Yesterday I didn't sleep again. I take pills now to drown out the world and bring me to peace. But sometimes your body's instinct fights pills. And it wakes up at 3am to feed the baby that isn't there. It was training for that instinct for 8 months. So exhausted, I slept from 9am-11:30. I woke up to my husband at the end of the bed, gently rubbing my leg to wake me up. Decisions have to be made. Life doesn't wait. The funeral home that waited for Brandon to get home from a work trip, wasn't able to wait any longer. We had already been to that building once. We had to make decisions no parent should ever make. Cremation or burial. What to dress them in. Do you want to identify the body or use hospital ID tags. And this morning, would you like to witness the cremation.
I went from asleep to panic attack immediately. How do you make this decision. I said yes to witnessing it immediately. Because as a mother, you do not ever want your child to be alone. I am alone without her, I don't want her to be alone without me. It feels like betrayal. I shut down, I couldn't think. My husband offered to make the decision for me, and let him handle it, seeing it was too much for me. More guilt for feeling like I can't even make my own choices anymore.
I turned to the newly found community I have. To the mom's who have had to make these decisions before me. I will be one of them one day to someone who joins these waters. Forever drowning in them, but lifting each other up for air. Was it better to witness it, or choose to not be there. They asked me if it would be healing to be there, or renew the hurt in some way. I didn't know. I'm always unsure of myself. My trust in myself is shattered and that is something hard to live with, without all the other emotions and grieving going on.
But then they ask this, do you want the last image of anna to be the ones you already have, or today. As a mother, of course you always want one more moment, no matter the cost. I felt like I needed to touch her one last time. Because there is only last's for us. But I also didn't want to ruin the image I have of her that day. The few memories we made. Her perfect face. I learned the hard way, that when babies pass, they dehydrate faster than adults. I was warned she wouldn't look the same. And my poor husband had to remind me how hard that would be to see. So after hours of reading online, asking friends, and weighing every possible option, we chose not to witness the cremation.
We drove the empty urn to the other side of the city. The gaping hollow hole in it, mirroring my own heart. My dad, her grandfather, carved it out of wood. On one of the first days, he wrote me and offered to make it just for her. I can tell you, you never dream of picking out an urn for your child. I spent the next hour trying to find what I wanted, but didn't want. I finally settled on a picture of a wooden heart. It was not an urn. But my dad took the picture, and the few words I used to describe my desire. And over the next week, spent hours perfecting this image I had in my head but couldn't describe. Yet it's exactly what I pictured. A light colored wooden heart, carved with fullness, sealed with a metal heart, her name and date engraved with remembrance. With every decision, I was 2 thoughts behind, and by the time I asked about something, he had already predicted my request. I asked how he knew, and he told me in 30 years, I would know my children that well too.
Wood is unique in every piece, and while carving it, he found a string of brown dots came up and he could not buff them away, no matter how hard he tried. Instead he imagined this meant Anna would have shared my freckles and it was her way of showing me we were so alike.
Today we picked her up. I will never have to drive to the funeral home and make these choices again. The drive there I distracted myself with conversations with a friend. She talked to me and let me show a photo of Anna the last time I saw her. It was comforting to show her in how I remember her, not simply in this urn, forever the rest of her life. That one moment I have of her as truly my Anna.
And then we drove home, and I wept, not cried, not sobbed, but wept. Pure emotion rolling off my cheeks and into my hands holding this wooden heart. That feels no heavier than it was when we dropped it off the day before. But yet it now contains my most worldly possession. Anna, in her pink coming home outfit, with a bow, and her bunny. Brandon holding my hand, and holding it together for both of us. He is so strong in all of this hell.
We brought our baby home finally. The day every parent dreams of. I have done it before in such joy. Today I did it with such pain. My feet barely moving as I carried her inside. Up the stairs. And placed her gently on my side table. Near me but never again close enough. And I crawl back into bed, because part of me died that day, and though I continue to heal physically, my heart will never be whole.
Because part of it sits in a wooden heart beside me.
with love, lissa