angel bears ain't
04/12/2011 07:59 p.m.
aka dandelion fluff revisited

some woman some where
lost her child
and we got one of many boxes
she made to fill her emptiness.

a blue box...
the anonymous nurse handed it over
rather briskly,
awesome compensation
for arms that should've held
someone else entirely.

not her fault,
i remember what it was like:
ten million things needing to get done,
no time to do it in,
people calling for help unceasingly...

besides, if you ain't been there
you don't have the words anyway,
silence is far better alternative
than sandpaper words...but they
have their practiced speeches that have to be said
so they can feel like they did something.

***

i've never been particularly normal...
maybe that's why that generic box pissed me off so.

what need does a 24 minute old dead baby have for clothes and toys?
clothes and toys picked by a random bloody stranger who knew nothing about us?
not that i'd anything in particular picked out myself

hope had dictated not jinxing myself by planning
and i'm too practical...
no ugly expensive reminders we couldn't afford
left to dispose of if the unthinkable happened
...wise as it turned out...
even if it was really a backwards way to tempt fate into letting him live
(see? we already expect the worst - surprise us!)

that woman probably was pissed off herself
when her baby died and she had nothing...
so she did something about it.

god save me from people who have to do something about it.

i do appreciate the thought.
it's mostly the generic-ness that still irks me

...epitomized by that damned angel bear.

it could've been worse i suppose
they could've added that doubly damned garden poem
(i know, i know, some people are comforted by the notion
god stole their child for his garden. my god doesn't do that
which makes it hard for me to wrap my mind around why that's
supposed to be comforting. more power to you, if it worked for you
...as for me, i loathe that poem with all the loathing in my soul.)

the bear was bad enough.

chalk part of it up to religion. my beliefs do not include me going to heaven.
the ones going to heaven are supposed to become rulers and priests...
not my calling. i like earth a little too well, and i'd just as soon NOT be in charge.

so what do you do with a gift representing someone else's foreign beliefs?
they mean well but wherever it was it'd be...THERE, yes in capital letters...looming.

but it's not like he had any other toys.
nor is it respectful to throw somebody else's religious representation into the trash,
doubly so when it's their ...penance? offering? memorial?...to their own child's death.

...they meant well...

so we cremated it with him.


***

admittedly, we probably weren't in our right minds at the time.

it's hard to be in your right mind when your dead son is lying on a cold metal cart in front of you at the mortuary, but we did fairly well. even if it's likely nobody else would've done it the same way.

we weren't hampered by family members' expectations since we didn't tell them. the problem with coming from a large dysfunctional family is that: 1) nobody can keep anything quiet and 2) somebody always has to start a bloody drunken brawl at family ructions. Can't tell one person something without somebody else getting angry and jealous...then there's having to deal with the stupid idiots who have to talk even when it's the equivalent of verbal diarrhea.

[like the aunt who told my sister 'there were other fish in the sea and you don't have to buy the whole pig to get a little slice of sausage' when my sister broke down telling us her husband was divorcing her. yeah...my immediate fam isn't that bad (mostly) but my extended fam sucks.]

so we were there alone, thankfully.

the clothes from the box didn't fit right, of course...way too big. he wore them for exactly one photo shoot at the hospital. (that's one of those things i'm extraordinarily ambivalent about even now. i seriously wanted to hurt the photographer that day...i was just too bloody worn to haul myself off the gurney to do it.)

so it does make a backwards sort of sense that we wrapped up the one pic the CNA took of us as a "family" (what a travesty that was, it still burns thinking about it. family pictures shouldn't include actual dead bodies. they just...shouldn't.) but that's getting ahead of myself.

had i known better, i'd've taken his body home with us. since i didn't, we not only ended up paying the undertaker for the trip but we found his naked body lying on that metal cart when we arrived the first time. grief isn't very rational and guilt is always in abundant supply but that...first sight of that was...awful. awful isn't nearly a strong enough word for it but everything else is cliche'd to death. it was more like somebody took a serrated knife made of guilt and was using it to stir my guts but since i haven't had anybody actually do that to me physically maybe i shouldn't be using the comparison. it was pretty rough, however you write it.

so we went home and brought back some things. aside from being poor and anti-consumerism, this is a situation where meaning is vital. that's probably half the issue i had with that damned box they gave us for that matter.

anyway, we wrapped him in the bloodied nightgown i wore when he was born. the blood was never going to come out and even if it had i'd never be able to wear it anyways...too painful. burning the blood of his birth with him fit.

as did burning that "family" picture. we placed it picture side to his back before folding him up in the nightgown...burning it was recognition of the family we wouldn't be. that also was right.

to which we added a handful of rose petals from the arrangement my husband's father sent us, in recognition of what other family members lost. even if i didn't want them there (my fam) or they couldn't be there d/t distance (husband's fam), they too had lost some one even if they couldn't know him.

and lastly, that damned bear. looking back now, that too fit...in recognition of the people he might have influenced but would never get a chance to know him. in recognition of the circle we had unwilling joined as well...of those who had also lost their children. which is likely the real reason i hated that bear so passionately even if i didn't recognize it until writing this. (gotta love my subconscious...it's always trying to do things like that to keep me sane in this crazy world.) this is probably why it felt right to add it, despite my loathing.

***

another anniversary has come and gone, this one the worst yet. the others i was busy distracting myself with work and/or travel. this time i was home. it was rough.

the problem when two people have the same hurt is that one triggers the other's grieving. two grieving people are hard to live with, there is no one to lift the other up because both have fallen. but we've gotten through it. having done so, i am hopeful next year will go somewhat better. i hope.

hope is pretty much all we have to hold on to.