Pi Day's Eve

March 13, Pi day's eve, as I was told by a friend this evening.  Two years ago on this very night, I was sitting in my bed, just as I am now, writing on my iPad.  I was thinking and reflecting and finding just the right words to use in my goodbye letter to Miri.  And here it is two years later, and I'm still sitting here, thinking and reflecting and realizing just how far I've come.  Two years ago, I was anxious about spreading her ashes.  I cried a lot that evening in anticipation of how that final goodbye would go.  I had no idea how liberating it was going to be and how that Pi Day would be the first day where I felt unchained from my sorrows.  One year ago, I was still sad about all those milestones I missed during her first year, I still cried a bit, but I was proud of myself for how much emotional healing I had done. I was pregnant and still anxious, and I wasn't quite ready for Pi Day.  This year, there are no more tears.  I'm not fooling myself--there's still a small lump in my throat--I do wish she was here and that I could celebrate her birthday.  I was thinking about it a lot tonight. If Miri was alive, I wouldn't be typing now.  I would be blowing up balloons.  I would be hanging streamers.  I would be wrapping presents.  I would be scrambling around the house trying to locate that rogue roll of Scotch tape that I know we have but has gone missing just at the wrong time.  And as I'm searching, I would be having a conversation with my husband (who by the way, would tell me that I was crazy for going all out with the balloons and streamers) about how the decorations ARE important and I don't care if she won't have any memories of going to bed in a normal room but waking up to a fully decorated birthday surprise.  I would explain to him that it would be fun for her and it would set the tone for her special day.  But I'm doing none of that tonight.  She's not alive. 

My life has gone down a different path.  And that's okay.  Even though I feel like I can see just what could have been as if it were, I'm not lamenting the fact that that isn't my life.  I am truly happy with where my life has ended up.  I love Annalie.  I love that I got the chance to meet her and raise her.  I love that my kids are 4 years apart, not two and a half.  I love that our loss brought my husband and I closer together.  I love the new friendships I have made.  I love the wisdom I have gained.  I love the perspective on life that I now have.

And this year, I set my alarm to go off slightly early so I can make it to the store and buy some pies for my math class tomorrow.  I'm going to celebrate Pi day with a nod to the birthday that almost was.

My Story--I Think Differently Now

I almost just wrote, "Miri should have been 1 month old", and then I caught myself.  Miri would have been 1 month old.  There's a difference, and it's an important one...Would have means "if it were not for the unfortunate circumstances", but "should have" means a little more--that something isn't quite right and it was supposed to be differently.  And part of being at peace with the situation means realizing that this is the way it was meant to be.  It shouldn't be different than it is.  This is it, and as much as I sometimes wish otherwise, I was meant to have lost her.  She was not meant to be 1 month old.  

In any event, Miri would have been 1 month old, and although I feel happy, confident, and peaceful, there are still plenty of moments that catch me off guard.  The obvious ones--people who hadn't seen me in a long time saying "Congratulations"--although, these don't nearly cause the same anxiety-filled reaction as some of the others.  It's more the people who ask, "How's the baby?", wanting to know how my almost 3 year-old daughter is, because in their eyes she still is a baby.  And my heart races, I think to myself, "Don't they know I lost the baby?  How can I explain it without making them feel ill-at-ease?"  It took a few times of someone else saying, "Whitney is fine." before I realized the intent of the question.  And there are the other moments that force me to do a double-take.  Friends, cousins, etc who are pregnant, and as proud and excited as a new mom should be.  I'm not jealous, I'm not sad, it doesn't bring me back to that dark place I was in so many weeks ago, but there are moments that give me pause.  My cousin had posts on Facebook,  "3rd Trimester already!"  "2 months to go!"  "Can't believe the baby will be here in 3 more weeks!"  Those sort of things, while very innocent on her part and something we all do as first time moms, now give me a very different reaction.  While I used to share in the excitement of the moment, now when I hear those comments, one word and one word alone always pops into my head...Maybe.  Maybe she'll be here soon.  Maybe you really have 3 weeks left.  Maybe if you are not one of the unlucky ones.  I feel awful that I can't get as excited as I once would have, but this is now my experience.  It gives me a new perspective on the old adage, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."  I always knew what it meant, but it's visceral now.  Even today, when I heard another cousin announce "It's a girl!", my gut gave me an overwhelming feeling of "I hope she makes it."  I really can't count on a baby being born alive until it is.  That sigh of relief at viability day, when they tell you if something goes wrong and we have to take the baby, it'll have a 95% or higher chance of survival, still is no real sigh of relief.  Had I been able to predict what happened over the weekend, I could have had a c-section on Saturday and a 95% chance or higher that Miri would be alive and healthy today.  It's dumbfounding sometimes.  

One thing that a good friend of mine taught me is that in the Jewish faith, when a woman is pregnant, you never offer her congratulations.  Instead of Mazel Tov, you say, "B'sha-ah Tova", meaning, "all in good time."  And having gone through a stillbirth, I can now see the wisdom in it.  Congratulations is for things which have already happened, not for things you anticipate will happen.  All in good time...how true.

One of the tasks that I saved until I was better able to deal with my emotions was returning the gifts that were meant for Miri.  My grandmother had purchased matching outfits for her and Whitney for the spring, and I couldn't keep either of them.  I didn't need anything newborn sized, and putting Whitney in it would just be another reminder that Miri isn't here anymore.  So I called my grandmother and asked for the receipt, then went to the mall.  When the sales lady asked me what my reason was for the return, I figured I should be honest...not many stores will allow a return that is more than 3 months old.  I cried a bit while telling her, but she was sympathetic and went ahead with a merchandise credit for me.  It wasn't fun, but one more task checked off the list and one more element of closure.

My Story--Saying Goodbye

On the day before my due date, the hospital called to remind me about the pre-op instructions for the next day.  I was driving down the highway when I received the phone call and I had to kindly tell them that I wasn't coming in because I had had a stillborn 2 months earlier. Apparently my OB had forgotten to cancel that appointment.  That was another one of those caught off-guard moments on what was already a tough day for me.

It was tough due to anticipation of how I was going to handle saying goodbye, but also tough because I was trying to decide how the day was going to play out.  We had already decided that Whitney would not be allowed to go.  There would be too many questions that I didn't think she was ready to have truthful answers to, and both Andy and I wanted to have the freedom to break down emotionally if we needed to.  Neither one of us wanted to have to be strong in that moment.  Andy wanted it to be private, as in just the two of us, but I wanted my parents there as well.  After all, it was their granddaughter too, and my mom had been my emotional support for the past two months.  He had agreed the night before that they could come, but only if they would stand in the background and not be with us when we spread her ashes.

Right before I received that phone call from the hospital, I was at our temple, meeting with my rabbi to try to find something appropriate and meaningful to say.  I knew the mourner's Kaddish wasn't right, because she technically was never alive.  I wanted something that was looking ahead with promise and looking back but not in a mournful, grief-stricken way.  My rabbi found a few passages and prayers from a modern reformed book specifically written to address stillbirths and miscarriages.  He made photocopies for me to take home.  He even offered to come and say a few words during our final goodbye, but I declined.  I knew Andy really wanted privacy, but more than that, I wanted Miri's goodbye to come from me.  This was the last loving act I could do, and I wanted to be the one to do it.  He also asked me if I had decided where we were going to spread her ashes.  It was going to be on the temple grounds, but I hadn't yet found the perfect place.  He offered a suggestion that that we spread her ashes at the center of their new labyrinth, right at the base of a tree that had been planted for him when he became our head rabbi.  He showed me where it was from his office window, and I said that I'd think about it.  At the end of our conversation, he asked me if I had ever seen ashes before (which I hadn't).  And he warned me that sometimes there are still remnants and pieces of bone mixed in with the ashes.  He did say that in her case she was so young and her bones were so much cartilage that he didn't think there would be many pieces, but he wanted to warn me ahead of time so it wasn't one extra bit of unexpected stress.  I thanked him for that and I left his office very emotional from thinking about what was coming up tomorrow.  I walked around the entire temple, and the spot that I had been thinking of ended up not being as great or as private as I had imagined.  I found another place that was nice, and I checked out the labyrinth.  I couldn't decide between the two, so I figured I'd give Andy some ownership in the "where".

Later that evening, after I put Whitney to bed, I went through the passages and came to the conclusion that none of what these progressive male rabbis wrote was what I was feeling.  Their words seemed empty and the solemn tone seemed as if they were imagining what it felt like rather than knowing what it felt like.  And when I thought about it, of course they didn't know...they were men.  They can't experience the loss in the same way.  They can't feel the responsibility or the sense of letting your child down.  So, I decided to just write my own letter to her, expressing what I felt and telling her what she meant to me.  I wrote and thought for a long time and I hit on this idea that made everything okay...I found purpose and meaning to her little life and I summed it all up in this short letter:

Miri,
I believe that people come in and out of your life to teach you lessons, and they stay until all the lessons they were meant to teach you have been learned.   You have taught me about deep sorrow, compassion, strength, and courage.  You taught me that I can do things I never thought I would be able to do.  You showed me how much love and support I have in friends and family that I didn't know was there.   You also taught me not to take a healthy pregnancy for granted, and that a second child's milestones should be just as exciting as they were for the first child.  You brought new friends into my life.  And you did all that for me in just 7 months.  And so your life, even without a taking a breath, had meaning and served a purpose.  And for that I will always be grateful.  As painful as it is, knowing you and losing you has enriched my life in so many ways.

I could have elaborated so much and described each point, but I knew that I wanted to read this letter to her, and I knew that it would be one of the hardest things I'd ever have to do, and I didn't know if I would be able to find enough of a voice among the tears to even get through one sentence.  Short and to the point was what I needed, but the thoughts behind each statement would be forever in my heart.  And upon the realization that her life had a meaning and that I am forever changed for the better somehow made it all okay.  That was the moment that I turned my grief into gratitude.  I felt better about how the next day was going to go, and it was late at night, so I settled in and went to bed.

The next morning, I was met with a wave of anxiety as I knew what the day would entail.  Andy and I showered and got dressed.  We both decided to wear something nice, a rarety in our house.  I printed the letter I had written and placed it next to the box containing her ashes.  My grandmother came over to watch Whitney, and Andy and I gathered our courage, the letter, and Miri's ashes, and we headed out the door.  We still hadn't decided with certainty where we were going to do it.  There were two spots I had in mind, but when we arrived at the temple, there were gardeners tending the plants at one of the spots.  I didn't want to ask them to stop, so by default we had chosen our spot.  It was going to be in the labyrinth, under our rabbi's tree.

A few minutes later my parents arrived, and just as we requested, they stayed back and watched from the entrance of the labyrinth as Andy and I walked toward the center.  We took a deep breath, with tears in our eyes, and we knelt down at a spot right next to a rock big enough to sit on.  I opened the box, with a bit of trepidation, not knowing exactly what the ashes would look like.  They were light gray, and very fine.  No bits or pieces, like I was worried about.  And very matter-of-factly, I asked Andy if he was ready because once we did it, she would be gone, and he nodded, so we both held the bag and sprinkled them in a small clearing we had made in the ground cover.  I tried to mix her in with the dirt and mulch, because I didn't want the gardeners to move her when doing their maintenance.  My hands were dirty, my eyes were filled with tears, some had streaked down my face, but I didn't care.  I got out my letter, and I read it.  The tears were coming out so fast, that the words looked blurry on the page, and at one point, I couldn't even read what I had written.  It didn't matter, though.  I knew it by heart, as the sentiments came directly from my heart.   I managed to speak every word out loud, and I told her I loved her.  Andy cried.  He said that it just wasn't fair.  He told her that he loved her, and we hugged, held hands, and walked back.  I put the letter that I had written in the box where her ashes were, and I held it.  It was lighter and empty, and part of me was sad that we let her go out of our hands forever, but most of me knew that it was the best thing we could have done.  It was the final step in achieving closure.  My parents gave us a hug, and a remarkable thing happened as we walked to greet them.  All of a sudden, my dark haze that I had been living in lifted.  Just like that.  It was over, and I felt happy.  It was the first time in months, and I felt like I was going to have a good day.  My mom asked how I was, and I said, "Good.  I'm really good."  I told them that if they wanted to go and pay their respects, they could.  And they did.  I could tell that it was really hard for them too, but they did it.  I took a deep breath, enjoyed the warm fresh air, looked up at the beautiful blue sky, and I knew that I was going to be okay.

Over the 9 weeks I had just lived through, I did a lot of thinking, feeling, and introspection, and this was the first day for me to move on with my life.  I needed to get back to a normal routine.  I needed to be a mom to Whitney and take care of her.  And I had a few months ahead of no stressing about a baby.  My life could be mine again.  And it was a relief in a weird way.  I no longer had to worry whether or not I would make it through spreading her ashes.  I no longer had to play the scene over and over in my head, where I just fell apart, where my legs buckled underneath me and Andy had to catch me because I just couldn't handle it, where I cried so hard I could barely breathe.  I did it.  I made it through.  I had a voice, and I used it.  I said goodbye, and I was proud of myself for finding that strength.  You wouldn't think that the day you say goodbye would be such a happy day, but I couldn't stop smiling.  I forgot how good it felt to feel happy, and it just felt so good.

Andy and I decided to take the rest of the day and spend it together as a family.  We took Whitney to the zoo and were having a lovely afternoon.  As we were walking to see the hippos, Whitney's favorite animal, I got a phonecall from Joy, wanting to know how everything went.  And I told her all about it with no tears or anything.  I was really relieved and really happy.  It was a good day.  Then her news once again rocked my world...Gabby was taken by ambulance from her pediatrician's office to the hospital.  They didn't know for sure what was wrong, but her blood oxygen was only 68%, and Joy was so distraught.  As it turned out, after a day or two of tests, Gabby was missing her pulmonary artery and a valve in her heart, and she had a hole between her ventricles.  Officially, she has Tetralogy of Fallot with MAPCAS.  And she needed to have open heart surgery as soon as she could.  After I got off the phone with her, I told Andy, and we were both in shock.  She was living through one of our, "It would be worse if" scenarios.