A New Day...

I'm doing a little better today. The afore mentioned training has kicked in and I'm preparing a trip to see my friend. I'll be laden down with the package I'm so used to sending, minus all the share grief support materials, of course - she already has them.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words and prayers - for her - and for me.

What I'm wondering today is, if you are the support and it happens to you, what happens within you?

Does the congntitive process of what you should do to set the stage for healthy grieving automatically start up, like a remote starter on a car? Do you watch yourself walk through each step as though outside of your body?

Or, does the shock and subsequent shut down from the fact that it is now your reality trump what you've been taught, making you as ready for guidance and support as the person who had no idea it was possible to bury your child?

Ideas? Theories? Personal Experience? Hit me. I'm digging deep here, for never before have I needed to do this right so badly.

Grief

I am heavy with grief today. My body aches. My eyes brim, silently spilling without provocation. Images fill my head and no real life presence can make them evaporate, like ashes, into the air.

This morning I received an email that, yet another baby had been born still. I receive them all the time: the calls, the emails, the references from a friend of a friend; but this was different.

I sat, reading and re-reading, thinking it had to be wrong. This couldn't have happened to her. No. It just wan't possible. Not even the unbalaned choas of this world could justify that she would be the 1 in 4.

***
We met at the Share National Training last spring. A small intimate group sat around the table and over the course of 5 days we knew details about each others lives as minute as the lines in a fallen leaf. We bonded, all of us, but this woman and I connected, really connected, and not just because we had travelled half-way across the country from the same small section of the Northeast. We could have been on the same airplane.

Two paths converging. Two lives about to be forever changed. Neither of us had a clue.

***
She's special for so many reasons:

~She is a social worker.
~She is a yoga teacher, for adult and children alike.
~She runs a Share support group.
~She runs a pregnancy after loss group.
~She is a loving mother to her girls.

But, most of all -- and this is the key that unlocked my affection for her -- she chose to attend that training. She intentionaly put herself in a place to learn more about bereavemnt, to listen to broken parents speak of their lost little ones. She opened herself to a world most push away with brute force, unwilling to listen because it might make it possible.

She welcomed the knowledge with a serene smile, an understanding heart, and a desire to truly help.

And, if you have read here for any length of time, you will remember a story of a quest during that conference: a desire to lounge in a hot tub made possible by a giving friend. She is that friend. She made it happen.

***
Today, I brim with equal measures of grief and anger, my day derailed by the undeniable remined that babies die everyday.

This is the email I sent her:

"I need to you know how affected I am by your loss. I get these calls and emails all time, as do you, but with you it's different. Silent tears fell all through church. I asked someone else to teach my Sunday School. I have images playing through my head that I can't be sure happened. Our time together last spring was a bonding experience. Looking back now it is obvious we met for a reason...even though I just was so grateful to you for being who you are: a kind, compassionate person in a helping field, attending a training to be better prepared to help OTHERS as they lived the tragedy of babyloss. I told my husband that it is rare to find people like you.I think that is why I'm so broken with grief for your lost girl and anger that YOU, you of all people didn't deserve this. I know I'm rambling and you are in no space to hear my emotional rambles. I just wanted you to know how much you are filling my day, I'll cry for you all day if I have to, I'll purge my emotions -- then, my training will kick back in and I will support you however I best can."

Past meets present. My experience converging with her reality. Our history setting the stage for a new type of relationship.

I hate that we now are in this club together. I hate that I now get to say, "I am so sad to be here. I am so glad I came" to her.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I scrapbook -all day - 9am to 9pm.

Why oh why did I commit to this? I asked myself more than once today.

I don't have one picture cropped. I don't have any papers sorted. My materials are scattered across the office. sigh

Not to mention that I can't not think about Bowling for Babies for more than thirty seconds.

No! I am scrapbooking.

I will take a break from the whirlwind my life has become and allow the moment to re-take me. I think I might finish the half-complete album about me, my childhood, my adolescence, my early years with Jer.

Yes. A trip down memory lane is exactly what I need. (with a brief sneak-out to pick up the addition bhb flyers that are ready and waiting at St.a.ple.s. I can't totally shut off - I mean... really)

Show and Tell - The Ties That Bind

The chinese raffle for Bowling For Babies has taken great gabs of my time as of late, and I've loved every minute of it. They have been arriving via email, snail mail, UPS and in person.

I've made new friends and been reminded of tried and true ones. Today, these showed up.

They are from Babysmiling. Her show and tell for the week describes them perfectly, but what it doesn't say is how the package reminded me that my friends live far and wide. That, presumably, the words typed here stay with them for a spell, causing them to make an effort to package and ship bowls even while reveling in their new twin babies!

That is what amazes me most. Our binding ties remain, even as babies fly, or are born, and life takes over for a time.

I've shared before, but it's worth repeating in my emotional state that other blogging friends are participating in this event too.

Martha from A Sense of Humor made this gorgeous necklace.

And Lindsay from Destined To Be An Old Woman With No Regrets sent this framed shot all the way from her Canadian post as she watied out the end of her pregnancy!

Pamela donated a copy of her memoir, Silent Sorority.

And Are You Kidding Me? donated time to crochet some angels for the ornment drive!

And so, you can see why I feel like this raffle is as much yours as it is the people who physically walk in the door of the Springfield Bowling Alley on Sunday, November 15th.

Sure, you may not be able to take advantage of a gift certificate to a local eatery or come in to pain your own pottery, but there are many prizes in the ever growing list that could easily be shipped to your front door.

CLICK HERE to preview the current item list. READ the raffle directions. Then, if something catches your eye, ENTER using the donate button and be sure to specify how to distribute your tickets!

Thank again, to each of you, for your support over the last year. Your words have sustained me through every transition. This reality is yours to celebrate too.

While you do, peruse what the rest of the class is showing and telling!

Week by week...

life seems to get a tad bit more overwhelming, not in a bad way, just a try to get everything done and still have a sane smile at the end of the day, way.

Thanks to all of you for your insightful responses to my last post. I am certainly feeling more at peace about my decision and blessed that another member of our board can attend. It is time to give up certain contols and let the crew man the ship a bit. Not an easy task for a person like me, but necessary when, as I just told a friend, "the thing you built is growing faster than you ever imagined."

An issue for a self-proclaimed control freak like me.

I have posts that are extremely important to me brewing, about the lighting cermony, about my big-daddy benefactor of sorts showing up, about love and life and seeing a side of my little girl I never thought I would.

I have catching up to do within your lives. I have babies to welcome. Anniversaries to belatedly acknowledge, hoping the mommy and daddy know I was thinking of them on their day. And sad moments to support.

Even as the chicken sautees, the pumpkins sit half-carved, the UPS man approaches the door, the Bowling for Babies flyer is 3/4 done, the eggs boil, the dough for our cinnamon buns rises, and my 332 pictures beg to be uploaded and ordered from Sn.ap.fi.sh my mind flies to all of you and the words spin through my head.

I have come to the unsatisfactory, yet realistic conclusion that I am at a blogging crossroads. I blog for me, and for you, but primarily to keep my senses sharp, my words in tune, and my emotions processing about the loss of our little girl. In just over a year I have nearly hit 300 posts. Writing daily was cathartic. It was my outlet. It allowed me to cultivate the relationships I now find myself missing daily.

Even so, at this time one or two posts a week is all I will be able to create until the new year. Until all the fundraisers are done, numbers added, and Share Southern Vermont's first tax return filed. I have to be ok with this down shift. I have to use it as a learning experience in the world of blogging. I imagine they all have their ebbs and flows. Just know that the ebb frustrates me as much as my lack of commenting might irk you.

Catch you on the fly...

The First Test

Recently I wrote about balance, or the search for it, within my life for I often feel like I am leading two well-cast, yet parallel existances: one with the living the; other with the dead. Or more accurately, not with the dead, but because of them.

They don't intersect well.

More often than not I find myself faced with choices that lay on either side of the lifeline. Choices that leave me feeling like lose:lose is a guilt ridden understatement. For, regardless of which side of the line I land, someone will be negated, or left out, or added in when they didn't need to be, or over-exposed to the concept of death, or left behind while I go attend to that very thing.

This has been my delicate dance since I started Share Southern Vermont. I dove into the mission with a fire burning in my broken heart, finally feeling like I found a way to parent Emma while unconsciously burdening myself with the added dillema of choosing to spend my time with my living children or taking action in memory of my spirit one.

I repeat: without boundaries they don't intersect well.

And perhaps that is my real issue. Maybe balance isn't my holy grail of time management. Instead, I might need clearly defined, boldly outlined peremiters to keep me where I am supposed to be, when I am meant to be there.

Because babies will die everyday. No amount of wishful, child-like, kum-buy-ah thinking will keep it from happening.

My living children grow and learn everyday too.
My husband and I seem to see less and less of each other with each passing moon.

There is a memorial service for twins who perished inutero as a result of a car crash next Sunday at 3pm.

At the exact same time there is a couples class at our church, the first in a series of three, intended to strenthen how we, as husband and wife, listen to and communicate with each other. And, in turn, how we parent the little ones who look to us as models of social appropriateness.

I was temporarily stumped. I always make an effort to go to the services for infants in Southern Vermont. It shows the parents that perfect strangers do care because they too have lived those horrific moments. It gives them someone to cry out to through the computer. It often gives them the intense courage to walk into a support group meeting sooner, rather than later.

But my family unit is important. How we build our routines and work as a team is vital to our future.

It appears I am going to miss this memorial. It makes me sad. I hope and pray this family knows how much we have to offer them. But on that day, at that time, I will be doing something so my husband and I have more to offer our family.

Balance... boundaries...

I wonder, did I pass my first test?

A Poem for Us All

Currently, I am re-printing our International Wave of Light programs because an idea came to me, last minute - as most of my good ones do.

As we light our candles tomorrow night my father will strum his guitar. At first, the background music seemed enough, a light touch to add to the memorial at hand. But then, I wanted, no - needed a poem. Something equally light and airy, not too deep, the perfect words to compliment random chords and small, moving bits of light.

After making a call, it came to me. My mind rewinding to the last day of my Share training.

Our closing ceremony was brief, filled with music, tears, complicated I-just-met-you-but-can't-stand-to-go goodbyes, and - a poem. This poem. It is perfect.

I type it here for each of you. If you are lighting candles tomorrow night, perhaps you might read it along with us. The idea of our collective actions happening simultaenously across the globe lights the flame within me.

For each and every one of you missing your sweet angel babies...

We Remember Them

In the rising of the sun and its going down –
We remember them
In the blowing of the wind and the chill of winter –
We remember them
In the grayness of an early morning rain and in the promise of the rainbow that follows,
We remember them

In the opening of bud and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
We remember them
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We remember them
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We remember them
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember them
When we have joys we yearn to share,
We remember them

So long as we live they too shall live, for they are a part of us as,
We remember them