And I don't mean you had a bad day where your car has a dead battery, so you're late to work, get an earful from the boss, you dump your lunch in your lap right before a client meeting, and then on the way home you realize you left your phone on the desk in your office. Sometimes, days where the bad luck piles up seem like tragedy and you just don't know what else could go wrong in the next twenty-four hours. You get straight into your jammies, climb under the covers and don't come out until the sun comes up the next day, hoping to avoid any further calamities. So, next time you might be better prepared for such crap.
I'm talking about the events that you hear about on the news happening to other people, and you never imagine in a thousand years that anything so terrible would happen to you.
I lost a child. Yes, possibly the worst tragedy any parent faces and so many have experienced, maybe even people you know--co-workers, relatives and friends. It isn't something people advertise. It's a non-exclusive club with only one membership requirement, and many don't even discuss the topic with each other except for an initial declaration of identification, something like "That happened to us, too." Then you might never hear of it again.
For the last four years, I have been attempting to put such a tragedy into a comprehensible frame of words, enough to pass the story on with the goal of letting other people know that they aren't the only ones, or to let those outside the club know just how a person going through the pain really feels and what they are thinking. I also have a cathartic goal of continuing to release the heartache and remind myself that I'm not alone. A few hundred words at a time is all I can manage about once a month, not always because interruptions are plentiful at the Love residence, but because I simply can't go for hours with my heart in my throat in order to get it all out at once.
I have a lot to say in the creation of the book I hope will eventually evolve from the tidbits I am able to write now and then. I want to relate the story detail by detail, painting as accurate a picture as possible of the skilled and not-so-skilled nurses, the medical jargon, the smell of the scrub room and the sounds of the Intensive Care Nursery. I also want to explain how a parent going through the grief of losing a child feels, because not every moment is full of blame or heartache. Some moments are full of respect and adoration. Bits of hope entwine around each day, some more than others depending on what the doctors have to say during morning rounds. And who can't resist smiling when a baby looks so adorable wiggling her fingers and toes or stretching her scrawny legs, even if that baby weighs only four pounds and is attached to a ventilator? We had six weeks and two days with our beautiful, feisty baby girl after she was born. Those moments are cherished.
As I'm writing, I often feel concerned that I'm going to upset people who read what I've written and I think I should back away from some of the more unconventional thoughts that I'm attempting to convey. After all, these are family and friends I'm writing about, real people who will most likely receive a copy of the book. Then I tell myself, if they don't like what I have to say, that's not really my problem. What I don't want is a cheesy, feel-good story. In reality, the ending is in no way feeling good. It's pretty damned shitty.
In truth, even writing this brief blog about writing the story proves a difficult endeavor and has taken me several days to get to a publishing point. I don't know if it get any harder than this.
Next Article: Filling in the Gaps
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