Some of you have noticed I haven't posted in a few weeks. I am not completely sure why that is, but I think I have been waiting for the inspiration to write new words. Thoughts of new clarity, hope, healing.
We have just passed the three month mark for Angeline's loss. There are moments where I still experience a wave of horror when it occurs to me that this really did happen. On the other hand, I have gotten to a point where I can usually tell my story without becoming extremely emotional, without tears. There are still tears in private sometimes, of course. When I see parents who have experienced a very recent loss, I appreciate the progress I have made in the past several months. Mercifully, I have the sense that time has been passing very quickly, and I am thankful for that.
I do not really subscribe to the Kubler-Ross "stages of grief" model. Why? Well, to start with, she developed this concept with regard to terminally ill patients confronting their own mortality, not the loss of a loved one. Obviously, coming to terms with your own death is very different than coming to terms with your child's death (or the loss of any other loved one). In addition, as I understand it, Kubler-Ross conceptualized these stages after interviewing a relatively small group of terminally ill individuals and these stages have not been clearly demonstrated in subsequent psychology research. These things being said, I think anyone suffering the loss of their child does experience shock / denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Not necessarily in that order, nor does every individual experience every phase.
For me, the entire first month was a blur. I don't know that I was ever in denial, per se, but I was certainly in shock. I don't even know how I was able to get through those early days. I went from being as happy as I have ever been in life, to the depth of misery that I had never before experienced. It seemed so perverse, so unnatural, so horrifying.
I have experienced some anger. I think that my anger was most apparent around the time of my due date. It wasn't so much that I was angry at God, or angry at my fate. I had long ago come to learn that very bad things can happen to anyone, and frequently they have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. In this case, it happened to us. I became angry with the insensitivity and thoughtlessness of certain people around me. (See my previous post, "An Open Letter.") In the past few weeks I have been letting go of those feeling a little bit. I realize that there are many people out there who simply do not have the emotional and/or intellectual capacity to begin to imagine what I have gone through. The cannot appreciate how hurtful their words and actions may be. Rather than being angry, I have realized that I have a few options. One would be to educate and inform them of why these things are so offensive. Another would be to basically write them off as people I cannot concern myself with and try to avoid them. Both of these are reasonable options to consider on a case-by-case basis.
Bargaining. Now that one might apply well to people confronting their own mortality. It doesn't work so well in this scenario. My daughter is gone, and is not coming back. There is no way to bargain for her safe delivery into her parents' loving arms. Any bargaining I may have done seems to have been in terms of my own recovery. I have focused on signs of my body recovering to help motivate me to keep moving forward psychologically. Maybe that doesn't make sense to some people, but without signs of physical recovery, I don't know if I would have made as much progress in my emotional recovery.
Some degree of depression has been a constant for me since Angeline's death. Only another mother of loss can relate to the heartbreak I am referring to. The constant ache. We all know the profound sense of emptiness that comes immediately upon the death of a baby. Being a mother was the most important thing I have ever done. I loved my baby more than anything else in this world in my entire life. Suddenly, she was gone, without warning. This experience is justification for depression by just about anyone's standards. The intensity of depression waxes and wanes. Early on, it was hard to even get out of bed at times. Later, waves of deep sadness would crash over me. As time is moving on, I do continue to experience these feelings of emptiness and sadness, but with less intensity overall.
In my mind "acceptance" does not necessarily refer to a complete sense of peace with what has happened, but just a willingness to acknowledge a new reality. I don't think I will ever be totally at peace with the fact that my daughter had a fatal cardiac defect that took her life at 31 weeks. However, I have come to a point where I can accept the fact that her life may have been very painful and difficult if she had lived. I know that had Angeline been born alive, she would have required extreme measures to save her, and she may have died in spite of our best efforts. There is one thing I do have a sense of peace with regard to, and that is that God did not put me in a position of having to make the heartbreaking decision to withdraw care on my own child. I often think that if Angeline had been born alive, I might have eventually been put in that position so that her suffering could end. Instead, God took her home as a beautiful angel while she was still inside of me, the only life she had ever known. I am grateful for that, in a strange way. So, in a sense, I do accept what has happened. I know that it very well may have been the lesser of evils.
Three months out, I accept that we have been chosen to bear this extraordinary burden, the reasons for which I do not know. That is the way this life is. We don't know why we are chosen to carry such a heavy load, nor do we known why we are blessed with good fortune in other areas.
If you haven't yet seen it, consider watching the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." It is a wonderful story of love, acceptance, forgiveness, sacrifice... It will make you smile and make you cry. There are so many beautiful moments in this movie. I will quote the scene in which after years of hard living Captain Mike has come to the end of his life and says,
"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went.
You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end,
you have to let go."
