Yesterday itself, I found myself crying in a Michael's craft store. And at a Starbuck's. And on the way to pick up Shea from school. I also found myself enjoying a visit from my neighbors, in which we laughed and talked about commonplace things, with no mention of dead babies or sadness. I had a long, involved conversation about the Lorax with Shea and savored the taste of a Frappucino and got satisfaction in cleaning my house.
None of these things feel right. Everything feels like I am feeling or doing something wrong. It doesn't feel OK to be happy when Harper is gone. It feels lousy to be sad all the time. I think I am past the numbness.
My sister in law asked me yesterday whether I feel like people look at me differently now, as if they know I've been hit with this terrible tragedy.
"I wish I did," I told her. "Because it's the fact that everyone is behaving so normally, that life is going on, that is killing me." Sometimes it is all I can do not to just shake random people or run around screaming that my baby girl died after only 17 days and how can they just go on shopping at Costco as if nothing has happened.
It also makes me wonder whether others I'm encountering are undergoing their own version of heartbreak. It makes me want to me nicer and kinder to everyone, because who knows whether they, too, have lost someone they loved? Life might be easier if we wore our sadness like a beacon above each of our heads, although recent experience has taught me that knowing someone is mourning does not mean anyone will know what to say or how to react.
Last night, Lou and I wrote some remarks for Harper's memorial and put together a photo album. I'm not a crafty person, but at first, I found the rhythm of scrapbooking soothing. Making things pretty for Harper, adding stickers, using lovely paper. I never got to dress my little girl in a single outfit. Never got to put her into a pretty dress or brush her hair. This was the closest I would come,
But then every picture began to crush me. And I remembered how in the darkest hours of the first night of Harper's diagnosis, before we had met her or held her, we thought maybe it was better if she was more severely affected, if she died very quickly.
I can't begin to describe how horrible that thought, however fleeting, makes me feel right now.
I'm so sorry, Harper bean, that I ever thought the world or my life would be better without you in it. I would give anything to hold you again, just one more time. I miss you. I love you. I wish you were here to celebrate your three week birthday.
Oh, Carrie, please don't feel horrible for your reactions! They were perfectly normal, understandable, and humanitarian. I'm so grateful that she lived and was loved for 17 days, than if she had died too quickly, before you and Lou had time to absorb the news.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it makes you feel any better, I have been entirely unproductive at work these past three weeks.
Carrie, your sorrow has touched all of us so deeply.
ReplyDeleteYou and Lou were there for Harper and did everything you possibly could. That's what matters--not a stray thought in the middle of that first dark night.