Crazy days

Grief. I think I am coping and then it sneaks up and sends me in a tailspin.

The children are doing well. They speak of baby George often, and they're comfortable to sidle up to me for a cuddle and to ask a question. Is he cold? No. Is he happy in heaven? I'm sure he is. Do you think he wishes he were here with us? Absolutely I think he'd have loved to have played with all of you, but I know he'll be happy waiting in heaven for us.

They set out an extra little lawn chair for him on the back deck of our new house. They call it George's chair and I overheard the boys wondering if their angel brother would sit there and watch them play.

Packing and moving has been bittersweet. I think of the times we came to see the house during the buying process and after, when the couple who lived here invited us to come and have another look around when the real estate deal was done. I would waddle in, rubbing my big belly, and imagine us all moving in, but here we are and the new little one is not in my arms as I'd pictured.

I'd pack and cry just thinking of how I'd thought I'd be crazy busy with the baby in a sling. Instead I was crazy busy but looking at his ashes on the shelf. I didn't bring him into the house in a carseat or snuggled in that newborn loveliness against my chest. I carried in the cold container that holds his earthly remains.

I try to be happy for my husband and the children. I really do. But I'm a post-partum mother with no baby, just grief and emptiness. Canada Day was a struggle. I found myself watching other mothers with big pregnant tummies or newborns and feeling so angry. I'm not jealous of their happiness, just devastated that our baby boy was born not breathing. Why did my baby die during labour? Why us? Am I being punished in some way?

Strangers asking me how many children we have or if we're "done" is enough to set me sobbing.

A friend sent me this post to another grieving mother's inspired way of describing her journey through bereavement as a Grief Dance. There is no way I could possibly say it better. It's up and down, happy and sad, a mix of any number of emotions at any given time. I just wish I didn't have to learn the steps to it:

http://thespohrsaremultiplying.com/2009/06/grief-dance/