How many children do I have?

Ahh, small talk.  The most basic unit of communication with strangers and aquaintances.  Usually so benign, but yet riddled with so many hidden bombs.  The benign "what do you do?" is a conversation ender if the person just lost their job (for example).  And the Omnipresent, "How many children do you have?"  Seemingly a great conversation opener (who doesn't like to talk about their kids?), can be more difficult than you can imagine for a person who has had a child die.  But let me back up a few steps....

When the two children I gave birth to were young, it was an easy answer, right?  Two.  Simple.  Then I married a man who had three children.  Ok, that's a little more complicated.  Add in that his oldest was about to get married when we met and didn't live any where near and I never even met her until after her baby was born.  So...now I have a mathematical equation to do.  First I have to figure out what the person is really asking.  Do they want to know how many children I gave birth to?  How many children I have something to do with raising?  How many children my husband and I have?  What exactly is the question?

I figured out after awhile to just stick with "between my husband and I we have 5" and following that up with a who's who that rivals the famous publication listing who was born to who, how old, where they lived, etc.  It wasn't a short answer, but it got a chuckle usually.

And then Michaela died and I had to start all over figuring out the right answer.  It seems easy enough, but it wasn't.  At first I made the same mistake a friend of mine was telling me about yesterday.  I would say we had 4 and one in heaven.  Talk about a show stopper.  Looks of pity, followed by uncomfortable condolences, followed by uncomfortable silence, followed by the person looking frantically for an escape. 
So I offer up this suggestion for the bereaved parent.  Give the questioner a break.  They aren't asking how many children you have alive.  Why even mention it in the first breath?  Your child is your child, forever, period.  Include your angel child in your number, you will feel disloyal if you don't.  But there is no need to announce that he or she is dead, unless perhaps you only had one.  That makes it a little more difficult, but at least try to offer up more that just that piece of information. 
For those with surviving children, it is a little easier, I think.  I have a memorized answer that seems to put people at ease.  I still say between my husband and I we have 5.  I usually leave it at that until the follow up question (how old, where are they, etc).  Then I start with the oldest and work down adding a tidbit about each one.  Misti is the oldest she lives in CT with her husband and three children,  my oldest daughter, Michaela, was killed in a car accident at 21, my stepson Brandon is 22 and at FSU, my son, David is 21 and going to a small school in Iowa, and the youngest, Heather is 20 and expecting our 4th grandchild.  Then I repeat the question back to them if appropriate.  Sure it seems rehearsed.  It is.

There is still that shock of the death of a child, but there is a lot of other things to process, so by the time I am done, they can simply acknowledge the death and either tell me about their own children or comment on one of the other bits I have given them to work with. 

And for the person confronted with someone telling you that their child died.  Unless they burst into tears or act like they need consoled in some way.  A simple acknowledgement and perhaps a follow up question.  "I'm sorry to hear that, how did she die?" Followed by a second condolence and then simply move on.  Ask about one of the other children if there are any or ask a question about the personality of the lost child that is age appropriate.  And then move to another topic of conversation.  It is ok to talk about your own children.  It is ok to ask more questions if you want to.  It is not ok to say "I know just how you feel, my dog died last month" or "I understand, I lost my father last year"....unless you also lost a child your loss is irrelevant to this particular conversation.  It isn't unimportant, it just isn't an appropriate response. 

That is all.  :).  I doesn't seem that complicated any more.

Getting Back Up

I think my posts paint an unrealistic picture of what it is like to be a grieving mother.  That is because I generally only post when I am up and I have something positive to say.  Truly that is more and more often as time goes on, but the downs are every bit as bad as they were two years ago. 

This will be our third holiday season without Michaela.  The first year was hard.  The second year was hard.  I'm pretty certain the third year will be hard too.  The only positive is that they were hard in different ways and I'm sure this year will be no exception.  Or maybe that isn't a positive at all....since it is very hard to prepare for the unknown. 

Last weekend I started some holiday shopping.  I used to love holiday shopping.  I loved buying things for Michaela, because she loved the things I bought for her.  She loved getting (and giving) gifts and wasn't shy at all about her gratitude and appreciation.  Her enthusiasm bubbled out of her control.  Naturally as I am walking through stores my mind goes back over and over to 'oh, Michaela would like that, wish I could buy that for Michaela.'  I wonder what I would be buying her this year?  She would have graduated from UCF in the summer, so would be in the process of setting up a home somewhere. 

By Sunday afternoon, I was very blue.  I can't say for sure where the blues came from:  the shopping?  hormones? the upcoming holidays? the excited blessing of Heather's baby coming (knowing that Michaela never had that chance)? her friend's weddings/jobs/graduations?  I am happy for them, truly.  But each is also a tiny pin prick of what should have been, just a little sting of a reminder.  That day the hole in my heart felt tangible; like I could put my fist right through my chest.

This time the blues knocked me down.  I stayed home from work on Monday and didn't do anything.  People recommend that 'mental health days' be something fun to bring you up, but they don't understand.  If I had the strength to do something fun, I just would have gone to work.  These down days are like a bunch of elephants sitting on me, making it impossible for me to move or even breath.  I don't want to see anyone, speak to anyone, or do anything at all.  I just want to sleep or stare mindlessly into space or at a computer screen.  Even TV is too much input for me to handle. 

But I know I must fight those feelings.  I have to be stronger than the grief elephants and do what needs to be done.  I may be able to give myself a little slack to work slower or a shorter day or on an easier project, but to allow myself to succumb to doing nothing does not help me.  It leaves me feeling worse than I did at the beginning of the day. 

Tuesday I got up and pushed through the air that felt like moving through a jello mold and got to work.  I looked at my to-do list, now already a day behind and felt anxiety building in me.  I felt like I didn't have the strength to accomplish anything on that list; the whole list was overwhelming.  So I turned to a blank page and I wrote down one thing to do.  The most urgent thing on the list.  Then I did it.  Then I marked it off and wrote down one more thing.  Then I did it.  Then I marked it off.  By the end of the day I was feeling a sense of accomplishment AND had finished everything on the list.

By taking the steps one by one, I am now feeling much better.  I have a handle on all of the upcoming festivities and visitors we will be having, the uncertainty of how the holidays will be based on when Miley is born, the joy of having my son home for almost a month and my mom and dad down for a short visit after Christmas.  Brandon coming home from college.  Lots of short visits from Misti and the grandkids.  All of those things were overwhelming to me when I was down, but now I am excited and looking for a unique holiday season that will be nothing like any we have had before. 

God Bless and remember, the only option when you are down is to get back up.  Find your ladder.

Uniquely Exactly the Same

We had a great visit with our grandkids over Halloween.  I love that we get to spend that particular holiday with them because it is a memory making holiday.  It isn't overwhelmed with cooking or gifts or fireworks...it is a holiday of playing together. 

As I was editting the video clips, I was struck by both the similarities between these beautiful children and my own children at those ages.  That Ava had to knock the snowman over before she came in the house...the same way Michaela knocked one over right after they built it.  Just for the fun of destroying it.  That they love to pretend to be different animals...don't all children?  And play dress up.  And do puzzles and build things (only to knock them down) and dance! 

But yet, even as babies they are unique and individual.  It seems such a contradiction.  Each personality is so very different, what they like and don't like, what upsets them and what they enjoy, the foods they prefer and the colors they choose. 

I spent some time pondering this and thinking about how it affects our lives as adults and I came up with a few conclusions.  I believe in our needs we are all exactly the same.  We have the same physical needs, but we also have the same emotional needs (love, acceptance, security, purpose, fulfillment, and so on) and the same fears (rejection, death, illness, injury) and the same feelings (lonliness, fear, anger, excitement), but what makes us individual is how we go about meeting those needs, confronting our fears and reacting to those feelings.

I read Post Secret (www.postsecret.com).  The idea originated as a project where people anonymously sent in personal secrets to a person who published some of them.  It has resulted in multiple books, a web site and even a mobile app.  What strikes me about this whole phenomena isn't that people's deep dark secrets are terrible, but just the opposite; people's secrets are exactly the same.  They post about their lonliness and their fears and they are almost all the same.  Thousands of lonely people, thousands of people who are afraid they won't find love, thousands of people who hide their addictions, thousands of people who have been hurt by someone else.  The post secret community has become a warehouse for people who are hurting to not feel so alone in their pain.  They can see physical proof that they are not 'the only one' who feels that way.

I think that the world would be a much kinder place if everyone realized this simple fact.  We are all uniquely exactly the same. 

If we could appreciate that everyone on the street that we meet is struggling with the same fears and hurts that we are, perhaps we would be less inclined to flip them off when they accidentally cut us off in traffic.  Perhaps we would smile at people for no reason or say hi to people we pass on the street.  Maybe we could find some small joy in letting someone merge in traffic,waving them through a stop sign or letting them go ahead of us in line.  Maybe we wouldn't be so quick to blow the horn or cut in line ourselves.  Maybe we would be kinder.

Perhaps we would be able to see beyond skin color, religion, language, and body shape to find amazement in our real differences and solace in our sameness.  Because our real differences are not a physical thing, our real differences are in the unique ways we address our identical world and our identical needs, feelings, fears and emotions.