Season of Grief

There are many reasons autumn used to be my very favourite time of year. The trees and their leaves, changing colours like some mystical fairy tale painting. I love watching the leaves float to the ground like little falling stars. I love breathing in the crisp autumn air and feeling the crunch of dried leaves crackle beneath my feet.

Autumn brings with it birthdays. Lots of birthdays. My grandmother (how I miss her), my brother - who turns 33 today (Happy Birthday Stretch!), my daughter and in a few days, my very own birthday. Quite a lot of cake for one month. I have many September childhood memories filled with chocolate frosting and wrapped in tissue paper..

Of course the birth of autumn brings with it the start of school. A parent's personal celebration. What is there to not love about September?

Turns out, a lot.

These days, autumn and the months which follow, are brutal. It would be less painful if I just bent over and you all took turns kicking my ass.

Seriously. And not just because my arse region has recently acquired some padding.

This is the time of year my husband and I refer to as our "Season of Grief." It is a tough time for all of us around here. We miss our kid. Our son, their brother. The next few holiday and birthday-riddled months do nothing but amp up our grief and spin it into an emotional monster which threatens to swallow us whole.

It is hard to have a birthday or holiday celebration without noticing the glaring absence of a boy long lost. I know as I put on my mommy happy face and try to make the best of this trying situation that I'm not the only one affected, the only one limping along in pain.

What does one say to their children when you know what their birthday wish is, and will be? What does one do when you watch your otherwise-very-happy child blow out her candles, close her eyes and wish her brother was home in our arms? How does one react when you hear your son pray every night to see his little brother once more?

It kills me. Slowly, one cell at a time, it's taking me down and stomping on my spirit.

There is no escape from this feeling for the next few months either. Next month is Frac's birthday, Thanksgiving and then the anniversary of Bug's passing; November brings about the painful reminder of Boo's father's absence, only to be followed quickly by Christmas. Just when we have hobbled our way through the most painful holiday of the year, we get beat on the head by Bug's birthday, the first week of January.

It's a party non-stop around these parts for the next four months.

I had hoped this year would be easier. After all, we are approaching the second anniversary of his passing. The pain has to end sometime, right? Or at least slacken a bit. This choking noose that leads me around by my heart every day has to relax eventually, one would think, right?

That may be true, but I'm still waiting.

I wait to notice when my scars are scabbed over and finally healing. I wait for the seepage to stop. I pray every day that nothing comes along to pick at these wounds and releases the pain again.

All of this waiting is damn near driving me insane. Almost as insane as painting those darned polka dots on my daughter's walls. I'm trying my best to keep it together, but I have to tell you, this sanity business is harder than it looks. All I want to do is hide in my pantry, curl up on the floor with a soft pillow and nurse a nice red into oblivion. I'd try it now, but I'm pretty sure Fric and Frac would find me and knock on the door, demanding to be let in.

I wish there was a magic formula for me to stop missing my Bug, to stop feeling this pain. I'm sick of carrying this weight on my soul and quite frankly, I resent it all to hell that this is my family's burden to bear. This is the legacy I passed on to my children. A pain that will follow them until the day they die.

I somehow managed to find the gift that just keeps on giving. Too bad I can't find the receipt to return it.

I just wish there was someway I could make my children's birthday wishes come true and bring their brother back.

While I'm at it, I'll take three magic beans and that goose that shits out golden eggs too.

Might as well reach for the stars when I blow out my birthday candles.

My Truth

I remember the day the nurse brought my freshly birthed daughter back into my room after being cleaned up and examined and thinking, "What the hell? What do I do now?" At barely 20, I was woefully unprepared for the trials motherhood thrust upon me the moment I pushed that baby out of my nice, warm uterus. I've been dog paddling in the pool of parenting ever since.

It ain't pretty. I barely have my nose above the water, and every now and then a wave comes and threatens to take me out. Parenting is hard. And it is painful. Beyond the obvious feminine aspect of gestating, labouring and delivering, being a parent hurts. Worse than if you slam your finger in the car door or get kicked in the face by a four year-old Arabian stallion.

(A demonstration of what type of creative cusser I can be in both instances.)

Just when you finally learn to live on two hours of sleep, succumb to your infant’s every demands, become adept at diapering with one hand and feeding with the other, and accept there will never be a moment of sexual intimacy between you and your partner again, the little buggers go and change the rules on you.

The next flaming hoop of fire to jump through is when your darling precious learns to walk, talk and pee in a pot. Preferably the ugly plastic one you bought special for the occasion and not one of the pretty stainless steel ones you received as a wedding gift from an uncle, and left on the floor so your kiddy could bang on it with a wooden spoon...

(The real reason I call myself a redneck...my children pee in whatever receptacle they can find...or in my son's case, right off the freaking front deck.)

If you are lucky, both you and your child survive this landscape fraught with hidden obstacles relatively intact and bonded stronger than ever.

(Say 'hamburger' for mommy's friends darling. Be a good girl. See!!! I told you!! Isn't she the sweetest thing?! Snicker. Hangaboogers. My kid is the greatest!)


Then like a stalk of corn in the middle of my mother-in-law's garden, they grow again, thereby changing the rules of the game, once more. Every stage brings with it new rules, new dangers, new dilemmas and better rewards.

I never expected to enjoy parenting this much. As a teen I vowed my uterus would remain unused. Wasted anatomy. I wanted to save the world and make millions while doing it. There was no room in my vision to include children. Falling in love changed that.

(Forgetting about grade nine sex education and the value of rubbers may have also played a small part in my attitude adjustment.)

Yet, before I reached 25, I had squeezed out three little angels, pretty much solving the mystery of how babies are made.

By boarding the parenthood train, I bought a ticket for disappointment, sadness, anger, laughter, love and loss. I silently agreed to give away the biggest part of my heart to these dirty, blonde rugrats who often don't protect the soft side of their parents.

(Ask Boo. He's been kicked in the man grapes more than once.)

You must give of yourself wholly and put your heart out there so that your children can run off with it when ever they choose. It's written in the fine print at the bottom of the contract.

There is no pain or reward greater than being a parent. If someone had told me seven years ago, that I was going to deliver a baby most people wouldn’t want, most people wouldn’t understand, a child most people chose not to see, I would have said told them they were off their freaking rocker. Bad things happen to other people. Not Boo and me. We had reached our quota for bad things. Surely, God or Nature or my fucking uterus wouldn’t be so cruel as to stick us with that.





Proof I am a natural blonde.

Except, we weren't stuck, we were blessed. If you had told me seven years ago that this child would be the best thing to happen to us, our marriage and our kids, I would have laughed uncomfortably and then ran screaming from the room, to search for some alcohol.

And if you told me 653 days ago, when I walked out of the hospital with nothing but a wad of tissue in one hand and an big white plastic bag in the other, that I would want to walk that path again, fight with bureaucrats and beg for a ticket on that train, I would have probably strangled you with my bare hands.

The stakes of this parenting game suddenly got a whole lot higher. We don’t often think about our children passing away. Sure, we fear it. In an abstract way. The same way, we fear they will be stolen from us while shopping in a crowded mall, or snatched by some stranger on the street. We know the possibility of death exists but if we sat and actually understood what it would mean to lose our child(ren) we would be paralyzed with fear, unable to give them the space they need to grow.

I knew something was wrong with my pregnancy with Bug. I used to tell my husband that I had an alien baby inside me, and I was only half joking. I would complain to my doctor about my size and my fears and she would quickly dismiss me. I would leave half annoyed she didn’t hear me and half relieved she didn’t listen.

When Shalebug was born, and all the doctors and specialists kept telling me he wouldn’t live long, or be normal, my heart cracked with every word, every prophecy they uttered. I knew that my love couldn’t save him, but I was hoping it would prolong his life.

I believe it did. I never prayed for him to heal or be normal. I never asked God to fix him or make him whole. I couldn't bring myself to wish for him to be anything who he was because who he was to me was bloody brilliant.

Instead of hoping to change him, I hoped for him to walk through life with grace and dignity and love. I hoped he felt no pain. And most of all, I hoped every night when I went to bed that I would wake up to have another day with him.

Wishes don't always come true.

People ask what I fear most, now that I have been through this nightmare. I could say not much, having walked through this fire and survived. But being the boob-oogling, over-emotional, hyper-hormonal woman I am, I can't lie to you.

It would be wrong to say I fear losing a child. There is no word to describe the terror and anxiety I feel when I think of life with out yet another of my kiddies. The word 'fear' simply doesn't touch it.

I think what I fear the most is losing the ability to try. To try and live without the shadow of grief clouding my every movement, every choice. I would rather love and lose a child than be too scared to try and parent again. I can think of no better way to honour my son and help my children through their pain than to remember how to laugh, to love and to live. How to try.

To learn to ignore the shackles of fear and remember the bonds of love.

Because, in the end, all we have are our memories of the ones who touched us, made us into who we are today. If we don’t accept the chance of dying we can never really live.

And that is my truth.

Which I will be reciting over and over to myself as our final adoption meeting advances upon us like a steam train next week.





Yes, I really did force him to wear that dorky hat. He's still pissed.

Graduation Day

Shalebug would have graduated today. Sure, it would have just been a kindergarten graduation ceremony, but to me (and likely all the other parents involved) it would have meant much more than that.







It would have been a reward to us parents for putting in our time, paying our kindergarten dues. Suffering through endless hours of trying to teach your child to tie his/her shoes, learn to write his/her name, learn how to read.

It would have been a reward for time spent as the class-mom, helping kids use scissors correctly and not amputating a digit while trying to cut out turkey shapes and pink cardboard hearts.

It would have been our reward for tying shoelaces, telling kids not to run in the halls, get your fingers out of your nose, and no, girls don't have cooties. (After all, everyone knows cooties comes with age, and poor hygiene.)

It's our reward for being snack mom/dad through out the year; for remembering to slice up those apples and even for that time when you forgot you were the mom designated to bake the cupcakes and had to sell your soul to the neighbourhood bakery to let you come in before store hours to buy some treats that you would try to pass off as your own. (Not that I would EVER do that. Snicker.)

All of the patience and energy we had spent the last ten months focusing on our precious child would be rewarded with the pomp and circumstance of watching our lovely kiddies march their processional, fidget, giggle, pick their noses and act proud as they waited to hear their names called.

I would have hooted and hollered and made an ass of myself the loudest. I tend to be known for that. I'm the mom that doesn't mind walking up to the front of the gym to get the good photo, the mom who believes all children need to be applauded, not just my own.

And I would have been cheering wildly. Bug would not have grasped half of what the others in his class would have. He would not have been able to write his name, and I doubt he would have been able to recognize it in a group of letters. He wouldn't know his colours or be able to tie his shoes and I'm fairly certain the concepts of numbers to him would have been like astro-physics to me.

But yet, he would have succeeded. He would have overcome his hurdles, the ones individual to him. He may have made it a whole month with out being hospitalized. Perhaps he would have been able to stand at the water table and not recoil with fear. He certainly would have shown the other children how to love. He would have taught them all patience and understanding.





Bug working with his speech therapist.

He would have fostered a protective friendship with his group of peers, all of whom would have clamoured to give him a high five, or sit next to him at circle time. They would have wanted to help him use his computer, the one that gave him a voice, and he would have been the coolest kid in the class for it. They would sit next to him at snack time and eat his pudding for him, because that's what friends do. After all, Bug couldn't eat it, he wouldn't have minded sharing.

The really brave kids would have asked to help feed him and would have felt like professional nurses when they squeezed water through his g-tube with shakey hands. They would have filled up his syringe with water and squirted each other with it until one of the teachers took it away and admonished them with a look.

Through it all, Bug would have laughed. He was his father's son that way. A tease, a joker and always easy going.

I imagine when Bug's name was called, his dad would stand and proudly clap, while rolling his eyes at me, as I'm up at the front, telling Bug to look at Mommy so I could get a nice picture. Would he have walked to the front by himself, with a walker, or with his aide? Perhaps he would have been wheeled up in his chair if his feet were bothering him. I can see clearly in my mind his shakey hand outstretched to grasp his little photocopied diploma, his chubby fingers crinkling the paper.

Afterwards, we would have greeted the teacher and offered thankyou's for all of her hard work, and patience and understanding while working with our special boy. I would have hugged his aide while trying not to embarrass my son too badly as I smothered him with kisses.

Then we would have proudly left the school with our son, the new graduate, to get ready for his next year of academic battles.

There will be parents who never had the opportunity to know us and didn't understand my son, or his special personality and they will wonder why we cheered so loudly. After all, he didn't accomplish the goals the other kindergartners did. They will wonder why he was part of the graduation ceremony when obviously he will not be attending grade one, instead, he will be part of an individualized learning plan, carefully put together to help him get the most out of his limited capabilities.

But I would have been tolerant of their ignorance, able to simply bask in in my son's glory for the moment, before having to go back to our carefully constructed reality.

People don't always see the value of people with disabilities, especially those with mental disabilities. By allowing our son to participate like all the other children, it would have been able to foster a sense of normalcy for him. More importantly though, it would have taught those kids in his class respect and acceptance. Bug would have taught them more than they were ever able to teach his malformed little brain.

He would have taught those kids, and some of those parents, the value of life, of love and of perserverance. All of this wrapped up in one wobbly, slimey, messy blonde haired little boy.

I know this, because this is what he taught every member of his family.

I'll miss that today when I watch those kids fidget on the bench this afternoon, waiting for their name to be called, while peering hopefully out into the crowd, trying to find their parents or loved ones.

There will be one mommy in the crowd with no one looking to find her. But I'm okay with that. Bug found me. He knows where I am. And he knows that I'll be the mom whooting and hollering the loudest for all the kids, while trying to hide the tears in her eyes.