The empty spot of darkness

Sometimes there are not words powerful enough to convey the anger, the fury, and the brokenness of death. And I've learned that death is always grotesque. Always.

And sometimes there is so much anger that it seems imperative to isolate oneself because you are certain there is no one that can possibly give enough care to your grief and the loss you have suffered without making you feel even angrier.

what was left of My Dad's plane

When my Dad died one of the most prominent places where his loss was felt head on was at the dinner table. I actually had to move his chair away, sit in it myself, or avoid the table all together to get through that emptiness of having the head of our home vanish before our eyes. But many times I was overcome with anger as I sat there staring at the emptiness. Even now, thinking about that empty chair and the absence of the person that I still so desperately needed, I can't help but feel like throwing something. What made me angriest was all the people that were friends with my Dad and how sad they would act around us to lose him, and they were sad, but then they would go home to their houses and their families and sit at their tables while we sat at ours, the only ones that had to face the loss constantly in our faces. It wasn't fair.

This is the side of grief that hurts the worst because it's not justified. And I wish it was. Anger is not justified because death is what we all deserve. I want to scream and break things and tell God it's not fair, ask Him to intervene, to help, to have mercy, to end this madness. But He has not. And I know what His answer would be. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

For 10 days I walked around with a dead body inside of me. Unless you have experienced that, there is no way you can possibly understand what it feels like to have your body betray you and not be able to keep your precious baby alive. Sometimes having my womb turn into a house of death made me physically ill. It still does. The desperation and the plea of begging God to raise that baby back to life only to have my body so grotesquely expel my child 10 days later.

And for a year now I've been trapped in this hell. On the one hand I have my amazing husband and my 4 amazing children. A part of me wishes I could erase the last year. I wish I could erase it. What if I was like other people that have a few kids and decide to "be done"? What if, like we were tempted to do when our 4th was a baby, we had decided to stop having kids? I wonder what I would be doing now. I wonder how my life would be different if I had chosen the 4 I had and decided to just live. Obviously I would still be caring for my 4 children and home schooling, but what would I be thinking about? What project would I be excited about? What would my plans for this year and the next be? Instead of thinking about blood tests and whether I will conceive next month, what would my focus be?

And sometimes I'm just tired. I just want to be done. I want to forget the hell of pushing out a dead baby. I want to forget the nightmare of being told that my second child of the year was being murdered by a giant hematoma attached to his placenta. I want to forget watching his heart trying so hard to beat. I want to forget the Doctor offering to do a D&C on a living baby to spare him the suffering he was going through that was killing him. I want to forget the two weeks that I, again, pleaded for a life of another child. I want to forget standing in the grocery store when my cell phone rang and my Doctor told me, shouting, that we had "gotten our miracle". My baby, Amadeus, had been two weeks behind in development when I went in at 8 weeks for an ultrasound due to a spontaneous hemorrhage because a giant hematoma attached to his placenta was taking blood that should have been going to him. But two weeks later some labs showed that my hcg had skyrocketed as had my progesterone. My Doctor was certain the hematoma had reabsorbed and that my baby was just fine. I laughed and cried and shouted right there in the store. My baby was going to live. I was so certain everything was fine that I went to my ultrasound alone a couple days later. God had given us our miracle, healing! When the screen lit up I nearly stopped breathing. There in front of me was what looked like not one, but two sacs. Dear Lord, did we miss a baby behind that hematoma?! The ultrasound tech told me she needed to switch to an internal ultrasound to get a better look but that it looked like we were looking at twins. I went to the bathroom and for 5 minutes I thought I not only had one living baby, but two.

The ultrasound screen lit up but I could not see it. She was at my feet and needed to have the screen near her. She was far too quiet for far too long. Finally I said, "There's not two is there?"

"No."

"Is there one baby?"

"Yes."

"Is he alive?"

"No honey, he's not."

Instead, what looked like a second large sac where a baby would be, I had a hematoma that had grown so much that it had fooled my body into thinking I was still pregnant. The hematoma was so big we thought it was another sac. And because it was filled with "debris" it looked like it held a baby inside. The hematoma had become a giant leech. We finally found the baby and he looked like a swollen grape. There was no form to him at all. Just a dead heart.

6 weeks later I got another phone call. This time while on vacation. Our next baby was dead. I had to miscarry that baby while I was supposed to be enjoying jet skis with my kids and husband on the beach.

4 weeks after that I watched 4 positive pregnancy tests turn to negatives before I had even called my doctor.

And now, 4 weeks ago I watched the same thing.

I want to always be an example of faith, of courage and of trust in my loving Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because I know He is love. I know He is mercy. I know He is truth. I know this was never His plan. And I know God is not to blame, but that wretched enemy of life and the stain of sin on all of us. That is the devil's trick, to turn the finger at God. To make us hate God. To make us take things in our own hands because we think things are better in our hands than in God's. Thanks be to God the Holy Spirit intervenes and protects us from ourselves.

But my heart is tired, broken, despairing, and angry. And so I pray, as my Daddy taught me, "Lord I believe, help me with my unbelief." And, "Lord, have mercy, please lift me up in due time."

And some how I breathe through one moment to the next. God have mercy.