Life Goes On

This summer I read an excerpt from Elizabeth MacCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir. I almost got down on my knees and thanked whoever it was that put that article into my hands. MacCracken's first son was stillborn. She captured what it is to live with neonatal loss like noone else I have encountered.

She wrote, simply, life goes on and so does death.

There is no handbook for life after the loss of babies. I know because I desparately tried to find it. The closest thing I came to was Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking which is about the sudden death of the writer's husband and her daughter's sudden and seemingly inexplicable, grave illness. The "loss of children" books that I read never addressed continuing to live with the loss of such tiny children. One author wrote that people who experienced neonatal loss involving multiples had a whole slew of other issues she would not deal with in this particular book. So, I groped my way through grief, anger, rage, sadness, blame, shame, despair sometimes with grace, much of the time not. All the while I got up everyday and functioned - much of the time on autopilot - but I was functioning I assured myself. My internal voice often said, "I have always gotten out of bed! I have never stayed in bed depressed!"

But, I was doing some pretty nutty stuff . . .

. . . like drinking very little water. I used to drink lots of water. You know, because it is supposed to be really good for you. When I was in the hospital fighting the infection that took the lives of Hope, Meret and Annalisa, the nurses and doctor encouraged me to drink as much water as I could to keep the fever down and I am not sure what else. I drank gallons of water - no exaggeration. It was the only thing I felt I could control. It didn't work, so I boycot it now.

I have been hanging on to a giftcard that graduate students in Scott's department so generously chipped in to buy us once our pregnancy with triplets was public knowledge. I have had that card for 3 1/2 years. I have not known what to do with it. At one point I thought we would donate it to our Women's Center. At another I had the idea of buying books for our public library in their names. I even thought we could use it for our next child, but then thought that that would not be fair somehow.

All these seemed like perfectly okay ideas, but at the same time none of them felt right. And, that really has been the theme here. What does one do after three babies die anyway? A lot does not feel right. I received a flyer for a children's book drive today so I am back to buying books for book drive with the giftcard. At least I think I can actually do something with it now.

My dayplanner used to be the biggest I have ever seen - truly. Inside I had elaborate grids and calendars to plan out my weeks and months with multiple colored pens to keep track of my progress. My life was divided into sections a la Stephen Covey - Partner, Family Member, Lecturer - so that I always knew what had to be done. I all but burned that thing after the babies died. It just felt so pointless keeping track of all this minutia. I started to wing it. I skipped birthdays and stopped sending thank you cards (gratitude?! not so much). I didn't return emails or phone calls. I didn't clean the house. Stuff piled up. I cared but didn't at the same time.

There is more . . . I just can't think of all the ways this loss has been incorporated into the very fiber of my being. I guess by hanging on to all these habits, quirks and feelings I have been keeping the triplets present in our everyday life somehow. I tried to not let life go on - to grind my heels into the ground - because how could it?

What I was waiting for was someone to say was that death goes on. I didn't know that is what I needed to know until I read it. I did know that I was full of grief and self-blame and could not figure out where I could put it. There is a great song by Beck call Missing and one of the lines is "I can't believe these tears were mine. I'll give them to you to put away in a box." I think that's what I thought was going to allow life to go on - putting the deaths of Hope, Meret and Annalisa away in a box.

Here's the thing - the more I have tried to box everything up, the more life does not go on.

So, on this rainy October day, a week before Scott and Alia come home, I remember Hope, Meret and Annalisa . . . and not only their deaths, but their lives as well. There have been so many times throughout this process of adopting Alia when I have felt their little souls were there with us. And, for that I am grateful to them.