He Comes to Me Part the Second

Whew.

Deep breaths.

I wish I could say this post will bet somehow better from this point forward but it will not. In fact, I will say now that I cringed a lot in reading, even glancingly, some of those old posts. I really posted a lot of trash and filler after Jackson died. I posted some but not nearly enough about what I, we, were feeling then and maybe that is because of a sense of decorum but as I don't own of those I know it was because we were both mired somewhat in a level of denial. If we smiled and played cards, shopped a little and took some Xanax, surely things would get better, right? I mean not to say that we both weren't blasted to hell and back but at the same time, we both danced around the death. Sounds chipper, yes? We talked, we flirted with counseling but mostly we wised it away. Dealing with my medical issues was immediate and time consuming as well but even in the days, at a time, of lying in bed together awash in misery, it still seemed at times surreal. It seems less than reality even now, almost a year later. How, I ask now, did all that happen and we're still standing? Some days just barely, to be sure but did that...really happen? We had a son? That died? Certainly not, so it seems, at times.

But we did.

And please, I beg of you if you recognize yourself in any of the scenarios to follow,  do not take offense. Do not believe me to hate you or wish you ill. I don't, we don't. It's just that the words have been brimming at the surface for so long and I need to say them out loud, perhaps to cleanse my heart of them, mayhaps to confess the ugliness in my soul and hopefully to keep myself from becoming permanently  embedded in my own bitterness.

I thought briefly about joining some sort of support group but decided against it almost immediately; I didn't want to lay down in my sorrow and I surely didn't want to become part of some larger, ''my wound hurts more than yours'' posse. But even without joining an actual group, I met both in real life and online many parents of loss. Some who had surviving children, some who went on after loss to have more children. But none given our sentence of, ''have as many more as you want to bury''. None having had the door slammed with such venom. This is not to say that other families dealing with either infertility or infertility secondary to illness haven't been dealt essentially the same hand. We aren't unique in our outcome though definitely in our circumstance. A miscarriage and a vasectomy later, we our fine, honestly, with adoption (specifically foster-to-adopt) and that, in and of itself, was never the issue. Children, as I've said here in reference to Jackson many times, aren't replaceable. It matters not if you have two kids or a dozen, losing one is incomparable. It's not a hole that can be filled or a void that is easily or ever shuttered. But I was ashamed, so ashamed, at my envy that other parents had either surviving children to focus on or future children to plan. We had none of those and we also didn't have our son. Our child, our babyman, our perfect little guy. It was hellish and ugly and brutal and not something I would wish on a single soul (no, not even her; I know, right?).

But then it something happened. I don't know what it was or how it came to be but slowly my jealousy, envy and self pity gave way to something resembling, though not exactly, acceptance. I vowed when Jackson first passed that I would not and should not embrace ugly emotions in his name; his memory deserves so much more. If I've only got a memory to parent then that I shall do and in prideful not shameful manner.

Jackson came to me. Slowly, in my mind he became less a child who passed and more a constant in my heart and mind. Always, he was there to talk to, to think about to grieve less and celebrate more. The shame in any young person dying is that their potential is never to be realized; the shame in losing an infant is that while their potential is never realized, it leaves open the ideas in your mind as to what could have been. As some truly dreadful people are canonized after their death, when a child who you already thought was the best and brightest dies, it's easy to create an image in your mind that no living child could ever live up to because there is no harsh reality to compare it to or for your baby to live up to. Except that is the harsh reality; the reality is that your child is gone and all you have are the brief, time frozen memories and the creation in your mind of what could have been.

Sounds creepy, right? Right. But wrong, so wrong. It was and is a comfort to have Jackson with me, whatever is real and no matter what comes from my heart and from the cloth visions of a never to be future. Jackson is the penultimate good guy, needless to say. Created in his father's image, he is a gorgeous child. And this version never leaves me, never leaves us. If you're looking at your screen all wonky eyed and muttering, ''Um Okaaaaaaay, then. Crazy.'', I understand. It's likely even more nuts than it sounds but it gets me through the days, right? Or it used to.

These August days, settling finally into our new home and realizing, at last, that we may just live here for a little bit and could maybe, possibly, even like it eventually, have been tiring. In accepting the newer realities of my sister's situation and as always, trying to not become a full-time Sick Person and falling in love again, truly, with my husband has forced me to think of things that I would rather not but in the end, cannot be avoided.

Our son is gone; there will be no more from us, of us. And that is fine, or at least, it is what it is. As is Jackson's death. It is what it is and I cannot make it any more or any less than that but those blithe words aren't a balm to my soul, not at all. I am faced with the fresh  anger again that I felt when he died but this time with having a year of obstacles, set backs, good things and deep love between the initial loss and now, I find the anger creeping upwards and the understanding lessening. For the first time, I actively don't want Jackson to come to me; he needs still my love in all it's unconditional glory, not the dark hollowness I carry as I carried him last year. I feel, at times, shockingly indifferent to all the events of this time last year because in some ways, until now I didn't absorb the gravity completely. A son, that died? Fuck that, that shit never even happened. It's an odd surreality that I hate but at once love because it makes it all so much easier to deal with exactly by not dealing; what son who passed might you speak of, as I have a perfectly healthy infant.

Except that we don't. And as much as Jackson is worthy of so much more than me, this confused, angry and sad woman who was to be his mother, I never really want him to not come to me. I want him with me always and I want always to be the best person and mother he could ever seek. I can't help but wonder though does he seek me for comfort or does he seek to provide comfort to me? Too heavy a burden for our love, our son, either way.

Fuck me, August cannot end soon enough.

Comments

[woodstove]

You are not crazy. To answer your question, I believe Jackson comes to you to comfort YOU. Why? Because he is comforted, and he is able to watch over you, and he is not just OK, he is content, happy, and just sorry that he cannot (right now) ease your pain.

I believe you will be with Jackson again. I believe that when you are, this will all make sense. My guess is that you challenged your soul to endure very difficult things here, so that you had the chance to grow, and serve God, be the hands and tears here on earth.

Did you over-estimate how much you could take? Maybe, but somehow, I think you are going to meet those goals, even if your knees are bloody while you crawl to them, and you hands are tired from holding on.

Jackson is there believing in you too. But you know what? He is going to love you no matter how well you do here. So will God.

Now who sounds like the nut?

As far as grief and how it hits you? There is a book I love called Wheel of Fortune. In it, a woman says, "Grief is not a train you catch at a station." It has no timetable, no "resolve," no pattern.

It just is. You are not being graded here. Feel what you feel, whenever you need to feel it. No judging yourself, ever.

When things are the darkest, it's sometimes hard to have faith. Sometimes it takes a friend to hold up a flashlight...and help you believe that somehow, someway, someday...this really will make sense. You will be with Jackson again. I am as sure of that as it's possible to be sure of anything. He's "up there" pulling for you, hoping for your happiness and cheering on this difficult soul path. So, do I believe he is "there" for you?

Absofuckinglutely.

[Suburban Oblivion]

((((((HUGS))))))

[carmen]

I can't add anything to what woodstove said above, so brilliantly. I'm here if you need a shoulder - God knows you've been mine a time or two.

[thordora]

Your heart knows you son, and will hold him for you.

[Heather]

In essence, I agree with Woodstove. Not so much in a "God" sense, but just an overall balancing-act-of-Nature sense. I think I wanted so much for my fallen one to come to me, that I missed it when she did. But I don't give up... And I think they come to comfort us because wherever they are, they are no longer suffering and need no comfort because they know... They just know our hearts.

I would write more, but I am getting crazy looks because I am sitting here, silently, with tears rolling down my face and I don't want to upset the little people.

Grief is such a uniting, and somehow dividing force. It can make you feel pulled to someone inexpleicably, and make you feel completely isolated and alone from those you should cling to the most. If nothing else, I hope you remember to keep clinging to Deels. You seem to be the best life rafts for each other.

*love*

[SophieTreadmill]

Just wanted to send you all the hugs I possibly can.

[Racy Red]

Shan,

I want to offer something, anything at all...but I don't think I have any words to offer.

Not meaningful ones anyways. Your post touched and pained me, as your words so often do.

I get it...in as much as my limited knowledge of your loss has provided.

But I don't think you are crazy. Not in the least. I hope August speeds by but then September slows down...cuz I'm not sure I want to face October.

xo

[sunShine]

I think Woodstove said it best. I wish I had something insightful to say, but I don't. Just know that I am thinking about you and praying for you.

[StickyKeys]

Ditto to the infinity what Woodstove said. I am constantly praying and thinking healthy, cleansing thoughts for you.

One thing I will say is never to dismiss the power of group. I know it seems on the outside like a pity party, or a one upper deal, but honestly it can be really healing.

August is tough overall, I think it's the heat, something about the passing of seasons. I don't know, but I can feel it every year.

[Jennifer]

I have no idea what to even say. Really, but I heard you. I hope that writing it out is healing, somehow...wow, what a ridiculous thing to say.

How about, I'm sorry it's August? Shall we skip onto November?

Hugs to you.

[jodi]

oh Shannon, what can I do? What can I say? I'm sending you virtual hugs.

When you are ready to think foster to adopt email me, I work in foster care.

[Stefania/CityMama]

I wish you peace.

[Kris]

I also do not know what to say except to thank you for sharing your writing with us, and offering a virtual hug.

[Jen]

I have no words that will come close to helping with anything you are feeling, so let the silence of a cyber hug comfort you!
God Bless You!!!

[Sherry]

I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,

Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,

In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.

By Emily Dickinson

[Bon]

i'm late here, Shan, but weeping in my coffee. i am so sorry for the weight of the calendar pressing down on you, for the burden of confusion and self-preservation and anger that is a perfectly reasonable part of coping with all this shit dealt you, and for the absence of the comfort Jackson brought you...and will again, i think, when some of this cycle of grief has gone round again.

i haven't walked your shoes, had to accept that "it is what it is" in terms of there being no more of us. but i know that in my struggle to accept losing Finn, the bleakest parts came late to the party, and came as i could no longer call his presence to mind so easily, with such immediacy, came as the emptiness of him being gone and the helplessness, then, at not being able to comfort the him who did come to me really settled on me. that no matter how many times i said "fuck this shit," it didn't go away.

dude, i hold you in the light all through this month, and next.