*Just want to warn you upfront that this post is rather littered with the f-word. Sorry, but as I’ve said before, sometimes it is the only word that works. This is most definitely one of those times. This post is also garbled, much like my mind right now.
First of all, thank you. Thank you so much. A million times over, thank you. One of the reasons I wanted to just go ahead and share our news, no matter how new or raw it might be, is that I knew that the “bucking-up brigade” (Downton Abbey fans out there?) would be right there, ready and waiting to start the bucking up. Because despite the purposely positive tone of yesterday’s post, I definitely needed, and need, and will need for a really long time, some bucking up. Make no mistake: I am scared. I am confused. I am angry (although I think I was a lot angrier at the guy who honked (and yelled!) at me in the hospital parking lot this morning because he thought I was going to hit his precious M6 convertible while I was backing into my space. I was nowhere near him. I so wanted to get out and scream into his window, “I got diagnosed with cancer yesterday. What’s your fucking excuse?!” I really wanted to key his car when I got back and he wasn’t in it anymore. Maybe my anger was a tad misdirected.). I needed the bucking up. Big time. And you all came through, big time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Scared, confused, angry, yes. But right now, more than anything, I am still just stunned and disbelieving. As the past three weeks have unfolded, I have felt much like I did during those awful hours in the ER with Hudson before she was diagnosed. With each passing minute, it became clearer and clearer that at best, we were in for a very frightening experience, and at worst… well, we just couldn’t think about that at the time. All we could do that whole day was keep breathing and try, impossibly, to comprehend what was happening before our very eyes. It was a down-the-rabbit-hole experience if ever there was one. Reality just yanked us along, step by horrifying step, and we could do nothing except stumble along helplessly, waiting for someone to tell us what came next.
After I’d first noticed the swollen lymph nodes in early February and saw the doctor about them, they seemed to get smaller again, and we chalked them up to an infectious process of some kind. I forgot about them altogether for a few weeks. And then out of nowhere, I passed my hand over my neck again and there they were again (or still? I really don’t know, because I hadn’t been monitoring them, thinking they’d gone away). Over the next ten days, after a visit with the primary care doc, discussions with Jessica and my friend Nirav, a critical care doc at Maryland, and a visit to an ENT, it became clearer and clearer that it was time to get scared. When the ENT wanted a CT scan and a biopsy, I wasn’t surprised—in fact, I was relieved that we were going to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible. But I was also in complete disbelief. I just couldn’t believe that the word “biopsy” was even on my radar. Was anywhere within 600,000 fucking miles of my radar. Even as I went through each day feeling as though it were simply impossible that the universe could possibly shit on us in such a terrible way again, I also grew more and more certain that that’s exactly what it was about to do. It was (and still is) an incredibly surreal time. I felt like I was in the mirror room at the fun house—turn this direction and life looks one way, turn another direction and it looks totally different, and every direction feels completely insane. In one breath, we were giddily discussing our crazy plans to renovate a crappy 1960s ranch house into a beautiful, light-filled bungalow that we’d live in until we died. And in the next breath, we were discussing the possibility that I might have cancer.
So when the pathologist finished looking at the slides and came back over to the table and said, “We’ll still have to do confirmatory tests, but it looks like Hodgkin’s to me. I’m so sorry,” I was simultaneously shocked and unsurprised. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s true. I’d been nearly certain that’s what I was going to hear, and yet I was still in utter disbelief that this could possibly happen. How the fuck could this possibly happen? How. The. Fuck. And of course, right after that, WHY? Why is this happening to us? AGAIN?
I read my post from yesterday, and I mean it. I read the few responses I’ve managed to write to messages and Facebook posts, and I mean them, too. I am trying to think positive. I am trying not to think too far into the future. But in everything I say and write, I also recognize the same protective coating of utter shock that kept me alive in the days after Hudson got sick and died. I read what I write and I listen to what I say and I think, “Wow, I sound way more upbeat than it seems I should feel.” But I’m not doing it on purpose. At least I don’t think I am. Maybe my brain is doing it on my behalf, to protect me from the fear, from the confusion, from the anger. After all, it has lots of practice at this.
And it’s a good thing, because in many ways, I feel the same today that I did the day after Hudson died. Obviously, nothing, nothing short of losing Ed or Jackson could ever be as bad as that, but the fear of the unknown future is the same. When Hudson died, I didn’t know how I would live. I knew I would live, but I didn’t know how. I had no idea what was in store for me, but I knew it would be awful. It might get better afterward, but it would be awful first. I just didn’t know how awful it might get. Today is the same. I know there is a dark night ahead of me, but I have no idea how dark it might get. I have that same feeling I had then that something is stepping right in the middle of my chest and won’t let up (but this time, I am terrified that it’s actually the cancer). And I am scared. And confused. And angry.
But the shock works. And the bucking up works. And Ed and Jackson and Hudson work. I have no idea what lies ahead, but on this, another terrible day after, I’m just grateful for that protection.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Life Is Both Cruel and Beautiful
Of course, I have known this truth for a long time, but I never really knew it until Hudson died. And the world grew so very dark. And we were surrounded and uplifted by so much love and light from literally all corners of the earth. And then Jackson was born. And the world grew brighter again. And all those corners of the world celebrated with us.
Today, life showed me once again how terribly cruel and terribly beautiful it can be.
This afternoon, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I discovered some swollen lymph nodes back in the beginning of February, and after getting them looked at and waiting them out and trying to treat them with antibiotics, I ultimately went for a CT scan last week and a biopsy today. The pathologist told me within minutes of looking at the slides that it appeared to be Hodgkin’s. They still have to do confirmatory tests, but it is all but certain that they will show what we already know, what I have been preparing myself for since I first felt the lump in my neck several weeks ago.
Life is cruel.
Last night, we went under contract on a house in Carrboro that we plan to renovate into our dream home, complete with a 1-acre yard for Easter egg hunts and hide-and-seek and maybe even an at-home wedding for one of our kids one day. Today, I have cancer. This morning, I swam a mile as part of my triathlon training to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This afternoon, I became a lymphoma patient myself. The irony is almost surreal. I can still barely believe I am even writing these words right now.
There is still so much we don’t know. We suspect, and hope, for a variety of clinical reasons, that the cancer is still in a very early stage. Given that we are moving to North Carolina in a few weeks anyway, our plan is just to meet with an oncologist at UNC early next week and go from there. Hodgkin’s is very curable, even in advanced stages—cure rates are as high as 80-90% depending on the type and other factors. Despite my lack of faith in odds based on our experience with Hudson (the survival rate of her type of meningitis was also around 80-90%), I am obviously going to start from the proposition that I am going to be one of the lucky ones in that 80-90%. I am trying desperately not to even entertain an alternative. I am trying desperately not to think about all that this means for the rest of my life—whether I’ll be able to have more children, whether I’ll get to watch Jackson grow up, whether I’ll get to tend the garden I plan to plant for Hudson at our new home, whether I’ll get to spend many more decades with my dear Ed like I have planned and dreamed of doing.
No. I will not think about those things. Not today.
Because life is also beautiful.
Ed is unwavering in his love, his support, and his resolve that we will survive this. We. All of us. Will survive. He and Jackson and Hudson are my very reasons for being, and they are the most stunning, perfect, incredible reasons any person could ever ask for. I have amazing family and friends who will be there for us for whatever we need for as long as we need. I remain surrounded by love and light from all corners of the world (and thank you all for continuing to check in and read and think of us even during my long periods of silence). I have health insurance. I will get world-class treatment. I have a dream home just waiting to be uncovered and lived in and loved by us for many decades with our children who will grow up in it and forever return to it whenever they need an anchor. I swam a mile this morning. With cancer.
One Good Thing about this diagnosis is that I am reminded, once again, that in spite of the ridiculously rotten luck that just refuses to leave me alone, I am still astoundingly fortunate.
Life is both cruel and beautiful. I choose to focus on the beautiful. If there’s even a choice.
Today, life showed me once again how terribly cruel and terribly beautiful it can be.
This afternoon, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I discovered some swollen lymph nodes back in the beginning of February, and after getting them looked at and waiting them out and trying to treat them with antibiotics, I ultimately went for a CT scan last week and a biopsy today. The pathologist told me within minutes of looking at the slides that it appeared to be Hodgkin’s. They still have to do confirmatory tests, but it is all but certain that they will show what we already know, what I have been preparing myself for since I first felt the lump in my neck several weeks ago.
Life is cruel.
Last night, we went under contract on a house in Carrboro that we plan to renovate into our dream home, complete with a 1-acre yard for Easter egg hunts and hide-and-seek and maybe even an at-home wedding for one of our kids one day. Today, I have cancer. This morning, I swam a mile as part of my triathlon training to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This afternoon, I became a lymphoma patient myself. The irony is almost surreal. I can still barely believe I am even writing these words right now.
There is still so much we don’t know. We suspect, and hope, for a variety of clinical reasons, that the cancer is still in a very early stage. Given that we are moving to North Carolina in a few weeks anyway, our plan is just to meet with an oncologist at UNC early next week and go from there. Hodgkin’s is very curable, even in advanced stages—cure rates are as high as 80-90% depending on the type and other factors. Despite my lack of faith in odds based on our experience with Hudson (the survival rate of her type of meningitis was also around 80-90%), I am obviously going to start from the proposition that I am going to be one of the lucky ones in that 80-90%. I am trying desperately not to even entertain an alternative. I am trying desperately not to think about all that this means for the rest of my life—whether I’ll be able to have more children, whether I’ll get to watch Jackson grow up, whether I’ll get to tend the garden I plan to plant for Hudson at our new home, whether I’ll get to spend many more decades with my dear Ed like I have planned and dreamed of doing.
No. I will not think about those things. Not today.
Because life is also beautiful.
Ed is unwavering in his love, his support, and his resolve that we will survive this. We. All of us. Will survive. He and Jackson and Hudson are my very reasons for being, and they are the most stunning, perfect, incredible reasons any person could ever ask for. I have amazing family and friends who will be there for us for whatever we need for as long as we need. I remain surrounded by love and light from all corners of the world (and thank you all for continuing to check in and read and think of us even during my long periods of silence). I have health insurance. I will get world-class treatment. I have a dream home just waiting to be uncovered and lived in and loved by us for many decades with our children who will grow up in it and forever return to it whenever they need an anchor. I swam a mile this morning. With cancer.
One Good Thing about this diagnosis is that I am reminded, once again, that in spite of the ridiculously rotten luck that just refuses to leave me alone, I am still astoundingly fortunate.
Life is both cruel and beautiful. I choose to focus on the beautiful. If there’s even a choice.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Hand-Me-Downs
Hand-Me-Downs
One day this past week, the whole family overslept a bit, so our wonderful part-time babysitter ended up being the person who got Jackson dressed in the morning. When I saw his outfit, my brow furrowed in confusion. “What are those pants?” I said, even though I knew immediately what they were. “Did you get those out of the bottom drawer of the dresser?” Obviously surprised, she said, “Yes, was that OK?” I recovered as quickly as I could and said, “Oh, sure, it’s fine. Those are Hudson’s pants. All the clothes in that bottom drawer were hers.”
Her little brown corduroys. 12-18 months size, which is the size she was wearing when she died, along with some 18 months, too. They fit Jackson perfectly at only nine months.
I knew this day would come, the day when he started wearing that same size (of course, it has come sooner than I thought, because he’s such a big kiddo). Soon the day will come when I will buy bigger sizes for him than she ever got a chance to wear (the only 24 months sizes I ever bought were some jammies I picked up on sale after her first birthday—they were so cheap that I bought a few pairs for the following winter, and of course, they never got used). Soon he will no longer be able to wear any more of her hand-me-downs, because there are no more.
In only eight short months, Jackson will be older than Hudson ever got a chance to be. What remains so incredibly striking and awful about that is the recognition, if not truly the understanding, of how terribly short a time it was that we got to spend with her. He is already well past the halfway mark of her entire little life. How is that possible? He is just now starting to hit all those awesome little developmental strides that she started to hit right around this same age. He has so very much awesomeness left to grow into. Why did she never get that chance?
As I’ve said before, I’m working on not dwelling too much on future events and milestones, but it is so hard to imagine what it will be like to watch Jackson grow up when Hudson never will, to watch him hit every milestone she never did. Of course I don’t want Jackson never to grow beyond seventeen months and twelve days, but watching it happen will be hard nevertheless.
As we get closer and closer to the time very soon when we will leave the only home Hudson ever knew, I feel more and more the weight of the monumental shift in our lives that this move will bring. More so than ever before, I feel like we are moving on without her. Even though I know for certain that she will be with us wherever we go (how could she not be?), I still don’t want to leave her behind.
I am reminded regularly these days of the night we left her at the hospital. It was probably close to 11:00 by the time we had cleared everything out of her room. Ed and I walked out of the hospital with our friend Scott. The car was parked just outside the sliding doors. Ed and Scott started loading the car with all the detritus collected over a three-day stay in the PICU with a dozen friends and family members. I opened the front passenger door to get in and suddenly it hit me that we were leaving without our little girl. Forever. My legs buckled under me and I folded myself over into the seat and sobbed. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t run back inside, take the elevator back up to the PICU, and fling myself over her body to prevent them from ever taking her away.
I see that moment in my mind’s eye over and over again every time I picture closing the door to this house behind us for the final time. It feels almost the same. Part of me wants to fling myself across the threshold in that moment and refuse to leave without her.
Part of me does not want to keep going on without her. Jackson will keep growing, I know. He has to. I want him to. But I also want endless hand-me-downs from his big sister for him to grow into. And those I cannot have.
One day this past week, the whole family overslept a bit, so our wonderful part-time babysitter ended up being the person who got Jackson dressed in the morning. When I saw his outfit, my brow furrowed in confusion. “What are those pants?” I said, even though I knew immediately what they were. “Did you get those out of the bottom drawer of the dresser?” Obviously surprised, she said, “Yes, was that OK?” I recovered as quickly as I could and said, “Oh, sure, it’s fine. Those are Hudson’s pants. All the clothes in that bottom drawer were hers.”
Her little brown corduroys. 12-18 months size, which is the size she was wearing when she died, along with some 18 months, too. They fit Jackson perfectly at only nine months.
I knew this day would come, the day when he started wearing that same size (of course, it has come sooner than I thought, because he’s such a big kiddo). Soon the day will come when I will buy bigger sizes for him than she ever got a chance to wear (the only 24 months sizes I ever bought were some jammies I picked up on sale after her first birthday—they were so cheap that I bought a few pairs for the following winter, and of course, they never got used). Soon he will no longer be able to wear any more of her hand-me-downs, because there are no more.
In only eight short months, Jackson will be older than Hudson ever got a chance to be. What remains so incredibly striking and awful about that is the recognition, if not truly the understanding, of how terribly short a time it was that we got to spend with her. He is already well past the halfway mark of her entire little life. How is that possible? He is just now starting to hit all those awesome little developmental strides that she started to hit right around this same age. He has so very much awesomeness left to grow into. Why did she never get that chance?
As I’ve said before, I’m working on not dwelling too much on future events and milestones, but it is so hard to imagine what it will be like to watch Jackson grow up when Hudson never will, to watch him hit every milestone she never did. Of course I don’t want Jackson never to grow beyond seventeen months and twelve days, but watching it happen will be hard nevertheless.
As we get closer and closer to the time very soon when we will leave the only home Hudson ever knew, I feel more and more the weight of the monumental shift in our lives that this move will bring. More so than ever before, I feel like we are moving on without her. Even though I know for certain that she will be with us wherever we go (how could she not be?), I still don’t want to leave her behind.
I am reminded regularly these days of the night we left her at the hospital. It was probably close to 11:00 by the time we had cleared everything out of her room. Ed and I walked out of the hospital with our friend Scott. The car was parked just outside the sliding doors. Ed and Scott started loading the car with all the detritus collected over a three-day stay in the PICU with a dozen friends and family members. I opened the front passenger door to get in and suddenly it hit me that we were leaving without our little girl. Forever. My legs buckled under me and I folded myself over into the seat and sobbed. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t run back inside, take the elevator back up to the PICU, and fling myself over her body to prevent them from ever taking her away.
I see that moment in my mind’s eye over and over again every time I picture closing the door to this house behind us for the final time. It feels almost the same. Part of me wants to fling myself across the threshold in that moment and refuse to leave without her.
Part of me does not want to keep going on without her. Jackson will keep growing, I know. He has to. I want him to. But I also want endless hand-me-downs from his big sister for him to grow into. And those I cannot have.
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Beginning of the End
Yesterday was a really, really hard day. The hardest day I’ve had in a very long time. It came at the end of a string of hard days—still suffering from the post-vacation blues—but yesterday was a puffy-eyes, sore-ribs kind of hard day. It’s been quite a while since I had one of those. I was so tired at the end of it that I couldn’t even bring myself write about it last night.
I finally started packing up all of our mementos of Hudson yesterday. I had told myself I would wait until the last minute to pack them up, but now all of a sudden the last minute is really here. We’re trying to get the house on the market within the next two weeks and have to paint the room that most of our Hudson memorial things were, so it was really time to get them boxed up and ready to move.
I didn’t think much about this in advance, but instead of all three of us going to the grocery store together, I told Ed it would probably make more sense for him to take Jackson to the store so that I could finish getting that room packed up. Good decision. I cried—no, I sobbed almost the entire time. But as painful as it was, I really needed it. I put on some of ours and Hudson’s favorite music, a playlist I had created when she was in the hospital, when we were still hoping she might come out of the coma, when we were trying to think and be “positive.” Among these favorites were Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, Godspeed by the Dixie Chicks, Baby Mine by Allison Krauss, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye, Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor, and of course, Seasons of Love. Each song made me cry harder than the one before it.
I sat before the little bookcase (all that was left after all the dismantling I’d already done) full of our Hudson things and cried. I clutched every photo and token to my chest, and I told her over and over again how much I miss her, how much I want her back, how much I still just can’t understand why she is gone and not here with us. I opened our keepsake box and pressed my finger into the stony clutch of the plaster mold they made of Hudson’s hand after she died. I looked at her lock of hair and marveled again at how similar it is in color to mine and now to Jackson’s. I held her little lamby tight and gently folded the dishtowel that she always put over him for a blanket. I carefully wrapped all the precious little turtle gifts we received after she died. I folded up the banner of turtle pictures one by one and placed them gently into an envelope.
I had (rather ridiculously) struggled for some time about what container to use for all of these precious items. I rejected the cardboard box—there are too many pieces of precious artwork that I would want to be sure were protected from water damage. I had a few old plastic storage bins that would have worked, but they already had writing all over them from prior moves, and I just wanted Hudson to have something that was her own. Ultimately, I was so concerned about this that I ended up dumping the contents of two newer plastic storage bins into other boxes so that I could use the nicer bins just for Hudson’s things. One day, maybe her brothers and sisters and I can decorate a box to keep our Hudson things in, but these bins will have to do for now.
After I packed away all the things from our memorial display upstairs, I then had to tackle a few boxes of Hudson things in the basement. Some were things I put away after she died, things that will be always just Hudson’s. Her consignment sale coat that she wore every day during the winter before she died (which I looked at yesterday and thought, “Did I really buy this thing that says “Princess” on the lapel?!”). Her Topsail Turtle Project t-shirt, a memento from our lovely trip to the beach with her when she was nine months old. Several heirloom toys that family members gave her when she was born (these I may have to resurrect should we have another girl one day). The snowflake jammies she was wearing the night she got sick, which I can neither part with nor pass on. But some were things I had already boxed away, totally unceremoniously, for us to look at with her later, when she was older and wanted to know about before she was born and when she was a baby. The pregnancy test we took to find out she was coming. The second pregnancy test we took because we weren’t sure we believed the first one. Our first ultrasound showing a tiny little peanut. Our later ultrasound pictures of her little alien face and a waving hand. A baby shower invitation. A card from my OB showing that I had an appointment scheduled for the day that she arrived, nine days early. Our hospital wristbands. A receipt from her first pediatrician appointment. A schedule of classes at the Breastfeeding Center. The daily activity report from her very first trial run day in day care at 5.5 months (I got a kick out of this one—it asked how long the baby had slept the night before, and I remember very vividly how proud I felt when I wrote “6:45 PM to 6:45AM” as if I somehow had something to do with that—we did sleep train her gently, but I know very well now that she was just the kind of kid who took to it quickly). The Christmas card her day care teacher made for us, complete with a photo of her grinning in a rocking chair in front of a Christmas display at St. Ann’s, where sitting right behind her was a giant stuffed penguin. So many seemingly ordinary little things that, like so much else, now have such extraordinary meaning.
But the shoes? Where were Hudson’s little white and pink Nikes that her grandma gave her? The ones she wore almost every day? Surely I hadn’t misplaced those. And then I remembered. They are still in the diaper bag. Along with the clothes she wore the day we took her to the hospital. Still in the diaper bag, which is still on the floor of her (Jackson’s) closet. When will be the last minute to do something with that?
Needless to say, it was hard. All of it. So very, very hard. Not just getting intimately close with all of these things of Hudson’s for the first time in a long time, although that itself was difficult—so very different from just living in and among them every day. No, it was more the idea that I was packing away our very lives with her. Finally really beginning to come to terms with what it will mean when we leave this house. Wondering what it will feel like when we close the door behind us for the last time. Not feeling even remotely ready to do that.
Among the things I read as I was going through everything was the letter that I wrote to Hudson on the first anniversary of her death. These words in particular stood out to me as I sat there, red-eyed and clutching at the gnawing pain in my chest:
When you died, I promised you and myself that in order to help keep your spirit alive in the world, I would live the lesson that you taught me—to cherish what is, rather than dwelling on what should be. To look for the One Good Thing even when things seem bad. As it turns out, that is so much easier said than done, particularly in these very dark days that we must live without you. So many days, it feels almost impossible—how can I say that anything good could have come from you being gone? At any given moment, I would gladly trade back every ounce of wisdom I have gained from having lost you. I would gladly return to being my naively ignorant self if it only meant that I could have you back.
But I know that no amount of wishing can ever bring you back. So I must continue to let you teach me and guide me every day, sweet girl. You are helping me understand that it is on the very darkest days when I need to look the hardest for the One Good Thing. What an amazing gift you continue to give me, to give all of us.
I needed to read those words yesterday. To be reminded.
So I was particularly moved when I happened upon this quote in another random box of things in the basement yesterday, one that I opened just to see what was in it and found a page with this on it inside:
You cannot stay on the summit forever, you have to come down again.
So why bother in the first place?
Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees.
One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.
What one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
~Rene Daumal
How incredibly appropriate for the terrible task I faced yesterday. I found my One Good Thing on another very hard day.
What one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
I finally started packing up all of our mementos of Hudson yesterday. I had told myself I would wait until the last minute to pack them up, but now all of a sudden the last minute is really here. We’re trying to get the house on the market within the next two weeks and have to paint the room that most of our Hudson memorial things were, so it was really time to get them boxed up and ready to move.
I didn’t think much about this in advance, but instead of all three of us going to the grocery store together, I told Ed it would probably make more sense for him to take Jackson to the store so that I could finish getting that room packed up. Good decision. I cried—no, I sobbed almost the entire time. But as painful as it was, I really needed it. I put on some of ours and Hudson’s favorite music, a playlist I had created when she was in the hospital, when we were still hoping she might come out of the coma, when we were trying to think and be “positive.” Among these favorites were Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, Godspeed by the Dixie Chicks, Baby Mine by Allison Krauss, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye, Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor, and of course, Seasons of Love. Each song made me cry harder than the one before it.
I sat before the little bookcase (all that was left after all the dismantling I’d already done) full of our Hudson things and cried. I clutched every photo and token to my chest, and I told her over and over again how much I miss her, how much I want her back, how much I still just can’t understand why she is gone and not here with us. I opened our keepsake box and pressed my finger into the stony clutch of the plaster mold they made of Hudson’s hand after she died. I looked at her lock of hair and marveled again at how similar it is in color to mine and now to Jackson’s. I held her little lamby tight and gently folded the dishtowel that she always put over him for a blanket. I carefully wrapped all the precious little turtle gifts we received after she died. I folded up the banner of turtle pictures one by one and placed them gently into an envelope.
I had (rather ridiculously) struggled for some time about what container to use for all of these precious items. I rejected the cardboard box—there are too many pieces of precious artwork that I would want to be sure were protected from water damage. I had a few old plastic storage bins that would have worked, but they already had writing all over them from prior moves, and I just wanted Hudson to have something that was her own. Ultimately, I was so concerned about this that I ended up dumping the contents of two newer plastic storage bins into other boxes so that I could use the nicer bins just for Hudson’s things. One day, maybe her brothers and sisters and I can decorate a box to keep our Hudson things in, but these bins will have to do for now.
After I packed away all the things from our memorial display upstairs, I then had to tackle a few boxes of Hudson things in the basement. Some were things I put away after she died, things that will be always just Hudson’s. Her consignment sale coat that she wore every day during the winter before she died (which I looked at yesterday and thought, “Did I really buy this thing that says “Princess” on the lapel?!”). Her Topsail Turtle Project t-shirt, a memento from our lovely trip to the beach with her when she was nine months old. Several heirloom toys that family members gave her when she was born (these I may have to resurrect should we have another girl one day). The snowflake jammies she was wearing the night she got sick, which I can neither part with nor pass on. But some were things I had already boxed away, totally unceremoniously, for us to look at with her later, when she was older and wanted to know about before she was born and when she was a baby. The pregnancy test we took to find out she was coming. The second pregnancy test we took because we weren’t sure we believed the first one. Our first ultrasound showing a tiny little peanut. Our later ultrasound pictures of her little alien face and a waving hand. A baby shower invitation. A card from my OB showing that I had an appointment scheduled for the day that she arrived, nine days early. Our hospital wristbands. A receipt from her first pediatrician appointment. A schedule of classes at the Breastfeeding Center. The daily activity report from her very first trial run day in day care at 5.5 months (I got a kick out of this one—it asked how long the baby had slept the night before, and I remember very vividly how proud I felt when I wrote “6:45 PM to 6:45AM” as if I somehow had something to do with that—we did sleep train her gently, but I know very well now that she was just the kind of kid who took to it quickly). The Christmas card her day care teacher made for us, complete with a photo of her grinning in a rocking chair in front of a Christmas display at St. Ann’s, where sitting right behind her was a giant stuffed penguin. So many seemingly ordinary little things that, like so much else, now have such extraordinary meaning.
But the shoes? Where were Hudson’s little white and pink Nikes that her grandma gave her? The ones she wore almost every day? Surely I hadn’t misplaced those. And then I remembered. They are still in the diaper bag. Along with the clothes she wore the day we took her to the hospital. Still in the diaper bag, which is still on the floor of her (Jackson’s) closet. When will be the last minute to do something with that?
Needless to say, it was hard. All of it. So very, very hard. Not just getting intimately close with all of these things of Hudson’s for the first time in a long time, although that itself was difficult—so very different from just living in and among them every day. No, it was more the idea that I was packing away our very lives with her. Finally really beginning to come to terms with what it will mean when we leave this house. Wondering what it will feel like when we close the door behind us for the last time. Not feeling even remotely ready to do that.
Among the things I read as I was going through everything was the letter that I wrote to Hudson on the first anniversary of her death. These words in particular stood out to me as I sat there, red-eyed and clutching at the gnawing pain in my chest:
When you died, I promised you and myself that in order to help keep your spirit alive in the world, I would live the lesson that you taught me—to cherish what is, rather than dwelling on what should be. To look for the One Good Thing even when things seem bad. As it turns out, that is so much easier said than done, particularly in these very dark days that we must live without you. So many days, it feels almost impossible—how can I say that anything good could have come from you being gone? At any given moment, I would gladly trade back every ounce of wisdom I have gained from having lost you. I would gladly return to being my naively ignorant self if it only meant that I could have you back.
But I know that no amount of wishing can ever bring you back. So I must continue to let you teach me and guide me every day, sweet girl. You are helping me understand that it is on the very darkest days when I need to look the hardest for the One Good Thing. What an amazing gift you continue to give me, to give all of us.
I needed to read those words yesterday. To be reminded.
So I was particularly moved when I happened upon this quote in another random box of things in the basement yesterday, one that I opened just to see what was in it and found a page with this on it inside:
You cannot stay on the summit forever, you have to come down again.
So why bother in the first place?
Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees.
One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.
What one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
~Rene Daumal
How incredibly appropriate for the terrible task I faced yesterday. I found my One Good Thing on another very hard day.
What one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I Miss Her
Goodness. Not a single post yet in February. Still no 8-month post for Jackson (even though he turns 9 months on Friday). I do have good excuses (reviewing 8 50+-page student papers in one week for my adjunct professor job at GW Law School, preparing for my first big trip alone with Jackson complete with a cross-country flight and packing for two different climates, and the 10-day, 5-flight, 2-city trip itself), but I still miss writing. I feel rusty. I need so much to flex these muscles more, to grasp for more understanding where I have so little, to give myself dedicated room and time to grieve, time that is just for Hudson. So many other things are competing for my time right now—triathlon training, preparing to put the house on the market, reviewing draft after draft of student work—lately, all I can do is just let the grief come when it will, in short bursts of hot tears in the parking garage at the grocery store or stopped at traffic light. I need more time that is just for Hudson. I can only imagine that as time goes on, as life goes on, it will be harder and harder to find. What I wouldn’t give to have this problem with a living daughter, to have to carve out special Mommy-Hudson time so that she wouldn’t feel too often overlooked next to her much less independent little brother. How often I have imagined what we would do on Mommy-Hudson day.
As you can imagine, my inability to find time to write bears no relationship whatsoever to the status of my grief, no relationship at all to the intensity of my continued longing for my daughter who is gone from me forever.
I have somewhat come to terms with all the “firsts” that still remain ahead of us for the rest of our lives, milestones that will always feel different than they should because she should be part of them. But this does not make them any easier when they come.
The trip I took with Jackson had two legs. First, he and I flew to Helena, Montana, for a 6-day visit with our dear Jess and her family. From there, we flew to San Diego to see our old friends from DC, Jake and Andrea, and their two kids. Ed spoke on a panel at an ABA conference there and then joined us for the weekend afterward.
While I certainly had my share of wistful moments during our visit with Jess (and regretted so deeply never having taken Hudson to Montana), it wasn’t until Ed joined us in San Diego that I really felt Hudson’s absence so keenly. I’ve written before that I don’t often imagine Hudson in the places where she should be anymore—while I never stop wishing for her to be in those places, my brain no longer sketches her into them like it used to. Is this some part of acceptance, some kind of “integration”? I don’t know, but in just the right circumstance, the brain rebels again, unable again to comprehend what it means for her to be gone forever.
On Saturday, Ed and I and Jake and Andrea and their two kids all went to Sea World in San Diego. Jake and Andrea had told us that Sea World had both sea turtles and penguins, so we were in. Although I didn’t end up being a giant fan of Sea World (I’m not sure what I expected, but seeing the sea turtles and penguins in that kind of captivity ultimately just made me sad), I couldn’t stop thinking the entire day about how much Hudson would have loved it. As we watched dolphins leaping and dancing in the water with colorful acrobats, my brain sketched her right in. I could just see her there, completely mesmerized by the motion, the colors, the spraying water, the high dives, the gorgeous dolphins. I could see her laughing gleefully when the dolphins soaked the first several rows of the audience with powerful slaps of their tails. I could see her leaving the stadium and pronouncing that she was going to work with dolphins when she grew up. I could see her there. I cried silently behind my sunglasses through half the show.
As the day wore on, it occurred to me that this was our first big family trip without her. Just when I think I have mapped the perimeter of the giant hole in our lives where she once lived, it changes on me. Just when I think I have plumbed its depths, another cavern opens up. Just when I think I have stopped imagining her where she should be, my brain sketches her right back in again, leaving me breathless to think of all the imagining that must remain ahead of me for the rest of our lives.
We returned home once again without her. Our family of four with only three.
Over and over. The hole ever wider and deeper. The longing made new and raw all over again.
I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
As you can imagine, my inability to find time to write bears no relationship whatsoever to the status of my grief, no relationship at all to the intensity of my continued longing for my daughter who is gone from me forever.
I have somewhat come to terms with all the “firsts” that still remain ahead of us for the rest of our lives, milestones that will always feel different than they should because she should be part of them. But this does not make them any easier when they come.
The trip I took with Jackson had two legs. First, he and I flew to Helena, Montana, for a 6-day visit with our dear Jess and her family. From there, we flew to San Diego to see our old friends from DC, Jake and Andrea, and their two kids. Ed spoke on a panel at an ABA conference there and then joined us for the weekend afterward.
While I certainly had my share of wistful moments during our visit with Jess (and regretted so deeply never having taken Hudson to Montana), it wasn’t until Ed joined us in San Diego that I really felt Hudson’s absence so keenly. I’ve written before that I don’t often imagine Hudson in the places where she should be anymore—while I never stop wishing for her to be in those places, my brain no longer sketches her into them like it used to. Is this some part of acceptance, some kind of “integration”? I don’t know, but in just the right circumstance, the brain rebels again, unable again to comprehend what it means for her to be gone forever.
On Saturday, Ed and I and Jake and Andrea and their two kids all went to Sea World in San Diego. Jake and Andrea had told us that Sea World had both sea turtles and penguins, so we were in. Although I didn’t end up being a giant fan of Sea World (I’m not sure what I expected, but seeing the sea turtles and penguins in that kind of captivity ultimately just made me sad), I couldn’t stop thinking the entire day about how much Hudson would have loved it. As we watched dolphins leaping and dancing in the water with colorful acrobats, my brain sketched her right in. I could just see her there, completely mesmerized by the motion, the colors, the spraying water, the high dives, the gorgeous dolphins. I could see her laughing gleefully when the dolphins soaked the first several rows of the audience with powerful slaps of their tails. I could see her leaving the stadium and pronouncing that she was going to work with dolphins when she grew up. I could see her there. I cried silently behind my sunglasses through half the show.
As the day wore on, it occurred to me that this was our first big family trip without her. Just when I think I have mapped the perimeter of the giant hole in our lives where she once lived, it changes on me. Just when I think I have plumbed its depths, another cavern opens up. Just when I think I have stopped imagining her where she should be, my brain sketches her right back in again, leaving me breathless to think of all the imagining that must remain ahead of me for the rest of our lives.
We returned home once again without her. Our family of four with only three.
Over and over. The hole ever wider and deeper. The longing made new and raw all over again.
I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
More of One Good Thing
So often on a daily basis, I find myself thinking of Hudson, seeing something that reminds me of her, feeling her presence. And so often these days, I find I have less and less time to sit down and write a proper post about these moments. Many times, I just want to acknowledge or remember the moment, without necessarily needing to process it or write about it at length. For a time, I was just sending myself emails when this happened, but it occurred to me that Twitter might be another way I could collect these snippets of thought and memory so that I can go and look at them whenever I want, and I can share them with anyone else who might be interested in hearing more about what this journey of grief is like on a daily basis. So feel free to follow me at @onegoodthings:
Follow @onegoodthings
I’ve also included a widget with recent tweets here on the blog.
For me, this is just another way to stay connected to my girl. And that is surely One Good Thing.
Follow @onegoodthings
I’ve also included a widget with recent tweets here on the blog.
For me, this is just another way to stay connected to my girl. And that is surely One Good Thing.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Jackson Update
Thank you all so much for your care and concern. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to post an update sooner (and I don't have time for a proper post today), but I just wanted to let you know that Jackson is doing OK. His RSV never took a turn for the worse, like the horror stories I've heard. He's had a pretty nasty cough all week long and has clearly not been feeling well, but he's hanging in there. We realized this morning that on top of all that, he's also been cutting a new tooth. Poor, poor baby.
Anyway, thank you again for all the messages of concern and support. I'm so grateful, as I am every day, for everyone who reads here and carries me during these harder days. Thank you.
Anyway, thank you again for all the messages of concern and support. I'm so grateful, as I am every day, for everyone who reads here and carries me during these harder days. Thank you.
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