Random thoughts on a Tuesday.

I had breakfast with Sarah (Ezra's mommy) this weekend. She is absolutely delightful. There is something so comforting about meeting these amazing babylost women in real life, watching them talk about their babies, seeing their expressions, and getting real hugs. This weekend, as we walked in the city, and ate at one of those very busy brunch places, I had this profoundly silent moment. Here we were. Sitting in a booth talking. I wondered if anyone else in the diner noticed us and wondered what we were talking about. I certainly thought, "I bet no one else in this place is talking about the death of their children." We look like normal girlfriends talking over a couple of egg white omelets. And we certainly feel like old friends. Some things just need not be explained, though we met only twenty minutes earlier, and yet, we were getting to know each others' mannerisms, humor, patterns of speech. Sometimes it is disconcerting to connect with someone, and not know exactly how they pronounce the word "water". (In Philly, this is not a given.) Yet, meeting with Sarah really felt like the opposite of real life--the real life that I am terrified of entering on a day to day basis.

In real life, you hear your friend's deepest, hardest, most heartbreaking moments after years of knowing them.
In real life, you expect to laugh, and it is unexpected to cry.
In real life, you don't feel completely protective, maternal, loving and unconditional about the person you have just met.
In real life, you simply expect to carry your grief inside your heart where you are certain you are going to explode.

Being with Sarah was comforting, kind, gentle, and much needed. Thank you, Sarah. I love your fantasy of having an entire social life of babylost women. Yes! I imagine it would involve some wine, some plate throwing, some crying, some laughing and everything true.

:::

I know my playground sounds like an awful place. I think it is like most playgrounds in small towns. Sam read my blog and said, "Yeah, I hate the geese too."

:::

I light a candle everyday for Lucy. It started early, when Sam's brother and sister in law sent me the best package from Earth Mama Baby Angel. In it was a warming heart for my post-birth uterine contractions, a package of seeds, called Seeds of Hope for Lucy's garden, a votive candle, and a container of No More Milk tea. It was so incredibly thoughtful. As I sat there with my breasts bound, and recovering from birth, I lit the candle next to the Buddhas. Lucia means light, and just having a little flame flickering feels warmer in the room to me. At different times, we have lit a second candle for my father in law Harry, and for others we want to think of that day or night. I have done a bunch of research about St. Lucy, which is its own post one day, and the rituals of light surrounding her. On our little shelf with Lucy's candle sits a Buddha my friend brought back from Thailand. It is small. When my nephew Max was a year old or so, we found the Buddha decapitated. I suspect that Max bit his head off and spit it on the floor, much like some toddler Godzilla. I never got upset about that, especially at the time. It made me laugh until my sides hurt actually, because you can see the little teeth mark on the Buddha. It just seemed like an apt reminder of the impermanence of life. And so, instead of superglueing his head back on, I leave it next to him. His head is never too far from his body. There is some wisdom in this, but I am just not sure what it is yet.

Zero.

Today, I took Beatrice to the playground.
I hate the playground.

All the fucking small talk. All the fucking questions.
"Finally some sun. Nice day, isn't it?"
"How old is your daughter?"
"Where did all these people come from? It was empty when I got here."
"Is she your only child?"
"Is she small for her age?"
"What is her name? Oh, that is...unusual."
"Is she climbing well?"
"Where is she going to daycare?"
"Are you having any more?"
"Who is supposed to clean up this park?"
"She must look like her father."
"How does she sleep?"
"Are you the babysitter?"

I hate the playground.

The mommies and their babies in Baby Bjorns. So many siblings. Can't stand the siblings of the 21 months apart variety. The smoking grandmothers lurking on the other side of the park. The creepy teenage boys on the highest slide. The competitive stay at home mommies with their blackberries. The geese. (I hate geese, but perhaps that is another rant.)

I am the Mommy that everyone talks about across the playground. Wasn't she pregnant? Did she have her baby? Is that her daughter? She looks nothing like her. Is she Puerto Rican? I avoid the playground. I let it become my husband's realm since December, and well, to be fair, there haven't been too many great days...but spring is here, and Sam was totally spent today. So, I took the girl for a walk. It's where we end up.

Today I told a perfect stranger that I had two daughters. She asked me how many children I had. And I said two. Two daughters. But one died. She said, "I'm sorry. How old was she?" And I didn't know what to say, so I said, "She was stillborn at 38 weeks. So she was zero."

She looked uncomfortable. So I said, "We are so sad."

Uh, yeah. Sad.

Thesaurus Meditation

I don't know why I love the thesaurus so much. I just love words and the thesaurus is like reading jazz. Take a concept, and see how many words we can use to riff on that theme. There is something beautiful about that to me. It also seems so subjective. For example, when you put happiness in the thesaurus, blessedness comes up. So does cheer, and hilarity, and laughter, and paradise. Paradise = happiness? To the thesaurus compiler, maybe, but to me, I've been depressed in paradise. Been laying on a white sanded, clear-oceaned beach crying my eyes out. Location does not equal happiness to me. Or hilarity...humor is not happiness. Something funny is temporary. I laugh all the time, but we all know that doesn't mean I am happy. Happiness is a state of being, right? Maybe one can argue that a temporary hilarity is happiness.

Because I am me, and I somehow have to dissect and analyze everything. I put grief into the thesaurus today. Just to see what comes up.

Main Entry: grief
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: mental suffering
Synonyms: affliction, agony, anguish, bemoaning, bereavement, bewailing, care, dejection, deploring, depression, desolation, despair, despondency, discomfort, disquiet, distress, dole, dolor, gloom, grievance, harassment, heartache, heartbreak, infelicity, lamentation, lamenting, malaise, melancholy, misery, mortification, mournfulness, mourning, pain, purgatory, regret, remorse, repining, rue, sadness, sorrow, torture, trial, tribulation, trouble, unhappiness, vexation, woe, worry, wretchedness

I just want to say these words together, like I want to say our children's names. One after another. Grief. Affliction. Agony. Yes. Yes. Yes...grief is all those things. But there are the small words in here that I think are why these exercises are so important for me.

Care.

Such a gentle word. Care. We all need gentle. But does this mean to care for oneself in grieving? Does it mean we mourn because we care? I clicked its hyperlink, and it read "personal interest. concern." I just love that part of the concept of grief is concern, solicitude, diligence. Care as part of grief. Of course.

Dole. I didn't exactly know what that meant in terms of grief, so I clicked it (yay, online thesaurus). Dole means allowance, allotment...charity. Charity. That didn't seem right. I mean, yes, charity would be nice, but didn't exactly hit. So, I clicked the dictionary. 5. Archaic. one's fate or destiny. Shit.

In the definition of dolor, it says passion. YES. Passion. That is what we have...a passionate understanding of how unjust this all is. A passionate love for a child we do not get to hold again. A passion for understanding, coming to a place of peace, for loving ourselves, to forgiving ourselves. We are passionate about everything surrounding our children.

But I think the word that somehow floored me the most is disquiet. Not because it was there. I would have expected it in the list, but I dictionaried it.

dis⋅qui⋅et [dis-kwahy-it]–noun 1. lack of calm, peace, or ease; anxiety; uneasiness.

Disquiet. Lack of calm, peace or ease. Isn't this it in a nutshell? Isn't this the biggest hurdle? I want to come to a place of peace with the death of my daughter, and right now, I cannot. I still cannot even believe I never get to hold her again. It hits me everyday that this is permanent, like during the night I somehow wake again with this hope that I get her again. I wonder if this defines when we are out of our actively grieving period, when we feel a sense of ease, or peace, or even calm. Last night, I just couldn't stop crying as I ached for her. How much I want her with me. How hard it is to manage all these relationships in my life, when I really only want to focus on is finding a very beautiful handkerchief to soil. When I really only want to concentrate on my sobbing, the inhales and exhales, the particular noise I never knew I could make--noises that only exist when your child dies or you give birth, and are particularly unique when both those things happen at the same time. I cannot imagine peace right now, or calm, or ease. Disquiet, that I know something or two about.

A Chapter Closed.

Monday, I closed a chapter of this life.

We finally met with the Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) doctor to go over all my test results, the autopsy, the bloodwork...Of course, my midwife had called to talk me through what she knew when she got the preliminary autopsy results, and we had a copy of all our records, which I poured over trying to find anything to explain why Lucy died. As my midwife put it, "There was no smoking gun." No infections. No chromosonal issues. No placenta incidents. Nothing. But this cycle of tests, waiting, results, repeat, was growing old. I felt nauseated from the roller coaster ride. One day, the midwife told me there was a placental infarction of 8%, consistent with the car accident we were involved in in October, and then the next week, my friend (a high-risk OB) would tell me that placental infarctions don't affect the baby until it is 70%, and death would be over 80%. So, I would prepare myself for the next result, the possibility they could tell me something so I could prevent another dead baby, and then I would come crashing down...nothing. She simply ceased.

Still, having known and been mentally preparing myself for the diagnosis that my perfect baby just died, I was still incredibly anxious about walking into the MFM office for further information. I had known people to get different information. More in-depth reasons for their baby's death. I just wasn't strong enough to learn anything new. And well, when I really examined why I was so very anxious, it wasn't that I didn't want to learn new information about Lucy's death. I did. I wanted to know why this happened. It was simply I didn't want to learn information that indicted me. I had the fear that I would sit down and he would say, "Sorry, Angie, but it was your fault." I mean, how could I not realize I was harboring this deep guilt? I was afraid he might tell me that my weight gain caused her death. Like he would sit down and say, "Yes, pasta killed your baby." Or maybe he would say it was my inability to give up sushi for most of my pregnancy (there I said it!), or the glass of wine I allowed myself every so often.

But he didn't say that. He said he was so so sorry. He said that these cases are most frustrating. He called me "healthy" five times. Me? Healthy? Before December 22,2008, I would have said, "Yeah, so?" But now, I didn't realize how much I needed someone to call me healthy. All these tests and a dead baby, and I thought I was unhealthy, diseased...I wanted to kiss him, and lay my head on his shoulder and cry, "Thank you for calling me healthy." He said I did everything right. He said my chances of having another stillborn baby were the same as before. (Actually, that part wasn't comforting at all.) and when he was talking about what would happen if we got pregnant again, it was the first time since Lucy died that I remembered the excitement of having a baby, of trying to conceive, of going through labor...but I am still not exactly there yet. I just realized that I entertained an idea I also thought was dead.

I walked out of there feeling lighter, like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I am honest when I say I didn't consciously ever think I could have done anything differently in my pregnancy. The closest I got to blaming myself outright is that I often thought that stress took its toll on my baby. I blamed the stress of a car accident, a falling out with one of closest friends this fall, and a broken collarbone which all happened at the same time while my father-in-law was battling lung cancer and I was trying to care for my 20 month old, and prepare for Christmas...it very quickly darkened the happiest time in my life. I felt so alone during that time...I thought maybe my stress caused her to suffer too. But I didn't realize I was blaming myself for specific things I did in my pregnancy. As I virtually skipped out of the MFM appointment, it was clear that I had.

Now, I just need to really work on wrapping my brain around her death. I have tried to come to peace with this place of no resolution. But honestly, this will remain my biggest challenge. As a science-loving, non-religious mama, I am trying to come to terms with the death of my child for no discernible reason. Adults don't just die for no reason. Why do we tolerate this? I have tried to equate it to SIDS in my brain. In fact, in my quest to make sense of it, I came across this term: Sudden Antenatal Death Syndrome or SADS. Still, finding a term doesn't bring a sense of peace. It just doesn't. Someone named a no-reason. But hey, sometimes I'm up for grasping at straws too. But whatever you name it, it still remains the same--My girl is gone. She just died. In me. For no apparent reason.

Geesh.

Something.

There they were, walking amongst the fleece jackets, a young couple with a baby in one of those framed backpacks that you really only need when taking on Everest. Really, I heard the baby before I saw him, but my daughter had been chanting "outside" for fifteen minutes. He was just one of the noises in REI today. I'm not one of those babylost mamas who cannot be around pregnant women and babies. Maybe practicality prevents me from dwelling on other people's babies, or maybe it is simply that I want my baby, not just any old baby, but I think babies are keen, pregnant women beautiful, and families heart-wrenchingly touching. Still, when I noticed them in front of me eventually, after Beatrice ran off to baby bicycles with her father, my knees got weak.

It was her that made me want to vomit, run away, shake violently, take a generous shot of Jamesons. N. She was in my prenatal yoga class for months. She cried every Sunday morning when we went around the room said our names, how far along we are, what are issues for the week were. An architect by trade, I think she was having trouble wrapping her brain around this all-encompassing feeling of unconditional love. She was afraid. Every week she cried over a new fear. She once cried because she didn't know how she was going to be ready in time. And there I was, sitting in remarkable flexibility, like some swollen Buddha, saying "Pregnancy is a wave. Follow the wave."
"All the baby really needs is a boob, a diaper and your arms."
"Enjoy this time of expectation and planning."
"Revel in the long days of waiting, and sleeping, and relaxing."
"Be kind to yourself."
"You are doing everything right for your baby."
"Your baby is happy with just you. You cannot spoil a baby with too much love."

I virtually flaunted my laid backedness. I was so fucking cool. I was the only one in class who knew what it was like to have a baby and I had done it naturally at that. It was like I held some ancient secret that I wanted to share will all women. "If I can do it, you can do it," I said. "I was only in labor for 21 hours. It is a pain that is productive. It isn't like other pain." I was such an asshole.

And there she was, like I once was, with my husband after our first child, walking around loudly in an outdoor store, planning for our first hike, camping trip, bike ride...everyone listening to us. We didn't care. We were new parents, and our life wasn't going to change. We were taking the kid on our back and hitting the road.

I cringed. I slunk back into toddler wear, and began hyperventilating. Sure, I wanted to see the kid. I would have once run to her, drooled over her beautiful boy, told her how stunning she looked, how perfect her baby was...but I was completely paralyzed. Stunted. Immobile. Wholly inadequate. Instead of gushing, I wanted to tell them about Lucy. But I couldn't. I just could. Not. I mean, they were happy. Look at them, picking up expensive little onesies for camping, blissfully unaware that babies die because of nothing. Their world still had order, justice, kindness...I couldn't tell them that their baby was one yoga mat away from a dead baby. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror hiding behind a rack of clothes, trying to figure out a way to my husband and baby. I look so sad. So broken. So sleep-deprived and depressed. A person no one notices in the store. A person no salesperson asks to help. I hopped rack to rack until I somehow managed to pop into the aisle with Bea and Sam. He took one look at me, and said, "Come" and held me. He put the keys into my hand and said, "Go to the car if you want." And I thought, "Yes. I will run to the car." But I didn't. I didn't run. I decided to let fate decide if N. would see me, talk to me, ask me about my little girl. I am tired of hiding from people who are happy...she didn't see me. Too wrapped up in her own very loud new baby world.

Why do i feel so compelled to write about these moments? It happens to me everyday. To every one of us. Something that takes my breath away, reminds me of a before-time, of my ignorance, of my grief, of my dead baby in a more concrete way than simply the usual background chanting of "Lucy is dead". It happens so often, in fact, it is more out of the ordinary to not break down crying in public for one reason or another. But here was this woman. A woman so scared, so sure something was going to go wrong, and here I was so laid back, so sure everything was going to be just fine. Never again will I take anything so important for granted. Never again will I look at a pregnant woman and think, "Suck it up. It'll be fine." I was like some sort of twisted Greek heroine who told the gods that she was too smart for them to take her baby. I think the cliff notes of my life would summarize this chapter of my life as: Hubris killed Angie's daughter.

Maybe the moral of this post is simply: today I didn't run away from my demons. I didn't confront them, like a brave person, but I didn't collapse and run to the car either. Maybe I was supposed to remember my arrogance today. Maybe this is progress. Maybe this is something.

A Museum of Flowers

As we walked around the lake near my house, my sister-in-law said, "They really ought to have museums with only beautiful pictures of flowers and landscapes." I told her about the painting of Rachel Weeping and how I began to weep in the museum the other day. She was there too, of course. She said, "I was afraid you had seen it." She was good to talk to. She listened, she nodded, she told me stories about women who had survived the death of their children. When she said that there should be a museum of just flower paintings, I agreed at the time. Yes, only Monet, Renoir, Pissarro. It sounded like a good plan. Only safe paintings. Only paintings that don't make babylost mamas cry. They shouldn't hang pieces like Prometheus Bound, which also hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When we saw it in the European collection, she said,"Did you see Prometheus Bound?" And I said, "Yes. I totally forgot that hung here. It is magnificent." She laughed, embarrassed, because I think she was about to say how disgusting it was. And it is hard to look at an eagle eating a man's liver. It is graphic. But it is also spectacular. Spectacularly horrific, but spectacular. Is this part of my personality that was here before? Probably. I have always loved Greek mythology, and the macabre, and well, that painting has it all.

The past few days since the museum trip, I have thought about it long and hard. Even though, I wish that we had some sort of babylost guide book, much like a morbid Lonely Planet, that warns us about paintings in museums; particularly baby-filled parks; scenes in movies that involve childbirth, miscarriage, stillbirth, cot death, death of anything innocent, young or child-like, or particularly touching scenes involving mothers and/or fathers; desperately coded songs where we might hear our own heartbreak present; and anything else likely to take our breath away, make our knees shake and send us into uncontrolled crying in front of visiting guests and strangers, I still think the painting Rachel Weeping needs to hang in the Museum of Art, even if it made me cry. I think it is desperately important for it to exist. So, I have catalogued the reasons why, as my brain is wont to do:

1. and/or A. In Peale's time, there was probably no place for men to talk of the sadness over the loss of his baby, and his wife's unhappiness. Painting it, perhaps, was his way to communicate how important and very sad this event was to him and his family. Perhaps it was his only emotional outlet. I dare say that is probably exacerbated by how prevalent stillbirth was in his time.

2. and/or B. Stillbirth and child loss is unfortunately part of our lives. To pretend we only have flowers, girls by rivers, and portraits of rich European girls in fancy dress means ignoring part of the human experience. We babylost mamas are already in the closet, must art also shield the world from our grief?

3. and/or C. Flower paintings are boring.

4.and/or D. This painting is entitled Rachel Weeping. Not Baby Lying There Dead. This painting is about our pain. This painting is about our grief. This painting is outing us in the American Collection. It is all about the Babylost Mama. About us. About Women. About all Mothers. Flowers are not about us. Flowers are about someone else, someone maybe we once were, but are no longer. Flower paintings are about pretending the world is a beautiful place. Flower painting are about pretending our babies don't die, and we are not sad. Flower paintings are for wimps.

5. and/or E. When we want to show pictures of our beautiful children in a room full of mothers who have pictures of their newborns yawning, we don't. We protect those mothers from our children, from our babies with their peeling skin, and red red lips. So, let us call this painting beautiful. Let us call this gray child cute, stunning even. Let us look for her father's nose,and her mother's lips. Let us hang Rachel Weeping front and center of the American collection, not behind a tall boy dresser. Let us think Rachel Weeping is more beautiful than a painting of flowers. And if forced to stare at painting after painting of cut flowers, let us remember that those flowers are dying too.

6.and/or F. Of the thousands of works hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there was one that I saw dealing with stillbirth. One. Rachel Weeping. I cannot even remember how many flower paintings I saw. I also can only specifically remember the contents of one, which is Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and that is simply by dint of its celebrity. Does our society repress death so much that one painting of a dead baby is too many?

7. and/or G. And the most important reason: Rachel, we will not forget your baby.

Angie Weeping

This week, we have out of town guests. Normally, I love having guests, showing everyone around this city, especially people that think that Philadelphia has no redeeming qualities. I like pointing out the history and art, the beauty of the city...I like telling those goofy Philly stories, showing them it really is a small town by walking around and running into people everywhere. Of course, it is different now. I wasn't sure I would have the energy to do it. Everyone seems a little bored with my stupid banal knowledge of the city. Perhaps I've truly lost my joie de vivre, or maybe, closer to the truth is, no one ever really enjoyed my ridiculous tour guiding.

Still, we hit the Art Museum yesterday, which is impressive without me having to do anything. Just by its mere existence. Now, I have a membership, and have gone/go quite a bit, but it has been a while since I wandered around the permanent collection. I generally go for a new show, or just head up to the Asian art section and Buddha-gawk. So, I was delighted to have an excuse to look at the European collection. The Philadelphia Art Museum has an amazingly vast collection of truly beautiful work. I was impressed with us. Go Philly.

Then, we decided to hit the American collection. I had forgotten that the Gross Clinic had become part of the permanent collection, and was excited to see the other Eakins. We walked into a room filled with quintessentially American furniture, and glassware, and I walked around. Wide-eyed, taking it in, and then BAM, there it was. Rachel Weeping. And the room began spinning, and I searched for an exit. My niece, age 7, stood next to me, and said, "Is she dead?" and I was faltering, "Yes, I think so. I have to go." And I turned around, past my family, past my husband, just saying, I need to walk, I need to walk. and the tears were streaming down my face.

I couldn't pull it together. I couldn't reign it in. I was just simply a wreck. Why didn't I notice these paintings before? Or the songs, or the poems, or the anything...how ignorant I was. I felt such a pull of two emotions. One screamed like an insane women, "Get me out of here. Get me out of here." And the other wanted to pull each person to this painting and say, "See how sad she is. This is how sad I am too." Of course, these incidents always remind of how universal this is, how very human losing my child to stillbirth is, but that doesn't make it any fucking easier. Sure, I feel very very human and very very fragile.

Yesterday was such a beautiful day, a day I have been waiting for since Lucy died, and I was a mess. When we got home, everyone wanted to head to the playground, while I just lay in bed and sobbed. It took all of my energy, all of my everything to get up when I heard them, and try to make it look like I hadn't been crying for an hour and a half. Last night, I looked up the painting on line, because I was ready to look at it. I was prepared, unlike the chance encounter we had in the American collection. And when I found the painting on a blog, it said, "Rachel Weeping, by Charles Willson Peale. Above is a painting by Charles Willson Peale of his wife Rebecca weeping over her dead little one. This painting is a poignant reminder of one of the blessings of modern life: the drastic lowering of child and infant mortality."

Fuck you, blog writer.

On compassion

After reading Sarah's post, I was thinking about the word compassion. I use that word all the time. It is the main quality I wish to bestow upon my daughter. But I have never really looked it up before. So, I did:

–noun
1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

Even the definition makes me feel deeply that the universe is a good place...It isn't that I don't know what this word means, but I wanted to be reminded of all the elements of it. Deep sympathy. Sorrow for another. Desire to alleviate suffering.It isn't simply one of these qualities or feelings, it is all of them together. That is powerful medicine. The synonyms that came up are commiseration, mercy, tenderness, heart, clemency. Wow.

I asked Sally the other day how she found my blog, and she said Sarah sent an email to a few people. Then she honestly said, "I must admit, when i got the one about you I was like 'fuck not another one' almost as if, my heart is full, i can't support any more." And honestly, I don't know how she did, yet grateful that she is. We all have an the exhausting job of mourning, of sadness, or existing. That is enough, like that folktale I wrote about once, that is enough work. But all of these women come together and sound the call. I imagine it sounds like a great wail across the world, hitting San Francisco, Australia, Germany, England...like the bat signal, only a loud, deep guttural cry only a mother experiencing the death of their child knows, to support another new mother of another dead baby. Compassion, indeed. And the effect is tangible. I am here and ready to offer my arms, my ears, my tears, my memory for the next woman, even as I beg the universe that there will be no more women...This beautiful, sad, cyclical community thrives on compassion, and proves the extent in which our hearts are capable and ready to love.

I don't know why I am writing about this this morning, when others have written about it so well. But hell, I will probably write about it a thousand times again. But it got me thinking about these stories. Our stories. I devour babylost stories. Before I could find my own voice, I relied on the stories I read of others able to somehow breathe another day. They told my story. They put words to the anger, the pain, despair, grief, guilt...Some of those women went on to birth again and showed pictures of their beautiful children. Women that wrote stories about a small joy in life, like the first flower popping after a long cold winter (hey, my front lawn is littered with crocus). Stories about women who were finally emerging back into the world, a little pale and clammy, but eager for sunlight on their skins. I wanted to read about survival, especially from women who experienced the stillbirth of their child like me. The most powerful posts for me are the ones where the emotions are so raw, so honest that they floored me, somehow made me laugh a little, but left me slack jawed and crying all at the same time. Where there are no other words to describe the experience except fuck, or wow. I vicariously live through those happy times, laugh at the rants, feel a great satisfaction at pure raw anger and vitriol, and I cry with the sad.

Before Lucy, I didn't know you existed. I didn't know about your children. I'm sorry. I should have known. The world should know about all of our babies. But now, I think their names constantly along with my daughter's name. Name after name, like couples, I cannot think about a mother without thinking about her son, or daughter. They go off in my head interminably. And I think there is part of me that is collecting these names. One day, when they hand me a microphone somewhere, and I will say them all together, in a long litany, so those thousands of ignorant fools out there, of which I am and was one, will know about our babies. And I will say each name, "Angie and Lucia. We will not forget." Standing tall, trying not to cry, and say them all, until I drop...or they pull me off stage and tell me this is the annual book festival of Collingswood...

But I just thought I should remind anyone who might think of themselves as not compassionate enough, your comment on one woman's stupid blog might change her outlook for the day, it might change a tide in Philadelphia, it might change the world.

On strength.

I sometimes have the urge to just go to the place that is reserved for particularly disturbing fifties films where the distraught mother loses all touch with reality and dresses a porcelain doll in her baby's clothes, and calls it by her dead child's name. I would surround myself with all things Lucy—her hair, her picture, the little acorn baby that I bought for her Christmas, her ashes. I could create some kind of fancy, strange little Victorian museum out of all her things, wrap myself in another reality, and rock in the corner. I would just weep until I believed she was alive again. It would be morbid and ugly, and somehow deeply satisfying. But I have a child, even if I did this for one day, I fear I would go fully insane and not be able to come back to my beautiful life. But for one day, I want to dress like Bette Davis, and say something akin to "But you are, Blanche. You are in that chair."

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The other day when I wrote that I wasn't strong, I was also a goddamn liar. I have lived a few lifetimes already. There was a time in my life when, convinced that I wanted to be a writer, I decided that I would not turn down any new experience. I have talked to truly insane people, like a man who believed the Illuminati was following him and had tapped his Temple dorm room phone because he was a Catholic. I talked to him for five hours. I once went cliff diving in New Mexico while visiting a Zen Monastery. I tried to be brave then. I did. But I wasn't strong. I really was just a knucklehead. I have always thought that when people called me strong they just meant that. They just totaled all those knucklehead experiences and thought it equaled strength. But to me, that never was strength.

Strength to me is being compassionate, being humble, being capable...I want to be that. I strive to be that. One day, in a seriously delusional moment, after Lucy died, Sam and I were driving I began saying, "Being strong and faking being strong are the same exact thing. No, really, I am just going to pretend I am strong. I am just going to act like a strong person, like how I imagine a strong person acting, and then I am going to get through this." and I giggled nervously,"Yeah, I'm just going to fake it."

After Lucy died, I reveled in the emails and notes I received from my friends, and loved ones. But I was also completely stunned, and still am, at the amount of people who have said nothing. Not one thing. I know they know. In my kindest moments, I see their suffering, and pain. In most moments, I call them cowards. Fucking cowards. And I am shocked at how many cowards I know. My amazing friend, whose wife miscarried three babies wrote me the rawest, most honest email after Lucy died. It stunned me, and I read and reread it. He got it. He has survived this nightmare. He talked about the abyss. He gave me exactly what I needed at the time--permission to go to the dark place, to be angry, to be alienated, to grieve in anyway I needed without regard to my mental soundness. He still does this for me. It is a gift I can never repay. When I wrote back and told him about the cowards in my life, he wrote this:

I am sorry that others you care for and who, no doubt, care for you cannot be more for you in this time of suffering. Such is a bitter lesson for the strong: Because we are strong does not mean that those around us - though they may revel in this quality - will be equally strong when we need it; Indeed, it is in times of weakness that you find that those around you who rely vicariously on your strength are nowhere to be found because they cannot fathom the responsibility of shouldering the load; they cannot be strong for you... And you must find it in your heart to forgive them. You can believe that they are out there wishing they had the strength; the courage to try and lift you up....

But you will find that your strength alone will carry you through this, and you will indeed come out stronger.

But in the end, I do think I am strong. Not simply because I have survived a lot--death, birth, robbery, marriage, taxes, sickness, bills, corporate life, traveling, depression, giddiness...but perhaps it is because I have grown from these things. Because I have let others lean on me when they are going through them. Perhaps it is because even though I don't know what the fuck to say when someone's baby dies either, I still say something. ANYTHING. Even though I am afraid. But I don't think it is any of those things. Not really. I think it is simply because I forgive all those cowards in my life. I do.

a dream

i had a dream that i walked into this strange house. it was like an architect's house from the 60s all straight edges and exposed rocks, and low furniture. there were people milling about in a sort of cocktail party type way, and i was fixing martinis for the crowd. when i carried the tray down the stairs to a fireplace room, my grandparents were sitting there. my beautiful nan and pop. my grandfather was reading a newspaper, and my grandmother looked as though she were crying. she said, "oh, honey, i am just so sad for you." and i said, "i am so sad for me too." and i sat at the edge of the coffee table. "why are you here? i am so happy to see you." and i sat with them staring. my grandfather looked up from his paper and said in his way,"Jesus, would you look at this one, Mary Lou? She died cliff diving. That's a shame." And I realized that he was reading a paper from heaven about who the newcomers were. i knew they were leaving and my grandmother gave me a kiss on the cheek which left big red lips, like she did my entire childhood. and i missed them before they were gone again.