Shea has finally succumbed to the nasty cold virus from which Lou and I have been suffering for the past two weeks, so stayed home sick today. While he was quietly coloring at the table, I decided to use the opportunity to clean out our mail bin.
Mail bin is the misnomer we give to the large wooden box where we toss assorted pieces of paper, notebooks, etc. that we don't want to deal with right now. It reaches a point of un-manageability every few months, and I purge it to restore order, filing the important papers, recycling the ones that just don't matter anymore, deciding how much to keep of the avalanche of Shea's artwork, debating over whether we'll ever use that coupon, often followed by shrugging and tossing it back into the box.
This morning, the mail bin was still full of Harper.
Painful items, things that made me smile, lots of papery memories I had given no thought to for many weeks that had somehow been tossed into the bin, because I wasn't ready to deal with them yet.
Sonogram photos. So many, many sonogram photos. When you're going for three ultrasounds per week, they end up everywhere - I run into them all over the house and the mail bin had its fair share.
Sympathy cards that hadn't made it to the basket on the bookshelf in our guest room that has declared itself the Altar of Harper. Insurance summaries. Medical information.. Notes from hospice. Resources on grieving. Thank you notes. Newborn information packet from Georgetown. A baby book, with only the family tree potions filled out.
Harper's death certificate.
It reminded me we still have not ordered her birth certificate. It doesn't seem high on the priority list. Still, it seems like there should be a record that she was alive, not just that she died.
It's amazing that one tiny baby, less than five pounds, can generate ten or more times her body weight in paper. But since it is all I have left of her, I file it away. Out of the mail bin. To another place of limbo, because I'm still not ready to deal with much of it.
News stories that never would have caught my eye before also leap out at me now, thanks to our experience with Harper.
Like this one, about how Germany is now offering a third option for gender on birth certificates, for babies born like Harper, chromosomally of one gender but anatomically of another. It reminded me of her little hospital I.D. band, listing gender as U for unknown.
Or this story in the Washington Post, about how a merger of funeral homes could threaten a deal for inexpensive Jewish funerals in the Washington area. We know all about that deal, Lou and I; we learned of it when seeking advice from the rabbi on what to do with Harper's remains. Prior to that, I had no idea the Jewish Funeral Practices of Greater Washington even existed.
Noticing these things makes me want to nudge someone and say, "Hey, did you see this?" But except for Lou, they'd have very little relevance to anyone other than me. One more way in which losing Harper sometimes makes me feel very alone.
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