I want something........

I want to fill the hole in my heart

I want to patch the cracks in my sanity

I want to ease the throbbing ache of grief

I want to suppress the sorrow

I want to hold back the tears

I want to build up walls of protection from the world

I want to rip the blinders off those who can't see my grief

I want to climb a mountain and shout Everett's name from it's peak

I want to make a difference and do it in the name of my son, who has already changed so many lives

I want to announce his existence to everyone who asks how many kids I have

I want to build a time machine

I want to fix his broken heart, then bring him home and love him

I want to comfort those who mourn

I want to be comforted

I want to do something with the grief and turmoil inside of me

I want to change my life

I want Everett

I want to see my twin boys side by side again

I want to throw away all my mementos and have the real thing instead

I want for him to never have died

I want to know God's rational some day

I want to understand his plan

I want to feel whole, and know I never will

I want Everett, always

Katie

Once bereft, always bereft....

It's my experience, in the two years, four months and one day that I've been grieving, that you don't graduate from grief. You don't get discharged from it. You don't get promoted out of it. It's a life sentence, or if you will, a brand, seared into you for the remainder of your days. And like a brand, it may start out raging, raw and painful, and with time heal over, settle down, hurt less, but even scar tissue is painful when handled wrong.

Yes, once grieved, always grieved.

This is reasonable since I can't "un-lose" my baby, therefor I should not expect to "un-hurt", or "un-long", or "un-mourn" him.

Even on my very best days, when my life is filled with gratitude and hope and beauty and joy, the scar is there, red and raised and reminding me that nothing is quite right, because he is not here. Not to say that Everett is a scar, or that he is painful to me, because that is not the case. The scar is the grief, the scar is the sadness, the scar is the shattered expectations, the damaged trust, the disbelief.

Two years, four months and one day after the fact, and I am still standing mouth agape, in disbelief in that hospital room in Toronto in my mind. I'm still dumbfounded. The shock is still resonating through me, like the aftershocks following an earthquake, I'm not done experiencing his loss yet, and I fear I have not yet begun to "heal" over yet. My scar is still new. It still hurts. And every time I hear the word "twins", or "NICU", or "heart defect", or "ECMO", it's like someone poking a finger into the wound. It's agony.

I must look healed to those standing on the outside looking in. Because people certainly feel free to talk about their friend who's having twins, or their neighbors baby who just had open heart surgery, or the baby they saw on TV who had to be on life support because of a heart defect. And as bad as it sounds, I want to shove my fingers in my ears and yell "LALALALALALA" as loud as I can. Or even worse I want to tell them to shut up, give a dirty look and storm out of the room. Grief's irrational like that. But please! I am not okay with talking about these things, it's painful, VERY, painful. And the hardest part is that those who don't know, don't know, and it's not their fault. I can't expect them to understand it. I can't expect someone who's never grieved their baby to know what the triggers of grief are. And honestly, they're different from griever to griever.

Yes, once bereft always bereft.

And you know what else this bereft Mama always feels called to do? Fund raise in Everett's name. I feel an overwhelming drive to do big and beautiful things in his name, to give purpose and meaning to his brief life, tangible, comprehendable meaning that is, to make sense of the mere 20 days I had to know him outside the womb. God had a purpose, this I know to the core of me, God had a plan and he executed it flawlessly. God and Everett are right and squared, they understand each other and what went down perfectly. But I got left out. I don't get it. I'm not informed and I don't understand it. So, I'm driven to make sense of it in my own way.

I lost Everett, that caused me grief, my grief made me sensitive, so I sympathize with other bereft parents and want to make them hurt less, so I want to fund raise for them, to make the process easier, in some little way for them. Everett made it possible for other families to hurt less. That=Good. And good, we can all agree, is good.

Grief makes you crazy you know, you can never be quite certain if your new quirky take on life will be interpreted as an insightful and genuine take on life after loss, or just plan strangeness, I'm not even certain myself. Grief also makes you care less, so I won't lose any sleep over whether or not I'm strange or not.

See this boy?


He holds up a mirror for me, and shows me each day what Everett would look like, and it stings like rubbing alchol on a too fresh wound, but it hurts good, like the pain that diminishes an itch, the itch was far worse then the pain itself.

He reminds me of so many truths I needed to know....

Life goes on

God is good

Somethings are not to be understood here on earth

Flowers grow from dirt, and good grows from bad

Everett was, he existed, he's still here in a sense, in our hearts, in our memories, in our dreams, and in Landon's precious face.

And Landon speaks now. He talks up a storm.

He speaks, and he says his brothers name. Almost perfectly. And again, it hurts in the most welcoming way.

Once bereft always bereft.

But thank the Lord that He teaches us to live with it, love through it, and grow by it.

Katie

Ambushed.....

It happens at the strangest times.

It tip toes up behind me when I least expect it.

Sometimes I just don't see it coming.

And I miss him.

Terribly.

Being at work used to be a big trigger, but not so much lately. And I guess because it hasn't been a problem for so long now, I let my guard down.

Mistake for sure.

It started as soon as I walked through the door. Those doors.

I'm used to entering through them now, the doors outside of the Pediatric wing, but there was a time when stepping foot inside them sent waves of panic rolling through me. And that happened again tonight, for the first time in a long time.

The smell.

The sounds.

The vision of it.

Exactly as it was. And I was transported, for an instant, back to my time there with Everett and Landon. My heart was heavy before my shift even began.

And then infamous "how many kids do you have?" was asked. I have the quick and simple answer, and felt ashamed for it, and my heart grew even heavier.

I took a little walk to get a chocolate bar, and was browsing the bulletin boards, when a picture of a baby with a surgical incision up his sternum caught my eye. "Help save ******'s heart" the sign read, it was a fundraiser for a baby born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. My heart sank a little deeper.

On my way back to the elevators I passed a sign I pass all the time, a picture of one of our pediatricians leaning into an isolette to examine a tiny baby. Memories came speeding back at me, my heart raced, and sank, and broke.

And now here I am, trapped in a place that holds so many good, and bad memories, feeling more then I want to be feeling, remembering more then I want to remember, and feeling pained and heavy hearted.

It happens, when I least expect it, and at the most inconvenient times.

I miss him.

I miss being full of excitement and anticipation and hope.

I've fully come to grips with the reality of losing Everett. I've made my peace with God and let him comfort me. My faith has grown and deepened, further assuring me of a reunion one day with my lost baby boy.

But something in me craves a special kind of healing.

The desire comes deep from within, or perhaps from beyond me. It's strong and unexplainable. And calls for another chance. Not to "do over", because Everett cannot be "done over", there can be no alternate ending, and there can be no undoing of our experiences. They are ours, they are precious and painful and real and a part of who we are today. But something very deep within me calls for another baby. For another chance to conceive, carry, deliver, and care for another baby created by Elvis and I from great love and faith. It's a scary thought, but my faith in God, and my past experiences with loss have taught me that risk, and trust, are worth it, and that the pay out can be so incredible.

I have a beautiful daughter, two beautiful sons, and a mystery baby in Heaven, and something deep within me feels the call to have another baby.

I feel it even more when I walk through those doors outside the Pediatric wing. And I crave to be there on happier circumstances.

I feel it even more when I see that sign with the Dr. checking in on the new born baby, and I think about having another new born of my own.

I feel it when I see a TV show with a pregnant character, when I see a pregnant woman on the street or in the mall, when I drive by Babies R' Us, when I look at baby pictures of my kids, when I take pictures of someone elses babies, and when I care for old ladies long past their childbearing years and I wonder if they wished they could have had one more.

Grief comes with longing.

Longing for the past, and for the unknown present.

Grief creates desire.

Desire to remember and hold on to memories, desire to heal and be pain free, and desire to be in control of what happens in the future.

Grief brings fear.

Fear of never healing, fear of feeling the scary depths of your own personal pain, and fear of not being able to decide what happens next.

Grief brings love.

Deep, deep love for Everett, and for Avery and for Landon, and for what the future might hold for us all.

Grief is a domino effect.

It starts with just one thought, just one memory, and leads to another and another and another, until where I end up is no where near where I started.

I started off coming to work.

Which kicked off missing Everett.

Which kicked off missing babies.

Which kicked off a maternal longing.

Which kicked off fear of never having any more babies.

Which kicked off fear.

I wish I could kick off grief!

Five more hours of work tonight, and I'm trying to but grief and longing and sadness and fear to bed, for now.

For now I want to surrender it all to God, who knows my heart and knows his plans for me. All my worrying and fear will do no good. He knows what's in store for us. He has has influence on our hearts, and he works all things for our good. So I'll trust him with this. My grief and my longing. And put this post to bed.

Katie

Cross Post....

Once more, my life blog overlaps my grief blog, this post would have been perfectly at home right here, since it is all about grief and Everett, it's hard sometimes to decide what goes where. Here's the link...

This post may break your heart

Katie

Last night I had a dream....

I had one of those dreams.

One of those dreams that feels so real, it violates all the defenses you set up to protect yourself from the hurt, and you feel, truly feel, the depths of your grief.

Those of you who have lost a child will know exactly what I mean, but those who haven't can imagine.

I dreamed that Everett and Landon had just been born, but in this scenario, we knew Everett was going to be sick, and that he would die. We were staying in some little apartment within the hospital, and we kept going to the nursery to see the boys, and we kept waiting for Everett to get sick, but he never did. The anticipation was painful, we knew it was coming (somehow), but he kept on doing well, in some cases better then Landon who was perfectly healthy. The longer Everett continued to do well, the more we allowed ourselves to hope that we were wrong, and that he would live. It even occurred to us that we had prematurely changed the boys nursery from a twin nursery to just a room for Landon, and that we may have to change it back because it looked like Everett would be coming home. We imagined him in our lives for years to come, we imagined him at 4 or 5 years of age. The dream was wonderful and horrible all at once. Maybe because no part of me, at the time, realized like we sometimes do, that it was a dream.

Our hearts filled with hope.

And though it was just my subconscious, it felt so intensely real, that I felt real hope, hope which transcended my dream and came into my day with me. Then died. Reality hit me like a tonne of bricks.

Just a dream.

No miracle healing.

The only encounters I will ever have with Everett now in this life, are in dreams like these.

And even though they hurt when I wake, I wish I could have them more often. What a blessing it would be to feel him close to me, to really feel it and not doubt its reality.

It never crossed my mind to do so, but maybe now I'll pray that God will bless me with dreams of Everett, the closest thing I may get to my miracle.

Katie

Explanations........

...It just occurred to me that I'm going to have to make them one day.

Some day I'll have to tell Landon about Everett.

I'm not sure why that never crossed my mind before.

Maybe it's because Landon's learning how to talk, so we're asking him to try his skills out with our family members names. It felt so strange to ask him to say Everett.

Actually, saying the name Everett out loud, a few times in a row to prompt Landon, felt very strange to me, to say it and to hear it said. We don't speak his name out loud often enough to make it feel common place. Sure we think it, we type it, we write it, but we don't often hear it.

It's a strange sort of painful.

To hear what it would have sounded like to call out his name, it kills me.

I'll never call down the hall "Everett come get your boots on," like I do the other two kids. His name will never be commonly used in the day to day, it will never feel worn in or familiar.

His name, whenever said out loud, will always hurt, it will always feel like a blow to the stomach, it will always make me say "Oh!" when I hear it, "Oh, my other baby", "Oh, my lost baby", "Oh, that's right, he's not here, and never will be."

This grieving business, it's tricky. Hard to master for sure.

Try as I might, I still don't have the swing of it. And something as benign as saying his name out loud can send me reeling.

How on earth will I ever sit Landon down and tell him all about his brother, when he's old enough to understand. How will he feel when he knows his history, his deep connection to his lost brother? Will he feel strange? Sad? Confused? Grieved? Or like a piece of a puzzle fell into place?

I'm dreading it.

Good thing is, pictures are up all over the house, and we talk about him out loud from time to time. Plus our tattoos are great conversation starters, so his existence won't be a big surprise, I hope.

I'm ashamed of myself, for feeling so strange and disconnected with Everett's name, and how it sounds coming from my mouth. I'm his mother, and his name shouldn't sound foreign or alien coming from my lips, but it does.

I picked his name.

I loved his name.

I rubbed and prodded his side of my belly calling out his name trying to get him to react.

I sat over his bedside in the hospital and softly whispered his name.

I tattooed his name on my ankle.

It's branded on my heart.

So how can it sound so strange when spoken.

One of the mysteries of grief I suppose.

His name......


It used to be on the wall, and now its not.

He was supposed to be a part of our lives, in the flesh, to have and hold....


And now he's not.

And now his name, in tattoos and memorial plaques, are the only time we see it written out....


But its in our hearts always.

On our minds constantly.

In our prayers nightly.

And always on the tip of our tongues, but sometimes we just can't bring ourselves to say it out loud, and feel the depth of his goneness, because it hurts more then we have words to describe.

Everett, I miss you.

Everett, I love you.

Everett, you're on my mind 24 hours a day.

Everett, you're beautiful, and every minute of our time together was worth it.

Everett, I cherish every single memory, and every single memento I have of you.

Everett, you're the reason I believe in God, you're the reason I'll go to Heaven, because nothing on earth could keep me from a reunion with you one day.

Love Mama

(Katie)

Cross Post.....

I just blogged in my other blog about grief and about Everett, which I realize would have been very fitting over here as well. Should you not happen to know about my other blog and want to check it out, here's the link to today's post:

Maturing Grief

Katie