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.

Deja Vu

6 1/2 years ago, we went through hell with the state after my baby's death.  They tried to blame us for her death, even though it was clearly an accident.  I want to say it was a nightmare, but you wake up from a nightmare.  I am still scared of knocks at my door.  As I said a few weeks ago, they committed multiple crimes and lied in multiple ways in an attempt to frame us for negligent homicide.  For ten months, they could knock at any time and take our kids away just because they had the legal right.  And we could offer no proof nor defense that they'd accept, even upon the admitted and proven lies of one of their workers.  I'd rather face a firing squad than face losing my kids.  All of this is a big reason we have struggled to heal from my baby's loss.

This last week, I had a representative of the state show up on my doorstep unannounced.  Why?  Because somebody in the cafeteria saw my boy eating cold ramen and my girl expressing frustration about being hungry.  Did that busybody bother to ask why?  No.  She assumed it was because they didn't have food at home.  So she reported us to DCSF.  And my kids were interrogated in their school because we hadn't yet filled out the Reverse Miranda paperwork that would protect them from the state and give them the rights they should have to only be interrogated in the presence of parents and a lawyer.  That paperwork is now in place, so my kids don't have to be made to feel insecure in their school and pitted against their parents by people who pretend to care.

Later the day the DCSF worker showed up most recently, I made the inquiries that busybody in the cafeteria didn't bother to make.  My boy was eating the cold ramen he packed himself because he decided he preferred cold ramen over waiting for the lunch monitor, an upper-grade kid, to cook his food for him.  He figured it took too long.  Why did my girl complain about hunger that day? Because a lunch monitor screwed up the food my girl packed for herself then threw it away.  And to top it off, the person who made the call to the state was in charge of lunch monitors.

So basically, this woman blamed me for her negligence, thereby making my kids' school feel less safe and launching me back into the nightmare that was the ten months following my baby's death.  And it did feel like we were launched back in hell for the days that followed that knock on the door a little over a week ago.  Over cold ramen and a misunderstanding of the reason for a nine-year-old's histrionics.  This is called jerky behavior on the part of that school employee.  The reps of the state disappeared when we proved conclusively the latest call was based on misinformation and that they had no grounds.  But will there be any negative consequences visited on the cafeteria worker for a false report?  There should be since it's illegal to misreport, but there won't be.  Instead, we get to live with the thought that there is a dangerous person in the cafeteria, one who thinks trivial items like one day's unsatisfactory lunch and cold ramen sound like abuse, one who would rather sneak around and conduct witch hunts rather than ask questions and communicate openly.

For 6 1/2 years, I feared the state's visit since the first time, when they showed how unethical they could be in a legal system that validates anything they want to do under the false assumption they wouldn't lie.  I should feel triumphant that we fended off their attack.  Instead, I feel insecure in my home, in my kids' school, everywhere because the illusion of safety for me and my kids is gone again.  And the memories of those tragic days of loss and victimization have resurfaced.   I'm trying to regain my peace.  But it will take a long, long time.

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.