Otto’s Birthday

Posted on August 22, 2014

Tonight, I write about my son Otto. And how six years ago from right now, I was working hard, talking to my baby, laboring, birthing.

My son is always with me, he is such a big piece of my heart. I talk to him often. And as the years go by, I trust his answers.  They are light as a thought, but my ears are getting swifter and more natural.  So many times, especially this time of year, I am so heavy with his loss, so confounded by what happened, wondering why he died when he was eight days old.  So many times my heart asks the question, “Darling, where are you?” It is the same as saying “my heart is hurting.” And so many times, without expecting any answer, he will come in less than a second. One time after my question a hummingbird flew down and hovered a few feet from my face, just looking at me, buzzing, and then flew away.  Once as I sat by his rose bush and  looked up at the sky, heavy and sad, asking this question, Luna came out of the house and said in a quiet voice, “Mom, I’m HERE, I’m OK.” In my heart it was an answer. Not that he is Luna, but that he is there, and he is well.  At the cabin, as I sat looking up at the big open sky, alone, the breeze and the pines and the mountain, I asked again, where he was, and a cloud in the shape of a hummingbird floated through the sky. And each time this happens I giggle for a second, through my tears.

It’s never a time when I ask for an answer, the question comes out because I can’t bear to keep it in, and he comes when I don’t expect it. It’s not explainable, but it keeps happening!

I don’t want to try to convince anyone about what happens after we die because it’s such a delicate thing to speak.  And it’s taken me a while to feel comfortable about what I feel to be true, and always I imagine what the scientist or the atheist would say when I say such things. But, I am, more and more, a mystic. And see that there is much more to being than what most of us busy Americans take in.  There are worlds and dimensions, and they are beautiful.  And this time of year, when the season starts to shift from summer to fall, there is an abundance of singing from the other worlds, which are really right here, somehow. And it is the time my son came and went, and this all makes sense, that he would come at such a time.

Until it doesn’t. It doesn’t usually make any damn sense.  I look at his pictures, his soft, beautiful face, and remember holding him and his warmth and his amazing love, and I want to scream WHY? I will always scream that. And there won’t be an answer.

BUT, there will always be love.  The kind of love you can only see from the corners of your eyes, if you don’t focus too hard, his love is around us, our love is around him. It is forever. My son is always and forever my son and I’ll never stop missing him and I’ll never stop loving him, and never stop weaving this grief, always weaving it, weaving it, different patterns and colors, and sometimes it is beautiful and sometimes it’s so hard, like giving birth, so painful, I just can’t take the pain. And I weave that too. I weave wishing I could see him grow up. I weave seeing him as a six year old boy, tall, in first grade, sweet and silly and quiet. I imagine him like is daddy. What he would smell like. I weave his baby smell, his breath.

I love you, Otto. I miss you so much. I wish you were here. Like your sisters are here. Tomorrow for your birthday, we will celebrate you with beautiful things. We will celebrate the beauty of life, the beauty of a simple day, the way the light changes as the sun moves, the way food tastes, the way the big ocean moves, the sand under our feet, the breeze on the delicate hair of our faces, we will eat cupcakes and touch your memorial stone and put beautiful rose petals all around it. It’s always such a beautiful day, August 22nd. Happy Birthday, my sweet love. Thank you for your love.

Autumn Equinox

So many nights I have written to you in my head, in my heart.   I haven't made it to the lit screen of the computer for a while, but that doesn't mean anything about the depth of my love or our speaking.  It's just been more private. Always so sweet.

So much has happened.

Again, faced with such a big burden. Cancer. Children. Wanting life.

I feel like I'm far down the road, so much faced and so many steps taken. And the endless mystery stretching out.

Tonight I stepped outside as I often do, to open the door and look out at the stars for a final goodnight before going into the bedroom. To look up, breathe the air, get a sense of the universe, how far it goes, get a sense of you, my boy, my first baby, my lost one, but yet you are my heart.

I saw the glow of the moon above the big oak tree rising beyond my neighbor's roof, I saw stars, and clouds and my heart felt like it was breaking, squeezing.   Tears falling effortlessly.  I am so sad that you are gone. I am so sad that I am facing this now. And yet, this autumn equinox feels so beautiful and holy, so clear and luminous, so full.  What does it all mean?  Suffering and love and night stars, grandmother moon and the huge old oak tree, and me and you and my girls, and my heart that feels tired and alive. I'm not sure. But I know I desperately want to be here, to keep going, to take it in. I can take it. Just let me. Let me be here. Let me stay here.  For many many night skies and moons and equinoxes.

Seeing You at the Ocean

Otto, today we went to the ocean. After weeks inside the house with colds, stuck in a small space with clutter building and building. Today we got out to see the sun over the blue, shining ocean. We drove to Jenner, where the river meets the sea. A magical place, a place of converging, the moving river, running through hills, the vast sea, meeting continents, the broad sky overhead.  I thought of you there, meeting us too.

The wind blew through me, refreshing cells, lungs, heart.  Zoe and Luna seemed so happy too, to see the bigness, the love of the sea.  Luna was so happy to put a blanket down and eat some snacks, picnics are one of her favorite things.  It was a time of happiness for our family. To go for no reason but to go, to get out and see the beauty of the world.

I have been thinking about grass lately. Really, I've been thinking about life in general, and after-life, trying to see if anything makes sense. I've had more moments lately of wondering if anything makes sense, do I really believe what I say I believe? Does it matter?

I always come back to grass in the sun. Here where we live in California the grass is so green in January, so glowing with tenderness, the water so apparent and alive in it. I feel like I want to be a blade of grass, glowing in the sun, soaking it up, making energy in my cells, reaching and being, just being grass.  Being a person can feel so complicated.  I like to imagine having my thin roots in the dark, damp earth, holding on to this beautiful, round, mama planet, loving the sun, glowing in the moonlight, belonging to obviously here.

And I think of you too, your ashes in the earth, held by the mother, your energy in the midst of us.  I know I don't talk of God the way some would like, with a lot of doctrine and explanation. I like to feel God, with my eyes on the grass, or on the sky, the way things all hold together, the way I feel love for it, I feel love and belonging, and there it stands now. Just there. And it feels good.

I miss you all the time and I love you.  Your sister Luna talks about you all the time.  She wishes she could meet you. She wants a picture in a frame of the two of you.  This breaks my heart open.  With love and with tears.  She thinks you are great, and she says so in those very words. She knows you are her big brother and that you keep her safe.  I am so glad that she loves you with real love.  You ARE great, my son, my baby, my warm, soft boy.  My soul that lives among the stars.  You are so many things.  I am amazed to be your mama.

Heaven in my Belly

Luna, now almost 3, has been talking about Otto a lot lately.  She sees his picture. She knows that her baby sister was just in my belly, and that she grew, and we were so excited to see her, and then she came out. 

And she sees Otto's picture, and says, "I can't WAIT to meet Otto!"  I don't know her mind, but I guess she is thinking that he is the next baby that will join our family.  I don't want to tell her that he was already here, and that he is not coming back.  Because I want him to come back too. And I like the thought she is thinking. Part of me, deep in my consciousness still goes, "well, maybe..."

She will include him sometimes in a list of the family with fun things she wants to do, like going to the park or the zoo to see the Heffalumps. She'll say, "and mommy will go, and daddy will go, and Zoe will go and Otto will go!" She knows how we love him, she sees it in how we talk, in pictures of him. And I love her inclusion of him, because that is always how it feels to me. I have three children.  And one of them is a boy.

I've told her  that Otto died, and that he is in heaven, and that he loves her, and is always with her. And I wish I knew what all of that means.  But the words are a way to start. The words "died" and "heaven"  are still strange for me too. I say them and let my consciousness bleed out like watercolor on paper, reaching out toward a meaning slowly, slowly, waiting for one.  She doesn't know what those words mean either.  But maybe she knows more than I do.

Today was the real heart stopper.

She said, "Soon, Otto will come out and see us.  But right now he is in heaven, in your belly."

I'm not pregnant and don't mean to be pregnant.  But the thought that heaven includes my womb, includes my deepest, sweetest connection with him, includes even he cord that brought his nourishment and probably his death, is so heart-filling.  Because sometimes it feels like, when he left, he became again this beautiful spirit, and that in that transition my mothering him doesn't matter as much. People all say he was a big soul, he IS a big soul, and without his little body anymore, is he still my Otto?

This vision of the womb, of my baby in heaven, in that deep, dark mothering space of the universe, deeper even, softer than the universe, and that maybe my womb is carrying part of that space right here, and that Otto will always be fed from that, always be loved by me, by this mother, in that space, is so wonderful.

After hearing Luna say that, and when both girls were napping today, I looked at his beautiful picture, while resting on the couch, and his face looked so peaceful, even almost smiling.  It doesn't always affect me that way.  But today it did. And I will take that as a YES. He is mine, he is here, and he is in the center of all love.

Three Children

My darling ones.

I want to love each of them as though they were my only.

Have all of my time and heart for them alone.

And yet that is not how it works! And I suppose that is what a family is. I want to hold baby Zoë and smell her cheeks, feel their firm, milky fatness as I kiss into them, stare at her, talk to her, hear her talking back, make her laugh, show her things, walk her around, just be with her all day. Know her completely.

And I want to hold Luna all day, hold her hand, walk with her, run with her, read her all the stories she wants, make her favorite foods, hear all of her songs and all of her ideas, get her dressed and brush her hair, love her, be there for her, never say "not right now."

I want to know my Otto, I want to help him grow up, I want to talk to him in the sky, lay on the grass and look up at the birds flying over our little patch of land, watch the sun light the top of the trees, wait for hummingbirds, cry and think and let my mind be still as I watch the sky change, hear the crickets come, see the stars, and feel how deeply they go into the universe.

My heart grows bigger with each child, more and more love comes in, but time doesn't expand and I don't have all my time for each of them. And It's training for life. They will never have every need met, and we need to learn how to deal with that. But they know they are loved. They know we are trying!

I heard a good line in a movie last night and I want to try to remember it.  From the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  It went something like this:  " the only failure is the failure to try.  And success is measured by how well you take disappointment."

This seemed right to me. And inspiring. My beautiful love, Otto, left and it broke our hearts.  And we are not the only ones to have such a huge loss. All over the world, people grieve such dear things. To have disappointment and to still love, is such a key thing in life.  To have disappointment but not give up on everything.  Especially myself.

I feel so lucky, in some glowing moments, to feel so much love. I will be nursing Zoë in the rocker, and hearing Luna reading her books in her room, and looking at Otto's picture on the window sill and hear Ryan in the kitchen washing up, and feel so full.  In the small messy house and the old kitchen, who cares?  If you have all the nicest cabinets in the world, but have not love...

I am learning to love all of them in the 24 hours we get, and to soak up all my moments and to know that they will only be little for a short while, and we will always look back on these crazy, tired times with aching to have them again.

Sitting in my chair at night. Sounds of water running through pipes, the gurgle of the washer, diapers, lullabies from the iPod in the baby's room, a dog barks, crickets. The weight of my new baby Still fresh in my arms. This is what I dreamed of, this moment, the year He was gone. My heart is full with my girls. And still, since otto's birthday this year I feel the hole of him.  The boyness missing.

And I feel the completeness of our family, the tired, sweet, desperate funny fullness of us, the weight and love

The Night Before

Another cycle.
We are here again, the night before you died.

Your dad and I sit in the living room, not wanting to go to bed, feeling like we don't want tomorrow to come again, don't want it to be true again.  You died.

Four years later I still sit here and feel the shock of it.  What a beautiful boy you are.  In your body you were so full of light, so radiating love.  How we love you still.

And every year for this week it feels like we get you back in many ways. Part of me feels like I will get to hold you again, we get visits from you in different forms.  Loved ones are visited by hummingbirds, we feel you come near to us.  You are always near but the veil is thin this week. And then I think of all the cycles we will go through without you and life feels so long.

This year I hold your baby sister on your anniversary, 6 weeks old on your heaven day. I am so in love with her, amazed by her, grounded by her. I feel like I get to hold you again through her, and in this way the pain is eased.  And yet she makes me feel all we gave up with you,  the extreme thing that was asked of us, the impossible thing, of loving our beautiful son so much and then letting him die.  Letting his warm, soft sweet body become cold. Letting his spirit leave. Helping him with this.

I remember this strangeness when my Grammy was dying. She was in her late 80's, a proper time to die, and I held her feet under the covers, and they were warm, they were the feet of a person, not an old person, just lovely, warm feet. And it was so strange to know that they would grow cold and her blood would stop running and stop being her feet.  It is so strange to me, death.  That change. That shift from life and spirit in the body to the body just being, I don't know, what is it then? Cold and beloved still.  But not the same.

Oh, my son, this is so hard still.  We still love you so tremendously.  And I don't want you to leave. You already left, but still, I don't want it to happen.  I don't want this.  But it is ours.  How can this be our story? The story of the son who died? But it is who we are now.

I think you are happy now, you are fine, you know our love, and the pain is mostly on our side. I am glad you are happy. I am glad you love your sisters.  I long for a time, out of time, when we are all together, loving freely without longing.

I am writing this under the tree where we held you, four years ago, on the lawn, on that beautiful afternoon, and you felt the air, warm, and the slight breeze, and heard the hummingbird talking above us, the light filtered through this big tree's leaves, the height of summer. We were each other's, completely.  To know such love, I know we are so lucky.

And my son, I love you. I will love you forever. You have my heart, and I am devoted to you as your mama.  Help us through this night, it is so hard to accept it.  It is so precious to remember. What an intimacy, that crossing.

Thank you for all the ways you love us.  I pray my heart will open to them, and not be shut in self pity or depression. Although that is part of this at this stage for me. I love you, I love you, I love you. I send you a million kisses, up to the stars, I remember your sweet smell, your soft hair, your hands and feet and belly. I kiss them all over.

Love,
your mama

First Outfit

38 weeks. Baby sister on the way. I think of you so much, and miss you so. Thinking of what her first outfit will be, I remember the one I packed for you. A beautiful soft yellow onesie with a blue bunny, from Italy when my mom was traveling. It's tail was a real cotton tail. I loved running my hand over it because it was so soft.

And the first time you wore it was in the NICU, the night we learned you were not going to make it. We held you all afternoon and night, skin to skin, and a blankie over your back. I went to bed at midnight to get some sleep, but couldn't sleep, I just lay in the bed shaking and missing you and feeling so cold. So at 3am I got up and went in to see you. The nurse, her name was Kay, was holding you, wrapped in a blanket and reading a magazine. I loved that she took you in her arms during her shift, not letting a moment go by when you weren't held and loved. (the 5 days before was a cooling treatment where we couldn't hold him.)

She had dressed you in the lovely yellow onesie. I was a little jealous, since I hadn't put an outfit on you, but I loved that she was treating you like a beautiful, real and wonderful baby and wanted you to feel the soft and the love of those who chose it for you. She handed you to me, and I took off the blankie, and took off your onesie, because I wanted to just hold you against my skin, your warmth and my warmth. I never got used to you wearing clothes, you were just a naked boy for me.

She left us alone.

And we rocked in the glider, and fell asleep, and I felt my heart get warm again, and I stopped shaking, and I just loved you. I smelled your hair and kissed you and soaked up every moment, and watched the dawn come over the city of San Francisco, that amazing view we had from that room. The light slowly creeping in, time still happening, the planet still moving, even though I would have done anything to stop it and just keep holding you.

At 6 am I walked so slowly back to my room, so tired, and so full of love and the peace that it brings, I could sleep after being filled with those hours of closeness, knowing I had held you as much as I could, and you had felt my heart beating. My milk leaking on you, all over my shirt. I walked back to my room, ragged and full of light, devastated and complete, not caring who saw me or how I looked, how I must have looked.

 I talk to you now, knowing you are with me, and ask for your help as I wait for this baby. Wait to hold her in my arms, trying not to go crazy with the waiting and hoping for safety. Crying for you, crying for her. Waiting for the first breath again. Facing the huge mystery, the huge black, warm universe of giving birth, giving everything over, being taken over, letting go, and then...life. A cry. Love.

 The yellow onesie is in your special box, so every anniversary we can take it out and run our hands over it and remember you, when you wore it in our bed at home, and for your service with our family when you had just died. It is so precious. We love you so much, little boy. So so much.

Hello darling boy. I know it has been so long since I've written. Our talks more happen when I have a moment to look at your picture, by our bed with candle and sage, or when I am outside by your big tree, or anytime that I just miss you so much.

And since I just got back from recording an album about all the love you've given us, all we've learned, how our hearts have been molded by you, and this music is coming together with so much tenderness and ringing and beauty, that your dad and I are just sort of in heartache from it. Brings back a lot, brings us back to the time when you were here and died, and that is just overwhelming. We love you so much, and always will, I am so happy to be singing to you, and that people will get to hear this, and I hope, be comforted. I hope they hear that loving is still worth everything.

I'm remembering these little moments. The shape of your forehead. How much I tried to memorize it before I had to give you away. I remember that feeling of just loving your shapes so much. I miss you so much. I wish I still had my boy here. It does hurt. But your love has made my life better and I always want to learn to freely love moments, to be filled with contentment more than fear. To learn to just be here.

Thank you for your love, my darling.

Christmas

At Christmas we miss you so much.
We get your ornaments out from the box. And put them up on the tree. We buy you one every year.

We love you as much as we love each other, but you aren't here.
Our boy, our son, brother. We miss you so much.
I love being together with family this time of year, the baking of cookies and old traditions being brought to present, celebrating love and being inside when it's dark, drinking warm drinks, being cozy. I just wish you were here.

My mom buys you a coat every Christmas. She buys a coat your size and donates it to a little boy who needs it. The coat looked so big this year. I so wish I could see you wearing it. But I'm glad that another little boy will wear it. He deserves it and I wish him so well in his life.

This year I feel even more a need to draw you into our traditions. I'm getting you a stocking tomorrow and we will fill it with poems and notes and donations we will give to another child in your honor. I want to say your name at Christmas meals, and love you at family gatherings, light candles for you, include your name in cards. And do it without shame or worry of what people will think. This is what I feel to do this year. You are part of our Christmas, so I will include you. Your spirit.

Most people miss someone at Christmas, I know we are not alone. Loving and missing are an honor. I am glad to have loved your beautiful golden self the way I got to, to feel you move, to have you so close to my body, to kiss you and sing to you, to have my first baby. To get to have more. To miss you the rest of my life. It IS better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved.

But the tears are there. And the wondering why it had to be you. But it was you.

Anyway, I want to say I love you, my boy. It feels good to tell you. I wish I could hug your 3 year old body and kiss your face till it bugged you! You're my darling.

mama

Thank You

Just put Luna to sleep for her nap. She fell asleep in my arms, which is one of the best things in the world. We love each other so much. So wonderful to feel that, to know it and not question, to just revel in it. I stare at her for a while before I walk her to her bed. And lay her down to sleep by herself for a little while. So beautiful. Hard to walk away. Each day is so precious. And she is changing and getting so tall and saying so much.

I look at Otto's pictures on the windowsill as she is sleeping in my arms and feel my love for him, our boy. Accepting our big love for him, out in the open, telling people openly, "no, don't be sorry that you asked if she has an older sibling, because I like to talk about him." I love him, still love him, and I am so happy to talk about my son too. Luna knows him.

We are at an easier place. The heartache doesn't take over everything as it does at first. But the missing is always there, and sometimes comes over bigger. I missed him a lot at Halloween, felt dizzy by seeing all the kids, remembering Halloweens when we were so devastated to be without our child. He is always in my heart, the tenderness that filled me when I got to hold him was something I had never felt so strongly and meltingly before. He gave that to me. He made me a mama. And he gave me the gratefulness I have with Luna, knowing the preciousness of moments, of the love between mama and child, that nothing could ever replace it.

And the moment I just had, hearing the whir of the wall heater in our small house, the spin of the drier, the sunlight coming into the living room between tree branch shadows and the bleeps of the parakeet in the other room as my beautiful girl slept happily in my lap, I said Thank You. Thank you for this perfectly peaceful moment, when all is well. This was my greatest dream and it is here. Thank you.

Fall Equinox

I miss you, baby.
I remember holding you and the softness of your brown hair on my chin,
How you nestled in
Your yawn that went back and forth
Your feet, wide and thick,
Your long legs
The veins in your forehead,
their winding ways,
how they made me think of all of the tributaries of arteries and veins
that wound around and through to your heart,
to your organs,
your fingers,
the amazing universe of you,
And how you were mine.

The first face I saw as my child,
A merging of me and my love,
the wonder of that.
I wish I had so many more days to stare at you,
To learn you
and take you in.
To touch you and caress your head,
to sing to you and talk to you.

I look at the stars to see you now
I look outside and see if the skies are clear
or if there are clouds,
and if I see the specks of silver in the black,
I take comfort in the great expansion
of this universe,
of all the mysteries that I don't know,
of the way the earth moves around our star,
of the way things move so far away,
there is so much room for you to be
Somewhere.
I already know you are here with me
Somehow
And that you love me. I know and know that you love me.
That if you could you would put your small 3 year old hands
on your mommy's head,
just to feel her hair.
I love you too baby.

On this first day of fall,
the holy equinox,
I celebrate the veil thinning,
spirit seeming closer,
the elk and the deer coming out
a time when we see you more clearly.

I love you so much, my sweet little boy. and miss you.

He Was Here 3 Years Ago

This has been heavy. I wasn't expecting such heaviness. Maybe because the rest of life has been lightening up, around the year, that it is more shocking to go back into the rounds of the anniversary, the re-living of it all.

On the days it hits hard my legs are heavy, like right after Otto died. They feel like they are made of something else, a heavier earth than flesh. My hands don't work, I can't open anything, the toys or drinks that I usually can. I have anxiety, my stomach tightens up, life feels daunting and big and like, at any moment, something terrible can happen.

When you're not in this state it seems silly, it's easy to comfort someone with anxiety and say, no, the chances are so slim. You think that nothing bad can REALLY happen to you, not if you make no mistakes.

But we all make them. Not even mistakes, really, just being slightly off with your timing... A little boy in our town was killed this week in a crosswalk, going back to his car from soccer practice, with his family, and he was just walking a second or two behind them, and a driver didn't see him, and now he is gone. Four years old. This story is sunk in my stomach like a rock. Every crosswalk I see is a moment to gear up, get my senses sharp, whether I'm driving or walking. I think of this little boy, how his parents are feeling, how horrible it is.

We really are vulnerable. So the other side of it is, that right now is really good. Even though we are tired and hungry, or wish we had more money to cover the bills, or wish for more success or a bigger house, or whatever it is, the other side of this vulnerability is realizing that, since it can all be taken so suddenly, I might as well enjoy this really good moment right now, like the walk we had yesterday at dusk around the neighborhood park. "We are all alive," I told myself. "I am with my husband, my daughter, my dog, we are walking down the street to our house, and we are happy." And it becomes warm and covers my soreness and I sink into my life, into the trueness of it.

But this month has a deep darkness to it too, a deep missing, a deep tearing, I truly miss my son, my little boy, I cry really hard, my ribs constrict my lungs, knowing that, in this body, in this life, I will never see him again. It seems too hard. My whole being feels off, I can't return calls, I can hardly get the dishes done, a big part of me is gone with him. I love him and he's gone. He's my little boy, my first child, and he's gone. I want so badly to see him on the swings, hitting a tree with a stick, laughing with other little boys. Seeing how much he looks like his daddy.

This is my month to be more soundly WITH him, and part of it means that I hurt a lot. It's not a choice I make - well, part of it is. I could choose to ignore all these feelings and go crazy trying to be normal, or I could be fairly sane but really sad. It seems like it should be the opposite, but it's not. And it's much easier to choose the sad route. The feeling route.

It's beautiful to go to his grave and cover it with rose petals from his rose bush, with the leaves from the tree where we sat with him, to burn sage and kiss the stone and talk to him, to feel my body evaporating and sitting in the world of spirit, to feel my prayers to him rise up with the smoke from the sacred sage. This is the other side of the pain, the extreme beauty of love and being carried over to a big peace with the surrender to grief. The quietness of my heart after a good cry with him.

This year, in short, is no easier than others. It almost feels harder. There is some sort of realization in this triad, this 3rd year, that his time here is really over, it's not coming back, there is no way he can come back. It takes a long time for a body and soul to really sink this in.

We look at his pictures, his beauty, his soft, strong, sweet body, the comfort he took in cuddling up to his mom and dad, the love, and it is beautiful, but, let's be honest, it's horribly tragic too. This year the tragedy is in first place.

This too is part of life. Many have tragedy. I don't feel like glossing it over with anything to sweeten the story. Or make anyone feel better.

But there are things that are easier: I don't blame myself. This is pretty huge. To let that burden slide off. And I don't feel embarrassed when it comes up with strangers. I just tell them what happened. I don't worry about how they'll take it, I just tell them. I don't need them to understand or have the right reaction as much. He's my child, not theirs. Also, I know he is here, and that he loves us. He seems to let me know all the time, in ways that are special for me.

This is a long road, my friends. We are just at the beginning.

August

Oh, I miss my boy so much. I miss his smell, the dear and kind expression of his face, the back of his head, my son, my first child.

The one that made me know the hugeness of endless love, that opened my heart so big.

I miss my child. You see, he wasn't just A child, it was not a matter of getting pregnant again and having another one and making everything better that way. He was Otto. Singular. A person all his own, and my boy. He grew and moved in my belly, I loved being pregnant and holding his life. I loved that amazing closeness, that constant hug and love, the honor of being a mama.

I loved seeing him in the ICU, tape and cords everywhere, I loved looking in on him in the middle of the night and seeing his nose, and seeing his hands and feet and touching him and knowing he was mine, this beautiful boy I could never have imagined. How big he was, how strong and tall, I knew he would be a beautiful man one day.

I miss HIM.

So darling friends, I want to tell you something. Something that will be interesting to you because it doesn't come naturally. When I am sad about Otto, and missing him, I only need you to miss him with me, or to hear me missing him. I don't want you to make it better.

I don't want you to remind me that I have Luna now because I know, Luna is the light in my days and my laugh and my amazement. I need to talk about just Otto sometimes.

I need him to have a place of honor, a place of his own, and I need to feel the pain of missing him. Especially this month. This is my month with him, the one where I want to sit in a dark room and cry and talk to him. The one where I remember the saddest of days, the one where I remember the bliss of holding him for the first time, of loving him so much, of getting to rock him to sleep. Of changing his diaper. Of kissing him. I need to feel all of this, and it naturally comes to the surface this month. It is an intimate and hard and amazing thing. It is mine and I need to have it. And sometimes I need it to be witnessed and seen. And it will hurt for you too. Hurt is just part of joy. The other part.

I feel so much love from my friends this month, from people I hardly know, that remember that August is his month. This means so much to me. He is such a part of our family.

Today Luna got out a photo album of her brother, closed the cabinet, threw the album on the couch, climbed up onto the couch, and looked through it, naming all the people in the pictures. "Mommy, Daddy, Otto," making sweet, soft sounds of her own words too, and when she was done, she got down and put it back in the cabinet. She doesn't normally put things away. She knows this is special. She has a sweet love for this baby Otto that her Mommy and Daddy loves so much in the pictures. Sometimes she kisses his picture. She calls him budder. (brother.) What a darling girl. He is part of our family, I feel him here so much, he is mostly in my heart, and he loves Luna, and Luna loves him, and we will find our way through this family shape.

I am grateful for my son. I am so grateful to be his mama. I would rather have this pain than not have him at all, because he is mine and I am his and it will never be broken.

Mother's Day

It was supposed to rain but instead it was sunny with a clean breeze, the air smelled full of flowers and water and green grass. The roses are blooming and there is so much color. We spent the afternoon at Dragonfly Farms, an organic flower farm in Healdsburg where Ryan and I picked out our wedding flowers 12 years ago. Roses of the lightest color, and deep deep red and purple.

Luna loved the ducks and chickens. If she took your hand, you knew that was where you were headed. She loves animals. She learns so much all the time, animal sounds, words, she says "yah" or "no" if you ask her a question. She is full of wanting to learn. And lots of squeals of laughter. Especially if Bo eats out of her hand.

In our backyard, Ottos' rose bush is full of flowers. It was easy to pick a bouquet today to bring to his headstone, of red and orange roses, of calla lilies, of pink carnations from our yard. My mom and Josef and Ryan's parents were all there. It felt good to hear their voices around.

I am just happy at first to see the beautiful headstone, to put the bright flowers in the vase at the base of the stone. I clear it off. I have always seen people do this in movies, and now it's interesting to do it myself, it is like making his bed and smoothing the sheets, natural to want the stone to look polished and dignified, to wipe off any smears of dirt, brush away the pine needles. To care for my son in a small way.

At first I am pleased to see it and then Ryan gives me a hug and the tears come from my belly. I hug him for a long time and cry. I don't want Otto to be down there. I feel the weight of the stone on top of him, the weight on my heart of accepting how things are and not wanting to. The weight of love. The weight of being brave. It makes me feel tired. So I keep crying, letting myself feel all of this, all of how things are. My sweet little girl running around, my sweet little boy, watching his family around his grave, placing flowers, missing him.

I love being able to have this ceremony, have the family around to give him kisses on the the earth above him with our fingers, in this beautiful piece of country surrounded by apple trees and blue skies with white clouds. This is life. Life is getting more and more beautiful as time goes by, more full, I see how it includes dying. But it is not less painful. The pain is part of it too.

We stop at the frozen yogurt place in Sebastopol on our way out of town. It reminds me of all of our counseling sessions after Otto left, just barely walking up the hill, a block from our therapist's office, to this place, to have a treat and process a little. It is the best yogurt place.

Eating my yogurt I feel ghosts of the huge rifts we have had to find our way across, the kindness of the people who slowly walked us through, the sound of a soft voice that let us cry and cry. And here we are, a little bit later, here we are, still alive, humbly on the earth as it turns again and again, small creatures soaking up the spring. Visiting the small grave of such a beautiful, wise, big soul.

Fantasy

Somewhere in the past 2 years I had developed a fantasy. It was a story in my being that I had to play out, I had a compulsion to complete. It was as though I were there.

Losing Otto has made every story of children's deaths real. And one that kept playing in my head was one from the Holocaust. I had heard a story sometime in my life of soldiers taking babies from mother's arms and throwing them off bridges.

This story is too hard for me to process, that instant of life changing to death, without need, with such shock.

So, in my story,

I am in line, on a bridge, being taken to a camp among my family and people from my town, my baby in my arms. A soldier takes my baby, we are over a river, the bridge 30 feet or so above the water, and it's cold, it's fall. It's twilight.

He throws my baby over the railing and without a hesitation I rush over the rail too. Into the cold cold water. The baby's blanket is white, so I can see it even in the last light of day, 10 feet below the surface. I grab him. Bullets come into the water, but they don't find us. I swim out towards the edge of the river, and there are trees there, making dark, making shade. We are hidden.

We move a little farther down, into the trees, into the woods, in the water. The soldiers give up, they move on, I hear people crying.

We get out of the water, very cold. I hold him close to get any heat I have.

A little ways into the woods there is a small cabin.

And in the end, I am by the fire, holding my baby, warming.

I don't know if he survives the cold from the icy water. Sometimes he does and sometimes not. But I get those few days with him, at least, I saved him, I saved us.

In this version today, we get warm, we get food, we get hidden, we get well, we survive.

Because: Miracles Happen

And a 4 month old baby survived the flood of the tsunami after being washed out of her parents arms. Rescue workers found her in rubble, 3 days later, and returned her to her parents.

I don't know why this story played in my head, why I needed to construct it, why I had to save Otto in this way. But it gave my heart some kind of strength. And I'm so happy to hear of THIS true story. Among all of the untold ones about the children who are gone from their parents arms forever.

I cry for them too.

Headstone

We have finally gotten around to designing Otto's headstone. Choosing the color is the hardest. Because it's gonna be there for a long time.

It feels good to put such care into it. It will be nice to go to the cemetery and be proud of it instead of the little plastic marker that is there now.

We put flowers and totems around it. Hummingbirds and turtles, but it needs an honorable marker. And something about the new year this year, I was ready to go and just make it happen.

Just made the down payment.

Would it suck to work at a place that makes headstones? Most people are sad that you work with. Would you have to stifle your good mood? It's probably satisfying too. The guy I talked to today reminded me of Dan Akroyd with a mid-western accent and said he missed the birds in the winter up there (in Washington). He liked my parakeets over the phone.

We chose a graphic with a hummingbird and flowers. They'll start designing some mocks for us and we'll get to see them next week. I can't wait. It feels WONDERFUL to do something for Otto.

I miss him so much. Two close people to me have lost loved ones lately. A husband, a brother. I grieve for them and then I grieve for Otto. I grieve for his big earlobes. Like my mom's and my sister's. I miss those earlobes so much. I miss the kisses I would have logged on them by now.

But for a couple more weeks I think seriously about granite. Granite with green flecks, blue flecks, light, dark. What do I want to see when we go there? I always thought I'd want it to be the grey that looks so nice and stately. But with all the options this headstone place offers, we feel like taking a chance and going with something like "evergreen."

I'll post a picture when it's done.

Ambulance

Love and death.
Life and death.
Life and love.

I saw an ambulance by the coffee shop today, pushing Luna by in the stroller.

Are you a person who sees and ambulance with lights on and thinks about that time when...

For me it is this:

I gave birth
On the floor of my living room by the heater.
After 26 hours, I gave all that I had,
and gave birth to my first child.
And turned around to look at him
And I couldn't see him
Because the midwives were around him.
And I said, Why aren't you giving him to me,
And they said, Are you on the cord? Move off the cord,
And I found the thin and rubbery cord on the floor
And lifted my body away from it,
Sitting on the wood floor, stunned and confused,
Out of breath and still,
And moved to where I could see him.
I put my fingers on his body,
Wet and new.
They said, Does this baby have a name?
And I said Otto
We said his name,
and told him about the stars and the trees
And all the things he needed to be here for
And a tall man with a black uniform came in
And took him away in his big hands
To an ambulance with flashing lights
A tall man in a black uniform
Held my son
He was gentle and soft with my little baby,
Rushing outside into the cool summer night
And we followed behind in the car.

Christmastime

Oh, the dark and the light
The lights on the tree, the softness.
The memories of cookies on a plate and Nat King Cole singing from our record player. Now he sings from the ipod.
Oh, the darkness inside me.
Darkness can be warm and soft, the darkness that makes the Christmas tree beautiful, that allows it to be so special. The darkness of my sad heart, the part that just misses Otto. I don't think about it being Christmas and how he should be here, it is a matter of my body, my belly, my lungs, I feel it wash over, I feel his absence, I feel my love for him, I feel the hole. I just want to cry.

Maybe because Christmas is about children, sweet little kid memories with sisters, it's about a mama and baby, the child coming to the world. This may sound strange, but all the songs about baby Jesus seem like they're about Otto. Especially the first Christmas after he left. To me he was this glowing, perfect, loving soul. He was a prince. He was everything. He brought so much to us. And every day now I cry again, I grieve a little more.

And then there is the light. The light of our love for him, our strong, bright love, our gratefulness for his making us parents, gratefulness to have ever felt that love. There is the joy of Luna, of her laugh, her amazing habits. Like stirring a fake pot of soup and giving us sips of it. Of putting little pieces of paper in pockets that she makes in her shirt, or my shirt, of crawling as fast as she can to her Daddy's office door and banging on it, watching her put pieces of bread in her mouth, of jumping on her knees naked in our bed, her glee, her bigness. I have so much joy every day in her. Radiating joy.

I am so grateful for all of this love. From all of our family.

Life, the structures of it, can fall apart so fast. There is so little control. But the simplest being together, the talks around a kitchen table, preparing food, these are such beautiful things to love as we have them.

It is nice to be at peace with both of these things, my sadness and my joy. Christmas holds them both. We sing about the cheer and merriment, and more modern songs about the difficult times, missing home, missing a love. Really, we all have SOMEONE we miss at Christmas.

I am enjoying it this year, unwrapping our ornaments; those from childhood, from 11 years of marriage, 3 years of Otto's ormaments, Luna's 2nd year, these gifts that mark togetherness, love, tradition, sweetness. I am enjoying the bells, the cookies, the love. And I usually don't want to go to bed at night because of the heaviness of pain.

This is Christmas! All of it is beautiful. Not easy, but beautiful.

Dia de Los Muertos

Today is the Day of the Dead in Mexico, Dia de Los Muertos. People celebrate children who have died today.

They put marigolds, favorite foods, candles, on altars and go put flowers on graves and clean them up. It's a day in many traditions where people feel the veil between worlds growing thinner, where those who have gone on draw closer to our realm. The Fall is seen as such a time.

And I like this. It's supposed to be happy, not sad. Celebrating our love for our families and friends. But for children, I don't see how there is not some sadness included.

I wrote about this in my breath email today and just started crying as I typed. My son, my son it is still so hard to believe. Writing to people about him brings the tears. I celebrate him through tears. I wanted to put marigolds on his grave but it is too cold for the nurseries to sell them this time of year. Next year I'll grow them myself. So I bought some red mums and a nice bright green pot to plant them in and brought a ceramic hummingbird that's been in the family a long time, and we drove down to the cemetery in Sebastopol. Luna was tired and she cried the whole way there.

Sun was going down on such a fiery, clear autumn day with warm blue skies. We got out of the car and walked toward the Garden of Angels where the children are buried. A family was there at their baby's grave, putting flowers down, 2 little boys running around.

We put Otto's flower pot and hummingbird down on his grave. We spread the petals from his rose bush at our house. We put our hands down on it and talked to him. Luna sat down too, and played with pine needles. We miss you, baby, we love you. I imagine his ashes down there, under the earth, the earth holding them. A place for us to convene, to do this, though I know he is always with me, I can always talk to him. It is beautiful to drive out to the country, through apple orchards and into sweet smells and hills, and be with him and his memory, his meaning.

Another family came to put flowers down for their child. I heard the mama's tender voice as she talked to her baby, soft, high tones, sad. They bent down and cleared his stone, and little boys ran around.

Other families do this too. Other families have big holes in them. We are there together, putting flowers down. Holes filled with love, but love leaves the holes there. They make us interesting, they make us who we are, we grow around them, we are strong, we remember.

And how I love Luna. My love for her makes the whole world seem better. That love, such love, began in full when they put Otto on my chest for the first time, when I held my warm, soft child for the first time, knowing he would die, but Oh, he was with me then, he was MINE, my sweet, soft darling boy, and those moments will always be strong with me, those NOWS of then. I have never been the same. And when Luna came, that love just carried on with her, it got to live longer in my arms with her, and it grows and grows. For both of them. That is the part we celebrate.

So, my sweet boy, let me keep being your mama. And put flowers down for you on special days. Let your dad keep being your papa. It is so important to us. We hold you so close. We love you so much. We are so glad you are our boy.