Friday, July 10, 2009

d-day

d-day has come and gone. all i wanted to do was disappear today.... i fear i have made a mess of it. in my quest for isolation i have done just that and i have isolated myself from the person that loves me the most. i have wounded him i fear.... it seems we have grown into a new phase of grief and that would be that we are greiving differently now. it shocks and scares me as all of these years we have handled it very similarly, up until this year. i want to be alone with it. roll around in it. sometimes ignore it for awhile and then rehash it again. lunging out in anger and ignoring the concequences of whatever may happen because of this. i feel it coming and yet do nothing to prevent the inevidable seperation that follows. i guess cause i am having a hard time feeling anything this year. i haven't really cried in 10 months. i mean racking sobs. i feel it bubbling inside of me and i am trying, flailing around in a vain attempt to get it out, to really try to get it out of me. it is bottled inside. tightly closed. words are inadequate. screams are silenced and shouting seems ridiculous! where is this anger coming from? i struggle to name it, to give it a place in which i can even begin to deal with it. he spent the day writing a liturgey to our deceased son. it is beautifully written and i trivialized it with arguments and threw a bomb into the beauty. blowing it up into a disaster area. we are seperate. and earthly seperation feels a thousand times worse then death right now. how to begin to repair it? a meager apology followed by helpless pleading for forgiveness? i hate hurting. i hate hurting someone i love. and yet in a sick and twisted way i feel something. though it is awful... at least i feel. oh, how it is misdirected though.

on this day 5 years ago, we drove home from the hospital, empty. an empty drive home through a crowded city, full of people who knew nothing of what we had just witnessed in a hospital in the middle of toronto. i wanted to scream at them. "can't you just stop what you are doing? can't you just freeze for a moment? can't you see that we have witnessed suffering? we stared at it this morning. we looked death in the eye only moments ago and you keep going on with your lives. you get on your street cars headed for who knows where and we are going home to an empty nursery. a prepared home. " i had never felt so alone in such a crowded place and yet my best friend was sitting next to me in that truck. tears running down our faces as we whispered his name....finnigan....finnigan...i just want to see finn again. and realizing right there that his name would forever be a reminder of what was to come some day....what we wanted at that moment. to see finn again.

we will see him again....i hope. i know i should write with assurance and the shame that quickly follows upon writing that last statement lets me know that my hurt may be bottled up with those few thoughts. my belief system is weak. what if i don't see him again? what if life is just a cruel joke and our son was taken, like so many well meaning christians said to us, cause God wanted him in heaven with him? obviously i have not come to terms with that part of his death. deep down in this quiet and unmentionable place inside of me there is a fear that that may never happen.... and i hope God is big enough, no i know God is big enough to meet me in this place of doubt and fear. this place that i find myself in. i don't know how it will happen. maybe my entry next year will be filled with strength and hope, and an ssurance that i will see my first born again someday.

when we found out we were pregnant in toronto i started a count down calender on our chalk board on our kitchen wall. i think the first number i wrote down was 164 days. the picture below was taken 11 days out from my due date of july 1st, which is canada day. it came and went and the numbers stopped at zero. but the hope remained. the naive hope that nothing would go wrong and that soon there would be baby cries filling our apartment. those did not come instead what followed was, well you know what followed. tears, sadness, and the plans for a funeral in michigan on the 14th of july. matt and i have never been closer then we were those few days and the months following. i am thankful for that. i long for that closeness. that feeling that we were totally 100 percent in sinc with each other. no need for words....we just felt the same. i have withdrawn into my solitude wearing it like armour. trying desperately to self protect. and with self protection comes only isolation.

1 comment:

Changs said...

Hi Lydia,
My name is Anna Chang. I am a friend of Jared and Steph. I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your honesty in your blog! In 2005 My precious little 4year old brother was playing outside in our fenced in backyard. My mom turned around from getting cookies out of the oven 5 minutes later and glanced out the window. She saw joshua laying in the street. We have no idea what happened in those 5 minutes but 18 hrs later we had to unhook josh from life support and let him go. reports confirm that he was struck by a car in the head and left...i moved to China in the fall of that year to live with my older sister and that october my sister went to get her baby up and found she had died in her sleep. I know pain isn't comparable, but what i'm trying to say is I understand in a small way how you feel. It always hurts on May 4 on joshua's birthday. I'm so much older than him and he felt like my son in a way. God continues to comfort us, but it is still terribly hard at times. I found that when I was honest about how I felt with God and others how much faster the healing process goes, although i'm fine with the fact that it will always hurt now. It doesn't mean you aren't healing, but that you loved greatly someone who is gone. I love your blog and find it encouraging! even if you don't feel it I see Faith in your writing...in your honesty. I'm praying for you Lydia and hope this was somewhat encouraging to you!

love, Anna