Grief

In the early hours and days after someone dies, it is not as painful as you imagine. Their soul is very close still, they are talked about and remembered and you don't feel alone. It is when life starts moving on for everyone around you that it becomes so difficult. Grief is lonely.

When we left the hospital the next morning, we left without a baby. I walked out of my room, flanked by my family who had come down to leave with me - and in the hallway, through a doorway, was another family with a newborn baby. People were oohing and ahhing, the baby was crying and I was paralyzed to the spot. I stared and stared and couldn't move. That should be me. Why isn't that me?

Someone encouraged me to keep going and I began the horrible trek down the hallway and out the doors with empty arms.

Arriving home was even more painful. The reminders of what we'd left with and what we arrived home without were everywhere. I tried bravely to carry on normalcy. I remember running to the grocery store for something and getting to the parking lot and being unable to get out of the car. I sobbed and sobbed and panicked. I could not face anyone. I could not bear to have them ask me about my baby. Worse - I could not bear it if no one asked.

I turned the car around and drove home. Once there I barely made it in the doorway before I collapsed in heaving sobs. As painful as it was at home, it was safer here with my grief than out there.

I threw myself into planning his funeral. I wanted a few days so that I didn't feel rushed and I picked songs and poems and scriptures. I made up the program and included an open letter from Kirk and I about Gabriel. We met the priest and planned the service - I would not walk down behind the casket, I did not want a full mass. We met with the funeral home and picked out the casket - which was so surreal. We fought the sick feeling by joking with each other. I told my husband that if he ever buried me in a blue velvet casket I'd come back and haunt him. He promised that he would because he didn't want to be without me.

We arranged for a simple funeral and a payment plan - we were so shocked at how much money this would cost. Money we, of course, didn't have. To save some money, I decided I would pick flowers from my garden and bring them to put on his casket.

I went to the stores to find a dress for me to wear - a dress that would fit my swollen breasts that were bound with tensors to try and stop the milk from flowing. The saleswoman had no idea and her perkiness set me off. I'm buying this dress to wear when I bury my dead baby - I told her. Please! Leave me alone. And she did...

I picked out clothes for him. A tiny white sleeper. I bought two tiny lullaby books - one to buried with him and one for me to keep and I promised him that I would practice singing the lullabies and one day when we met again, I would hold him and I would sing them. I bought a small stuffed rabbit. The casket was tiny and wouldn't hold much...

I was putting everything together at home when I started to panic. You can't dress a baby without an undershirt - he would need an undershirt. You can't take him out without a hat - he would need a hat. He needs a blanket. I laid everything out on the bed and took pictures of it. Kirk gave me his Knights of Columbus rosary and we included that.

I wrote a note to the funeral director and tucked it in with Gabriel's things. I asked for them to make sure to put his undershirt on and don't forget his hat. Please, set the bunny by his head and put his father's rosary beads in his hand. Please...take care of him. Love, Gabriel's mama.

The night before the funeral was torture. Panic set in and I was up all night. I prayed for peace - just a little bit of peace. The next morning as we got ready, my husband's father and brother called. They were going golfing before the funeral - did he want to come?

I dressed in my sundress, breasts bound tightly and hidden under a small jacket. My husband wore his suit in the heat of the day. We dressed our little girl in a pretty dress and white hat. Before we left, I stopped in my garden and cut the pansies I had planted earlier in the summer. When I'd planted these, he was still alive in me. Our hopes and dreams for him still existed. He existed.

And now, as I cut the pansies and tied them with twine - he was dead.

We drove to the church and when we parked the car, we turned to each other and said - let's not go in. Lets go and get him and put him in the car with us and drive away. And keep driving. Drive until everything is right again and we are together.

We bravely stepped out and into the church and just off to the side was his tiny white casket. My family stood quietly nearby and I walked up to the casket with my small bouquet of pansies. Laying the flowers down, I dissolved into sobs. Deep, painful sobs. I heard my family struggle to hold on behind me and at my knee was my little girl. Mama, don't cry - she said. Don't cry mama.

I picked her up and we walked to the front pew to pray.

The funeral began and I heard many voices behind me - embracing me as they sang. The rolled his tiny casket up beside us and I prayed for peace.

At one point during the funeral, I looked over at his casket. There on one of the petals was a tiny white spider and washing over me was his voice. Its ok. I'm ok. I'm there - in every spider you see - I'm there. And for the first time since he was born - I felt peace. Yes, he was gone - but he really was ok. I believed it. I knew it.

I tried to tell my husband about the spider on the way to the cemetary - but he didn't understand. He didn't care to hear. My husband stood at the graveside for so long. He couldn't walk away. He didn't want to leave. The peace that I had found in the church had not come to him.