The Mother's day before we lost Alamanda, I got a voice mail that told me my brother was dead. He'd been my best friend all through my childhood, youth, and early adulthood. But for a couple of years before he passed, we hadn't been talking to each other. It is a long, ugly story. But then, without warning, he was gone entirely. He had been gone for a while from my life, really, uninterested in contact. But the news shocked me, really sent me into shock. Until that point, I hadn't lost anyone closer to me than a beloved pet, all of my grandparents, who were ailing and not particularly close to me when they passed, and an uncle I didn't see much. These were all significant losses, and I don't mean to diminish anyone's experience who goes through these pains. But I'd never lost anyone truly close until I lost Brent. It hurt that we had lost the closeness we had once shared.
The news of my brother's death had not truly sunk in when just over a month later, I called home after work to find out my baby was not breathing and had been rushed to the hospital. To lose loved ones with whom I had little contact was hard, at times devastating. The losses of some of my favorite pets had left me reeling. But the pain of all of these losses before did not prepare me for the loss of my baby, the center of my existence. My older children and husband were and are incredibly important to me. But anyone who has been a mother to a small infant knows that your world revolves around that infant. You wake [several times a night] for that baby. Your first thought in the morning is to tend to the baby. Half of your brain is always occupied on taking care of that baby. Your body, especially if you're breast feeding, is keenly aware of his or her existence and the baby's needs at all times. To have that closeness ripped away is beyond a physical agony. In fact, I'd rather undergo physical torture than the loss of a child.
I can't speak for all parents. But I can speak to my experience. There is nothing worse than the loss of a child. Nothing. Here is another poem written a month after the first. The pain had become slightly but only slightly less acute. But in my experience, there's no such thing as getting over such a loss. Only getting through and surviving it.
"A month has passed"
A month has passed
Since I held you in my arms.
Already, the image of your large,
Blue, curious eyes peering at me
Around the breast,
Already the sense of your round warmth
Is fading from my memory
Until you are only a series of pictures
And an aching, sometimes gushing, heart
And a spirit watching me, cheering me on.
The memory of what was
Hides behind the present,
But in quiet moments,
The agony revisits with a twisting sword.
Words cannot convey the pain of your departure.
I strain for the sound of your name
On anyone’s lips but my own.
Your warmth and the glow of your smile,
The happy giggle at my silly face
Seem like a pleasant dream,
The image from my mind
Rather than a reality from my past.
I miss you more than words can say
Even as I wonder how it can be
You were ever part of my life.
Come back.
I've come a long way from when I wrote these poems and early entries. But I know I have a lot farther to go. Which is one reason I'm writing these blogs. Because of so much loss piled on loss, I don't know that I can claim I've really processed or healed from my brother's death. Often, it hardly seems real, like he just hasn't gotten around to writing recently. Maybe I'm still in shock from both of these losses. I struggle to find a meaning for the word "healing" when it comes to loss, at least a meaning I like. I guess that's because, for everyone, it means something different .
