Is the first year after loss really the worst?

I tend to think so. But what do I know, sixteen months out?

In the first few months after my loss, people would sometimes say, “The first year is the absolute worst.” This would come primarily from those who have suffered baby loss, so I trusted their opinions. However, in the back of my mind, I was always thinking, “I’m not so sure.” Everybody grieves differently. Our minds, our hearts, our bodies, everything “recovers” in different ways and paces. I place that word in quotes, recognizing that grief is a lifelong process, and from what I know there is never complete recovery from the loss of a child. But there has to be some degree of healing for any of us to continue living. Not merely surviving, but truly living, which is what I’m starting to finally do. Back to the questions at hand: So how could anyone know that my first year of grief would be the worst?

I’ll tell you. I’m sixteen months out. So maybe I don’t know a whole hell of a lot. But so far, it does seem that the first year IS the absolute worst. I know I will have days where the grief knocks the wind out of me probably for the rest of my life if not at least for many years. I know I’ll be in a retirement home talking about my precious son. I hope to be. He deserves that. However, the pain, the pain lessens. It has to. And while I hope that I will always honor and acknowledge my son as part of our family, I also hope that the pain continues to lessen. I don’t feel I need to hold onto the pain to hold on to him. I know that his legacy is about so much more than that.

My epiphany about the first year being the worst came to me at the most unforeseen time. A visit to the dentist. For some reason, the dentist always brings flashbacks. I always think about the last time I was at the dentist and how I was feeling. This dental visit was going really well. I got a clean bill of dental health, and everything was perfect. I flashed back to before my loss when TTC. I kept asking if this or that was okay during pregnancy (just in case I was pregnant), and the woman kept reassuring me. Then, she told me about a woman who had a stillbirth that was attributed to gingivitis. I thought that was just absolutely horrific and thought I would never forgive myself if something like that happened to me. (And of course, I did NOT lose Elias to gingivitis. But oh my, if hearing that story was not incentive to keep my teeth clean, I don’t know what would have been!)

Flash forward to my next appointment. This was only a few months out from my loss, maybe four or five. I just wanted to get in, get out, go home, and crawl under a blanket. You know, typical day. So I go in, and to my surprise, the hygienist says she’s sorry for my loss. I had no idea how she even knew. But I didn’t want to talk about it at all, and I felt so exposed and panicky and self-conscious and just OMG get me out of here! So they proceed to do the cleaning and had plenty to say. In nice tones, of course, but still. Teeth not in great shape (thanks, grief). Hadn’t been flossing enough (thanks, depression). Enamel worn away (thanks, months and months of barfing due to multiple gestation). I felt like sitting up in the middle of that dental visit and screaming, “My son died! I’m sorry I didn’t brush my teeth twice a day and always remember to floss! I was kind of busy trying to not off myself or end up in the freaking loony bin! Can you cut me some slack here?!?!?!”

I’m sure I had a visit in between that one and this one, but I was likely in my numb phase of grief (rather than the anger phase), so that visit doesn’t quite stand out so much in my mind.

But this one? It went so freaking well that the lady didn’t even give me the special “sensitive” toothpaste. She sprayed cold-ass water during those rinses, and it didn’t bother my teeth one bit. We talked about a bachelorette party I’m going out of town for and what salon treatments I might get beforehand (it’s at a water park). She told me all about her experience getting waxed for the first time (I know, right?!) and a little about her family back in Romania. We made jokes and talked about the weather, all that NORMAL stuff, and I walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. And almost like a normal person myself. I felt so awesome, I walked next door to FroYo and treated myself to some delicious calorie-laden teeth damaging frozen yogurt (I’d never been there before. Let me say that it is fan.tas.tic).

Driving home, scarfing my ice cream (unsafe, I know), I realized something that should have been so painfully obvious all along. I guess I’d just never really thought about it. But here it is. The first year after your loss, amidst the raw grief and anger and all that, there’s always that nagging agonizing feeling of, “This time last year I was __________”. Whether happily TTC, happily pregnant (or, admittedly at times miserably pregnant). “If only I knew then what I know now!” And that feeling where you trick yourself into thinking you could have changed the outcome now that you know what you know, which makes you feel panicky and guilty and so.freaking.upset.

After the first year, you start saying, “This time last year I was __________”. Suicidal? Hating everybody? Not sure my broken heart would continue to function? Not sure I would ever care to brush my teeth or shower on a regular basis?

And you kind of stop wanting to go back. You start being okay right where you are now. And you realize that a year from now, you’ll look back without panic attacks, and just think, “This time last year I had FroYo for the first time, and it was fan.freaking.tastic.”

Is there such a thing...

...as grief-induced bipolar disorder? Not.even.kidding. This is a real question.

I am not sad 24/7. For realz.

I feel a responsibility of sorts to push all the other blogposts I have floating around my head to the backburner for awhile and just say something.

So here it goes:

I am not sad 24/7.

For realz.

No joke, no fingers crossed, no bull.

I remember in the early days a coworker came to visit (yes, the same one I mentioned in a previous post about over-sharing). She brought a gift for Evelyn (cute girly outfits), and she also brought a gift in memory of Elias (a children’s book. I cried.).

I was still so early out that I was in complete and utter shock over what happened (this was maybe a month post-loss, if that). I said, “I think my life is going to be ruined by this.” When she asked me to elaborate on how I came to this conclusion, I simply said, “Look at the babyloss blogs. They are full of misery.”

Now, this woman had no idea what I was even talking about. So I had to kind of explain what the BLM community is and how many blogs there are floating around in cyberspace written by women whose losses completely destroyed their lives. Jobs lost, marriages ruined, no future children, multiple losses, no hope for the future, etc.

I had such fear in my heart and in my expression when I looked at her and said, “Will that be me?! Is this it? The best of my life is OVER, and I’m not even thirty years old? It’s just all downhill from here on out?!”

She simply responded, “Everybody grieves differently.”

I sighed, and let that comfort me as best it could. I moped for days thinking about how further down the road, once the shock of it all had worn off, I may be ruined by my loss like so many other BLM seemed to be ruined by theirs.

One day I logged into Facebook to find this message from her: “You said that you read a lot of the blogs and women never recover from the loss of a baby. But women do recover...or at least learn to move on. The blogs you are reading are from the women who have a difficult time moving on. The women who have managed to forge ahead with their lives are busy with their families, friends, careers, etc. and probably don't visit the sites as much as the women who are having a difficult time. I am not writing this to upset you...not even a little. I'm hoping that this will make some sense and help you in some way. You can tell me to shut up if you'd like. But just know that I'm thinking of you and wish you nothing but peace and happiness.”

Now, I know what some of you bloggers are thinking. And I agree, some of her words could cause offense (especially to those of us who are very raw in our pain). I don’t equate blogging with “having no life”, which is what she seemed to imply, and I recognize that part of what she wanted to communicate to me was that I need to enjoy my daughter and not spend all my time reading loss blogs. (Come on, that’s a good point, people.) But that wasn’t even the main point. She was trying to help me see that the loss blogs are only snippets and not necessarily representative of the entire loss community.

Her words seemed genuine enough, and I knew they came from the right place, so I started to think it over. And while I don’t completely agree with everything she said (I think you can blog but still have a life, or I at least like to tell myself that), I have my own version of the point she was trying to make: Most BLMs go to their blogs when they are having a horrible day. It’s cheap therapy. Get online, type type type, and not feel so “about to throw someone out a window”-ish. The blogposts created from such sob-sessions are clearly not indicative of the whole person behind them. They are a sliver of that person, a snapshot in time, a moment of pain so heavy that it requires sharing to lighten, a fear so sharp it needs expression to cut a little less. I am “guilty” of this myself, in that I don’t want this blog to become where I only go to vent, cry, rage, and whine. That hardly represents my grief journey in its entirety.

Yes, I mainly use this as a therapeutic tool, but I feel a sort of responsibility to say…to any future babylostmama that may come across this blog after losing her baby someday…I know I am over seven months out from my loss, but given that right now I would consider I am having a “low” point, I want to be honest about what that actually looks like. Aside from my moments where tears are falling.

-I still function.

-Most days, I even shower, brush my teeth, and do my makeup (still working on the whole flossing thing).

-I make an attempt to find clothes that fit and convey some aspect of my personality (challenging with the weight grief, not carrying twins, has added to my body).

- I do not live off of junk food and donuts, like The Secret Life of an American Teenager would have you believe. (One of the main characters just suffered stillbirth and frequents Dunkin' a bit much.) I sometimes eat breakfast. I always eat lunch. Not only do I eat dinner, but I have gotten into finding recipes to try, and we have fresh organic produce delivered every week to my husband’s workplace in an effort to learn how to be “grown-ups”. I have enjoyed cooking lately when I never cared to before, so I’d say I am developing new interests, which is not common for someone “depressed”.

-I regularly go grocery-shopping and run other errands and enjoy doing so.

-I recently went to a movie in a theater (haven’t done that since I was pregnant and saw Eat, Pray, Love) and saw a comedy. And I laughed, real laughs, not fake canned ones. More than once. (It was Bridesmaids.)

- I have listened to people complaining about trivial things, like the weather, without screaming, "Did your baby die?! No?! Well then shutthehellup!!!"

-I love Pandora radio and am a huge dork about it. I'm a big fan of trip-hop and post-punk and a variety of genres, and I sit there with Pandora open, and whenever it plays a song I love, I add it to my playlist on playlist.com. (I’m usually cleaning or something while I have it on.) I love showing off my awesome playlist when people come to visit.

-I attempt to work out and do yoga, although some efforts are more successful than others.

-I have composed mindless Facebook status updates (which for many months I wouldn't have cared to even try to do).

- I am sometimes able to make small talk with neighbors and acquaintances (not even kidding).

- I love to go shopping (which may possibly be retail therapy, I realize), and I love to kind of splurge and pamper myself after all the bedrest and…well, trauma I’ve endured.

-I have held a male infant without totally losing my sh*t, and if I’m being honest here…I didn’t even think about my son when I held him. He absolutely positively was not a trigger. I had a great day that day and didn’t shed a single tear, actually. (Although if I had held my daughter at the same time, I think that would have been a trigger.)

-I spend time preparing myself for novels I will be teaching this upcoming school year and am excited about the challenges that lie ahead with my career.

-I am still very much in love with my husband, although we both have a lot of work to do individually and in our marriage.

-Not to brag, but I am not exactly lacking in the friends / social engagements department. I am not some recluse who sits at home all day. I connect with others easily – loss and non-loss people. It's true; some friendships do not survive tragedy, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. If I can learn to live without my son somehow, then I can learn to live without fake friends.

-I have this new ability to throw things out that before I would have become overly emotionally attached to. (goes along with my last statement above!)

- 99% of people I interact with do not treat me like I have the plague. (Some might say, the dead baby plague.)

-I find joy in focusing on myself as a whole person, not as just the woman who lost a baby (or the woman who just had a living baby!).

-I revel in the blessing that is motherhood; I don’t take my daughter for granted; I don’t allow my daughter to be a constant trigger for my sadness at the loss of her brother.

-I have learned the complicated but useful psychological art of compartmentalization, and it has helped to save my life.

-I have moments where, in thinking about Elias, my heart fills with so much love for him – pure love unscathed by his death.

In the early days, I did not believe I would ever find joy again. I did not believe I would ever have a regular conversation again without my mind wandering to my son. I did not believe anybody would ever want to spend time with me. I thought I was cursed and would only bring pain to everybody around me. I did not believe I would be anybody other than "that poor woman who carried twins and lost one".

I realize that my loss is different than the loss of a singleton, just like the loss of one triplet is different than the loss of one twin, just like stillbirth is different from SIDS, and the list goes on. Every loss is different and yet the same. Losing one baby but still bringing another home from the hospital is different than coming home with empty arms.

It’s not easier, it’s not more difficult, it’s just different.

But differences aside, grief is grief, loss is loss, and I feel a sense of responsibility to say this today:

I am not destroyed.