Grieving

It's odd when something like this happens. All around, words fail.

Here are some recent attempts at words:

"Everything happens for a reason."  I've heard that one a few times. For all of you out there who haven't experienced loss, that line is not so comforting.

"We really thought you'd be over this by now." Lady at my office said this to me the other day, after I decided not to go to an office picnic because a baby that was born on the day Georgiana died was going to be there.  "Over this."  There is no getting over this. And trust me, I am not even close to the point where I can truly say, "yes, I've accepted it and gone back to normal living." That may never happen.

"I was so upset when I heard. All I could think about was, 'what if this happened to me?'"  This comment is so offensive to me, it almost makes me laugh.

Since Georgiana died, I have had a constant feeling upon me, stronger at certain times, always stronger late at night and in the morning when I wake up.  Until we went to see the counselor, I couldn't name the feeling.  Fear?  Not quite.

Feels more like being dead inside, like wanting to die.  It's odd. And horrible.

I felt it like fire when I laid on the table and was told by the doctor there was no heartbeat. I felt it in those first couple days in the hospital, especially that first night after she was born. March 20 and March 21st, easily the worst two nights of my life. The night of March 21st, I lay all night in the bed, feeling utterly alone. Praying fervently. Asking God, where are You? Where were You? Feeling evil and blackness, drowning in it. The nurses coming every couple of hours to check on me. Hoping it was all a bad dream. Empty empty pain.

The therapist put a name to it--dread.  Dread.  This is it. Much more than fear. A mix of intense fear, panic, sadness, emptiness, exhaustion.  I don't know why I've been asked to carry this, but it's like a stone. Others are uncomfortable with it. I am too sad for some people, I can tell. Many people do not speak to me of my child.  Even I paste on the face of okayness and every few days feel as if I will collapse from the sheer exhaustion of it all. The exhaustion of simply trying.


It's day to day surviving, and it simply sucks. I was driving behind a driver yesterday who had a "breast cancer survivor" sticker. I was thinking about that, and what it would feel like to be a survivor of that. I would think it would be a triumphant sort of thing.  Being a survivor of this involves no triumph, more bitterness.

It's hard to have hope right now. I have a hope for heaven, but that feels so far off that it is very dim. There is only so much hoping for heaven I can do right now. The nowness, the burden of being on earth, tends to outweigh it. I often find myself asking why any of this even matters. I don't get any of it. I have a constant prayer to God right now that doesn't quit--Why, God? Why?


I have struggled a lot lately. In the last couple of weeks, nearly all phone calls have tapered off. People expect you to "snap back," somehow. I can't. I don't know how. I feel angry about many things lately.

For example, only a handful of people recognized my husband for Father's Day. I was so angry about this I could hardly see straight. I don't know what the alternative would have been, but I felt like it should have been different. Then again, I don't know if it would have been different if Georgie had lived. Either way, it makes me angry.

This is not one of those situations where you just "think happy thoughts."  It just doesn't go away like that.

Sometimes I wish all I felt was sadness. Sadness is just one of many awful daily, sometimes by-the-minute, emotions. Sadness, yes, but anger, frustration, self-blame, exhaustion, insomnia, fear, panic.

Feelings I don't feel so much anymore: carefree (nope, gone, probably not coming back), happy, like everything is going to "work out" (because face it, we don't really know).

As a BLM friend wrote in one of her last posts, she's a crappy friend now. Yeah, I feel that way now. Crappy friend, wife, daughter, etc...Probably not so fun to be around me anymore. Sigh. Life is just too hard sometimes.