Smashed pieces and glue

Park Güell, Barcelona
DH is away on a business trip and rather than spend the whole time on my own feeling sorry for myself, I pre-arranged with a friend to go to Barcelona for a few days. I think I spent more time laughing than crying although I definitely did some of both.

We saw a lot of trencadís work, mosaics made of pieces of broken tile, and found all over the city, especially in works by the architect Antonio Gaudí.

A few weeks after Moksha died I had a tearful lunch with a friend and told him that I hoped the person I would become would bear some resemblance to the person I was before. He asked me if I thought I was completely smashed to pieces as I didn't seem that way to him. Delphi's blog title, eight million pieces struck a real chord with me, as did her words "picking up the pieces one by one".

Since then I have often thought about his question. And now I'm wondering whether it's more like I was totally covered in hairline cracks, but now some of those hairline cracks have sealed up again. There are still some large portions that couldn't be saved and are smashed on the floor and I have to pick those pieces up one by one. But what's on the floor doesn't represent all of me.

I feel guilty about writing that and don't really understand how some of those hairline cracks have sealed up again. I do wonder whether the sealing-up is structurally sound. I don't understand how I am still able to function. But every now and then I feel like I picked up a piece and glued it back on.

Here are some of the pieces I feel like I have picked up. They seem blindingly obvious now. They weren't though, not to me.

Understanding that having a reason doesn't make it easier
I am in limbo of having and not having a reason. It could have been my Factor V Leiden which caused Moksha's death and it could just as easily not have been related at all. A few weeks after Moksha died a work colleague got in touch with me and said he and his wife had lost a full term baby four years ago. They both kindly came to our place to talk to us. His wife had a placental abruption and before she came, I thought, well at least she has a reason. But after talking to her I realised that all she knows is the how not the why. There is no answer to the why. She only asks why the placental abruption had to happen to her and why did it have to kill her baby.

Understanding that there will always be regrets
Thank you for the nice comments on the photo of Moksha and his Daddy. I have a grand total of 14 photos of Moksha. The hospital didn't encourage us to take pictures - DH just instinctively took some. And even he felt a bit paparazzi-like when he was taking them and so didn't take that many. I don't have a single picture of me holding Moksha or an equivalent photo of the one I posted with my hand instead of my husband's. I regret this.

I regret not holding him more and more closely. I regret that we went to sleep in the few hours we had alone with him. I regret I didn't play with his little arms or look more closely at his face, his ears, his hands, his feet, his elbows, his back. I regret we didn't take a lock of his hair. I regret that we didn't ask for footprints or handprints. I regret that I didn't dress him myself. The midwife dressed him. The pathologist undressed him. The undertaker dressed him. The crematorium flames undressed him. But I didn't. These regrets were all lying in smashed pieces of me on the floor.

A local grief support group put us in touch with a woman who chose to terminate her pregnancy in the second trimester due to a chromosome problem. Her biggest regrets were that she felt like she had murdered her baby in making the termination decision and that she didn't have any sort of goodbye ceremony. The hospital disposed of her baby's body.

Those are two regrets I don't have. She helped me realise that it doesn't matter if I had done something differently and didn't have the regrets I listed above. Even if I had 100 photos of Moksha in 5 different outfits that I dressed him in with my own hands, I would still have the mother of all regrets which is that my beloved son is dead. So I'm slowly coming to terms with those smaller regrets.

Recently I saw a new doctor (I didn't have a generalist doctor before and I can't keep seeing my obstetrician for everything). I explained to him what had happened. He asked if I was able spend any time with my son. I sobbed that yes, but I had wasted that time by going to sleep. Most people have said, well of course you went to sleep, you were in labour during the night, you were in shock, you were pumped full of drugs. All stuff I knew already with my head, but somehow it wasn't comforting. But this doctor said, "How do you know that isn't what your son needed? A family sleeping together is the most natural thing in the world. You, your husband and your son spent some hours asleep together in complete peace." This made so much more sense to me and he gave me some glue to start sticking that piece back on.

Playing in the big kids' playground
This one might sound a bit silly. And like so many things, I think it about myself, not about other people. Since Moksha died, I have felt like I tried to play at being a real adult and I had my knuckles severely rapped. Who do you think you are, trying to play at being a real grown-up? Did you really think you could have a baby? Nope, that's for real adults only. You should have known better. Go and sit in the corner with this pointy hat. Face the wall while you're at it.

I said this to my friend when we were in Barcelona and she said, "Going through a child's death is the most grown-up thing you will ever have to do." Like I said, sounds bloody obvious but it really hadn't crossed my mind before. She gave me some glue to stick that piece back on.

I don't know how many more pieces there are to stick back on. Some will be messy, visible joins and will always be ugly-looking. Some will fall off repeatedly until I can find the right type of glue. Some will be impossible to fix and I will have to learn to get along without them. The dust of those pieces has to be swept up. But there are some which I may be able to fix.