It Still Happens...

It still happens. It’s not as often as it used to be. But it still happens. It’s usually just a normal moment. Driving, shopping, cleaning my house, something like that. Mundane, no special reason for it but it happens. I suddenly realize, this is real. I’m really not going to ever have biological children. This is real. It’s a bit like realizing something really, really good…like, Oh my gosh, I’m really getting married! Or, I’m really moving to a new house, or; I’m really getting that new job. Except it’s really, really awful reason. I don’t often talk about it because it’s the one thing I can’t take the reaction to. I can take pat answer reactions to most anything…those awful things we all say when we haven’t been through something you can’t accept. I used to do it too. Someone passes on? Our answer is “everything happens for a reason”. You have an illness? Our answer is “God has a plan”. You’re having trouble getting pregnant? Our answer is “It will happen when it’s meant to”, “everything happens for a reason”, “God has a plan”, “you can adopt”, “have you tried standing on your head?”, “you shouldn’t talk about it”. I could go on ad nauseum but I think you get the picture.

I’ve said for some time now that I am going to write a book called Just Say, I’m Sorry. I’m off track. I said all of this to say, I don’t often share because I can’t take the reaction. I can’t take the pity. I can’t take the pat answers. I can’t take all the “fixer” suggestions from the fixers who can’t just say “I’m so sorry that happened to you”. But sometimes when I’m driving somewhere like this morning when I was driving to work and I had this sudden and unwanted realization that I’m never going to have children I do want to share. I want to share just very simply that this morning I had a moment of grieving that so many do not understand. It’s a lot like those weird moments when I’m doing nothing special and I remember that my Grandpa Bud is gone. Dead. At 65. From a stroke that was misdiagnosed and mistreated. He’s gone. This is grief. It comes in waves. At weird times. And it is like that for me, with my babies that I never held or even conceived, but loved. Did you know that we dream of them? A lot of us do. I’ve heard it from others like me, and read about it. I’ve dreamed of myself rocking a sleeping baby. I can smell it’s head. I can feel the warmth, the nuzzle, the softness of the blanket. I’m so happy, I’m a mother, this is my legacy I’m holding, it’s the best moment of my life. Then my alarm goes off, at first it’s some kind of alarm in my dream, like the microwave, or the baby monitor. I look around in my dream for what it is as I hold my child close and it begins to move. It’s little hands come up around it’s face to stretch and rub it’s eyes and I smile because it’s so sweet and so real to me. But that alarm, it just won’t stop and I’m suddenly groggy in my dream and I’m worried because my baby needs me and then I’m awake and I sit up quickly to respond to my child who needs me and then…I’m fully awake. I’ve lost my child. I know you won’t understand. I know you, who think this is dramatic will dismiss it. I’m good with that, I do that sometimes too. I also know there are those who will think I gave up and won’t have compassion for the reality that I accepted a death, I began a grieving process where I chose sanity and happiness over insanity and bitterness. It’s ok. I’m not looking for anything. I don’t need anything other than this, I just want you to know you are not alone. I get it.

I started writing this on a regular day when I’d had a regular moment driving and felt this wave of grief. Today we are staring down the barrel of a really big issue with one of my step kids and I’m thinking to myself…why did I ever want to do this? So there ya go..perspective at it’s finest!