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.

Fall and Love

It's been a while since I wrote. Crawling girl makes it hard to type now, she can get anywhere fast and I can't look away! And I'm sleeping during her naps too, so bye bye free time.

But there has been a wonderful glow from within lately. Happiness. Contentment.

I sink into the outside in the Fall. The rain. The leaves. The sounds. Everything is getting more saturated with color and feeling and smell. It's been over two years since Otto passed over, and 2 years seems to be a marking of a change in grief work, the walk, the experience. I'm less heavy. I'm more in my heart.

I cry often, I feel his love and loss, and in many ways I feel more a part of the universe. I'd say more alive, but it's even more than that - like even when I die, I'll still be a part of it. I feel at home. Part of a big, cozy, beautiful family that extends out all around.

I look up at the stars and am glad that I will be a part of them still after I die. I want to know more about the cycles of the moon. I want to know about making bread and I enjoy taking the seeds out of the pumpkin before I bake it. I feel love for dirt and trees and sky. For my husband and my child. Otto brought that deep love to the surface, a shattering surfacing. A rearranging. Love that makes you know that it is what we are here for.

I am still flabbergasted that Otto came and left. There is a part of his story that I go through every day. A different part every day, a little piece. A room in the hospital, the lactation nurse, the fridge where I stored the milk with his name on it. I found a little bottle from UCSF yesterday, his name still on the label. I will keep it. It is a precious thing.

I have been here for his conception and growing in belly, and his birth, and his death. I know death a little more. I know the permanence of it, and yet the fluidity of it. The feeling like it is not an ending even though it is so complete and sudden. I am a little less afraid of it. And more grateful that I have this day. A day I get to be with a man I love and a child I get to care for. Who gives me smiles of total joy when dad brings her in from her nap. I have not know such complete love in a face. She melts me.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing things right as a mom, feeding her the right things, getting sleep right, yada yada, but I know that I do love her enough. And that is basically the key. Everything else works itself out.

When I can really accept that this love is the most important thing in life, it's easier to let things go like the dishes being undone, an email I forgot to send, a form I forgot to fill out. Instead of going into the vortex of everything I do wrong right away, it's easier to slip that off and just say, Oh well, and look, I'm alive. I'm alive. I don't know how long I get, but right now is a pretty good moment. Pretty great when you think about it.

Rain is falling. The Giants won and will go to the world series! My baby is sleeping. The moon is almost full. The earth is soaking in long awaited water. Who am I to judge my life and if I've done it well, if I've done it right? I am here. I am here and breathing, my heart is beating, I live in a house of love and undone dishes and piles of laundry.