Because he is dead.
He is dead.
He is dead, dead, dead.
As dead as a doornail. As dead as a dodo. As dead as yesterday's front page news.
He went from cradle to grave in six hours flat. The dead go quickly, sometimes. So quickly, they leave. Even if there's time for a fond farewell it feels like they've slipped through your fingers just before you've finished your sentence.
For the second time I let them put him in a box and screw the lid on, tighter and tighter, until he's out of sight. He's a baby in a box. Sounds like some kind of novelty toy.
His brand new cot also lies in a box, waiting for the baby that never came home. It's a big box; unwieldy and impossible to hide in our small house. Much bigger than the tiny cube in which the baby lies crushed up and burned.
It's a pretty urn. As pretty as an urn for a dead baby gets.
I get it home and suddenly I'm incensed. It shouldn't be in my living room. WHY IS IT IN MY LIVING ROOM? Why? Fucking why?
I'm half inclined to smash it after all that. That's what I think of baby dust. It doesn't feel sacred. I don't know what's in there, but it sure as hell isn't my baby - the one with the soft, velvet cheeks and the tiny little mouth perpetually opened as if he were getting ready to coo to me the sweetest ever song.
I want to grind those ashes into a paste and plaster it across my face, and the face of every single person I know. I want them to know what it feels like to have dead baby all over you, as I will every single day for the rest of my life. I want to make some kind of mark on them, even the ones I love, so when I see them I will know that we are all in this together. A mark like we are the chosen ones, like the priest gives good Catholics on Ash Wednesday.
No one wants to hear this, but I picture my baby in the fire where they burned his precious infant body. I'm scared to put those images into words - the words are too, too brutal. Blistering, shrivelling, disappearing into. . . nothing. . . I wish I'd mummified him and kept him in a display case like the priceless objet d'art he was. He was a valuable original, impossible to reproduce. He was a masterpiece lost forever to us.
Ashes can't be remade into solid form, so he's not eligible for the much talked of heavenly resurrection. There's laws of physics, I'm sure, that could give me an exact answer as to why I can't make him whole again. I wish I knew them. Maybe then I'd understand.
He's dead, you know. Oh, my baby. He's dead. He's still dead, where once, for a few magical hours, he was alive. But now he's dead, dead, dead. My baby is bloody, fucking, dead.
Forever is a bloody long time, isn't it? Too fucking long if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteI remember this place. This place of raw and brutal emotion. You probably remember reading about it when you read the old stuff on my blog. I'm so sorry you are here and going through this.
This post ripped my tattered old heart out.
xo
I do remember reading about these feelings on your blog, I do. I remember thinking how powerful some of your rage and resignation was. It's not even sadness sometimes, is it? It's just a feeling of being really, really, really pissed off that a dead firstborn, only baby is to be my lot in life. And feelings of being exhausted. And defeated. I'm sorry if I brought these feelings back for you, although I suppose they are never quite gone, just bubbling under the day-to-day grind. Thanks for being here. It means so much xx
DeleteMine too. My poor old heart. I'm surprised that I still have tears left to cry out some days but, turns out, that I do. I always do. And right now they are for you and Maxwell.
ReplyDeleteI found that everything took on a strange, nightmarish quality. I just couldn't believe it. That I was standing in a funeral home waiting to pick up the ashes of my dead little daughter. That I didn't just crumble into dust myself when they arrived in my hands, in a little plastic bag.
I hated all the HUGE baby stuff I had bought. For my tiny little baby. It all looked absolutely ridiculous and so complacent. I also had a bouncy chair and a brand new cot and I even had 0-3 month baby clothes and a 12-18 month party dress that I'd bought on sale. What an idiot. I've still got most of it as I can't seem to part with it.
I also worried about the cremation process. But I couldn't bring myself to bury her either. Either set of imaginings doesn't bear dwelling upon really. I had a very strong sense, the last time I actually saw her body (her funeral was closed casket) that I had to leave now and never see her body again. Because I couldn't do it twice. I just didn't have it in me. I would have been doing something like mummifying her body or just running away with it, through the doors of the hospital.
And it's such a long time. And I still can't quite believe that she slipped through my fingers, that nothing I could do or say or promise or give up could hold her here. I'm sure those laws of physics are slightly screwed up. Because surely we should be able to get them back. I wish we could. I wish that yearning for them could bring them back.
You're right that none of the ways we dispose of our dead bear thinking about, but still my morbid mind goes there. I'm glad Max was cremated, as I think I'd never be able to contemplate moving if I knew I were leaving him behind in a cemetery with no one to visit him. It's funny that the main benefit I see of cremation is its portability - it's almost like we're discussing the benefits of strollers vs slings, as some blissfully ignorant pregnant women probably are right now. I hate that we are here talking about the transporting of dead babies when I have a perfectly good pram for transporting a live one. I keep seeing other new mothers wheeling MY pram around the shopping centre. I keep wanting to slap them in the face. HOW DARE THEY HAVE A LIVING BABY IN A COMBI URBAN STROLLER! It seems a cruel irony.
DeleteI saw Max in his coffin on the day of his funeral. We wanted to see him a last time. It was tough. But he looked much better than he did in the hospital. I don't know what the mysterious practices of morticians do, but it was something nice.
I don't blame you for deciding you couldn't do it twice. How I didn't grab him and make for a run for it I don't know. I was on valium, so maybe that had something to do with my relative calmness in the face of my baby in a box. Leslie helped screw the lid on. He wanted to. I don't know how he did it, but it was important to him.
I wish we could bring them back to. I have been thinking of you so much, and of your dear girls. It's the 23 week thing. I feel like you're on my very unfortunate 'team'.
xx
Ooohh, ((hugs)), nothing I can say will help, I know, but I just want you to know you have thoughts coming your way. Life can be so profoundly unfair.
ReplyDeleteI recently had a miscarriage at 9 weeks, at home, alone. I saw the tiny baby, with all of his/her fingers and toes. What do you do with that??? What can you do?? I know how desperately devastated I was, seeing them that way (and I can only imagine 23 weeks was soo much worse), it just makes it so real, and so... over. So unnecessary.
My heart goes out to you. <3
Katie, thank you so much for visiting. Your kind thoughts mean so much. I don't know what you do with a horrific experience like the one you have had, I just don't know. No matter which way I look at it, I just can't make sense of any of this. I am so sorry you had to go through that, alone. I can't begin to contemplate what that was like. Thinking of you, and hope that you are healing. I wish healing for us all.
ReplyDeleteHi Janelle - I recently found your blog linked through another BLM's blog. My son was stillborn a month before Max's birthday - Griefland.
ReplyDeleteI am positive that cremation was the best choice for us, but the idea of his pristine body burning is torture. Each time it comes to mind I swear I could go permanently crazy.
The other thought that wouldn't go away was his small, perfect body being methodically cut open and dissected for the autopsy. Each organ carefully cut free from it's perfect place and weighed and measured. His precious head opened up, etc., etc.
Ugh. There is so much to be angry about. It's so effing wrong.
Thank you for sharing Max's story. I couldn't help but shed tears as I read about his bravery and that of his parents as well. Love to you as you endure this life without your son.
Thank you for visiting my blog, I'm honoured to have you here. I'm so sorry to hear that your head also swims with such horrible images. A month before Max was born, when you lost your dear son, I was blissfully unaware of how everything could, and would, go wrong. It's all so senseless. The before and after are like two different lifetimes.
DeleteI did not agree to an autopsy on Max for the exact reasons you mention that still haunt you. I still remember the moment they asked, everything inside me screaming 'don't touch him, don't you touch him!' It was different for us, though, as we knew why Max died (as a result of prematurity) and an autopsy was unlikely to shed any further light on what had gone wrong with me, which I understand is a very different situation than having a baby who died in utero for no known reason. My heart goes out to you as you find a way to manage those dark and frightening thoughts, which I know are common to us all, no matter which form they take.
I will visit your blog, Griefland. Thank you for sharing the link. I imagine we have been experiencing many similar things, given our sons both died at similar times, but of course no two journeys are alike. I hope I can learn something from you, and you from me, as I've done with all of the baby loss mothers and fathers I've been in touch with.
Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughts, and I will look forward to getting to know you.
I hate the ashes but the thought of my baby in the ground decaying seemed worse at the time. I hate that our babies sit in an urn instead of our arms. It is so damn hard and so damn wrong. I want them back for all of us. My heart goes out to you. It is all just so wrong.
ReplyDeleteI also hated the idea of burial, Paula. I know that it is not really my son in that cremation urn, but it's the closest thing to being him that I can get, so I want it with me all of the time. I could not face leaving him alone in a cemetery, though as I mentioned, some times I wish I did have a special place I could go and visit, and that there would be something public and visible to tell the world that Max was here.
DeleteIt is all so wrong. It is also so surreal. I still can't believe that this happened to me; that I am having these types of conversations about how best to deal with the bodies of dead babies. If only it were a nightmare, something we could wake up from.
Thinking of you, and thanking you for your kind words.