing my old poetry with an eye toward a writing contest.  I've taken classes on writing poetry, one from a former poet laureate of Utah.  This does not mean I'm a great poet.  It just means I've learned a few things about what makes a good poem and what makes a mediocre one.  I've never quite achieved past mediocrity.  But I have been able to write through a lot of my pain.  For the most part, poetry only comes when I feel something deeply.  Any "poetry" I write under any less trying moments feels contrived and hollow, at least to me.  I've written a lot of mediocre but emotionally wrenching poetry on loss, on miscarriage and on the loss of my angel.  It's hard to reread them either because they take me back into a moment of pain or fail to, meaning it hurts to know that I couldn't quite convey the horror of the moment, no matter how hard I tried.  Either way, revisiting those moments is hard.

At the same time, I know there is a healing power in writing and reading that poetry.  I once took a class on trauma writing.  The whole course was based on the assertion that healing comes through self-expression.  Some argue that revisiting just causes trauma all over again.  But for me, there are few better ways to work through the pain than by expressing it, putting it to paper.  My master's thesis went one step further and explored the healing space created by fiction.  But as for writing, there are few ways to try to approach my pain and deal with it faster than through poetry.  I don't believe in rhymed poetry. I may use alliteration to tie together sounds, but truly rhymed poetry rarely works well for me unless the author is William Shakespeare.

But how do I tell which is objectively "best" and, therefore, most deserving of someone else's attention?  Poetry is so very subjective.  Is it best because it most vividly conveys the emotion to the reader, because it uses all the poetic conventions, or because of something else I can't possibly know?   It all hurts.  It all helped me through hurt.  There was a time I would have compared my writings to children.  I would have asked how I could choose.  I don't make that comparison anymore.  There is no comparison.  I would lose 100 hard drives with 100 carefully written, award-winning novels on each before I would choose to have one miscarriage, one child loss of any sort, again.  All I can do is use poetry to express the pain of child loss.  Not that any words quite capture that pain.  They can't.  The pain of child loss is beyond human words.  But here is a poem that takes me back to that first day, the day everything was so fresh that I thought I would die of the pain.  It's simply entitled "Pain."  Objectively, it's not a great poem.  But anyone who has ever lost a child ought to recognize the emotions:

"Pain"

Pain

Blinding, numbing

Burning like a volcano

And clouding out everything

From my vision.

Everything tastes like dirt or salt.

I choke it down to fill the emptiness

But the real emptiness remains.

Everything I see, touch, think about

Links back to chubby toes,

Chunky little legs

Soft little cheeks,

Bright blue eyes

Staring at me from around the breast,

Peach fuzz across the soft head,

Round little bum

Aimed at me for a change

Preparatory to eating.

Where are you, my angel?

I long for you.

My every thought is for you,

Wondering how yesterday could have gone

If I’d have been just a little more careful

With your fragility.

My only comforts,

Your older brother and sister,

Your daddy

And above all knowing one day

You will fill my arms again.  

So back I go to staring at mediocre expressions of loss and healing, hoping to guess right, to find the one or two or three or four out of so many that may help someone else feel something of what I felt in that moment.  Because I guess the real truth beyond poetry, or any writing, is that unless you make the reader feel something, you've missed the boat.  Your writing will fall flat.  Here's hoping I find something that takes shape in the reader's mind and helps them find a little healing, too.