All the lonely people

Grief is just so solitary. At other times of sadness there are people who can help us feel better, the people you love can be there for you to help you feel better. But when your baby dies everyone is sad. Everyone you love is also grieving. There is no one to help you by taking on some of the pain. My husband has his own pain. My daughter doesn't deserve to have to take on my pain. My friends have already taken on more than could have ever been expected of them. There is nowhere for this pain to go. It just crests over and over again and I just have to hold my breath and continue to try to paddle through it by myself at my pace all alone. Always alone.

Judgment Day

So there is a piece of this grief journey that I really really struggle with. Judgment. These are the thoughts that went through my head this morning when I learned of the death of a boy in our community.

"I mean really, how sorry am I supposed to I feel for the parents, whose son, at 15, was a known drug user, but still left him alone while they went on vacation? Raising a child takes vigilance. Do things sometimes happen despite or best attempt to keep everyone safe and happy at all times? Yes, but some risks are too great to take. I consider not making your child wear their seat belt one of those risks; I also consider leaving your underage child at home without proper adult supervision one of those risks that is too great to take. Even with a "good" kid it is a bad idea."

Just call me Judgey McJudgerson. Good god, I wouldn't want someone thinking those things about me.And so I struggle with my feelings for those parents whose child died a tragic death. I know that they blame themselves as much as I am blaming them. Parents always blame themselves even if it wasn't their fault. But when something they did or didn't do probably did contribute why can't I have more compassion? They are probably in an even worse state of grief than I experienced.

I think this stems from the completely random nature of Em's death. Because of the way she became ill so quickly and died so fast there were no precautions we could take, nothing we could have done differently, no fault to be found. And so I find fault quickly in other peoples' tragedies. Psychologically I think I do this to try to trick myself into thinking that I still have control over my life. That I can somehow prevent other tragedies form happening to us.

I am certain that some people do see us as at fault. I recall an acquaintance who, a few months after Em's death from MRSA, immediately after asking me if we ever found out what caused it, tried to sell me Juice Plus to "boost our immune systems" because "surely you want to try to prevent that from happening again." I have a friend whose 2 year old died from cancer who has had people ask her about her daughter's exposure to a whole laundry list of "cancer causing" agents. People love to find fault, find blame - I guess they are just like me, they want to pretend that they can control their world and that if they just do everything right, nothing bad can happen to them.

This is one of those things that I hope changes as the years go on. Something that I hope is a symptom of my grief rather than a personality trait. I don't want to be the mean evil bitch with the child with the perfect death who doesn't understand.

These are the Days

Sometimes you just have a day. I think everyone has those days sometimes, but when you are grieving those days can be almost overwhelming. For me when I have those days it usually sneaks up on me.

It goes something like this... When I wake up I have an overwhelming feeling of wanting to just pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep. I chalk it up to just being tired. I get up anyway and get ready (on these days I usually barely care what I'm wearing or what I look like sometimes not even looking in the mirror for more than a moment). Then I go to work, and on the way to work every tiny bad driving error by the people around me turns me into someone who should probably be arrested for road rage. When I get to work I sit down at my desk and try to make a to-do list but am overwhelmed by a sense of inability to care about anything my job entails. I try to do a few things on my list but get continually distracted. At this point I usually give up and play a few online games. During these games, when my mind starts to slow down a little, all of the sudden I realize that I feel like I've been crying for several hours. And then I get it. "Oh I'm having a day. I'm super sad and angry that my kid died. I've been holding all of my emotions in for days just trying to get through this moment and the next and then the next. I guess I'm done."

There is nothing to be done on these days except muddle through and give yourself a pass. Luckily at 2.5 years out the days are fewer than they once were (given that the first year every day was one of those days). On a good one of those days I let it happen and live the grief and don't give myself shit for it. On a bad one of those days I berate myself for not being able to keep it together enough to go to work and get something done, or for forgetting things that I promised other people or for not caring enough about my dead kid by keeping it too together the preceding days.

It seems like the only relief in this grief crap is that as time moves on, even if there are still a lot of those days, they are fewer than they once were and I'm more used to dealing with them than I used to be, so I tolerate the grief more easily. It sucks but it is. Things are marginally not as overwhelming, so someday bad will be slightly less bad.