Thursday, October 23, 2008

Grief

Grief is a funny thing, one minute you think you are past it, the next you are feeling physically ill from trying to keep it away from the surface. There is enough space between the event not that I feel like I can talk about it, and I am discovering I need to. Candace and I lost a baby in May to a miscarriage. It was an emotionally and physically exhausting event that left us both feeling sad and bitter. I cried a bit at first but after that I tried to move on. I didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl, or really anything, so feeling so so sad just didn't seem right. I pushed it away, somewhat successfully… until a wedding in June. This was supposed to be the time we told Candace's brothers the joyful, now hollow, news. As the wedding progressed I was finding myself more and more irritable. More and more upset to the point where I had to go get some air. As I sat and I thought it occurred to me that we had no news to tell, we had lost a little life and it really really sucked. It was then that it all came out of me, a torrent of tears, and the realization that this was going to be a process. I found my wife and we talked, we decided to tell her brother Troy the news, and he and his girlfriend handled it perfectly. After that I felt better, like I had let it come out. I thought I was done.

Shortly after that I started to feel sick on a regular basis, at times barely able to breathe. Leading worship became a laborious task of trying to get through it without feeling like I was going to burst. I was breathing all wrong, raspy and anxious. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why. Two things happened in the last couple of weeks that have changed things. To be honest I don't remember the order, just the events. First, friends of ours had their baby, which was due about a month before ours. My first thought were of them, how proud they must be, how happy I was for them. The second was that I couldn't believe how much time had passed, and how different things could have been for us by now. I passed over it. I denied it really.

The second event was the catalyst. We got a dog. Rather we tried to get a dog. For a week. Paddy was an awesome puppy and we loved him. He was well behaved, sweet, and very very loving. The moment we brought him home we felt like we had made a huge mistake. This was too much. Candace brought up the idea that maybe we were trying to replace the baby. Nah, I said, too long ago, that is the past. My heart sank though, she was right, and I was not being honest with myself. The breeders had a return policy and it turned out we could give Paddy back, no harm, no foul. I kept telling myself I was doing it for Candace to support her in her grief. I was being stubborn, I was also getting more sick. As it turned out the best day to take him back was Friday morning, when Candace would be at work. It would be up to me. I bumped into our Senior Pastor's wife, a wonderful, loving, and caring woman and I asked her to come with me, that was the first tear that came. It was pouring rain as we waited in the parking lot for the people to come and get their dog, who sat quietly, sweetly in the back. As we talked more tears came and Anne asked, "Does this have to do with the baby you lost." A dam broke in me, I had run out of fingers and toes to plug all the leaks, I fell apart.

It's hard to see your friends with kids, its hard to see kids in general when you want that for yourself. It is hard to feel angry with the full knowledge that there is no thing to be angry at. It wasn't our fault, it wasn't God's fault, or anybody's fault. Those feelings seep out into the times when you feel pangs of jealousy at the families that surround you, pangs of loneliness when you realize you don't just go back to the way it was before. Even though it is just the two of us still, it feels like something is missing. And to top it off you have to face the fears of trying again. How am I to be excited and terrified at the same time. Will it feel like and interminable time of torture wondering if this is the day it all starts again. Will it be easier, do I want it to be easier really? Candace and I are both emotional people, and its hard to face that possibility, to stand up under those thoughts. And yet, consider what comes if it goes fine. New life, new joy, new everything.

I don't have all the answers and I think I tried to fool myself into thinking that I did. It has helped me to share this because part of the problem for me was that I felt like it was some sort of shameful secret. We needed to be strong and not let on to people that we were hurting. Some of that comes from concern that there are those who may not be the best at handling it and therefore shower us with every difficult to hear platitude in the book. But really it is me not wanting to admit that I am not strong right now, I need to hear those things if this whole thing is to be real to me so I can move forward. Since last Friday, I haven't been getting sick as much. The knot in my gut is ebbing away slowly. I had the best worship leading experience last Sunday, I actually felt hopeful and excited. The neat thing about admitting grief is that the benefit is nearly instant. The balance begins to return almost right away. I want to move forward now. I want to feel my grief as much as I need to. I want to be sad because it is OK to be sad. I just want to grieve and let it come.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shalom aleichem.

DaveJenn said...

Shalom aleichem indeed!
Sorry to hear about your loss! Thanks for posting about it and giving us some insight into your grief process. We'll definitely keep you in our prayers!