May 28, 2012

right where i am: 2 months and 3 weeks

This entry is for Angie's annual Right Where I Am project where she asks baby loss bloggers to describe where they are in their grief. Thanks, Angie, for both facilitating this project and the prompt -- I know it certainly helped me and took me to an unexpected place.

Today we are packing up our apartment in Jerusalem into boxes that will be put into storage for a year. In about 2 weeks, we will move to Toronto for Y to complete his fellowship. Y's parents are in town and they are helping us pack. Both of them (and Y) are much better at packing than I am. They are doing us a big favor by spending their vacation time in Israel helping us to pack, especially because I am so spatially challenged, easily distracted, and also inefficient.

Y's mom really wants me to acknowledge what a good job she is doing and how much she has helped us. But my stubborn 5-year-old version of myself is at war -- I will not thank her or acknowledge her help. Instead I will mope aimlessly in the corner. Both of my feet are planted firmly on the ground and I push hard against Y, against his parents who are helping to facilitate this move. Enablers. Co-conspirators.

I offer Y's mom a slice of leftover pizza, ask her if she'd like me to heat it up. She'll have it cold, she says. Like her son, she is ok with eating pizza cold. I marvel over how this is done, I tell her. Personally, I think cold, congealed pizza is disgusting. "I eat pizza cold because I am a mother," she tells me. Is this lady for real? Of course the only appropriate response is "Oh, well, mothers of dead babies like their pizza warm."

But instead I just bite my lip and stutter "I really don't think that has anything at all to do with being a mom." I hate myself for not saying what I want to say, but I'd hate myself for saying it, too. I hate myself for all that is left unsaid between us -- for the dirty feeling I get each time I realize that she doesn't consider my children real babies nor me a mother, not even a sort of in-between half-mother. One day I will tell her everything that she does not want to know.

I will tell her the truth, that these were her grandchildren, too. That Aminadav had Y's big head and that Naava was born alive. That they were not some sort of sad, macerated, bloody miscarriage mess. In fact, there was nothing sad about them except for their death. That these were real babies. Real, beautiful babies. Perfectly formed, just too small.

But for today I will not thank her for packing up my apartment and I do not budge. I do not want to budge. I don't kick or scream or make noise, I just give in to inertia and refuse to move. Actually, it is less of a refusal, more of a giving in. I am paralyzed, my feet planted firmly into the floor, through the floor, into the ground. Doesn't anyone understand? I have roots here.

Roots -- isn't that what I sought in this land, this scorching dry holy land that sucks you in until you belong to it more than it belongs to you? I came here, to Israel, as a new immigrant 6 years ago, seeking out the metaphorical roots. But now I belong to the land -- rooted.

These are the strongest, most real roots; so solid I could not extricate myself from them with any amount of effort or denial. Because here comes the simple truth: my babies are in the ground here. They are part of it and belong to it and I am part of them and so we all belong to this land.

Leaving this place, packing these boxes with our books and pots and pans, is leaving my children behind. So on this day, 2 months and 3 weeks since Aminadav and Naava came and went and returned to the land, my land, I hope you can understand why I can't interrupt my moping to thank anyone for enabling me to leave this place.

When they were gone it was so easy to go back to the life we had before. Except for their absence everything about our lives was identical -- a perfect replica of everything we had left behind. I went back to the lab, to a life of pipetting and aliquoting and enumerating. Y went back to the operating room, to the familiar routines of cutting and splicing and suturing back up. We both found a lot of comfort in the oldness and predictability of our lives from before. I returned to work full-time within a week of their deaths.

But here's the thing: I never imagined the future without the twins. I never imagined Toronto without the twins. While it was easy to slip back into the past without the twins, when it comes to the future I am still stuck on the future of my parallel universe -- our future with arms more than full. In the last few weeks, I have been preoccupied by the thought of how if they were to come now they would most likely be here safe and healthy.

I still wonder what it is like to have arms that are more than full.

Until now, until our living room was filled with bubble wrap and packing tape and IV boxes full of kitchen utensils I conveniently blocked out the part when everything changes and the twins aren't here, the moment when the future arrives and the twins aren't coming with us. This is right where I am: 2 months and 3 weeks later.

36 comments:

  1. I don't know how to coo meant on such a raw post my heart is too full of grief for you all. If its any consolation I hate cold pizza too. I wish I could take all the pain that BLM mums have and put in a box and throw it as far away as possible to give you one day of no heartache.

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  2. So recent for you, so very recent. What a hard place this is that you find yourself in now. Remembering Aminadav and Naava xo

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  3. I'm so sorry that you're going through this and have to move away from your roots... and be imagining your move without them. Thinking of you always xoxo

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  4. This is a stunning piece of writing. "I never imagined Toronto without the twins." I understand this. Though I have had the opposite problem of returning to my old life - I am finding it so incredibly difficult to go back to the life we had before - I also feel unable to move into the future where she was supposed to be. I am so very sorry the twins are not going with you. Just so very sorry.

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    1. Thinking of you. Yes - time is such a strange thing after loss - both our approach to re-entering our lives before the baby(ies) and the idea of a future in which they don't exist.

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  5. You write beautifully. I'm sorry for the loss of your twins. The early months are so difficult, it's a hard place to be in. Remembering your babies. Sending love and light.

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  6. That woman sounds like she wants to be a martyr. Unfortunately for both of you, at this point her martyrdom is outshined by your disaster, so she feels like she lost the martyrdom game. Which is why she is punishing you by ignoring your pain.
    Clear as mud.
    Glad my MIL has never been in my life.

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    1. I think overall she means well and she tries very hard to be helpful, but sometimes the most shockingly insensitive things slip out of her mouth that it is questionable whether she is really that oblivious, or if there is a little subconscious malice slipped in there.

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  7. What a beautiful, sad post. My heart goes out to you! Thinking of you. Big hugs.

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  8. This is so beautiful. Two months is so hard. It is all hard, but the early months are difficult. Thank you for sharing this, I know it wasn't easy, so thank you. xo

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  9. My heart aches for you. I've never experienced this kind of loss, but through your writing, I can begin to imagine. I know the loss of your twins has tied you forever to Israel, but know that they live forever in your memory, and you can take that with you wherever you go.

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  10. Wow, A. Your intelligence and emotions are conveyed so sharply and clearly in your writing. I marvel at your strength of spirit. And I wish we were friends. Thank you for sharing.

    Sending love from California. xo

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  11. Oh A. Oh. I am just so very sorry for the loss of your twins, Aminadav and Naava. And, I know, deep in the marrow of my bones, that there was nothing sad about your children apart from their deaths. I don't think many people understand what babies born at early gestations look like, such beautiful, perfect tiny bodies. Fully formed. That you can see your own characteristics, your husband's characteristics, that they live. I always think that my little girls lived in concentrated form, that they were super human (in the plainest sense possible of that rather hyperbolic description)

    And argh, the cold pizza comment. I think I would probably have bitten through my tongue trying not to let that retort slip out. I am also extremely spatially challenged but, when helps comes with comments like that attached, it's hard to be particularly thankful.

    Being uprooted not only from the past but from the future that you imagined, such a difficult, difficult place to be. I still feel, sometimes, cut adrift in time, trying to find my way back to that parallel place where none of this ever happened.

    And as vera kate, says your character comes through with such clarity in your writing.

    Sending love and strength for the forthcoming move and dearly wishing that your twins were in your arms.

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    1. Thanks, Catherine. I love what you write about your girls living in a concentrated form when they were born...I think I feel that, too. When I think back, I was ignorant myself to what babies born at our early gestations look like even though I had seen pictures of micropreemies and stillborn babies. I guess I expected them to look much more fetus-like and somehow foreign. Of course in reality they were not scary at all but rather so human and "normal", just so small.

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  12. Oh how I understand this post. It's lovely. It makes perfect sense to me that you wouldn't want to leave. It would be nice if others would understand this too. I think of you often.

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    1. Thanks. I am thinking of you often, too!

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  13. I am so sorry about your beautiful twin girls, Aminadav and Naava. They have the most beautiful names. Your Mother in Law sounds so much like mine.. My son died when he was two days old. My Mother in Law met him, held him, said goodbye to him. And all she does is whine about taking care of her daughter's daughter - her one and only Grandaughter, as though she is a burden. She doesn't show any grief for having lost her grandson, for her son or for me. But then, her Indian son married me, the white girl - what else did I expect from her but relief that our baby died? "One day I will tell her everything that she does not want to know." - It would take me so much longer than a day.. Thank you for sharing your story, I have bookmarked your blog and will follow your posts.

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    1. Thanks, Arcadia. My MIL adores her other grandchildren, but I don't think she considers Naava and Aminadav to have been grandchildren, which is part of what hurts me so much.

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  14. Oh, my dear. I wouldn't swap with you at 2 months out for all the tea in china, which I hope tells you, st least, that it will get better and be more bearable. It's no comfort at the time, I know. In fact, it hurts. Maybe I shouldn't say it.

    You describe the desolate anger so well. I will hope that things go well for you in your new place but oh, for you having to be separated from your babies. I am so sorry :(

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  15. This is so beautiful and heartwrenching. Sending you love...

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  16. So very sorry for your losses...I wouldn't be thanking her either! Thank you for sharing...

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  17. Here from Mel's roundup. Such a gorgeous, raw, heartbreaking post. I had a visceral reaction to your MIL's comment; what an awful thing to say on the heels of loss.

    Hugs.

    xoxo

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  18. Here from the Stirrup Queen's roundup. Such beautiful writing. Thank you for this.

    If you need support when you get to Toronto, my dh & I used to facilitate a support group for Perinatal Bereavement Services Ontario (www.pbso.ca). They have several groups across the GTA. (((hugs)))

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    1. Thank you very much for the tip - I will certainly look into it!

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  19. I'm here from the Roundup. Beautiful, raw post. I can't believe your MIL said that...actually said that to you and didn't have the courtesy to blush and apologize. So very sorry for your losses and the upcoming move.

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  20. I want to smack your MIL.

    Here from the roundup also. So much love your way as you navigate.

    <3

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  21. I am so sorry that you are leaving your twins behind. I know it sounds weird, but could you take a small vial of dirt from their resting place with you to Toronto?

    And cold pizza is yucky, and so is cold coffee and tea. My mother told me "It was years before I got to eat a warm meal or drink warm coffee." I just told her "That's what microwaves are for." The next time your MIL says something so insensitive, I hope you let her have it.

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    1. Haha, yeah, I totally don't get the cold food martyr comments. I agree with you totally on microwaves.

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  22. Here from the Roundup.

    I can only hope that someday you will be able to bring your future children back to Israel. Those children will be rooted to the land, just as you are, because it is the land of their brother and sister, of Aminadev and Naava, z''l.

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    1. Thanks, we will only be in Toronto for a year, but how amazing it would be to bring a little one back to Israel with us next summer.

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  23. At two months out, I found it difficult to thank anyone for their help, even when it was wonderful and without demeaning comments. I was functioning doing many things and so I know it sounds weird, but for that, I just couldn't find the energy.

    I am so sorry for the loss of your babies and that you are not bringing newborns with you Toronto. Of course they are rooted in Israel alongside your roots and also will be with you in so many other amazing ways that will forever be imbedded in your being.

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    1. I feel the same way you describe. I have been quite high functioning since their deaths and yet at the same time, I have such a hard time thanking people for their help...don't know what the block is or why I think it requires so much emotional energy, but that's where I am at.

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  24. *Aminadav and Naava* Your babies have such beautiful, beautiful names.

    Two months is such a difficult, awful time. I remember that the grief got worse around then as the filmy blessing of numbness wore off. (And I didn't have a MIL who picked at the hurt the way yours does, intentionally or not. I am so sorry that she cannot help you in your grief for your children, her grandchildren).

    One thing I found incredibly moving in my early stages of grief was someone telling me that a little of each baby's DNA remains in their mother. I hope it's true (I'm no scientist). It must be so very hard to feel as though you are leaving them behind but I hope that in time you are able to feel that brought them with you too.

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    1. You are so right. The past few weeks and especially now at 3 months out, all of the shock is wearing off and suddenly the fact that they are gone forever and not coming back is starting to feel much more real and for now I am just struggling with how to digest and live with that finality. I have also read that cells from every pregnancy remain in your body for life, and I agree that it is comforting. There is actually a fair amount of research exploring whether the those cells have some sort of helpful protective effect or whether sometimes they can play a more sinister role and contribute to autoimmune diseases.

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  25. I am so deeply sorry that Aminadav and Naava aren't going back to Toronto with you. And I am sorry that your MIL isn't able to fully acknowledge your twins as her grandchildren - it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that kind of thinking, and regardless of how good her intentions are, I hate to think of you having to spend concentrated with her right now. Two months is raw enough, and moving is hard enough, without that. Love to you.

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  26. I was so touched by the many thoughtful responses to this post. Thank you so so much to everyone who wrote - you brightened my day.

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