Worse than death?

Like most people, I don't like it when people make comparisons to my loss unless they, too, have experienced childloss. I have had a miscarriage (more than one) and while those were sad and painful, they were nothing like losing the child that I had given birth to and whose personality I had gotten to know and love. I'm not saying that one is worse than the other (although more than one person who's had a miscarriage or stillbirth has told me that their loss was worse since "at least [I] got to meet [my] child") but they ARE different.

There are times, however, that I think about Toby's death and other things that could happen and I have come to the conclusion that there IS something that I think would be worse for me. And that is child abduction. Having my child abducted is my worst fear, even before death.

When I am in a good place with my grief and I think about Toby dying and child abduction, I do reach some sort of solace in thinking that at least I know where he is. (Okay, I don't really know where he is, but I know where he's not.) I know that he is not in pain and that he's not being abused or treated poorly. Living with the knowledge that my child is out there somewhere and possibly cold, hurt, sad, in pain, and scared and that I can do absolutely nothing to help him is unfathomable.

I live with the fact that for at least a few minutes, Toby was dying and needed me and I wasn't there. Those few minutes are enough to make me insane. I get some solace in the fact that SIDS can't be prevented and that even if I had been there I couldn't have done anything.

On the other hand, having to live the rest of my life knowing that my child was hurting every.single.minute and that I couldn't be there for him is beyond my imagination. It's hard enough living with those two or three minutes that Toby needed me.

Last summer, Sam and I woke up and he went downstairs before me. I took my time getting dressed and straightening up the bedroom. Pete was already up and downstairs. (I knew he was home because I could see the car.)

About half an hour later, Pete sauntered up and we hung out for a few minutes. Finally, he asked, "Where's Sam?" When I told him I thought Sam was with him and I saw the blank look on his face my blood ran cold.

We immediately started searching the house.

At the time, we lived in an old Victorian mansion downtown in a large city. It was in a nice neighborhood and the neighbors were friendly enough, but it was still downtown on a busy street. Sam knew not to go outside alone and we kept the doors locked.

We could not find him.

Pete said that he had been mowing the yard so he'd been out back. It was possible that Sam had wandered out, Pete hadn't seen him, and he'd gone through the gate alone.

It was just as possible that he had done that and a passing car had stopped and thrown him inside and sped off.

I jumped in the car and circled the block. I drove down to the Farmer's Market where we sometimes walked and looked for him. No Sam. I tried calling my mom but her cell phone was in our house. Pete hadn't seen her.

I knew in my heart that someone had taken him. The terror that ran through me was paralyzing. My son is a beautiful friendly boy. He gets described as being an "angel" and a "cherub" and even at 5 years old people still stop and take second looks at him as they pass him.

I was getting ready to call the police when I thought about Mom's phone again. I looked at it and the last number dialed had been about an hour earlier and was a neighbor's number. I called the neighbor and, sure enough, Mom was there. Sam was with her. (If you're wondering why I didn't check the neighbor's house first, we did. Nobody had answered the door. Apparently, they'd been in the back and didn't hear me.)

Mom said that as she took Sam Pete had been mowing and that Sam had waved to him. She assumed Pete had seen him. He hadn't, obviously.

I'm sure, like losing a child to death, you learn different ways of coping and grieving. I can't say that it would kill me or that I am not strong enough to handle it. (I can, however, say with authority that if you try to abduct my child in my presence you'd better damn well hope you kill me because if you don't then you will live to regret the things that I will eventually do to you.)

What I can say, though, is that it is a thought that I can't comprehend. I don't know how Toby died (we still haven't seen the death certificate) and that is enough to haunt me. Not knowing where my child is, is incomprehensible.

Clearly, I need to stop watching CRIMINAL MINDS episodes that involve abductions. They lead to entries such as this one. 

New pages

If you haven't noticed them, I created some new pages at the top of the blog. One of them has Toby's story, just in case you are wondering who he was and how he died. I also included links to all of the entries that were originally in my Travels and Rambles blog. (www.krumlovgirl.blogspot.com) For awhile, I wrote there, until people told me they were going to stop reading my blog because it was so depressing. At that point, I started this one. You can read those earlier entries in the "Previous entries" page. They detail his pregnancy, death, and the aftermath.

I will try to keep updating the links pages and so forth.

If you're interested, I have made a similar table of contents for my other blog. With more than 600 entries, it took forever! But, I have been blogging for 7 years so there was a lot to sort through. It must have something to do with my upcoming brain surgery-like I am nesting or something. :-)

Finding support in unusual places

Most of the time, it feels like people just don't "get it." And why should they, really? I mean, I may have lost a child but I don't understand the pain that someone who lost a spouse might feel. (Although I think that losing a child might give me a certain amount of empathy and I have always been able to sympathize.)

Sometimes, though, I find that support comes from the strangest of places.

Recently, I was getting my hair done and my hairdresser started talking to me about Toby. He told me that his aunt had lose a baby to SIDS 40 years ago. We talked about this at length and he totally "got" it. There was no need to explain myself, apologize for not being the same person, or even really say anything at all. He told me that his aunt had never really "moved on" and that, lo and behold, nobody expected her to. His family just took it for granted that she would always be grieving and she would always be a little sad. Interestingly, though, was the fact that she said that in her mind her son continued to age. She saw his first day of school, his high school dances, his graduation, his marriage, her grandkids...all of those "memories" played out in her mind as though they actually happened. That's how she dealt with her grief.

My hairdresser, who has no children of his own, did not think this was strange. I was glad.

In another instance, we were at a small country restaurant and an elderly woman sat behind us, eating alone. Thanks to the cuteness of our children, we often find ourselves in conversations with random strangers. This woman and I got to talking and I eventually told her about Toby. (I mentioned in a previous entry that I don't shy away from discussing him and what happened.)

Like most people, I expected her to say something along the lines of a religious platitude or, worse, an accusation. Instead, she shook her head and said, "With SIDS, there is nothing you can do. That's just something they haven't been able to find a reason for yet."

Yes! Thank you.

There is a woman whom I only met one time and at that time it was just for a few hours at a one day writing retreat. I don't know this woman and we only talked briefly. However, when Toby died she attended his funeral and then wrote me a beautiful letter afterwards. She has continued to send me random letters and emails over the course of the past year, somehow always knowing the right thing to say.

I don't expect to find this support when I am out and about, but it's always a welcomed thing when I do. It takes me by surprise and I am thankful for it. 

Deleting a post

If you clicked on here today thinking you were going to read a post about subsequent children and didn't find it, it's because I deleted it. I normally don't mind that much if people don't agree with me, but I was afraid that entry might make some people mad. The amount of support I get seems to be dependent upon whether people agree with me about something or not. One entry and one instance of disagreement and they disappear. Since I am getting my brain operated on in a week I really didn't want the extra stress of an online argument.

I think it's suffice to say that I handle Toby's passing where Iris is concerned a little differently than some of the parents I know who have gone on to have subsequent children. Although I don't judge how they do it, I was afraid I would inadvertently offend someone who might be sensitive to that kind of thing. 

Giving them the benefit of the doubt

When you lose a child, you spend a lot of time focusing on other people. I know it sounds crazy, but I really feel like a lot of my energy was placed more on others than myself. There are those who want to be comforted regarding YOUR loss, those who suddenly crave attention themselves and for whatever reason feel more validated if they get it from someone like yourself, and those who just flat our drive you crazy for a myriad of other reasons.

One thing that we hear a lot is that "they mean well" or "I guess they didn't know what else to say." This is always brought up when someone says something inherently stupid. At what point, though, do you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and just tell them to shut the hell up?

I personally don't like the platitudes myself. "He's in a better place", "I guess God knew what he was doing", "time heals all wounds", etc. Sometimes, I think the person really means it but most of the time I think they're just repeating some mantra that they think they're supposed to say and they're really not putting the thought in behind the words. Still, I usually just smile and nod.

Then, there are the cruel things. "Just think of all the money you'll save now that you don't have to buy diapers", "at least he was just a baby so you didn't get too attached to him", "oh, did you not follow the SIDS prevention rules?"

Those things just piss me off.

I've also encountered the weird things. Like when someone has a conversation with me about the hypothetical, or fictional, loss of a child and never once brings up the fact that I lose one or even connects the two. I have sat there and listened to them and had to remind myself that they were actually at his funeral so it's not like they didn't know he died.

And the people who are kind of like grief junkies and start pretending that my loss affects them in the same way it affects me, to the point where the people around them might even think that they were the ones who lost a child. (By the way, these are people who either never met Toby or saw him once-not people like my mom who was around him every day.)

I can give a good example of this...I recently had to cut someone off because they randomly decided to take the initiative and call the coroner's office themselves to ask for the official cause of death, just because they wanted to know. This was not a family member or anyone close to the death-just someone who thinks they are more involved than they are.

A lot of times, we hear that people just don't know what to say or how to react. Well, I am 100% sure that I have said or done the wrong thing in the past when someone has died. But I am also 100% sure that  I never said anything like what some people have said to me and I certainly never crossed any inappropriate boundaries like calling the coroner's office.

If you don't know what to say, how about an I'm sorry? Or even "I don't know what to say?" You don't have to talk or play therapist or even validate our feelings. Sometimes, we just want to talk. Sometimes, we don't.

I get tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt. How come they can say cruel things to me under the guise of "they just don't know what to say" yet I get chastised for saying something back if I don't like it? Why do they get the pass at being cruel but I don't? Seems like another injustice to me.

If you go back to one of my earliest blog entries after Toby's death (it's on my other blog) you will see that one of Pete's former friends commented and told me that I was "disturbed" and that it didn't have anything to do with Toby dying. (http://krumlovgirl.blogspot.com/2010/09/posting.html) and (http://krumlovgirl.blogspot.com/2010/09/dedication-to-person-that-commented.html#comments) You can also see where my brother-in-law told me to shut the fuck up, weeks after Toby died (http://krumlovgirl.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/no-words.html) and the beautiful response my mother gave him (http://krumlovgirl.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/family-family-family-and-mom.html). When I snapped back at them, I seemed to have wound up half of England and we were flooded with people telling me how horrible I was.

Sometimes, grieving puts you under a microscope. People watch you and analyze you, ready to criticize you for not acting or reacting in the right way. Well, it's not pretty. None of these feelings are.

Instead of trying to give everyone else the benefit of the doubt, I have finally learned to give it to myself. 

Video of me and Will

If you read the previous post then you know that my cousin Will and I sang at Uncle Lindon's funeral. I have no idea how to post that video on here since my cousin uploaded it to Facebook but it is public so if you want to see it, go Here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2845357032337


It cuts off after about a minute which is a real shame since I think the song really took off after that. :-) It took me at least a minute and a half to get over the fact that I was singing at a funeral less than 15 feet from Toby's grave. 

Another funeral

Uncle Ray and Uncle Lindon last summer

Last week, my uncle Lindon passed away. He had been ill for awhile but the death was very sudden and unexpected. He had been married to my aunt Jane for 57 years. Obviously, he had been in the family since before I was born and was as much a part of it as any of the brothers and sisters.

I have a lot of fond memories of Uncle Lindon but some of my best ones are of the times we spent in Grand Haven, Michigan. He was a very quiet man, but funny. He had a good sense of humor and was a wonderful carpenter. You could usually find him somewhere fishing and in Michigan it was always nice to wake up first thing in the morning and walk out to the river and see his little boat, a line casted off into the water.

The funeral itself was hard in many ways. He was buried in Toby's cemetery and the service was graveside. We hadn't been back there since December and going back there for a funeral service was difficult. Pete read a poem during the service and I sang a song with my cousin Will. I underestimated the impact of standing there within sight of Toby's grave and trying to sing. It was harder than I thought it would be.

Uncle Lindon fishing

Lindon's death was different than most of the deaths I have been around lately. Toby and the Chesnut girls were children and clearly had their lives cut short. Pete's mom was somewhere in the middle-still young yet had been able to have a family and a career. With Lindon, however, it was like watching an entire life play out once he died. Never before has a life and death felt so linear and complete. He was born, he had a childhood, he married, had children, had a career, had hobbies, was surrounded by people who loved him, traveled, got to enjoy his favorite pastime, and died. On one hand, it's incredibly sad that he is gone but on the other it's almost like I've been able to see a complete life begin and end. (Even though I wasn't there for the beginning.)

taken at Will's wedding, the weekend before Toby died

In some ways, that's depressing in its own way. When you look at it that way, even a long life feels extremely short.

I wonder about my aunt Jane now. Where do you go from here, after being married for almost 60 years? It's almost like starting life over.

Iris, after spending a weekend with my family

at the funeral home

After the visitation, I was talking to Aunt Jane and she said that it didn't feel right, leaving him there at the funeral home. I knew what she meant. One of the hardest parts of Toby's funeral was having to leave after the visitation and go home, knowing that his body was there in the funeral home by itself. I know it sounds strange, but I actually felt better once he was buried. The idea that his body was just out there, in a dark room, in a coffin, while I was somewhere else was horrible. At least once he was buried there was some closure to it.

Pete, talking at the graveside service 

Because of my upcoming surgery, we've been trying to get things in order in case something goes awry. Surgery in general is always risky but brain and spinal surgery have their own set of unique risks. Seeing things end suddenly make me start thinking about my own mortality.

Cole and Will singing at the service 

Iris, with flowers for Toby

Dad and me at Toby's grave

Sam and Dad at the cemetery

I have a very, very large family. Everyone has their own unique role in it. It was hard to lose Uncle Junior and Uncle Willis and now Uncle Lindon. The idea of having to keep watching people go is heavy on me.