The Days That Followed

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~~~Flashback Post~~~
April 10, 2016 (The Days That Followed)

The days that followed the funeral were a blur.

I was dealing with the normal physical aftermath of a natural and vaginal child birth ~ the heavy bleeding, the uterine contracting, shrinking, and healing, the standard hormone imbalance and fluctuation with all its postpartum depression issues.  I had dealt with postpartum depression with my firstborn eighteen years earlier.  I had dealt with post adoption depression for over a year with my second child six years earlier. My milk had come in, as my body was responding how every other mother's does.  It was creating nutrients to provide for a baby's essential bonding, growth, and most basic of needs after it was done incubating that little life within me. My chest hurt so bad.  They were swollen, full, hard, tingling, letting down, and constantly leaking all over.  There was nothing inside to stop natures natural course of reproduction.  The reality and next step from within was no longer needed from the outside, and there was nothing properly coordinating with those natural responses. There was no baby, I had nothing to comfort or feed except my own sorrow, self pity, depression, and near desperation.

I was dealing with the incredible emotional aspects and coping mechanisms of a mother in the first steps of grieving the loss of a child, a long prayed for child after seventeen years of infertility at that...   I was home on an awkward and far too short two week "maternity leave." My body, soul, and mind an absolute mess, with no baby to love and care for. The only middle of the night crying was my own. 

And I was dealing with an enormous spiritual war in my anger towards God for causing all this, my guilt and shame over that anger towards God, and my battle to simply continue to find the will to go on living.  And yet, God kept continuing to wake me up every morning.  I knew He apparently wasn't done with me yet, but I sure was ready to be done with Him.

Cards continued to come in the mail.  My husband would bring in the mail and we would quietly sit side-by-side on the couch with a box of tissues. We would spend the next hour opening, reading, commenting, passing them back and forth, and crying our already swollen eyes out.   That first week the story was continuing to get out and several people were reaching out with love and support, praying over us, and trying to walk well beside us.  There were a few meals and not many phone calls.  After that we continued to get an occasional card or two, but very quickly the immediate outpouring of support trickled to an end.

People had no idea what to say to us, so most said nothing at all.

We were all cycling through the overtaking moments of utter grief and loss.  Rarely were we all a mess at the same time.  As it had been during the delivery, funeral planning and funeral itself, we all continued to just ebb and flow, taking turns through the downs and absolute rock bottoms (there were NO ups in any of that period of our lives...) of our pain and sorrow. We were trying to blindly navigate how to grapple with all our own inner demons, we were trying to help pick up the pieces of the others when they fell apart, we were trying to figure out how to be parents that now had children on earth and a child in Heaven.

My husband went on a spending spree as he tried to spread salve on his wounds.  Our teenager got even more quiet, secluded, and withdrawn than he had been before.  Our unpredictable, moody, adopted six year old, who knew he had not come from within the same womb that his big brother had, the same place his sister had just passed away in, rebelled and fought us tooth and nail through meltdowns and anger as his little confused mind attempted, but absolutely could not comprehend or process all of the intricacies of biological / adoption / grief / loss / life / death...

We all desperately needed to give each other grace, love, and support... But when you yourself are in the midst of their same darkest of dark places, giving grace, love, and support is amazingly hard, if not impossible.

I remember the sun shining and the promise of spring during the rare moments when I left the house.  I mostly remember the dark, curtain drawn shadows of our bedroom and those four bleak walls continuing to surrounding me as I lay in bed for hours and hours, day after day.

All of me - mind, body, and soul was an utter train wreck in dire need of healing, strength, and hope.  Never in all my life had I hurt so badly.  Every cell of my body ached in the pain of our loss and sorrow.

{ click HERE to our next journal entry, "Granite and Graduation" }
{ click HERE for our previous journal entry, "The Funeral" }