I am Grieving

I am grieving the innocence I had before great loss. I have experienced some of this loss when my dad died nearly 4 years ago. He was young, I was young, there was so much life that he was supposed to be here for, and I had to learn at 22 that what was supposed to happen doesn't change what has, and only makes the new reality more painful. I had to learn early that the world can have much more pain than we think we can handle, and after that, we cannot see the world the same. While some of the innocence can slowly return as time helps to scab the raw wounds we endure with loss, but there is always a small part that knows that the scar is still there, the pain life can give and you can’t fully trust that there is much goodness as you remembered. You can no longer say ‘well that only happens to those people, for this reason, ….it can’t happen to me’ but now you know better, now you know it can, and it does, and it doesn't care what else has happened in your life, how old you are, how good of a person you try to be, or any of it, it happens, and your innocence is gone.

I am grieving the excitement I had before great loss. This follows the innocence, and in many ways it is very much the same, but also different. As soon as I saw those two pink lines on the stick, there was never anything that could go wrong, the first time. We got pregnant with Josiah rather quickly and as soon as we learned of his existence, we were nothing but excited. This excitement was present at every appointment, whether a general check-up, an ultrasound or even the less comfortable appointments. There was always excitement with Josiah because we did not know anything could ever go wrong. We never believed it could happen to us, and honestly did not think that stillbirth was still a thing that people have happen, with all the medicine, technology, and care, we didn't think it could happen. This reality was crushed as we learned that our healthy baby boy was no longer alive. Even as they searched for his heartbeat at our 37-week appointment, I still did not know this could happen, as we walked down the hall to check the ultrasound, not being told yet of what the facts were pointing to, I remember being excited that we would get to see him again. I was excited until they turned on that screen and my heart broke as we saw the still picture. No flicker. No sound. No movement. He was still. He was gone.

Now I am pregnant with Baby #2. We have had some excitement, but it is accompanied with a fear. This excitement and fear have been present with each pregnancy test, especially all the ones that were negative. It is hard to only be excited when you know what can happen. We know what could happen. I don’t want it to seem that we are not excited about this baby because we are, and we are very happy and excited about this baby. But we know what we could lose. This partnership of fear and excitement are also present at every appointment as well.

I am grieving the hope I had before great loss. Again, this is similar to the grief, of innocence and excitement, but it is different. Tomorrow is our ‘big’ ultrasound with baby #2. I am 21-week along. Tomorrow we get to see the baby, for the 3^rd time (once at 11 weeks and again at 17). Tomorrow we get to start to call the baby, he or she, instead of Baby or it. Tomorrow is also the day that our hearts could be broken again. This ultrasound is more extensive and looks at the baby’s organs and how everything is going. There is no reason we have to think that anything should come up showing that the baby is unhealthy. There is also no way that this ultrasound could tell us that what happened with Josiah would happen with this baby. We think Josiah died because of a cord accident. An ultrasound could only prevent death in this instance if you were having an ultrasound as the accident happened. Maybe the worst part is also that there is no way this ultrasound can restore all the hope we've lost. It can bring some, but until I have a crying, breathing, healthy baby in my arms, I can’t know another reality.

I am grieving the loss of the family I don’t get to have. I grieve that this baby will not know its brother. I grieve that Josh and I don’t get to know Josiah more than we did. We do not know what our son’s cry sounds like, what his eyes look like or see his small chest rise and fall as he breathes. These are things that we will get to experience in the first moments with this baby, and we will grieve for a lifetime with Josiah. I grieve that I will always cringe when people ask me how many children I have. I grieve that I will never have a family picture with my whole family.

I am grieving, but I give thanks for that which I had before and have after great loss.

I don’t want to seem like there is no way I will ever have innocence, excitement, or hope again. I will, and each come back a little at a time, but I am grieving what will never be again. I will take hope in the promises of God and God’s presence and healing. I take excitement knowing that good things can still happen, even after horrible things happen. And I regain innocence as I trust in things that bring me excitement and hope.

While I grieve, I give thanks. I give thanks for the time we did have with Josiah. I give thanks that we are here again, about to see our little one and I give thanks that though I grieve, it is not all I do. 

Grief Cake

Sometime in the last year I got this idea to write a book. (This idea should fall into a category of ‘something will most likely never happen, but the idea of it gets me excited.’ But hey at least it’s getting a blog post!) I thought about this months after Josiah died. What inspired this idea actually came from a time a grieving, a time when I was angry grieving.               When I get angry about things, I tend to pile. I pile every reason why it’s not fair, why it’s not my fault, why it’s just me that this happens to, and why I don’t want to have to deal with it and then I pile on top of that a list of that of all the things that have gone wrong in my life. This is probably not the most mature or even helpful way to deal with anger, in fact it’s a bit on the dramatic side, but I get it all out – and after that, something happens.

What happens is I have gotten out all of my griefs and angers, and then – I can start to deal with them.

On this particular day, I was angry grieving, and thinking it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to have just turned 25 and have endured the loss of my child and my parent. I’m sure at the time I also had more things on my list that I was grieving, but those were the biggies. So that inspired the idea for a book Grief Cake.

Really all I had for it is an idea and a title. The piling that I do is the mixing of the ingredients to make the cake. After that angry, griefy batter has all the ingredients thrown into the bowl, you start to mix. In that mixing, you do the work, or the ‘grief work’ as they call it in books I’ve read. It is not something you can phone in, tragically there is no kitchen aide mixer for grief cake (but if the book doesn’t work out, I need to invent that!) But anyway - you must do the work, process it, and keep stirring, even when your arm gets tired. Otherwise, the cake will be lumpy and won’t turn out. After you have mixed, processed, and done the work, you can start to bake. In the baking, you don’t always feel like your grief work is doing something (maybe if I knew more about making cakes I could put in some good analogies about the baking process, but while I don’t know cake, I do know grief.) You can’t tell until a point down the road that the grief cake has baked, I wish it was only 30 minutes like cake baking, but that is generally not the case, and I don’t know of any toothpick tricks for grief cake either. But at some point, you start to see things differently, feelings change or your way dealing with the feelings change, you start having more better days than worse or you learn and grow from that cake you were forced to bake – and unlike normal cake, grief cake doesn’t cause your waist to grow, but it causes your worldview to grow, the way you understand God, love, life, death, and finding peace to grow.

(This is my mixing)

So here is why I decided to write this today. Last week would have been my son, Josiah’s, first birthday. I did not know what to do for this day. I didn’t know if we were celebrating or mourning, so the one thing I wanted to do was bake a cake. Leading up to the day, I said ‘I’ll probably make a cake and whatever else we feel like doing that day.’ I even bought a little fancy frosting thing to pipe decorations on the cake. As the day came and passed, we never really knew what we’d feel like doing, so we didn’t. I said throughout the day ‘maybe I’ll make a cake’. It didn’t happen. So I waited. Yesterday, almost a week after, I decided to bake the cake. It was a slow moving process. The box sat on the counter for a while, then I put the dry mix in the bowl but found other things to do, so that sat for another long while, and finally I decided to bake the cake. Today, I was going to decorate it. As the day was almost over, I finally decided to do it. I had this grand idea of what this cake would look like in my head. I even was thinking how maybe decorating cakes for my kids can be a tradition that we do every year and thought of how cute they would be. I was excited as the frosting was turning out to colors that I liked. I am not a fan of pastels and didn’t want the pale baby blue color for the cake. After putting the blue on and figuring out how to get the green frosting into the piping bag, I had to figure out what to write one the cake. This turned out to be more difficult than getting myself to bake it.

I don’t like saying that it’s Josiah’s birthday because it doesn’t feel that way. I say he was born a year ago, or something along those lines. I think because he was not alive at his birth, I do not consider it his birthday, but when he was born. To me, somehow these things are different. So I did not want to write “happy birthday”. I have an odd, probably inappropriate sense of humor. It is part of how I process my grief. I don’t think it’s avoidance, because I say exactly what I’m thinking and sometimes it’s just so sad or depressing sounding and my brain just comes up with jokes as I deal with them – maybe that is avoidance, but I don’t think so, but anyway, they are the sprinkles in my grief cake. So I told Josh maybe I should write something like ‘Fact: You were born a year ago.’ Or ‘Put in a good word with God for me’ and ‘Good thing they say heaven doesn’t have time, because we are a week late on your birthday cake’ But I found it’s actually very difficult to use a piping bag and write on a cake so I went with what I did not want to and wrote “happy birthday Josiah”

To my disappointment, cake décor is not one of my gifts! The cake looked nothing like the cake in my head. But I guess that fits, this 1^st birthday is nothing like the one I expected and wanted it to be – he is not here. His birth or being born, was not as I wanted, though it was amazing to see him and hold him, I wanted and planned in my head for a whole life of joy and happiness that he was there for, not the 24 hours of holding him which he was not there for.

Life does not go as we expect, planned or always wanted. When you find yourself in that place – it is time to bake a cake.

(Take this note as a copyright to my Grief Cake book idea!)