rivka | "I'm going to keep on 'til I find it..."

Not when accepting sympathy from horrified people who've just found out.

Not when explaining to Alex again that there isn't a baby.

Not even when sorting and packing up some baby clothes for the move.

But without warning, this morning, while waiting for the elevator to take me to the hospital blood lab for a quantitative HCG follow-up, I completely lost my composure and started to cry. Half an hour later, I'm still feeling incredibly fragile. No idea why.

I would feel less broken right now if my reactions were easier to understand. In a way, it would make more sense if I were crying all day or unable to get out of bed. Instead, 90% of the time I feel totally normal and functional. And then: not.

The other thing that set me off without warning was hearing my father-in-law's voice, when we called him to make sure they'd escaped the tornadoes that slammed through Memphis on Tuesday.

Until recently, I had never really thought about the fact that the reason Michael was adopted is that his mother had several miscarriages, ultimately ending in a hysterectomy. Michael's father has never said a word to me about it. But somehow the kindness in his voice when he says "Hi, honey" connects me to this pain of his, more than forty years old but still present.

Michael's father is aware of, and solicitous of, Michael's pain and grief in a way that no one else seems to be. (I love Michael dearly, but I am ashamed to say that my grief is pretty self-centered right now.) I'm so glad that there is someone who sees his primary job as taking care of Michael. And yet what an awful, awful connection for a father and son to share.

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I wish there had been someone for Matt when we were going through it. He was a rock, for me, but...

I don't know. Triggers are weird, and I never understood mine. Matt had to clear out the Amazon wishlist I'd made for my first... what do we call them? Hope.

(hug) I'm sorry. It's hard. Nothing is really going to make it better but time.

I wonder if waiting for the elevator was partly because you weren't *doing* anything else, not packing, not negotiating difficult conversations, just standing and being reminded?

I remember being background-upset about completely unrelated things, listening to a lecture in the car about Judaism, and finding myself in tears over the destruction of the second Temple in 70 C.E. (I'm not Jewish). And part of that was because I was on morning-commute autopilot, which is for me a prime time for bad thoughts to sneak in.

Thinking of you all.

I don't have any wisdom -- just sympathy.

It is like that. It's okay.

Emotions, particularly grief, can be funny that way. Emotions don't obey logic, or cognitive rules. They blow through our psyche like weather, storms and sunshine passing through in their own times.

*more hugs*

I would feel less broken right now if my reactions were easier to understand. ... 90% of the time I feel totally normal and functional. And then: not.

"They" (mind-body medicine) had to explain this to me when I was in aggressive cancer treatment the past couple of years ... I felt the same way: strong and coping most of the time and occasionally fragile and totally losing it, with no apparent pattern for when I would lose it or how intensely.

This is normal. It's better than otherwise (constant crying and depression). It means you are actually healing in all the ways you need to - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually ... The down times are your systems taking a break from healing, resetting in preparation for the next round of healing.

It's terrifying when it happens, and more so because it's mostly unpredictable, but it's a good sign overall.

*hugs* and *prayers*

For what it's worth, that's how I responded to my parents' deaths -- I'd be fine, I'd be coping, and then I'd lose it completely.

I've expressed my sympathy and concern primarily to you, because you've been the one posting, but I do want you to know that Michael and Alex have been in my thoughts almost as much as you have.

*hug*

All will be well again.

Yep, that's what mourning is like. Every so often, it just hits you. Most of the time, you can handle it, and then--boom, for any reason or no reason. It has to seep out through the cracks, I think, because if it was hitting you at that level all at once, all the time, it would knock you down and you wouldn't be able to function.

All I can say is that as time goes by, those moments get further apart. At least that's been my experience in mourning my father.

When I was freshly heartbroken, I started crying in the middle of the crawlspace at my mom's. I'd gone down there to try to find one of the books in one of my boxes, and, I don't know, I haven't the faintest idea what brought the tears, but all I could feel, at that moment, was the shreds and fragments where my bright hopes had been, and there was nothing else, and I stopped coping.

Grief's weird that way.

I'm glad that Michael has a pillar in his dad.

More good wishes for healing and health for all of you.

I had similar experiences when my dad had cancer, and when I was getting a divorce. I’d just be doing something else, thinking about something random, and start crying. When my dad had cancer, that moment would still hit even after it was apparent that he was going to be fine. With my divorce, because I met Jeff so quickly afterwards, there was a moment when I was utterly and completely happy in my current situation, but I still needed to cry and mourn the previous marriage. That was… odd.

So yeah, I think that’s normal, as normal as possible for such exceptional and overwhelming emotions. I suppose it doesn’t make it easier.

I’ve been thinking about you and adding my positive thoughts to the cosmos.

With my divorce, because I met Jeff so quickly afterwards, there was a moment when I was utterly and completely happy in my current situation, but I still needed to cry and mourn the previous marriage. That was… odd.

I had very similar experiences when I went through my divorce.

Grief does what it needs to. We're here for you though,

rivka.

N.

Many of the things I want to say have been said, more eloquently, already.

I am ashamed to say that my grief is pretty self-centered right now.

There's no shame in that.

I agree.

Your hormone levels are all out of whack - that could well account for your fragile emotions.

That and, of course, this terribly hard thing you're going through.

When you're strong, and competent, you can step aside from your pain, and not let it overwhelm you... but it's still there, and it's still real, and you're still healing from it.

Those reactions, they're not that hard to understand. They're just signs of a healthy person dealing with a lot of complicated emotional stress.

I mean, think about it. You've had a loss... but IIRC, you're not even sure if it's a loss of what might-have-been, or if it was just an illness that seemed like a pregnancy. You don't know what the future will bring, and you're nervous about that, and you were very, very happy (but stressed) and given a serious letdown.

It's complicated stuff, and it's going to affect you in complicated ways. It's not a sign of being broken (though I reckon it does feel that way).

Re: Michael, darlin', you don't need to be the one person he shares his pain with, for every pain he has. Sure, you need to be there for him; he needs to know you love him, that there's no huge barrier between you, and sure, if you *can* help him, you certainly should. But you don't need to carry his burden of grief. It's good that he has someone who understands; it's good that you can deal with your own grieving without having to worry too much about him.

Be well, and know that my love and my prayers go with you always.

The sadness upon you, it'll come and go. It's a complex thing. I wish it could be more predictable, because that might be easier.

K.

There's no rhyme or reason to grief. It is what it is. I think people don't give enough space to grieving a miscarriage. There's the physical pain of it, but there's also the loss of the dream of a child and that is a very difficult thing to let go.

You're all still in my thoughts.

You're not the only one.

It's so curious: one can resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. --Letters From Colette

I'm pretty much on the same page with everybody else here. Grief, loss, mourning: these things are a sort of crack in us, when we have them. There's a lot of us that's strong and still there -- sometimes surprisingly so -- and then there's the fragile stuff, the places where the loss lives, and everything there is so charged. Thing is, it's maybe kind of like veins of minerals; you can't always tell where one's curved around close to the surface until you're suddenly in it. Or something like that.

As to attending to one's own grief first, there is definitely a time period during which one has to, as they say on airplanes, put one's own oxygen mask on first before attempting to assist others.

I send much love to both of you. All three of you.

"I'm going to keep on 'til I find it..."

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