Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Easing the pain

It feels like I should be writing something...important...or deep. But I just can't. I'm so exhausted all the time that I barely have the energy to type silly useless bits. And, quite frankly, I just don't give a damn about much anymore. I mean, really, what is the point? I can keep repeating things over and over ad nauseum until I think I fully accept them (when I know I won't really fully accept it at all), or I can just sit and stare and feel numb. I prefer numb at this point, I really do. Because feeling means too much. It means facing all the fear and hurt and anger and sadness. Numb is much safer.

I guess it's no surprise that I would deny this part of it too, since I lived in denial almost the entire time I was pregnant with Travis. Heh...I was pregnant with Travis. Really? It seems like it happened to someone else...like I was looking in from the outside...a million years ago. And Alex...I barely remember anymore. How sad that I cannot muster enough energy to even remember two of my three children. I'm not sure I can even describe it appropriately. It just feels like...meh...who cares? what's the point? I don't even cry anymore...at all. What's the point?

Steve and I were talking about what to do with the baby stuff, since we're going to need to clean out the room that was intended for Alex...and then Travis. I told him he could dump it all in the trash for all I cared. And I meant it. I didn't even consider, not for one second, that we might use it in the future. I didn't care. I don't care. My life has become so foreign to me that even the IDEA of future children didn't even cross my mind. I'm ready to chuck all that stuff in the trash, along with all those plans and dreams we had. Gone...for good.

"God doesn't always give you the answers you want."
"You still have a lot to be thankful for."
If someone you loved came down with cancer...if you were watching your child die of that or some other disease...would it be all right for me to say, "God doesn't always give you the answers you want?" Would it be ok for me to tell someone that their prayers may fall on deaf ears and they should just smile and accept it? they should find comfort in it? Would it be ok for me to tell them to count their blessings? or tell them, "Life goes on?" as they suffer? No? So why the hell do people have to say this stuff to me?!?! I've got my foot in an aircast and I visit two dead children at a cemetery. Don't f***ing tell me to count my blessings right now! I asked for my childrens' lives and He told me "no." Where is the comfort in that? How heartless and cruel can you be?

I'm tired of heartless and cruel. I'm tired of fear and hurt and anger and sadness. I'm just tired. Numb is so much better.

3 comments:

laura said...

you know, i *want* to be a good parent to hans, but it's hard when i can barely remember him, and he's not really doing his part to keep me familiar with him, dammit.

kate said...

Numb works, for awhile. Take it while you can get it, i say.

Cathy and Laura -- you *are* good parents to your missing children. It is just a different parenting, when they are dead. Because after a while you *don't* really remember, not in the visceral way you did at first. And you can't do much for a baby who is dead.
I know it sounds trite but really the only thing you can do for them is to help others -- which you both do, in spades, by being so forthcoming on your blogs. I know very well how little that notion 'helps' with these feelings, but heck what can you do?

Elizabeth said...

Numbness is good. This greiving thing sucks.

I lost my son on April 24, after 6 1/2 months of many surgeries and struggles in the NICU. I still have numb days. You need numb days.

Hang in there. The pain and numbness have to ease up eventually, right?

Mom

My mom insisted on living independently. She wanted to live in the two-story house she and my dad built in the 70s, despite the fact that da...