Category Archives: grief

grief

Going under…

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Grief is such a very hard emotion for me. As a young adult I was always the happy, chipper one. I always had the quick lines and comebacks, and the cheerful silver lining comments to hand out. Any major grieving I did was done alone, in my room, door shut, loud music playing, and my face crammed into a pillow to muffle the sounds of crying.

As I got older, there were times when I would grieve in front of others, but it is still a hugely private thing for me, and it is still hard. I guess I expect to be able to pick myself up and move on with life whenever it demands, sans grief.

This time it is not working out that way.

Today and yesterday I was surrounded by loving, amazing friends and family. I am so incredibly blessed to be cared for by so many intelligent, funny, and neat people. I loved being able to see everyone, and being able to talk to everyone. I have scheduled time to see my family in smaller groups, have plenty of time left for my friends, and am overwhelmed by the love I have available in my life.

Yet here I am, at high tide, thinking about Nick and how much I miss him. It’s as though my grief is like the ocean, the tide of sorrow will ebb long enough for me to really enjoy myself, long enough to feel almost normal, and then will come back in, submerging me in it’s waves, wiping out the footprints I left during the day.

I know it’s only been five months since he died, and that my time since then has been full of new baby, moving, and family life. I know that I am still flush with hormones, that these hormones are probably enhancing or intensifying my emotions. I know I haven’t given myself the time needed to grieve fully, and recover. It’s just I am not sure I can ever grieve fully and recover. I feel as though there will always be this well of sadness waiting to wash over me in my quiet moments.

Today, at my mother’s birthday party, I was speaking with my cousins about Otter’s tendency to lie in his crib, point up at a spot in the ceiling, and talk and smile at it. They said their kids had always done the same thing, and they had always figured the babies were talking to angels or fairies only they could see. Suddenly I thought of Nick. Is Otter talking to Nick when he coos at the spot in the ceiling? Is my friend introducing himself to the baby he was so excited to meet? Is he out there, watching over me and my family in death, as he was so apt to do in life?

It was then that the waves came in, washing the now familiar feeling of sorrow over me, settling into my bones. So it was that I sat, surrounded by so many people who love me, thinking about the one I will never see again.

frustration, grief, Motherhood, Motherhood/body image, Stress

The third person

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I believe I have hit upon the reason mom’s refer to themselves in the third person. For example:
“Mommy is busy right now honey, please wait until I am done.”
“No honey, Mommy can’t turn the t.v. up right now, Mommy is in the shower.”
“Mommy is still in the shower honey, I can’t get to the remote right now! Please wait until I am out of the shower!!”

It is in part do to the interaction with the infant, but I think it is really because mommies have three personalities, therefore Mommy is personality number three, the third person.

My first person is a young woman who loves to go dancing, stay up until dawn, smoke cigarettes and toss back one too many tequila shots. Sadly, she was put into a coma about 6 years and 9 months ago, so the chances of anyone seeing her again are slim. However, she occasionally invades my consciousness with a sweet memory and the smell of freedom, often when I am driving in the rain and turn the music up a little louder than I should.

My second person is a serious lawyer ready and able to save the world. She is dedicated, tireless, and armed with the tools needed to wreak havoc on opposing council. She wears sexy yet serious business suits and sensible heels. She is witty at cocktail parties and political functions, and still amazes her husband with her intellectual prowess and social capabilities.

My third person is a mom. She is always there for tears, problem solving, lunch making, real and imagined insults, boo boo kisses, and upset tummies. She cleans the house, buys the groceries, prepares the food. She showers at night because she is usually showered in baby spit up several times during the day. She is a napkin, a washcloth, and more. She doesn’t sleep, hasn’t worn make-up in months, and lost her ability to put together a decent outfit ages ago. She is an expert in getting smiles and giggles, diffusing kiddo stress and consternation, and removing stains from laundry. She can change a really messy diaper in under three minutes with only three or four wipes.

However, she is the hardest personality to acknowledge and accept. She is much more disheveled than the other two parts of me, much more emotional, and seemingly less capable, though really, she is just dealing with more. After all, how often does a lawyer have to handle complex billing negotiations with a screaming baby vomiting on their suit? How many young and carefree women have to schlep children through the grocery store?

Anyway, the reason I think I refer to this third personality in third person is simple, it places distance between the sleepless, pale, disheveled mad woman in the mirror and myself. After all, carefree woman and slick lawyer are rarely interrupted in the shower by anyone for any reason, much less a six year old needing help with the television.

I really am still the young carefree woman and the slick lawyer. They are just currently hidden behind a river of baby spit up and burp cloths. Until I can see them again, or at least small parts of them, I will likely still continue to refer to the rest of me, that tired, spit up covered woman, in the third person.

grief, Monkey, parenting, pregnancy

Alien refuses to leave mothership…

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Still no baby here, though his family is certainly enjoying the alien moments created by his wiggles. He loves to give me crooked belly, and alien belly, and stick his foot out, etc. I can only be pregnant for so long before he gets here, so I am trying to be mellow about it all.

This weekend I was teasing Monkey by telling her that chocolate milk came from dark brown and light brown spotted cows from Wisconsin. She did not believe me and used the following phrase to create a majority over her father and I: “All of my stuffies and toys that have two eyes agree with me, so I win.”

What could we say against that? It was a fairly compelling argument.

Today I went to the outlet mall with Ellen and Tiff and spent an obscene amount of money on a new summer wardrobe for a certain tall beauty whose most recent growth spurt rendered her current clothing stockpile virtually useless. She was appreciative. Oddly, while she is hugely independent on everything else, she is fine with me picking out her clothes. I guess they simply don’t matter they much to her, or I have really good taste. I will go with the latter.

She and I both had a hard time with Nick’s death today, I spent the early morning hours awake again, pacing the house and trying to stop dreaming about him. No nightmares this time, just dreams of the time we spent together before he died. Sadly, they wake me up as much as the nightmares do, since even in my sleep I seem to realize something is wrong and that realization pulls me from rest. I am becoming very friendly with the hours between 2 and 5 am.

Monkey spent the last half hour of her school day in tears, crying about how much she misses him. Unfortunately, she had a substitute, and she really didn’t know what to do. I explained the situation again when I got to school and then made hot cocoa when we got home and we snuggled a little. Still, it is hard to explain this to her, because at 31 I don’t know when I will begin to feel normal again, so how can I set expectations for my 5 year old?

I still feel like some kind of friendship amputee, I can still feel my friend, I can hear him, and I keep waiting for him to call me. He is never far from my thoughts, and it is very hard to get through a whole day without crying, or really wanting to, at least once. I haven’t slept well in days. So how do I explain to Monkey that missing him is okay, feeling sad is okay, but being happy and forgetting about him is okay too? That she shouldn’t be completely morose about his death? She doesn’t have to remember him all the time in order to mourn him?

Hard conversations at our house lately. Tonight she asked if Nick was a ghost, I told her I didn’t know. She said “I hope he is, because I really want to see him again.” I suggested she talk to him, and told her some people believe people can hear us after they have passed away. She is currently in her room talking away, shedding some tears and hopefully learning how to cope. She is too small and too young to have to cope with this. He was a wonderful friend to her, I wish she had not lost him so early. Really big feelings are very scary and hard to deal with when one is so small.

Of course, this is hard to deal with even when one is big, so I can only try my best to answer her questions honestly, and be open to talking about him. That is the hardest part, whenever I seem to be having a day when he is not constantly on my mind, she brings him up, and there I am again, feeling like I could almost touch him, or hear him, and having to remember he is gone.