Line in the Sand

I’ve never been much for celebrating the New Year. I’ve been to exactly one New Year’s Eve party way back in the early 90s. Staying up and watching the ball drop in New York City is about all the enthusiasm I can muster for what is an arbitrary human line in the sand. Depending on which ancient civilization you favor, the new year fell on the winter solstice, the vernal equinox or some other logical celestial event. The winter solstice makes the most sense to me, but who am I to argue with history winners?

In recent years, staying up to watch the ball drop has become a chore. The older I get the less interested in I am in staying up late and if my neighbors would stop with the fireworks every year, I’d blissfully sleep through the whole thing.

This year though? This year that arbitrary line in the sand is vitally important to me. It’s a tangible moment that will allow me to put 2014 into the “history” category. And Friends, I really, really need to do that. 2014 was a challenge. 2014 sucked spiky, radioactive, guano balls. 2014 just needs to end already.

While I won’t be staying up this year to tell 2014 to “suck it” I’m certainly looking forward to waking up on January 1st with a metaphorically clean slate. I don’t expect things to be magically better though. They won’t be. The same issues that we have been dealing with all year will still be lurking. We’ll still be fighting to reduce some of the shit that has been dumped on us this year, but thankfully, the pile is definitely getting smaller.

2015 isn’t going to be be about new beginnings and changes so much as it will be a return to things I stopped doing in 2014 because it was too much, too overwhelming, too hard to juggle. I’m not one for sticking with resolutions, but I’ve got them this year and I am determined to keep them. Nothing in the realm of impossibility, nothing far-fetched. I’m not planning to take up mountain climbing, become fluent in Latin, and certainly not overcome my fear of sharks by swimming with them. 

Goodbye 2014. Make sure you leave your keys and close the door on the way out.

Hello 2015! Come on in, sit and stay awhile! I've been looking forward to your visit!

The Countdown Is On

There’s a two-part episode of Star Trek Voyager titled “Year of Hell” in which Captain Janeway and her crew suffer a series of calamities over the course of a year. Eventually, through the magic of temporal phenomenon, everything ends up honky-dory, and the Year of Hell never happens. Voyager’s crew continues on their journey unaware of the disasters that befell them or they avoided...I’ve never understood temporal mechanics.

There have been more times than I can count that I’ve wished for a temporal phenomenon to undo this year or fast forward it. My very own, very real, very intense Year of Hell. As science fiction isn’t all science fact yet, that leaves me just waiting for the end of 2014.

Many times, almost daily, I ask myself what right have I to complain. I know people who’ve been through far too much for me to ever complain about anything. How dare I mope when people are starving, when wars rampage across the world, when cities burn, and mothers lose their children! Who am I to lie in bed at night crying? My husband holds me but is helpless to comfort me because I am inconsolable. In those moments, I allow myself to fall because I tell myself that grief is not a contest and there is no measurable way to compare pain, that even though others have suffered far more than I could ever imagine, my anger, sadness, and hurt are just as real.

I count, I breathe, I pull myself together because I have no other choice.

Am I depressed? Yeah. Clearly. There’s no denying that. My one and only solace? I know that my depression is situational. That things are generally shit right now, but it won’t be like this forever. I know that as long as I keep putting my feet on the ground every morning, that someday it won’t feel like such a chore. There are days when my smile is genuine and my laughter is not forced. And those days are slowly starting to outnumber the others.

I’ve said it before that I should have done an anonymous blog, then maybe, I’d post more about my life. Maybe if I had a top secret super blog I’d vent, I’d rant, I’d utilize an outlet that I honestly should have been using: my words. My chaos has been my own this year. I’ve not wanted to share it or talk about it here or anywhere, so even an anonymous blog would have sat unattended this year. I’ve got 31 more days to go in what I expected to be a great year. I have used this year as an excuse for not writing, not crafting, not doing and that’s got to change. Whether I post to a public blog or just jot notes in a journal, writing has always helped me work through my issues and I need to get back to that.

In 31 more days I’ll have survived 2014.

In 31 more days I’ll file 2014 away as a lesson learned.

In 31 more days I’ll jump into 2015 looking to exceed rather than endure. 

 

Scott asked me the other day if I expected 2015 to magically be better. Of course not, I said. But it’s like a clean slate. New Years is a tangible mark, a concrete, albeit human, passage of time. Time allows distance and clarity, healing and hope. Time, right now, is the best friend I’ve got.

This year I fell. Come January 1st, I will start standing again.

A Year Ago

A year ago, when the phone rang I was on the couch being lazy. Scott got up and looked at the caller ID.

“Joyce?” He asked me wanting to know if he should pick up.

“Yes!” I said and my mind began racing. Racing to Japan where Sara and Geordie were awaiting the arrival of their daughter Lauren. She’s early, I thought as I answered the phone.

On the other end of the phone a very quiet Joyce asked me if I had heard from Sara that day. The soft tremble in her words put me immediately on edge. And as I sat up Joyce told me through her tears that Lauren’s heart had stopped. On September 28, Lauren was born sleeping.

I’ve written about this before here and here. More importantly, Sara has written Lauren's story and I encourage everyone to read go and read it. Babies aren't supposed to die and far too many do. We seem more than willing to talk candidly about breast cancer and numerous other medical issues, but for some reason people turn their heads away from stillbirth and miscarriage.

I’ve spent the better part of a week trying to find words for this post. Nothing sounds right. So I will leave it as such:

My heart, my thoughts, my love go out to Sara, Geordie and their families today and everyday. Lauren was loved from the very second Sara and Geordie shared her with us and she will forever be missed and loved.

Not A Statistic

Sometimes I don’t know what to say. I am supposed to be a writer, a teacher, an English Major for goodness sake! Yet words often fail me. They get lost on the highways and byways of my brain. Somewhere between the thought and my mouth the words I want vanish. Or worse, they come out and are absolutely no good. They don’t fit the situation, they are mispronounced, or they are non sequiturs. And sometimes there are situations, where no matter what words I carefully choose, they will never be enough, mean enough, help enough.

Just over three months ago, on September 26th my best friend’s mom called me. At first, when I saw her name pop up on caller id, I was excited. She’s two weeks early, I thought, but Sara must be in labor. But Joyce’s voice quivered over the line and she asked me softly if I had heard from Sara that day. My stomach dropped. I shook my head and tears welled in my eyes because I knew something had gone wrong.

Wrong. What a deceptively small word, like she had chosen the wrong answer on a test.

“They lost the baby,” Joyce’s voice cracked and became muffled as if she were speaking through her hands. “Her heart just stopped. They are going to induce labor.”

On September 26th I knew that stillbirth didn’t happen. Not today. Not in a world that prides itself on medical technology.

On September 28th Sara delivered her daughter, Lauren Joy, stillborn.

That day I learned that stillbirth does happen and more frequently then one can imagine.

For three months, I’ve been helpless to help Sara. I haven’t known what to say, what to do. I still don’t know.

As short as this post is, I have been working on it for three months. Each time I sat down to write I struggled with the topic. One thing that I kept going back to was the fact that stillbirth is not discussed. It is swept up and tossed out. Since that day, I have read baby loss blogs where far too many moms were told to “get over it” and “move on.” Moms who thought they couldn't talk about their baby...or felt pressured not to. And blogs where doctors were indifferent and never discussed the possibility of stillbirth with the moms.

Sara is a writer and blogger. Her post today helped me to figure out what I can do. I can help to keep Lauren’s name heard by sharing Sara’s story with as many people as I can.

After three months, I still grieve with Sara and her family. Not a day has gone by that I do not think about Lauren and miss her despite never having met her.

This is Lauren’s Story.

She is not a statistic. She is real. She is loved. She is missed.