Slammed

I almost let yesterday's date slip by without remembering that one year ago Dr. AA told me my eggs were nearly nonexistent and rotten. How naive I was back then to think of Dominished Ovarian Reserve as the worst possible thing that could happen. I now laugh bitterly at my innocent self of days gone by. HA HA



Everytime I tried to change my fate, the attempt got wrecked.
And life got worse.



Everytime I dragged myself from the bottom of hopelessness and gave myself a new chance,
I got slammed down harder and lower than I thought I could ever go.


How much lower is there?
Surely now I've hit bottom.



What if a year from now I'm laughing bitterly at the self I am now?
Because I dragged myself up one last time
and yet again was slammed into the ground.


I won't survive another slam.

Rebounding

I dreamt last night that my long ago coworker came to visit me with her husband and kids while I worked at the mall. At the Gap, I think. I was so happy to see her. When we left, her husband and kids took the car while Sheila and I took a boat. The water was so clear and blue. But we wrecked. I was driving the boat and it was my fault. Sheila was very mad at me.

I feel better today. Physically I'm kicking the flu's butt. Emotionally I hardly cried at all, relatively speaking. I was glad to see my kids. Being around them is so good for me. Especially when they are glad to see me too and behave well for me. They spent the first 30 minutes of the day telling me everything the substitute did wrong. "She didn't even know how we do calendar!" Poor sub.

I must say I'm feeling sane today. I feel half alive, rather than half dead and numb, which is how I usually feel on these 'good' days. Crazy how it can change so drastically from day to day. Speaking of crazy, I know I just said I feel sane but I did something a little crazy today.

I bought a book for Greyson. It didn't feel crazy at the time. It made me feel his love. It made me warm.

Whereever You Are, My Love Will Find You by Nancy Tillman


"I wanted you more than you’ll ever know,
so I sent love to follow wherever you go. . . . "

“So climb any mountain…climb up to the sky! My love will find you. My love can fly

"You are my angel, my darling, my star...and my love will find you, wherever you are."

Remember I was being silly and worrying about Greyson in Heaven? Well, reading this book really helped me. My love grew him and my love can fly! We're not really separated at all. Only in the flesh are we apart. I also thought about Greyson's funeral service which focused on Psalms 139 part of which talks about God being with you no matter how far in the depths you are.

I'll be with Greyson again.

My faith will return.

Somehow...

PS I just evaded a phone call from the horrid professor who made me write that final days after I lost Greyson and who called the night of the first class of this semester which I'd dropped to ask why I wasn't there. What the hell could she want? Why can't she just leave me alone?

The Most Important Person

I stayed home from work today and do feel a little better. In the late afternoon, I got a call from the tile lady saying she had some samples in for me to look at and because I'd been cooped up all day and was actually sore from laying around so much I took myself to look at them. As I left the tile place, I was relieved because I'd pulled off making the tile lady think I was normal. I'd interacted with her face to face for a considerable amount of time without crying or choking up. I was able to focus on the decisions before me.

I'd hidden the fact that I'm a grieving mother who has lost her only child only six weeks ago.

Tile lady will never know that I was the mother to a very special boy albeit entirely too briefly.
She will never know Greyson P existed on earth.

Nor will others that I may interact with over the course of my life.

Greyson was the most important thing I've ever done.
The most important person in my life.
It makes my heart ache to know that others will not know him
or know of him.

I have to figure out a way to honor Greyson so I can begin to let him go.
I understand this.
But I can't think of a way right now and I'm not able to let go.
Missing him,
wishing he were still here,
the undeniable hollow where he should be.
These are the last experiences I'll have with my little one and I can't leave them yet.
It's only been six weeks.
Not long enough to say good bye to the most important person in my life.
I'm not ready.

I love you, Greyson P.
You wrote upon my heart and made it expand exponentially.
Momma won't ever forget you were here.

Still No Answers

The day started out ok even though the flu was kicking my butt. I had breakfast at Bread Co with my former coworker, MS. She gave me a beautiful snow globe with Greyson's name engraved on it.

Throughout the course of the day I spiraled down, down, down. Emotionally and physically. Emotionally, I'm very close to wishing I wasn't even on this earth right now. Physically, I'm miserable.

Second follow up with Dr. H today but it's not even worth recounting my questions or his answers. It's all still the same. We don't know what causes this or if it could happen again. Again, he said something about it being fortunate that this doesn't happen very often and again I said it wasn't fortunate for me. I really tried to push him to give me real answers. I cried multiple times and was terse with him. It was a bad scene.

I think he could sense how much I was searching and dissatisfied with his answers, he encouraged me to take my information back to Dr. AA or to a high risk OB and ask them all my questions. I tried to get a definitive answer out of him about trying again. He said I had to decide if emotionally I could handle another loss but that physically he was comfortable recommending trying again.

And he did give me something for this flu. Speaking of which...I have to throw up now.

Sick

I dreamed last night that my bloggy friend, Kim, went with me to my second embryo transfer. The transfer was preformed by an older, tan skinned doctor with glasses who I've never seen before in real life or in my dreams. Dr. AA was not there but as we sat waiting at a table after the transfer, I realize that all the children sitting at the table, doing their homework are Dr. AA's children. Then, I woke up with a raging headache.

I got sicker and sicker the whole day including chills, body wracking coughing and a fever. Now I have to decide wheather to cancel my appointment with Dr. H and make one with my GP or just go and hope Dr. H will throw me some antibiodics.



Dear Life,

Thank you for kicking me while I'm down.
I hate you today.
Could I please have a break?

Paige



Dear Delurkers,

Wonderful!!! Thanks for being brave and delurking for me. There are many others out there. Again I invite you to say hi.

Paige

Update On Grief And The State Of My Sanity

Grief:
I don't know if you noticed but I was able to write a blog entry yesterday without mentioning grief, crying, pain, my dead baby or the shaky state of my sanity. I'm feeling desperately sad, still and missing Sweet Pea with every breath. Something's changed, I guess. Numbness seems to have taken over. I still cry daily and sometimes I cry hard but I haven't had a truly hysterical crying jag for a few days. My mind still turns and turns without stopping but the frightening high speed that threatens me ever closer to the edge of my sanity has slowed some.

Insane:
I've been worrying about something that is really, really silly. I know Aunt Alys came and took Greyson away from me in the hospital to bring him into Heaven. I keep waiting and waiting for some dream or sign that he's happy and ok but it doesn't come. Greyson was created with a donor egg and donor sperm. He was a child of my heart not my genetics. What if he got confused In Heaven and went with the wrong family. I know it sounds insane but this really bothers me. I don't want him up there with strangers and lost. What if he's not showing up in my dreams because he can't find me? What if I get up to heaven and I can't find him? I may as well go to hell.

Maybe my mind hasn't slowed as much as I thought?

Sane:
Mom went with me today to pick tile for the kitchen. We found some lovely old world looking tile for the backsplash. It's kind of different yet kind of traditional. I felt a spark of interest while we were looking.

Dad, E and RV installed the oven and the cabinetry around the fridge, worked on electrical stuff and brought in the island cabinets. The project rolls forward...spark or no spark.

Delurk:
Thanks to MB, I'm now obsessed with the "stats" button. I never knew that existed before yesterday. I really and truly CANNOT believe how many of you out there read. I can't figure out WHY you would want to read but I'm glad that you do.

Thank you.

I really wish you would ALL delurk!

Today.

Right now!

Go head, click on comments and tell me hi.
.
.
.
I dare you.

Eagle Outing

Two of my best friends are wonderful photographers and wanted to go a nearby lock and dam on the Mississippi to capture images of eagles who come south to escape the ice locked water in the north and feed on the river. We had such a fun time! We saw magnificent bald eagles gliding through the air and floating on ice in the river. The sound of the river lapping at the shore sounded so calming to me. I think I could use a week (or year) of being still and listening to that sound.

And we had so many laughs. Real laughs. MB lost her footing and fell but being the firecracker she is, she was able to laugh in spite of minor ouches. I thought the funny part was that when MC asked if "it" was twisted or broken, meaning her ankle, MB answered that she thought her camera was fine. Funnier still that I stopped to take a pic myself?

You can see brilliant photography of the eagles we saw over here and over there.

A Good Coworker Story

Just home from a late night of parent/teacher conferences. I'm pleased because I was able to hold it together and mostly focus while talking to all these adults and because I was able to talk to the parents of three out of my four students who really struggle and may be retained. I'm hoping to talk to the last one tomorrow.

I had a very comforting conversation with my coworker BS. I had made a sarcastic comment yesterday about taking up gardening because isn't that what childless spinsters do. She approached me this morning while we were in the hallway with kids saying that she'd thought of me all evening and me making that comment made her sad for me and that I should try again. I couldn't answer with so many people around. She seemed so genuinely sad and concerned for me that I talked to her during our break to tell her I probably would try again someday but that it was way too soon to think about it, I'm still shattered, etc. She said she understood that, of course, and we talked about grief a little.

And then she asked something nobody else has asked. She asked me what my baby looked like saying she bet he had red hair like mine (she didn't know about the donor egg) and she smiled and said that she knew he'd been perfect. People don't usually smile when they talk about my son. I don't usually smile myself when I talk about him. I told her that he had a bit of fuzz but I couldn't tell the color and that he'd had long fingers and toes with perfect teeny fingernails and toenails and probably would have been tall. She asked if I took pictures and said she'd like to see him when I was ready to share them. I understand that people may think it's macabre to talk about a dead baby but it made me feel so warm to share him in this way. He was a real baby and he's still very real to me, but nobody ever acknowledges him like that.

She also told me how upset people at work had been the whole week I was gone. That people cried. She said all of them didn't want me to come back to work so soon because they knew I'd lost my whole world. That they were all grieving him too. I believe her but find it odd that no one called while I was out or tried to convince me to take more time off or extended much sympathy after I came back. I just don't understand people.

PS...the dumb professor called last night because I wasn't in class and she was so concerned. Why can't people just lay off me taking this damn class. I'm simply not strong enough. She made me cry. I hate her.

Numb

Most of the school districts in the area called a second Snow Day but not mine. It was 12 degrees when I left for school with a windchill of -8. The students had a previously scheduled half day. Only seven showed up so it was a bit of a laid back day for us. I taught them to cut out snowflakes and they had lots of fun with it. The second half of the day was professional development on teaching writing.

Emotionally, it was a different, numb sort of day. I think it might be the first day I didn't cry, or cry hard anyway. It feels like it may be a leftover effect of the Xanax or maybe the after effect of just having a vacation from my mind constantly tormenting me. Or possibly having a Snow Day helped. I think it would really help me if I could work only three days a week. Maybe a combination of all these things. Why am I analyzing this so much? RK was right...my mind is way too busy even when it's numb.

Maybe I'm beginning to leave the raw, torturous anguish of losing Greyson behind me. Is it messed up of me to be a little bit sad about that?

Happy Birthday Stretch

I cannot believe I'm the aunt to a TEENAGER. It's been all boys, texting and wii this past year so I wonder what 13 will bring her. Where did the years go? I'm proud to be the aunt of such a beautiful, funny and smart young woman.

Oreo ice cream cake at E's house to celebrate. I loved watching E show Stretch a few chords on her new guitar and joking around with the whole family.

While there we got to talking about injuries and who'd had stitches. I guess I'm the only one in the family who has had them which is surprising since we grew up on a farm and were around tools and such all the time. Mom busts out with the info that I was the first patient at our local hospital's emergency room. I swear I've never heard this before. I remember falling in the bathtub and cutting my eyebrow open. I remember driving there holding a washcloth on my cut and asking Mom if I could pray without folding my hands. I remember being scared. But I don't remember being the first patient. Mom says there were doctors and nurses just standing around waiting for the first patient. I imagine they were disappointed it wasn't some big trauma but just a clumsy little girl.

Three inches of snow here and a Snow Day from school. I sat on my butt all morning watching TV and laying around. In the afternoon I did laundry and cleaned yet another layer of dust off of everything I own, vacuumed and tore out the other half of my kitchen floor.

And I took my first Xanax. I hated to do it because I really didn't feel the need but both the dr and the couselor cautioned to try for the first time when I was at home so I could know how I responded when I needed it. I can see why it's addictive. The vacation I needed. The ugly emotional wheel stopped for a while. I wish I didn't have to have those pills but I hope they can help me when I'm actually feeling driven to the edge.

To Iris' Mommy: Thank you for your kind comment and for understanding and defending my "voice". Thank you for being part of my support system and listening (reading) without judgement.

To Nell: Heferrini is my new favorite word!