January 6-Driving to the mountains

Friday. Of Chris’ first week back at work. I had been really looking forward to him but have also been very anxious and full of sadness as this is the day we head up to the mountains to let Mara’s ashes go. Chris left school a little bit early so we could head out to to Shenandoah as early as possible. I did work around the house all day and did some packing and a lot of research about different locations that we might want to use. I felt sad all day knowing that in a way, this was going to be another goodbye. I also knew it was going to be hard for me to be away from Aaron during such a sad time.

During the drive out to Front Royal, the sun was in our eyes and it was a chilly and clear afternoon. We listened to music in the car and I cried several times.

We tried to go in the Front Royal entrance to the National Park, but it was closing too soon for us to make it to the next exit on Skyline Drive. So we took highway 340 down along the western edge of the mountains to Luray and found a Best Western where we stayed that night. I felt very very low and sad and just had no spirit in me at all. Chris tried to keep me smiling. We had a really delicious dinner at a nice little restaurant in a historic building in the very slow and sleepy town of Luray. We were very quiet through our dinner and while going back to our hotel room. We were planning to look at the map of Skyline Drive and talk about some of the overlook turnoffs and just rest together and give each other strength and support. But Chris was so exhausted from a trying week back at school and he fell asleep while I was learning how to use my new camera remote and looking at maps. He woke up to look at the maps with me a bit, we decided the route we were going to use in the morning, and then he was snoozing again.

I couldn’t fall asleep because I was feeling so emotional, so I stayed up until about 11 alternation between crying and reading Love, Mom, a book about a couple who had a stillborn baby girl. I finally got to sleep around 11, but I couldn’t sleep soundly. I tossed and turned all night, and kept waking up and seeing light out the hotel room window, afraid that I had overslept. We wanted to get an early start because we wanted to see a beautiful morning sun.

January 5

Tonight we got out of the house and did something fun. It was actually really nice. George was in town and wanted to have dinner, but he didn’t have enough time between the end of his meeting and his flight from Dulles, so we decided to go up to Tysons to have dinner with him, then take a walk around the mall and do a little bit of shopping. Just some time out, doing something that required not just a shower, but some nice clothing and even a bit of makeup. We had a lovely dinner, and George took this picture of me and Aaron with his phone. I was like…hey, that looks like me, feeling happy. I was relieved to see it, really. Aaron tried to keep his eyes open, but George’s phone flash was so bright he couldn’t hang. That’s the monkey hat Aaron got from his uncle George.

After dinner we drove across the way to the mall and I saw that I had a couple of new emails from people expressing their love and support. I read them to Chris as we were driving, and those emails, coupled with our pleasant night out, gave me a much-needed bolster. Just another time when I felt okay, maybe even good, and what I needed was more evidence that those days would be happening more often. We walked around the mall, bought Aaron some shirts in the Disney Store, and bought a new comforter and duvet cover for our room.

Another note about this photo…another example of the small ways your heart breaks every day. In November, I jumped on the Instagram train and put it on my phone. I bought it to take pictures of Mara. I wanted to have it ready for my baby’s arrival, and I imagined all the pictures I would take of her while we were home together. You can’t imagine how many photos I had staged in my mind that I would blissfully post with updates of every tiny baby movement and sound. After she was gone, I just kept seeing that icon on my phone. And it kept staring at me. And I remembered that I took an Instagram photo of Aaron just a couple of days before she died, and that I hadn’t opened it since. And I thought about all the pictures I wouldn’t be taking with it. And I just didn’t want to open it. But, I didn’t delete it, because that would go against my “don’t do anything dramatic out of grief that you will regret later”philosophy. And this picture is the first time I used Instagram after that. Such a stupid, small, thing. An app.

It used to be that seeing a picture of me and Aaron would give me a happy feeling of satisfaction and a parental glow. On this night, the picture was an anchor to reality. I didn’t get the same feeling of happiness from the picture that I would have before Mara died, and that scared me. It still scares me. But I keep looking at it. And even though it means something different than it meant before, it still means everything.

January 4

Here is Aaron playing with a Christmas gift…Do-A-Dot Art from the Raceks. I have NO idea what else went on. At least I got a picture.

January 3

Today was the day the Rothes went home to California, and the day Chris went back to work. Yikes that was a rough day. I was dreading Chris going back to work. First of all, he’s my rock, no better way to say it. As I have described before, I have been leaning heavily on him during my grieving. Not sure he’s really leaning on anybody as he’s not much of a leaner, but I do my very best to make sure he knows he can lean on me if he wants to. Also, I kinda had this sense that going back to work=moving on, and I didn’t want him to be on a different moving on path than me, more importantly, I didn’t want to feel like he was going to be “okay” sooner than I was while I continued to struggle. I absolutely knew for certain that I had no desire to go back at that point, but I knew I would miss him during the day, and I was starting to miss our friends and the good things about being at work.

So, because he had left for work around 6, as we usually do, he was not present for the Rothe goodbye, which was pretty much heartwrenching. Cameron didn’t want to leave and was very upset. It was especially sad when he said he wanted to say goodbye to Uncle Chris, who wasn’t home. Cameron said he didn’t want to fly back to California, he wanted to stay in Virginia, and all I can say is if you have ever heard Cameron’s tiny lilting voice and the way he draws out the last word in each sentence, you can imagine how sad this sounded coming from him while he was crying. Aaron also became very upset and didn’t want them to go. He cried and cried and cried and sat on the stairs and looked at me and said, “I’m very sad, Mommy.” My mom and dad took them to the airport, and after they all got in the car and drove away, Aaron and I stood in the garage waving, and Aaron just looked up at me with heartbreak all over his face. It was FREEZING, (as a matter of fact there were a few snow flurries that morning, the only snow during the whole winter break, which Kelly aptly categorized as a RIP-OFF) so we didn’t linger in the garage. We came upstairs, just the two of us home now, and got on the couch together and cried and held on to each other. Aaron was just so sad that his little buddy and Auntie and Uncle were leaving, and me, well, I was crying for all sorts of things. That’s just the way it is these days.

The only picture I took today was of these gorgeous flowers that I recently got from the lady who is substitute teaching for me during my absence. She is fantastic in every way, and she picked out PERFECT flowers. I loved the purple and orange together, and they lasted a really long time. I loved looking at them on my desk every day.

January 2

Kelly and Caleb made everybody omelets this morning. (I feel that word should either have two Ls or two Ts. It just looks too small.)

ANYWAY, it’s a specialty of theirs, and they have a cute little operation going in the kitchen. MAN it was good. Matter of fact, I could really go for one now.

January 1, @)!@

…which is 2012 while holding down the shift key.

A little cousin bathtime…too bad I couldn’t get them BOTH to look at the camera at the same time.

And some ADORABLE Aaron and Uncle Caleb technology snuggles.

December 31

I don’t have any pictures for today but I know we rang in the new year watching Return of the King, and you really can’t celebrate the start of a new year any better way than that. We had some sparkling apple and grape cider. Also, during the celebratory clinking of glasses (while the movie was on pause) I realized that the reason our Dyson hand vac wasn’t working was because the charger hadn’t been plugged into the wall. My dad TRIED to convey that, but I thought he meant the vac wasn’t plugged into the charger, so I plugged it into the charger overnight and it still wasn’t working. I followed every DAGGONE troubleshooting tip Dyson had to offer, including painstakingly cleaning the entire thing out with q-tips. I was upset because I knew we were not going to be paying to replace such a thing, and I might have had some choice words when I realized what the problem had been. Ah well.

Anyway, I feel compelled to say as I make this post that 2011 was not my best year. Aaron’s surgery and Mara’s death? Come on universe, give me a break.

I am thankful for Aaron’s successful surgery and his continued health. He was a light in the darkest of times in the weeks after Mara died. An anchor to reality who still has needs that must be met, and a reminder of happy things in our lives. I will admit that the first few days, while I was still numb, I did not feel joy even around Aaron, took no joy in him, and that was something that frightened and shamed me. I know now that it was temporary, and I have felt the familiar heart bursting sensation of loving parental pride on a regular basis for the past three months.

My love for him grows stronger as I watch his sensitive soul deal with the loss of his baby sister. My dear, dear son, who sees me start to cry many times a week, comes over, takes off my glasses and brings me a tissue. He wants to comfort me, and says, “Don’t cry Mommy, baby sister died when she was coming out of your tummy. Her heart just stopped and we don’t know why.” He asks to have a few flowers in his room every time we go to buy a new purple bouquet and says he wants them in his room so he can think about baby sister, too. He sees pictures of angels and says, “there’s my baby sister,” and he knows that there are some things that trigger my sadness. He has become comfortable with grief, and with talking about it. I feel that this is the greatest gift I have given my son, an emotional vocabulary and the self-assurance to talk about how he is feeling without being afraid or ashamed. I will be quite satisfied with that legacy.