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

[rivka]

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.

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

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.