Infant Loss Awareness Month

so yesterday was the Infant Loss Rememberance Day. This whole month is infant and pregnancy loss awareness month. Which I have mixed feelings about. In some ways it just rubs salt in an open wound, but I guess there's some healing that goes with it too.
Today someone posted this beautiful article about infant loss. It's called The Other Quiet Mom, and it's about how the grief never totally goes away When you're a mom and probably just a woman in general, you get stuck in these conversations about having babies and kids. You listen, you participate. And, sometimes, when you're a mom who's lost a baby or a child, you just check out. Because something someone said caused your mind to wander off to the worst day of your life, and you just need a minute to breathe, to let yourself grieve, and of course the middle of a casual conversation isn't really the place to do that.
If you ever wonder how I feel about that baby, read this article. Because that's what it's like. Most of the time it's OK, but sometimes, while you're telling your pregnancy stories, I'm just thinking about her and wishing she were here.
The worst part for me is when people start actually talking about infant loss. People who don't know my story. And they blab and say things that no one should say at all, let alone to someone who's actually lost a baby. Those conversations are ones where I sort of wish I had a knife to stab people with. I once got stuck in the hot tub at a hotel with someone like that. It's kind of a funny story, but it actually isn't. She was "just wondering" if Michelle Duggar actually felt sad about losing her baby. (That had just happened, and Michelle was speaking at the conference we were all attending). She didn't think someone with 19 other kids would be as upset as someone who'd lost their first pregnancy.
Fortunately I had a friend with me. I miiiiight not have been so gracious if I hadn't. Part of me gets so pissed I want to scream, and part of me gets so sad I just want to shut down and hide. So you can imagine. Anyway, I assured that girl that it didn't matter how many kids you had, losing a baby is always painful and you always miss that baby.
It's weird. You just don't know what to say in those scenarios. I didn't tell that loud-mouthed girl my story. I didn't want to entrust that to her, although it probably would have shut her up. The story of your lost baby is a sacred one, and a person can't just spout off sacred things to just anyone. But sometimes, you feel like you should say something.
There's a kind of loyalty, like you have to tell people or else that little baby will slip into the nothingness of unnamed children. But you also know that, in telling people, you risk changing the dynamics of the relationships. Conversations have sort of a jive to them, and saying the name Grace to friends who know me sort of breaks up that jive. People are used to it, I think. I don't know if they mind, but I also sense a sort of hesitation to return to the subject of babies after her name is uttered.
Then there are people who are just OK with saying it. And that's some kind of glorious relief in just knowing it's OK with that friend if it comes up. Three examples:
1) When I first lost the baby, my friends came over and immediately one just asked, "Hey, do you want to talk about it, or do you not want to talk about it?" Let's just get it out in the open. That's a great thing to say to someone, by the way.
2) My husband's brothers are also really sweet about Grace. One of the youngest ones told me that he still counts Grace when he tells other people how many grandkids there are in the family. I didn't really know how to respond when he told me that, but thinking about it now makes me tear up, so it must have meant more than I thought. The more time that passes, the more things like that mean to me. I just don't want her to be forgotten.
3) At gymnastics once there was a gal I knew from church-ish things that I small-talked with every week. She was bulging pregnant ready to pop, and we were talking about it. She mentioned being high-risk and so I told her I was too. Then I , for some reason, told her about why I was high risk. And she nodded her head. "I had the same exact thing." She had the same experience I did. Same diagnosis. And same symptoms of future pregnancies. It was great. Because for once, it didn't make things a little awkward. It just made us better friends.

So, all that to help you understand how the long grief goes. There's the intense short-term grief of the first weeks, months. Then the year-long one, where you think of every little thing that should have happened. And then, as years pass, it becomes more like wishful thoughts, coming in waves. Some waves are bigger than others. And once in a while, I still almost drown in one and completely break down.
But I want you to know. I don't mind talking about my little girl that is in heaven. And I don't mind crying sometimes about missing her. The only reason I hesitate is so that you don't feel awkward.

Tell Me We'll Be Friends Forever

I had a friend in high school who, from the first day we met, I knew would always be my friend. We had so much in common, we liked the same things, we hung out all the time, and we really were best friends. The weeks went by and we just got closer. The years passed together, and we spent time at each others' houses, after school, in class. I always called her my best friend, even though we both had other "best friends" we probably had invested more in. I never even wondered if we'd lose touch (and that was before facebook), if we'd fight and never make up, if we'd stop caring about each others' lives.
Really I never used to wonder that about any of my friends. Partly because I'm sort of dumb when it comes to planning ahead. Partly because, despite my cynism about how the world works, I'm maybe a little idealistic about good friendships. And partly because, at that time, I had two very close friends I'd known most of my life who I was still friends with. I don't know, maybe it's normal to just expect every relationship to go on forever.
But reality is that most relationships really don't. At least for me they don't. And I know for a fact that I'm REALLY blessed in this area. Like ridiculously blessed. With those two aforementioned friends who are still my friends, my wonderful loyal husband, and a really great family, I just don't need to complain.
BUt I will anylize. Because that's what I do.
What happens to those forever friends who disappear from our lives? My friends from high school are mostly not my friends anymore. Most of them I don't actually even know what happened to them. At the time I thought they were close friends. One of them, I'll call her Ann, would sit and talk with me for hours about deep (for high school) meaningful things. We were like Dr. House and Wilson, always over analyzing each others' lives and concluding why they were the way they were. We gave advice, we told each other secrets. I liked her a lot, but I think, looking back, she might have been a frienemy. Either that or insanely jealous, emotionally unstable, and unable to cope with marriage... That's a whole other story.
Anyway, I had these friends. Lots of them. Some of them were sort of shallow, some weren't. Some were pretty great and (I thought) deep, with good roots. And now, as I look back at each one of them, the things that put us together aren't really common or useful or present in our lives anymore. One girl I went to church and school with (there were like three of them), we hung out all the time and did stuff. Her boyfriend was my brother's BFF... and it turned out, that was a big reason we were friends. So when she broke up with him after college, she sort of broke up with me too.
So I guess this happening over and over, the natural cycle of friendships, has made me think that none of my friends will be my friends forever. Yet I still imagine us growing old together. I still picture our kids as teenagers, friends. I still think it will happen even though the chances of all of the friends I have still being around are pretty slim. So why do I keep hoping? Because otherwise I probably wouldn't keep trying to be friends with anyone.
If I'd known the friends I had in high school were all going to take different turns in life and leave and stop talking to me, or just disappear... I probably wouldn't have wanted to keep them as friends. But they might not have chosen me, either, if they'd known how it would turn out.
Each person we meet changes us in some way, opens our eyes to a new world, to a perspective we hadn't heard. Each person has inherent value, and each person is worth getting to know. While we may or may not know them well, I guess you don't know how good of a friend they'll be until you put the energy in to get to know them.
I have a theory about heart-to-heart friends, that we really only make them when we're young, and once we hit 25, we stop really inviting people in to the intimate places of our hearts. I don't know if it's true, but it seems to me that most people are either happy with the friends they already made when they were younger, (or maybe their spouse), or they're happy with being shallow and not having any close friends. Or maybe no one's actually happy with their relationships. I guess that's also a possibility. I met most of my closest friends before I was 25. Not that I don't want to meet more, but some how it just gets harder, I guess.

So the friend from high school who I thought would be my friend forever? She kind of still is my friend. Or rather, my friend again. We had a little 12-year hiatus. So it's not the same as it was, because our interaction is all on facebook. We lived a lot of our lives between communication. We experienced the bulk of adulthood without each other. So we don't have the shared experiences a lot of friends do. But I sort of feel like, if we ever did meet up face to face, we'd maybe just sort of pick up where we left off and move forward, deeper, knowing each other better now, knowing how the world works better. Because there is something about true friends of the heart, something that makes you able to forgive their unintentional wounds, something that just wants to believe the best about them, something that connects you even when you've pulled away. Memories maybe? Or maybe we all really want to be known and we're just afraid and messed up and do the best we can with what we have. And sometimes that ends up being called friendship.