Trying Too Hard

My therapist gave me a book to read. She tells me at almost every visit how well I articulate my feelings which she thinks helps me cope with my grief. I joke that my verbal ability doesn't seem to be helping. She said I get a gold star and we laugh. She said "you remind me of a woman who's blog I follow and she wrote a book I think you might like to read." The authors name is Joanne Cacciatore...I said" that name sounds familiar". My therapist said "she started the MISS foundation". Okay so I borrowed the book. The book title: Dear Cheyenne. I had it in the car and kind of forgot about it. We went out today and Daryl was driving my car and so I picked the book up because it had been in my passenger seat. I think I got about 3 pages into it before I started crying. I mean CRYING. I sometimes feel like I am doing well "can't you tell by the smile on my face...I am doing really well, REALLY WELL" I can tell myself "I am doing REALLY WELL" but that really well is also very relative. How quickly the facade deteriorates with a few pages read that reach into my heart and remind me just how full of pain I am.

Remember this crushing feeling? the one where you can not breathe? remember your daughter, the one who can not be forgotten with a few good days or weeks? Remember the name you mistakenly said instead of Harlow because Camille is forever present on your mind?

 I couldn't even keep reading, I knew my mood was immediately shot. Exchanging Daryl's sweater for a bigger size seems so ridiculous right now. I am going to write out the passage I was reading. I don't think everyone is going to run out and buy the book but I want to write it down.

Page 3
Passages...

A pink stripe-positive, innocent unknowing
Destiny prevails
Screaming, "This shall be!"
ten lunar months
With or without her participation

She engages in the battle of denim
The expanding belly-The Victor!
tearful quest
For acceptance of herself
And elastic waistbands, instead

Danger: Nicotine. She smells it.
Looking for the source, nearby
Quickly changing seats
She drowns in primitive awareness
The role of sentinel

Tup-tup, tup-tup, tup-tup
their eyes dance to the beat
Of their unborn sister's heart
Smiles
Anticipation
Hope
Patience
Lessons esoteric
And then off to the sandbox

What is happening?
Could it be? A gesture of life
Maybe just her stomach? Must be indigestion
No! Again...the flutter of her baby.
No words. Just silence and a moment. A sacred moment. tear-beads accessorize the day.

Dancing bears and mint green lambs
Adorn the walls
The bassinet awaits to become the warm, safe place
Second only to the nest of her arms
Three weeks remain
She travels down roads of visual imagery
The sterile room
Pain, the joy...the incredible moment of birth
Her heart beats, races without ease
Deleting calender days in her mind
But serenity steps in the door, and brings a morsel of patience along

Barely re-transitioned
To the repose of slumber
Her only escape from the suffering
2:00 a.m. six pillows and bathroom run three
Tiredness creeps in
Stolen reserves
Her ankle bones hiding beneath the swollen tissue
Sacrifice of self. trapped in this foreign body. Vulnerable. Frightened.
Naked and aching
The journey has taken its toll

Two more days
An eternity, at least
She gently strokes her abdomen unaware
As their hands meet with holy intimacy-
She knows her mother. Better than anyone. they are one.
Love, only love, wakes her slumber

Morning saunter is slow
But this day will be different
She falls to her knees as if to pray
A pain, indescribable
Her body convulses
"Oh my God!"
Too fast....it is all too fast.
Rushing, rushing...get the doctor
"she is term, contractions every minute....she'll be going soon!"
Excited, yes, but scared too! It is happening so fast.
Culmination of timeless time will soon end. Her laborious months
Finally yielding the reward

"It was all worth it," she thinks silently

She smiles through the pain, with renewed assurance that it will all be over soon
A hodgepodge of clinicians, in and out
Unrecognizable faces sharing in the moment
Schooled by choice to be surrounded with new life
With brazen confidence the man who will guide
the passage from the womb's safety meets her glance
Strapping charcoal bands, cold, tight
Around the infants swollen domicile

Sudden change. Faces transform. Silence-
Their smiles break like glass
Searing through the faces of the white costumed staff
Glances unfamiliar to her
Once again, her body not her own

"What is happening?"

Silence-

they team up. Together. Screaming repetitions of nothingness
"What is happening!?"

Their secret code fractures her spirit.
Fear begins to ravage every cell in her body

His heart is callused like a laborer's hands
the synopsis, detached
"Your baby is dead."
                                                 "Your baby is dead."
                                                 "Your baby is dead."
                                                 "Your baby is dead."
"Your baby is dead." (Please, please turn the volume down.)

Contractions every thirty seconds
No time to think. No La Maze. Too much pain.
Unimaginable pain
Physical. Spiritual. Mental. Emotional.
"What? No. No. No. No. NO!"
She tries to get up from the bed

They hold her down, like a prisoner
What crime has she committed?

"No. I cannot do this. I want her to stay within me. Safe and warm...
No. I don not want to have my baby now! Let me go home. Lies, all lies!"

She fights in hateful protest
But the contractions bound her, and kick her,
And punish her.

Corrosive sweat
Rains like fire from her temples

"Push, push, push."
She can feel her child being born.

Head, elbows, chest. Finally her feet emerge
From her Judas body
Someone puts the camera on slow motion.
Frame by frame, outside herself she watches

Eyes clenched tight

Awaiting, baited breath.

"Cry, baby. Cry for mommy," she pleads helplessly

Negotiations. What can I give? What sacrifice? My life? Money? Time?
She is gone.

"What is happening? I don not understand. PLEASE take me! Take me!" she implores
No one throws her the life jacket. She drowns in agony, and
Dresses her lifeless baby in bear pajamas that match her room
The pajamas say, "I love mommy" all over
But mommy has failed. Mommy couldn't save you.

Pink, white, and blue are the choices
Not for lacy dresses but for caskets- they ask her to choose. "Choose? A casket?"
Looking around, planning her escape
For there are too many tiny caskets in the room closing in
She cannot see, as the tears asphyxiate her
Falling to the cold tile
"This cannot be, this cannot be."

The second hand is in a hurry today.
She begs it to stop, but the time has come.
Reluctantly she places her into the pastel casket.
Carefully, as she bends over to kiss this child of Heaven

Milk burns at her breast in disapproval
Her body doesn't understand
Her body must feed her, hold her, nurture her
A visceral need unfulfilled

Beautiful- eight pounds, dark curly hair, porcelain baby
She closes the casket cover
And falls down in fetal position
One being. She remembers when they were one-
A loss so physical, so permanent

Now death has transplanted her organs with despair
Today, she will bury her precious child.
Cathedral flowers tied with ribbons of sorrow
Black limousines stand at attention
Her anesthetized consciousness fades
In and out, as the sun dances
Between summer clouds

And from the earth that swallows her child
She begs acquittal

Stepping in to assume the role her body once played so well
Her mind becomes the stranger now
Evolution, bursting, dragging her through the muddy waters of grief
Swallowing the poison,
Blinding her, confusing her

Senseless propaganda in her ears
Stinging reminders around every corner
Disinterring the immortal hours...
Her body bleeds defiantly, still,
And her spirit lay mortally wounded
Amongst the shadows
Curled up
On the dark closet floor
Where her elastic-waisted garments hanged,
Anointed with French vanilla

And where no one witnessed
As she invited Death to come.
But He declined her offer
Another time, perhaps?
He leaves her in the carnage.

Like Gretel, looking for crumbs of hope
To guide her through the forest,
Through the passages of the deepest torment she will ever know
Not one in the millions
Of peoples, languages or philosophies
Can begin to speak the truth of
The torment of a mother
Whose child has been ripped, without mercy
From her burning arms

2,190 days
Six phantom years but love does not decompose as flesh
Memories try to sneak away when she is not looking,
The alarm sounds and quickly she brings them home
Edges of the photographs are time-faded and worn from too much handling

So she juxtaposes scenes from two worlds
And escapes to the voices of a thousand ghosts

Yet, in the underground passages of her mind
Through the only pardon from darkness
Shines the light of hope
And the gifts of angels, immortal

Now she walks the forest thick with grief
Leaving crumbs for the others
To discover the passage to peace and courage
To discover and to help change the world
Destiny prevails and whispers, "This shall be"

And so this is why I couldn't stop crying....I didn't need to read this. I lived it. EVERY SINGLE WORD. I lived it. The memories try to escape, but how quickly I regain them. A snippet here. A tidbit there. And Bam! I am back to June 30th 2011 and every grief enveloped day since. I haven't read any more of this book. The book could have been simply those several pages. the end. It would have been enough. My heart aches for Joanne, my dear friend whom I have never met...because I know too well the path she travels and the forever ache in her heart.

As the holidays are upon us, I realize that with all the merriment, and present buying, the decorations and preparations. I am trying too hard. Trying hard to make up for last year. But there is no make-up and the trying is exhausting. It isn't fake, it's just somewhat contrived. If I force it, it must be. If I am happy, it must be. If things are joyful, I must be. But it doesn't work like that. my heart can not be so easily tricked. But the tricky lies in the fact that happy, and joy form the padded walls that protect the sweet memory of Camille. I don't know how the joy lives so intimately with the sadness but they do seem to be the best of friends. And so I will kiss my children and breathe in their pure aliveness, and will wrap my arms around them and be filled to capacity with love. The love I have for Camille pushes out against the aliveness of the others and I feel as though I cannot possibly contain any more. Take a deep breath. In and out like the sun meditation. As the breath is taken in, the light from the sun in my chest expands. With each breath the light fills up more and more of the body until its radiance shines through us in all directions. That is the meditation I will do tonight. But right now oh how the pain hurts.