Marriage and travel

It is so freaking difficult to maintain a relationship and marriage through the very solitary act of grief. It is so achingly hard to feel alone next to someone you are in love with and like so very much. Sam and I often fall into bed, and forget to say goodnight, or 'I love you'. And I think, “Did we even kiss today?” There was a time when, if we went to bed with just a peck, I was disgruntled, tossing and turning all night imagining arguments we never had. I suspect all parents, grieving or not, go through this at some point in their marriage.

Many people thought our first child made it easier to deal with the death of our second child, that we could just focus on her and not our loss. It is partially true. We did just focus on her. Sometimes I think the only reason we spoke out loud was because we were talking to Bea. But how does that bode for a marriage? Even date nights, which seem so essential to the vitality of a marriage with kids, were forced. We didn’t want to leave Beatrice, not because we didn’t want to spend time alone together or we didn’t trust the babysitters (we do implicitly), but because losing our child made us keenly aware of how fleeting it all is. We just wanted to stare at her aliveness, her smile, watch her. Our children, grieving one/reveling in the other, has trumped our marriage these last eight months.

We tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible for Beatrice. People would stop by and see us being normal parents to Beatrice, teasing her, chasing her, getting her milk and think we were doing great. This didn’t seem like a choice to us, to try to be the best parents we could despite our grief and sadness. And maybe it speaks volumes to our partnership that Sam and I could come together between sobbing and screaming, and guilt and getting angry and feeling shitty and recovering from birth to parent.

:::

Parenting and discipline takes so much psychology, higher brain power, and patience. I sometimes do not feel up to the task. All my emotional energy is spent keeping my grief from engulfing my life. Our grief frequently came out early on in anger and impatience at each other, at the dog and at Beatrice. We are not violent people, or even screamers, but it all would erupt in that exasperated, annoyed voice. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeatrice: the path of irrational punishment and snapping. While frequently the easiest path unfortunately leads to the ugly town of Guilt. Now the impatience, squarely focused on my husband, is palpable. Our grief has changed, and our reactions to it have changed too. It isn’t the constant sharp daggers in my heart like the beginning. It is a general malaise, a suffocating sadness, and even some days just a crippling ennui. A “Well, fuck it” attitude. All my patience ends up completely spent on mothering Beatrice, caring for Jack the dog, and navigating the waters with my father. When Big Daddy comes home, I pick at him. Tell him off. Stomp off and pout. I can see it when it is happening and I cannot escape the Siren’s call of the quick, sarcastic, nasty snap.

I am not proud of the wife I have become.

:::

"Let's go to the zoo!" Sometimes that actually works. Gritty nights followed by mornings of forced fun. We end up, more often than not, having a nice day, feeling lighter. Parenting together gives us a sense of bonding, of talking, of checking in, of supporting each other. We often smile and laugh telling each other stories of our daughter, even though we were both there watching the same thing happen. More often, we are so exhausted emotionally, physically, and spiritually that we do more of a tag team kind of parenting. When he gets home, I can go cry somewhere, or write, or cook, or read blogs...Sam resents that my online life sometimes gets the best of me. That I talk more here than with him. It sometimes worries me too, frankly. When I try to be true to how I feel on this journey, I don’t always trust I know what is best for me. Writing to a mostly nameless audience doesn’t seem better than talking to my husband, and yet, some days it feels so vital to my survival.

I am both terrified and ecstatic to leave my fortress of solitude for our vacation. I suffer from both wanderlust and homebody-itis. I haven’t really traveled with my grief--folded it into my heart, and tried to get it through customs. I only know how to travel happy and carefree. I imagine I will be a mess some days, blissful others. Just like at home. But I am scared to leave Lucy’s house, her candle, her ashes, the little reminders throughout my space that she existed, and I’m also nervous to leave this on-line community, my blog, my daily ritual of reading and writing, my support system. But I know that this time away will be good for Sam and I. A time to reconnect, to come together without all the daily life, to talk again…maybe beautiful places will bring out the beautiful in us.

I can only say, every couple of weeks we stay up late, and really talk...those nights will save our marriage. Lately, those nights are fewer and further between. Sometimes we catch each others' eyes across Bea's little head, and smile. And he, Sam, has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. I am optimistic, and downright enthusiastic, that we will spend our time in Panama getting to know each other again, reconnecting, enjoying our family, but most importantly our marriage. Despite all this, I think that I have a good marriage and I know that I have a good man. We are just so deep in grief that I am not sure what we will look like on the other end. I hope stronger.

(So much for that quiet until I get back thing.)