....feathers from a birdless sky....

....feathers from a birdless sky....







Monday, October 17, 2011

...trillium ceremony....for my sweet boy, and his sky friends....

....how hot are the tears that run down my face, when i think about you witnessing when i laboured your body.....i know you were there....what did you think about our faces?
....my soul was cored out, like i was a human apple......

here is the speech i read at the first annual candlelighting ceremony at your hospital....i was such a proud momma :*)


Two of the greatest mysteries of all are birth and death….for us here today, those mortal adventures have happened all at once…..to our children. Since grieving is a form of love, and we are parents, the grief is bottomless, shapeless, and timeless.

His name is Oscar Solo, and he was born upstairs, in room 6, sleeping at 9 months….he is permanently 7.5 pounds, 22 inches of lifeless perfection, and he is my son.

The silence was thick, and  the terror was crushing, but, the love in that room, that day was intense. Fate forced us to live his entire lifetime with him in just 7 hours…..his hand, holding mine, taking in every hypnotic smell from him. Tranced in horror and love, I said goodbye to his body, and to my partial spirit, and left these hospital doors clutching on to a box of Kleenex, instead of my boy.

I am now 3 and a half years into my grief journey, and only now, at this distance, can I begin to understand the trauma I was hit with that day. The loss of someone very unreplaceable, unrepeatable and uncomparable.  Someone I love and miss with all my might….a son, and a brother…I mourn him, and the families he would have started on his own….I mourn that he is parentless, that he never tasted his breast milk that came in for 21 months after….that I never got brush silly curls out of his eyes, watch him play soccer with his dad and brothers, or read him “Goodnight Moon” before bed. I don’t know if he is left handed like his brother, or right handed like his sister……all of these “don’t knows” engulfed me, and spit me out into a shoreless sea……

Babyloss is painfully isolating…..we are still proud parents, regardless, and there is nowhere to go, nowhere to share the beautiful memories of our pregnancies, or to relive the labour, or to describe the soul-stirring of having them placed in our arms for the first and last time. Friends and family disappear in all awkwardness…. afraid to talk about it, to remind us….. but, truth is, they are never, not for a single instance forgotten……always swirling around in our minds, patiently waiting to hear mention of their name….yes, we will cry…love and pain is the chemistry of tears. Allow us that, allow us the time to express the gapping hole running right through us….we cannot rush through the grief, cannot go around the pain…..the work is hard, physical, and exhausting. We must go through the pain, into the eye of it, to find, again,  our own private connection with that little womb-dancer…and to work on the beliefs that we will find out why this has happened to us, and to make some sense of why they were given and taken…… and, above all, that they will fit perfectly back into our arms again.

We are all parents….the trick is to work out how to parent the sky babies from such a distance, but it can, has, and will be done….i wish you all strength, peace, and grounding focus….i mourn for your every loss, very deeply, and wish you friendship in this horrific time….and I thank you for all the times you have shared your child with me, the stories, and photos. Remember I am grateful if you’ve  allowed me to share Oscar with you…a kind word or compliment of him is never forgotten. Please find ways to continue survival of this ultimate loss, but, never feel you are alone…..and its okay to cry. Fino cielo, Oscar.




Tuesday, August 30, 2011

....almost there....

Extinguish both my eyes: I see you still;
Slam shut my ears: I can still hear you talking;
Without my mouth i can implore your will
And without feet: Toward you I keep on walking.
Break off my arms: I shall still hold you tight;
...My heart will yet embrace you all the same.
Suppress my heart: My brain knows no deterrent;
And if at last you set my brain aflame
I carry you still on my bloodstream’s current.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

trilogy of grief

....just like that a perfect pregnancy ends......just like that a beautiful face is reduced to a bag of ashes....just like that....three years go by........
ive decided that life is really quite meaningless....i mean, none of us have definate after-life answers...none of us have cures, or powers of any real meaning....
but, i see, the humans have tried to fill in these gaping holes with meaningful activities.....a first-date rose....a fishing trip.....a sports event................................................a birthday party
 oscar celebrated the third year of his birth into our arms last monday.....what he did, kills me to wonder....what we did.....a buzz lightyear balloon release......how can a crappy mylar balloon bring me such comfort?.....i sent buzz off with a whispered prayer, just like when i handed oscar over to barb.......the last time........
saying the words in my head, like i was weaving him an extra large, extra thick protective blanket......so protective, that he would be safe and warm and find nurishment inside.....and it would last until i found him again, downstream.......
where do i come up with these things? like, even entertaining the thought that he is just a little downsteam.....................and the balloon releases are like little paper boats i fly down the waters to him, just so he sees a sign, that i am still coming for him.........and he gets comfort.........all i want to do......is give him comfort........hold a glass of water to his thirsty lips......brush the silly curls from his eyes.......smell behind his ear....... happy birthdays are just birthdays....with pretend happy.....
...you would have loved your cake, my spirit boy........it was ice cream

Sunday, December 26, 2010

....please wait to be seated.....

.....I'm not the seemingly typical babyloss momma.....fluffy pictures, and cutesy tributes to my stillborn don't seem quite right to me, or my relationship with oscar...i tried, but fru-fru didn't bring me any sort of comfort knowing my boy would go on motherless...my ideas of oscar aren't mine.....they are received.....after understanding the blow of watching nurse barb leaving the room for the last time, with oscar in her arms.....i knew it was just the beginning, and things were only gonna get intensely worse......i knew the images in my head wouldn't be those of the oblivious and blissful parents who bring home newborns......pictures of the older sibling with the baby, first bath, asleep in a loving crib......mine were......more C.S.I-inspired.....cold-stainless steel drawers....where oscar's body would be waiting to be dissected to find the blame.....and, even worse.....done for nothing.....no *apparent* cause of death....cut into pieces for nothing......oh, except, i found out my boy had brown eyes.......having to find that out from an autopsy report is crippling.....yep.....no butterflies here......no ribbons and balloons....but, you will find magic here......not the kind you might preconceive....but, if you follow me, you will read my stories....of oscars white noise....his subtle *messages* and directions....wearing the hat of a grieving mother gets too heavy for my head, sometimes, so every now and then, i switch it for antennae.....receiving navigation from the essence of my boy.....