Day 15 of 100 Days of Grief

"We never lose our loved ones.  They accompany us; they don't disappear from our lives.  We are merely in different rooms."

-Paulo Coelho

I have to be honest.  There are some days I just don't want to write in this blog.  I don't want or have the energy to do it.  Tonight is one of those nights.  It's been a rough day.  I was an emotional basket case swinging from one emotion to the next.  It's been exhausting.  Tonight I think I'm going to go straight to the prompt.

The prompt talks about what they did to dispose of the your baby.  That sounds so terrible to me.  But I'm supposed to make peace with it.  I've struggled with this one a bit.  It's not something I want to make my brain go to.  My baby was scooped out of my body and treated as medical waste.  Which means it was collected and the sent to a place where it was incinerated. 

But really there weren't really any good choices for me.  It was either that or I have her at home and in that case she's just in the toilet.  Which then would leave me with having to flush her down the toilet.  None of it is okay.  

I have a friend who had a miscarriage a couple weeks before me and she was able to keep her baby.  I believe she was 13 or 14 weeks along.  I can't remember exactly.  But her story was more horrific than mine in the way that she got that baby.  

There are times that I'm a little jealous she got to see her baby and she was actually able to have a ceremony and bury her baby.  She was telling me today that she goes every week to give her flowers.  I've wished that I had something I could go to each week and talk to her.  Or just sit and hopefully have her sit with me.  I feel like my home is too chaotic to sit and think sometimes.  The only time available is at now (8:00pm) and at that point I'm so exhausted.  

I remember her saying to ask if I could see my baby.  I was horrified by that thought.  I didn't want to see a dead baby.  Now I kind of wish I had.  I'm not sure if logistically that is possible though.  I'm not sure how it all works medically. 

Today's prompt: If you or your partner have questions or concerns about the disposition of the body or tissue, talk about it today.  Invite someone who is creative and compassionate to join in the conversation.  Maybe the three of you can come up with a way that feels right to honor the physical reality of this baby.  

That same friend I talked about above came and visited me about a month after my miscarriage.  I had been messaging her how I was struggling with the fact that I had nothing left of her.  It was before we found my ultrasound picture and I was physically aching to have something.  Anything that I could hold or see that would remind me that she was real.  That I actually went through what I went through.  

Anyway, she came over and brought me this beautiful picture of a baby in Christ's hands.  I love it because it's such a small baby just in the palm of his hands.  To me it's the first thing I had of my Hope before I made the box.  Even though I don't have a grave to this picture that sits next to my bed comforts me knowing that she's with me during the nights and mornings when it's more difficult.