There’s a little something that pulls at my heart this time of year.

I don’t talk about this stuff very much any more. I talked and talked and talked about it a lot for awhile. I even mentioned it a few straggling times once I’d mostly grown quiet about it. A lot of friends and strangers questioned my resistance to healing. I don’t know if this is just something about me, an excessive emotionality that disallows me from ever really letting go of the deepest pains.

Maybe everyone is like this. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t.

It still hurts me at this time of year when I think about the babies who are not here, the one who was due on Christmas Eve, the one who quietly died in my womb in December and then had to be removed. Two of my kids won’t get presents from Santa this month, nothing to do with being naughty. They just didn’t make it. They never had a chance to be naughty. They slipped away before I ever had a chance to hold either of them.

I’ve always loved Christmas. I still do. But this little something pulls at my heart now too. It’s a melancholy kind of joy I feel nowadays during the holidays.

I choose to feel the happiness of the season, because most of the time, I do have a choice.

But when the tears come, I let them take over for awhile. That’s a choice, too. A mostly healthy one, I think, regardless of what anyone else might believe. When they dry up again, I hold onto all the joy I can find, and while I let the pain visit, the joy is where I remind myself to dwell.

May you all find the greatest joys and dwell in them for the rest of this year and into the New Year. xo

I thought about this baby several times on this past day that happened like they all do, as clocks everywhere mark the time that slides by without any effort. It has been 2 years since that first miscarriage, the one that opened the door on a special kind of fear and loathing, and introduced me to the doubt of my female body.  On this day I wondered, as I have so many times, who that one could have been if conditions had been just right. I sometimes stare off into nowhere, eyes distant, face slack, thinking these thoughts. Then I sigh deeply and swallow a lump in my throat; my hand may wipe at a tear that rolls absently. Other times I feel a peace, a moving on, an acceptance.

My world feels different than it used to so many moons ago.  I am changed.   There are some wonderful differences and there are, scattered about, some not so fabulous ones. These things, the changes both good and bad, are all just a part of the What Is. I can handle that. I can roll with it and still find a reason to be, see a splendor in life. It’s always there, waiting for me to rediscover it.

There have been times I didn’t think that was possible – that I’d be able to see beauty and feel bliss in life again, be able to even care if it was there or not. But I hold that knowledge, that truth, close to me now, as I live and breathe.  This tender awareness seems to sit in the palm of my hot hand like a smooth pebble. It holds weight and feels cool against my skin. I like it; it grounds me.

There is splendor in life. You (and I) can always rediscover it.

I have learned another truth during this time, as well.  A less fabulous one, I’m afraid.  In every situation during the past two years where I have said to a group of women (of any size) that I have had miscarriages, at least one of them always shares that she has had one, also. There are too many of us. Why does it never fail to shock me, even though I know well by now how often it happens?

To all of you who have experienced this or other painful loss, I thought about you today, too. I felt sadness and tension, and then I released it. I sought the love and peace in my heart. After soaking it in for awhile, I released that into the universe, too.

I hope it finds you, much like a cool pebble that might just land, unexpectedly, in your upturned palm.

This year, before we bought our tree, I went in search of something I’ve had in a cabinet all year long.  It is a glass spice bottle with a black plastic lid.  The glass is very heavy, and the plastic is thick and sturdy.  It appeals to me in some way, and so I saved it to use for something when the spice ran out.  I had no idea when I put it aside that later I’d be gathering fallen needles to place inside.

Last year, I lost a baby (Davin) right at three months into the pregnancy.  It was my second miscarriage of the year and, for many reasons, it throttled me in different and harder ways than had the first one (in April).

I found out on December 9th during a prenatal appointment that he had died.  A D&C to remove Davin from my womb was scheduled for December 16th.

I had carried him for a week, knowing he was no longer alive.  It was both maddening and oddly comforting.  On the one hand, I felt insane knowing he was inside of me and he was not alive; my body was incapable of doing anything to help him.  On the other hand, I got to be with him and say goodbye, come to terms with him being removed.

On December 15th, the day before the surgery, I asked John to go get a tree.  I didn’t tell him, but I wanted that tree in the house with all 4 of us.  That’s how it was supposed to be, and in my fractured state of being, I was going to have it that way, regardless.

When last year’s tree came into our home with all of its wonderful smelling glory my child was still inside of me.  The next day, he was all the way gone.  I was sedated for some time after that.  When the pills ran out there was still wine and liquor.  I got tipsy regularly; I ate crappy food.  No matter what I ingested, I was empty.

I was empty in more ways than the one that made my uterus ache as it healed.

That tree sat in the living room with me.  I watched those lights flash and dance through my bleary eyes.  I sat here, numb, with that happy smell.  Each day rolled by and I tried whenever I could to enjoy them, even if it was an altered, forced experience.

I cried a lot.  I was angry and sad.  A lot of days I was just nothing.

The tree was there.

At some time way past Christmas there came a point when I had to admit that the tree was dried out and needed to be taken away.  I cried about that, too.

When that tree came into my house, I still had my baby inside of me.  Now the tree was about to leave, and I had to keep a part of it, because somehow, it was the last thing I could hold onto about Davin.  Is that crazy?

I got down on my hands and knees with that damn spice bottle and I gathered up fallen needles until it was full.  Then I put it in one of my kitchen cabinets.

Only a couple of times during the year, when my heart ached the very most for Davin, I went and opened that bottle.  I held it, smooth, cool and heavy, in my hand.  In my fingers, it felt strong when I felt weak.  I stared at the needles.  I opened the bottle and smelled.

Pain and joy mingle together in that smell for me now.

Not long before we got our tree this year, I went for that bottle for the first time in quite a while.  When I smelled it, I wept for my lost son.  The smell was still very strong and crisp.  It wrapped me up; it sang to me of both sorrow and delight.  Afterwards, I felt a sort of peace.

I put the bottle out as the very first Christmas decoration in our home this year.

I will think of them both every Christmas: the baby who we thought would be born in December 08 as well as the baby who died in December 08.  I don’t think I’ll ever smell that happy smell or watch those dancing lights again without a twinge of sorrow.  But I believe I will always still smile at them, as well.

Pain and joy mingle together, and that is not such a bad thing to experience, or acknowledge.

It is far better than pain sitting in the heart by itself.

Most days I can pass by it at least once without noticing it there.

Every day I look at it and think of how empty it is.

I’ve thought about taking it apart and putting it in the garage, where I will not see it as often, or be tempted to picture him there.

I’ve stood before it crying because it isn’t being used.

I’ve wondered why it remains in my home even though I don’t think it will ever have use here again.

I contemplate whether it is unhealthy.  I worry that it means I’m broken.

I’m not ready for it to go anywhere.  I’m not entirely sure what that means.  I know what you think it may mean.  It’s not that.  I’m just not ready.

I know that at some point I will be.  And then I will do it myself, and it will be okay.

But for now it stays.

There is a crib in my hallway.  It is wooden, and lonely, and it just waits and waits for a someday that never was.

It’s been a very long year.

This August, Leo was hiding behind one of those particularly bushy and leafy plants in the Jungle, doing his Kingly Duties without me noticing him too much.

As the end of August neared, I walked past his hiding spot. I was expecting there to be a Virgin hanging around somewhere by that time, but it seems he ate her up, and when he saw me, he roared and reached out with a giant, furry paw and gave me a whap.

This was no friendly cat batting. His claws were out, and he threw me into September in a painful way. I landed in the Ninth Month ‘O The Year hard on my ass and with jagged claw marks on my heart.

It was September, I realized with a jar, and midway through this month, it would be a year since I’d conceived the boy who had then died 3 months later.

A deep, aching sorrow captured me for awhile. On a few occasions I cried it out. One late night, in particular, left me on the living room floor doing what is known well as The Ugly Cry. Oh, that it was. Ugly with a side of Stinkin, Holy Hell.

For twenty minutes, I lay in a heap, pouring it all out into the carpet.

My face was a swollen mess the entire next day; my head throbbed.

But life keeps moving, and you kind of flow with it most of the time. I got back to flowing. In fact, I threw myself at going, even. Lions be damned… bikes, and hikes, and picnics… oh my!

I can laugh in the sun as well as I can cry in the dark, it seems.

But then, can’t we all? Yes is the answer. (Remind yourself of that if you need to, sometimes. It can be easy to forget.)

Then I realized as the end of September ran out that someone resembling Lady Justice had me sitting on her outward facing scale. Before I could throw something on the opposing one to keep things steady, she dumped me face-first into October, and crashing into another of those dates I can never seem to forget.

I knew, of course, the whole time I was flying down the bike path with the wind slicing past my grin and throwing out my pony tail in whips and flips behind me, that this next bump was coming. Of course I did.

Today is that date, and it marks one year since the last time I realized I was pregnant. It’s been a year since I spied that little pink cross next to that little pink line.

It was an odd day one year ago, emailing my husband a photo of the pregnancy test with a message that spoke of my fear, instead of joy. A few weeks prior to that, I had finally come to terms with emotions and thoughts I’d been having and I felt sure enough about what I had decided to announce it out loud.

“I really just don’t want to be pregnant again right now. Maybe one day, but not any time soon.”

Soon after, I began having… those strange, but familiar sensations. You know, the bloating, the craving, the heightened senses. When my period was late, I pulled out an extra pee stick that was in the bathroom, and sure enough, it was time to turn off the neon vacancy sign on this lady’s uterus.

I was struck almost simultaneously with fear, anger, disgust, disappointment, guilt, sadness, and grief.

The irony of the situation did not escape me. Luckily, a new set of emotions rose quite quickly from deep inside, as well: Hope. Longing. Joy.

Guarded, those three were. But they were there, unmistakably.

You can follow posts back through my miscarriage tag and find me talking about the feelings I had being pregnant again after a miscarriage earlier that year. You can obviously also read the posts that detail what I went through emotionally when this new baby also died, in early December.

This, right now and through December, is a hard span of time for me – it is the first anniversary of the pregnancy that ended in a second miscarriage. I know, it’s confusing. But I think the first anniversaries are hardest. I tend to believe that while the dates will always have a sting, these initial ones offer the deepest blows.

And if you think I should be over this, I forgive you. You don’t understand, and that’s okay.  I sincerely hope you never do.  If you think I’m dealing with it all so very bravely and I am very strong,  you are sweet and kind. I appreciate that, but I’m just like you.  Some days I’m so strong. Other days, I’m nothing but Jello. In the sun.

October 3rd is the first blow of that second time when I decided I could let myself hope. I wrote a post about that hope. I damn near internally promised my dead son that I would never give up the hope that he taught me it was okay to have.

And yet?  I’ve spent a damn lot of time this past year being pissed off, signing off on hope, and mentally giving the finger to anyone who dared suggest I hold onto it. (Not you, really.)

Did he really teach me, in those short 3 months that it’s okay to hope again?

I have to believe that was the truth, no matter how things turned out. I have to, even if I don’t feel that way every day, you dig? I just have to keep believing that the lesson Davin taught me was true. About hope.

Because if you don’t have hope for something new and maybe even better, if not every day, then at least with some consistency, how do you keep moving forward? How, without hope, can one keep flowing and going, smiling and laughing, growing and loving?

I just don’t think you do, and so I know I still have it.  Even if it’s a bit dented and has lost some of its shine.

Today I’m going to be sad, that’s for sure. Really, really sad.

And that’s ok.  But I refuse to allow myself to wallow in misery this time. This will actually be difficult for me – it seems I’m an innate misery wallower. (Spell check wants me to change this to “swallower.”  So you hear it here first: I don’t spit misery, I swallow it, folks.)

Yesterday, I said, on Twitter:

“Oct. 3, 2008 I took a pregnancy test & it was positive. Can’t decide if I should let myself be miserable tomorrow or fight it tooth & nail.”

I got a variety of answers, and lots of support. Thanks to all of you who reached out then, and to those who have done so in the past. Even when you don’t hear back from me, please know that if you’ve done it, you’ve been a part of a support network that I value deeply, that keeps me going, and I thank you sincerely. (Even later, I come back to these posts and read your comments again.)

My favorite response yesterday was from @wbgookin (author of Daddy Is Tired), and I thought I’d share it with you. It is simple, and yet seems powerful to me. That’s the best kind of advice, isn’t it?

It’s what I aim to pull off today, and hopefully any time this same kind of question arises inside of me.

“Be both. Be sad for what might have been, be glad for what is.”

So yes… Today, I’m going to miss Davin. I’m going to be incredibly sad about what could have been, but was not. I am going to wish he was with us while I still rejoice in how wonderful it is to play in the sun at the park with Braden.

I’m going to do the Sad, Sad, Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Dance.

Here’s hoping your Saturday is peaceful and beautiful, even though you live with a sorrow, too.