One year

Old stone bridge in the Poconos Oct. 2009

Tomorrow is the day you were still born.

At this time last year I was waiting for a catheter to fall out so that my contractions would start. I had been put on a pitocin drip at 2 in the afternoon and not much had happened. At 10 in the morning I had found out for certain that Kai had no heartbeat. They never said the word "dead". They just looked sad and told me that he had no heartbeat.

How did one year go buy so quickly and slowly at the same time? I dreaded the Holidays. All I wanted was for time to stop. The coming of Christmas meant, to me, the coming of my son's death. The coming of the end. It was difficult to face the holidays, but I did it and it is now past. The anticipation of how wretched I would feel was much worse than how I actually felt. Yes. Christmas day I really cried hard a few times. I didn't join my family and friends for Christmas dinner. I knew that forcing myself to act fine was not something I could do and I did not want to try. Some people understood this and some did not ...and I was fine with that. Weird. I have spent all of my life trying to keep people happy and not cause waves! Usually I would be fretting about how I was disappointing someone, letting them down or making them angry. I am quite good at beating myself up for this. But not this time. What had changed? Why was I so calm about taking time out for myself? In the two weeks between Christmas and now I have thought a lot about the last year. I've taken a lot of emotional risks since Kai died. I had to if I wanted to survive his death and be in the present with my husband and daughter. I'd already been hospitalized three times in the past for suicide/depression ...I kind of knew that if I didn't take some huge steps in terms of asking for help from friends and family, I probably wouldn't ever recover. For me that was a huge risk. I had always believed that people would only like me if I was a happy person who was always there to help them. If I burdened my friends with my problems or the truth they would drop me - abandon me. The first few 'risks' were the most difficult. Calling a friend to talk at 1 am the day I got home. I was petrified that she would either ignore the phone or tell me she was too tired to talk to me. No one answered. I left a confusing message about Kai being dead and that I had to deliver him after I found out. In my head I thought "See! You have no one! No one wants to here your sob story! No one has time for you! Get it into your brain that you are not meant to be here! Your healthy son died! Isn't that enough proof that you are a loser and supposed to die?" I ended up taking a sleeping pill to calm down and fall asleep. I woke the next morning when my friend called me back and said that she would be at my house in an hour and a half. She lives an hour and a half away! She left her son with her husband and actually came to the city and looked after us for a day and a half! I was shocked that someone, anyone would drop everything to help me! Thank you from the depths of my heart, Karen! That was my first 'risk' and it didn't turn out at all the way I had always believed it would.