Truthfully speaking, I don't really want to talk about it. I'm not going to call anyone up and tell them I'm on the edge tonight, that I'm hurting and need to talk. I'm not that person, I've never been that person. And I don't want to talk. I want to write about it, eat because of it, and cry over it, cry a lot actually. I don't really WANT to cry, but, it seems to be the catalyst to getting "over it" for the night. Its a necessary evil I guess.
These feelings started brewing early this afternoon, I can pinpoint the actual trigger, but I was too busy/preoccupied to deal with it then. But now here I sit, alone, without distraction, or duty, and in relative silence. There's nothing to drown out my thoughts, or suppress my emotions any longer, so here they come! This happens a lot, a lot more then I think anyone realizes. Some nights when I'm at my computer desk in absolute shambles I wonder if anyone I know is at home wondering if maybe Katie's at home falling to pieces, I seriously doubt that thought would ever cross their minds, but man, it happens more then I'd like to admit.
Everett died 19 months ago. When you see it written out like that, it seems like a long time ago, but in my heart and in my head, its a flash in the pan, its no time at all, and on nights like tonight, my sadness feels brand new. I guess I have the choice about whether or not I indulge this urge to dive into grief. I technically could do something else. I could walk away from my computer, I could watch a movie, I could have a bath, I could play some online arcade game, but they're only temporary distractions. Eventually I'm going to have to go to bed, and then there's no escape from these nagging, lingering feelings of loss and loneliness and hurt. Bedtime has always been a precarious time for me, often times when Landon was just a young baby I'd make it just fine through our day, and get into bed, turn off the lamp, roll over and pull the blankets up over my shoulder and burst into tears, real bed shaking sobbing hysterical tears. Elvis wouldn't know what hit him, some days neither did I. Its the silence. The silence gets me every time.
There are a few things on my mind tonight, irking me, concerning me and leaving me unsettled. The first is that I think I foresaw all this, from early on in my pregnancy with the boys I was concerned about Everett, and I wonder now if there's not something to mothers intuition. Secondly, I read a disturbing article today in Parent's Magazine, and its haunting me, and I'm worried that we unknowingly exposed Everett to unnecessary pain before he passed.
I always worried about Everett, even before he was Everett and he was just baby A. His heart beat was always harder to find then Landon's, I always had trouble with the doppler at home, and even our Dr. had a hard time getting him. It sounded different too, but I guess its not uncommon for two babies hearts to sound different, after all, we all have different rates and rhythms. In hindsight, I wonder if we weren't hearing his defects right from the very start. He moved less then Landon, he was always very subdued. And he was nearly impossible to capture on ultrasound. We could see him, we knew he was there, but he never showed his face like his brother did. We called him elusive. Landon showed us his adorable mug, Everett showed us his feet, his back, even his little bottom. But, we could always see his heart, the ultrasound tech checked at every scan, and they always commented on both babies having beautiful four chamber views. Meaning they can see two atria and two ventricles on each baby, and this is the determinant of a healthy heart to them, but its a false beacon of health, its unreliable, and in Everett's case, it flat out lied to us! I sensed all along that something was wrong, but I allowed myself to be comforted with each ultrasound, because all appeared to be well.
The article I read to day in Parent's Magazine was about making medical procedures and surgeries as pain free as possible for babies and young children. Seemed pretty benign when I started, but I was disturbed to the core when I read that up until the 1980's open heart surgery was done on new born babies without any form of anesthesia at all, just paralytic drugs to keep the babies still. I cried immediately. This was apparently due to the belief that babies didn't feel pain! The first thing I did was gasp, and then I made a mental list of all the medication I KNEW Everett received, but I couldn't recall any mention of pain medication! I was just sick at the thought of Everett enduring what he did without any pain medication, thank goodness I know that Sick Kids would not ever do that to any child, I know he was taken care of and didn't hurt.
I hate being trapped on this roller coaster. I hate going through these painful evenings. I hate that my emotions boil up out of me and I can't control it. I hate the emotional hurt, and I hate the physical side effects that come along with it, the headache, the sore stomach and the tell tale swollen eye lids that show up almost immediately. I hate feeling so frail and unbalanced. There isn't anything about living without Everett that I don't hate.
I sometimes wonder if the rest of the world, on the outside looking in, wonders why we're still so stunned, why we're still so shocked and horrified and bereft over the loss of Everett. I hope they'll understand that we didn't see this coming, it was like we were hit by a bus stepping off a curb, we never knew what hit us. Until the day he was air lifted to Sick Kids we thought he had a heart murmur, a benign heart murmur, and our Dr's weren't worried. We had a healthy pregnancy and a picture perfect delivery and had two beautiful baby boys to show for it. We had a beautiful nursery at home awaiting, we were on cloud nine, and then we fell off, and plummeted into a reality darker then I have words to describe.
It took us seven months before we had the strength to address our twin nursery. Everett's crib stayed in place, and filled up with mementos, his name stayed on the wall, and for seven months we ducked in and out of that room, trying not to let our eyes wander and see all the reminders of Everett that would trigger pain so strong it would make it impossible to care for Avery and for Landon.
Seven months after he died, we had to face the devastating task of taking his name off the wall....
It was like saying "Goodbye" all over.....
We also had to deal with all the stuff we had accumulated, shower gifts, Christmas presents, sympathy cards, bereavement gifts, we have a lot....
Stuffed toys, baby books, hats he wore, cards Avery made with my sister, we had to finally "do" something with them all.....
We had to face the fact that our twin nursery was not a twin nursery anymore. We had to make it Landon's room, not a shrine to what we expected and lost. As badly as it hurt, and it hurt a lot, we had run out of time to live in "suspended" time, leaving things as unchanged as we could. Time to change...
Welcome to our new twinless life.
Anyway, I think this post is becoming less and less focused and so is my thought process. On a brighter note, I feel less on edge now then I did when I started this post, writing is definitely therapeutic for me, maybe I won't fall to pieces tonight.
Katie
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