Life After Loss

You reach for the bottle, you're wrong. You cry a year later, you're wrong. You continue to live as life was before, you're wrong. You find a healthy outlet to remain sane, you're wrong. Why is there so much judgement about the right way to grieve? Isn't a bereaved parent going through enough? Why is it good to appear "strong"? Why can't I be weak? Why can't I just hideaway on the bad days? And if I'm having a better day, and I laugh--don't think that somehow I am "over" this. I carry the pain with me every single moment, of every single day. Somedays it is just more obvious than others. You're judged if you have more kids. You're judged if you don't. You're judged if you keep the baby's room the same. You're judged if you donate everything. Instead of judging, hold out your hand. Offer to be of some support. You don't need to say anything. You just need to listen. Be there with me. Say my chi...

"Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle." -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross When the denial starts wearing off, the grief starts coming in bigger waves again. There is a constant battle of wanting to live a life for your child, and wanting to lock yourself away because you can't bear to face life that day. As grieving parents, we are told time and time again that our children would want us to live our lives. They'd want us to enjoy life and to do whatever makes us happy. But how can we possibly be happy when our child is not enjoying our life with us? At least not in the physical sense. I wake up. I see the beautiful sunrise. And I tell myself-you got this. You will get up. You will enjoy the day the best you can. I make an effort to smile more. I sing along in the car. I go out of my way to make someone else's day. I appreciate the little things. I can do wh...

Arianna Marie, How can it already be a year that you took your final breathe in our arms? I can feel the weight of you in my arms. I can feel your smooth skin on my fingers. I can see the family on the balcony. I remember coming home after planning the services. I remember the empty space between your dad and I. Our bed had become your bed. Everyone says no co-sleeping until your child is on hospice, because there's no longer a safety risk. Every night for the last couple weeks you slept in between us. We'd each keep a hand on you throughout the night. Some days your breaths were so shallow it was hard to tell if you were still here. The house felt so empty. Since bringing you home, there was always people over--Grandma Deb, Uncle Tim & Aunt Marianne, Uncle Alvin Sam, Uncle Je ff & Aunt Lisa, Auntie Sher Sher, Grandpa Rupert and Uncle Ham. And now there was just silence. Our home was empty without you. It is still empty. I still walk into your room hoping you...

That's how long it's been since I've seen your smile. Seen your eyes light up. Heard your little voice. It's like a nightmare I just can't wake up from. I know there is absolutely no way any of this could be happening. It must be a nightmare. But it's not. This is life. A completely unfair, beautiful thing called life. This past weekend, someone said to Gonz "God gave you this time with her for a reason." That's what we need to remember. The past year has come and gone so quickly. Most days, I'm proud of Gonz and I for just being able to function. There's bad days, bad moments, and sometimes bad weeks. It seems like it'd be much easier to say, screw all this, and just lay in bed. Things that were once important no longer are. I don't mean that in a suicidal way, I mean it in once your child passes away your whole way of thinking changes way. Grief is like a tug of war. The part of you that wants to do nothing vs. the par...

The weight that a grieving father carries around with him is astonishing.  Fathers don't get the same support as mothers do. They don't have books written for them (at least not nearly as many). They don't get the phone calls and the texts. They get the "how is (insert grieving mom's name here)?" Yet, they hurt. Their hearts are broken just like the mothers'. They yearn for their child to be back in their arms. To be able to protect their baby from all the bad in the world. Yet, when their child gains their angel wings, they can't protect them anymore. They didn't protect them well enough. At least that's what they think, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I know with every ounce of my being, if my husband could have traded places with our daughter, he would have in a heartbeat. He crumbled with every piece of bad news we received, but still remained so optimistic. Fathers need to just pull their boots up by the...

I don't know where that came from.  Babycakes. It's so random. Your dad laughed the first time he heard me call you that. You were still in the NICU. But guess what? He was calling you babycakes by the time we brought you home. Your room looks just like how it did when we first brought you home. I would do anything to have you here with us again. Or to have traded places with you. We had hope. We prayed. We begged for you to be okay. We held on so tightly to all the good things the doctors would tell us. We knew you were going to wake up, how could we ever survive if you didn't? Yet, it's been over 9 months and we are surviving. Some days it's just barely, but we are.  How is it that you've been gone for as long as you were here? In some ways it seems like you took your last breath just yesterday, in other ways it feels like a different lifetime. I remember everything about your hospital room. I remember the beeping. The little ray of ...

Every time I hear about another child gaining their angel wings, my heart stops.  I imagine these small, innocent, beautiful human beings who never even got a chance to fully experience life. I think of how their parent's lives are forever changed. I think about how the parents will be in a complete fog for the next days, weeks, or even months to come. How you can't wrap your head around the fact that your child is no longer here on Earth with you. Even if you knew your child was battling such a big fight, it does seem like they will ever leave you. How can a child's life be taken from you? Everything must get better. I think about how I was torn at Arianna's wake. I remember crying very minimally. I remember looking at my husband and smiling. It felt like we were being torn. It took everything we had to even be there, standing. But at the same time, we got to remember Arianna's legacy and celebrate her life. We felt the support from so many people and we...

Everyday there is a choice to be made. Am I going to get up and get done what I need to do or is today going to be the day that I let myself feel the loss? It sounds crazy, I know. I feel the loss every single day of my life. But the vast majority of days I am running from it. I'm so afraid that if I let myself go there again, there's no coming back. That I'm jumping into the ocean off a huge cliff with no life vest. But I do have a life vest. My husband and my family. But somehow it feels like it's not enough. That if I jump, even with their support, I will just bring us all down. I'm told to embrace the grief. That if I run from it and don't face it that it will only make things worse. But it still seems too unreal. How in the world is our perfect girl gone? How do all those months of doing the absolute best parenting we could not mean anything anymore? How was she here one day and not the next? How did we live in a hospital for 3 weeks? How did we watch ...

After losing a child, you begin to look for them everywhere. You stop to listen to the birds chirp, you notice the butterfly that lands right by you, you look for clouds that are shaped like angels or hearts. The sky has been where I find myself looking the most. I love to see the beautiful sunrises and sunsets and hope that somehow Arianna was involved. Like the sky is her canvas and she's just up there painting away. There's something more magical about the sun shining through the clouds now than ever before. I cling to these things because more than anything I want to know that she is still with me. That she's watching over us and is smiling. That she truly is in a better place (although I still think that the best place for a child is in their mother's arms...). That she is no longer in pain. That she can move, and walk, and talk, and is singing in the angel's choir (apparently Arianna is extremely talented!). You just want to know that your child is ok. T...

People say time heals all wounds. As a grieving mother, I disagree. I think that with time we learn how to carry our grief and how to cope with the waves. I think that there are good days, and there are bad. I think that you may be able to take one wave of grief head on, but the next wave make knock you down. And I think that it is absolutely ok.  It's important to know that falling down doesn't mean you're weak. That tears streaming down your face in public because you see another mom with her daughter doesn't mean that you're somehow "stuck in the past". Life changes drastically when you give birth to a child. All that you thought you knew about parenting goes out the window. Your routine completely changes. It's all for the better of course. When you lose a child, it's new territory. You now need to learn a different routine. One that feels empty. Without any purpose. And you just hope that there will be good days again. Once the go...

I was showing my mom Arianna's lab results on the board in her room. A man we hadn't met yet walked in the room. Mom sat down in her chair. Gonz was sitting on our couch. He introduced himself. Dr. Soandso from Neurosurgery. My mom's face went white. She asked a question, her voice was shaking. Me, being so casual said, "Mom, don't worry. Just because he's from neurosurgery doesn't mean that Arianna needs brain surgery or anything. What's going on?" His response "Well, actually she does need brain surgery and we need your signature now." I don't remember what happened after that. I remember our nurse kicking him out of the room and yelling at him. I remember being brought into a conference room and being shown the CT scan from that morning. I remember throwing a box of Kleenex and it hitting some poor girl I hadn't seen before. I remember being told if we didn't sign these papers then our daughter wasn't goin...

You know how sometimes you have those days where one bad thing just happens after another and you think how could all this be possibly happening in one day? Today was kind of like that for me. First, I dropped my phone--in the toilet. Yeah, had to place a claim to get a new one. Then, I was all excited to eat my chicken and rice (yummy!), but I needed to eat at my desk since I didn't have a working phone and the clock in the break room is broken. No big deal. I gather up my stuff and head on upstairs. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the BIGGEST klutz in the world. Yep, I fell (going up the stairs, not even down) and bam, I watch in slow motion as my chicken and rice fly through the air. All of it. None was savable.  So somehow I managed to laugh this all off. It got me thinking, I haven't had a day like this in a long time. I've had way to many horrible days, but not where it's these random individual events. Then I smiled. The old Heather would hav...

Everytime I read about another innocent child passing, my heart breaks all over again. There's absolutely no words that can comfort a grieving parent. The best thing you can do is just be there for them. Listen to them. Many times they won't make sense, but just talking helps tremendously. I wish that doctors had more answers. So many times parents are left questioning why. Why us? Why our baby? Why did this happen? Unfortunately, there's not always answers so all you can do as a parent is accept it. You can accept it one day, and then suddenly the next day you can't anymore. There is no getting better. All there is are good days and bad days. And you feel relieved if 2 good days are strung together. It's strange how quickly your mind takes you back to day you lost your child. I can so vividly see everyone in our home again. My aunts and uncles. My Alvin Sam. My mom and Gonz. I remember exactly what Arianna was wearing. I remember one second ...

And mine kept beating... Since then I feel as if I'm jumping off a cliff--every single day. But mid jump, it's like the rewind button is hit, and I end up on the edge of the cliff again. With every jump, I get closer and closer to hitting the water. I know that eventually I will. I'm not sure what is scarier--not knowing when I'm actually going to hit the water or not sure if I'm able to swim and get out alive once I hit. You think you're doing ok. You have a longer streak of OK days, but you know you're getting closer to the edge again. At first I felt like I was wearing one of those big Sumo Wresting suits. I had this thick layer of shock surrounding me. It helps lessen the pain of the horrid truth. But with time, that layer thins out. Everyday the truth is a little more real--a little more painful.  I think of holding Arianna in my arms, and it brings tears instead of a smile. I think about her cute laugh, or the way she would cross her feet jus...

My dad passed away when I was four and a half (half years were a big deal at that age!). I have missed him for as long as I can remember. Now, I know I miss the idea of what it would have been like had he beat the cancer and never had heart issues. Would I have been a major daddy's girl? Would he have approved of my grades? How would him still being alive affect my life today? I have this memory of us. I'm not sure if it's an actual memory, or one I've created from hearing the story, but any who: It's night time. It's warmer out. Him and I are standing on the back porch together. He explains to me that one day he may no longer be with us . That he will become an angel and be watching over the whole family. He will become a star in the sky. So every night I should go outside and finding the twinkling star. That would be him. I remember doing that once he passed. There would be something so disappointing on the cloudy nights, when I couldn't see t...

Happy New Year! What are your resolutions? New year, new me. Those are some of the standard phrases you hear around this time of year. Everyone is focused on making this year better than the last. Something big will happen this year. I'm going to eat better and go to the gym to finally lose this extra weight. I'm not going to waste money on silly things so I can save up to make that big purchase I've been wanting to make. I will finish my degree and get my dream job. For us, this New Year represents us entering the new year missing a piece of us. It signifies more time has passed since we last saw our Arianna. We can no longer say we lost our daughter this year, it was last year. It is a door closing before we're ready for it too. Of course we are continuing to live our lives. We don't have an option. We both enjoy working out (ok Gonzalo really enjoys it). For us though, it's not about a new year's resolution or trying to make ourselves better. It...