44

Today marks the 44th birthday of my still born brother. When my mom was still alive my sister and I would have made sure to send a bouquet of white flowers to my parents (if we weren't with them at the time). We didn't have many other rituals to mark the day - when we were little my sister and I knew about the brother we never had, my mom sometimes  told us little snippets, but that was about it.

Only later did I understand why she reacted to things the way she did. She thought it was ridiculous when in films / TV shows women in labor would be screaming (my dad had asked her not to scream when she went in to the L&D room to deliver her son while he had to wait in the hallway - she didn't scream when she had me or my sister either and delivered all three children without epidural or other pain medication. I had M. Gourmand without epidural too and I think my screams were heard on the entire L&D floor and I don't know how I would have managed without...); when she hurt herself she would say "I've faced  bigger fires before" and wouldn't complain about it;  she would tell us to 'enjoy life' before getting pregnant - feeling she and my dad had been too young (they were in their early twenties) and to 'green' to face those doctors with their horrible bedside manners that first time around (and probably even a feeling of mother's guilt that she might have been able to change the outcome had she been more assertive).

Since she died, don't really know how to celebrate this day with my dad. Anything that refers to the time with my mom expressed in the presence of his new wife still seems to make him nervous, as if she wouldn't be able to deal with his past (or he just doesn't know yet how to fit everything into his head and heart yet). I just sent him a text message to let him know I haven't forgotten. I thought that would be it, but now that I'm writing this I've decided to ask my sister (who is with them in their house in the South of France this week) to buy a small white bouquet (or gather some white wildflowers if that's easier) for my dad to remember his son.

Pilgrimage

Today would have been my mother's 67th birthday. As I couldn't visit her grave - 900 km from where we live - I went on a little pilgrimage with hubby and kids in tow.

It was Valery, who asked in a comment one this post if there wasn't a special place nearby to remember her. I couldn't immediately think of anything, but I kept the comment in the back of my mind. Then a while ago I knew exactly what I wanted to do once my mom's birthday would come around: when I was pregnant with M. Sensible, my parents came over to visit and my mom asked me if I wanted to join her on a walk to the basilica, because she wanted to light a candle, to give thanks and ask for a blessing for this pregnancy. I happily obliged and we made a beautiful little pilgrimage together, first crossing the river to the old part of town, then climbing the hundreds of steps, up to the top of the hill where the basilica lies, overlooking the city.

Today, M. Sensible, our dapper 3.5 year old, walked those steps all by himself, holding his daddy's hand. M. Gourmand was on my back in the baby carrier, and my mother was there too, her spirit accompanying me to the top.

After the first long set of steps, we came across this writing on a wall. I thought it was quite fitting on a day like this.

English translation:
Don't ask anyone your way,
especially not those who know it.
You wouldn't be able to get lost anymore.

When we arrived at the basilica, mass was still in progress and it being Palm Sunday, the church was packed. We quietly stood in the back for a few minutes and then I lit a candle for my mum, before heading out again.

On the way back home (this time via public transport) we stopped by the bakery to buy a cake, which we'll eat later today.

The bracelet - the one she never got to meet

This is the fourth and last post about my mother's bracelet. You can find the other ones here, here and here.

Today we celebrate my youngest son's first birthday. He was born 14 months after my mother died, so she wasn't there anymore to see me pregnant for the second time, to hold her fourth grandchild in her arms, or to have his coin touch her arm on a daily basis. She did know, however, that we wanted to try for another child, and it was a thought that made her happy, even though she knew she would probably not meet that child (at least not in this life).

When gearing up for another round of IVF in our quest for baby #2, my mom's situation got a lot worse. Being in a different country and not able to see her every day, it was hard for me to know how bad it really was. So I started suppression. Just before I was to start stimulation I got a very emotional call from my parents. I knew she was doing a lot worse than before, but my dad said it was really really bad. They were still going on a river cruise organized for sick and disabled people, but, he told me, after that she wanted it to be over. I couldn't believe it, it was so hard. I didn't quite know what "she wants it to be over" would entail, but I knew it would not go hand in hand with our IVF schedule. I told my dad, I asked him if he thought she could hang in there a bit longer. He handed the phone to my mom. I explained my situation to her (it seems so selfish now), asked her if she thought she could wait. We were both crying. She answered that life had become so unbearably hard for her, she didn't think she could do it. I went into denial. Four days after starting stimming, when at my mom's side in Holland, I came to my senses and we canceled our cycle. Three days later my mom died.

We tried again a few months later. It was a BFN. I felt very down. But luckily we had one frozen embryo left from this cycle, with which we did a FET in early May 2011. And now our son is one year old.

I cannot share my son's milestones or funny things that happened with my mother anymore. But somehow I choose to believe that she knows him. As the months since her passing went by, I was looking for that bird, or ray of sunshine, or some other sign that would tell me my mom was somehow still there with me. But I had the feeling there was nothing. Until I realized that if there was somewhere I could find my mother's spirit, it was in my baby's eyes. This boy, so calm, so happy, has something of her in him (even though everyone keeps telling me he looks so much like his dad).

My dad decided to add a coin for him to the bracelet. It is complete now.

The bracelet - 39

After this post and this one, another (overdue) post about my mother's bracelet. It should have been posted exactly a month ago, on December 16, 2012 - the day I turned 39! I don't really have an excuse, I wasn't too much caught up in celebrations - hubby was away on business, so I was alone with the kids. Early in the morning it seemed that the oldest was getting a stomach flu, but the idea of baking a chocolate birthday cake with mommy was apparently the best remedy, because all of his symptoms were suddenly gone!

I was born during the oil crisis and the Dutch government had decided to hold a few "car free Sundays". My mom's labor started in the early hours of such a Sunday. Before they headed to the hospital my dad called the police to ask for a 'laissez passer', which he easily got. He later told me he had hoped for a police escort, haha!

I imagine my birth being the best early Christmas present my parents got. They now had two healthy girls. They were in a new city, no longer tied to the hospital (and the nasty OB/GYN) where she delivered her first two children. Of course her new OB was aware of her history and my mom told me once that he had come to her (I think just after she'd given birth to me) to tell her they were able to deliver a live baby after a woman had come in with the same issue my mom had had with her firstborn (abruptio placenta). What she must have gone through hearing that news, I have no idea. I guess it was a good thing she had a healthy newborn in her arms herself.

My mom with me, 2 or 3 days old.

This was my third birthday without my mom. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it.

The bracelet - three firstborns

As a follow-up of this post, I had planned to post this in July, but then so many things got in the way that it was never finished and kept in my drafts folder way too long.

July used to be a sad month for my mother, as it holds the day she gave birth to her firstborn, a stillborn son.

But then, 33 years later, my sister made it a bit brighter month, by giving birth to her firstborn, a healthy boy, on July 5th. My parents had planned to arrive in time for the birth (my sister lives in California, my parents in Holland), but as the boy decided to come earlier than the due date, they were too late. At the time I was still living in the US, so I flew to California to help out the first few days, until my parents arrived. We then spent some time all together (my husband also came over in the weekend), which was pretty special (and perhaps a bit overwhelming for my sister as well). My parents were as proud and happy as grandparents can be.

My nephew turned 10 this summer. We took him rock climbing as a birthday present when the whole family came to France in August.

Another seven years later (thank you IF...) another firstborn was expected. Mine. It would be my parents' third grandchild. My mother, always anxious the last few weeks before a due date, wanted to be around again, even though I thought we had agreed they would not come before the baby's arrival as per our wishes... But her restlessness was too strong, so they came on the due date itself, only the baby decided it would stay put for another 10 days... It caused a lot of stress, even anger on DH's part, that took a long time to settle. I wrote a little bit about it here. But there was a lot of joy too. His coin on the bracelet is bigger than that of the other grandchildren, because they jeweler didn't have the smaller size in stock at the time, but my mom told me he also deserved it, the much wanted child... This miracle boy turned three on July 6th, yes just one day after his cousin (and if you would keep the Pacific time zone, they were born on the same day). We celebrated it at the beach in Holland.

Before she died, my mom told me July had now turned from a dark to a happy month for her, celebrating the birthdays of her two grandsons.

The heart on the bracelet belongs to her own firstborn, my brother, born still on July 23rd. I wrote about it here. I wish I could have talked more about it with my mom, especially after I'd become a mother myself. After she died, my dad decided he wanted their son's name engraved on her tombstone as well - he was torn that he hadn't thought of it before she died, and he hadn't been able to share it with her. I don't think it matters, I think somehow she knows it anyway, and it feels good to see those two names together, engraved in the glass, especially now that my dad has a new partner and will most likely not be buried next to my mom when his time comes. It somehow feels she's less alone.

The bracelet

My mom used to wear this bracelet

First, there were only two 'coins' on it, one with my sister's name on the front and her birthday on the back, and one with my name and birthday. Then years later she added the heart to represent her stillborn son. When my nephew was born, he got a coin too, next to my sister's, and almost four years later one was added for my niece. The last one my mom added was for our first son.

When my mom died, we talked a bit about what to do with the bracelet. It had been such a part of her, that we briefly considered having her wear it and take it with her into the grave. But it had too much meaning to do so. Incorporating it into the gravestone was also discussed - but the chances that it would get stolen were too big, so we abandoned that as well. Until we came up with a better idea, my dad kept it safe.

My dad recently had a sixth coin with our second son's name and birthday added to the bracelet, and when we saw each other over Easter, he gave it to me and asked to alternate it with my sister.

I won't wear it because it's not my story that it represents, but my mom's. I liked the idea of exchanging it with my sister, but at first I didn't really know what to do with it, I didn't want it just sit in its box and being forgotten until I would hand it to her.

But now I think I know. Today is my sister's birthday. So this morning I opened the box, I took the bracelet in my hand and looked at that oldest coin, the one with my sister's name and birthday on it and thought what that birth (a healthy girl after stillbirth and miscarriage, born on a day people in Holland remember the death from WWII) and that girl has meant to my mother for all those years.

My mom and sister, on the beach in Holland, probably somewhere in the early 1990s

And it made me tear up, because I miss my mom so much.

My mom, my back ache, and how it's all related

I had intended to write a post about my mother one the one-year anniversary of her death, November 19.  But for several reasons (one being that it was emotionally not easy to write such a post), I didn’t get to it until now.

When I was composing the post in my head at the time, it was mainly about what my mom’s death had brought us. Besides the tremendous sadness of losing her, I also wanted to share that somehow, her death (and the fact that my dad found a new partner rather quickly and wasn’t a bundle of loneliness and misery we had to go and take care of) gave my sister and me a kind of liberty. Of course we would never say that we favored this liberty over having our mother, but – at least to me – it did offer some peace of mind. The umbilical chord had finally been completely cut. Let me explain: ever since we’d been living abroad, and even more so since the birth of our son, I always had this urge to move back to Holland. Not immediately, but someday in the not too far future. I wanted to be close to my mom, to have her around to babysit my child(ren), to be my reliable source to fall back on when I was in doubt. To have that person close to you whom you don’t need to explain anything to, she already knows. This feeling made me restless – always wanting to leave, even though hubby had no desire to move back to the lowlands any time soon. However, when she had died, this feeling was almost immediately gone. I wanted to stay where I was. I had good and affordable childcare for my son, we had built some nice friendships with local and international people, I liked this city, I even got some more interesting work projects. It was as if I finally was able to appreciate this and value it for what it was. In a way, I think a similar thing happened to my sister. She lives in the US and talks at least once a year about moving back to Holland, about wanting her kids to grow up with their Dutch cousins, etc. However, just before my mom got her death sentence, they had sold their house in a very uninspiring town, to move to a town close to a big city, with all the cultural offerings they were missing so much. They briefly thought about abandoning that move and moving straight back to Holland, but luckily they didn’t do so. My mom got to experience the positive change it made for my sister, but also the rest of her family – and even when she was sick mentioned to me once that moving to that town was the best decision my sister had made. Then my mom died, and my sister had the urge to stay in Holland to take care of my dad. But they were getting into each other’s space, and not much later, my dad met someone new (something my sister had a lot more trouble with than I, but that’s a separate story). A year after they had rented their new home, they got the news that the owners wanted to get rid of it. So it was move or buy. Again there were discussions about family in Holland, etc. etc.  But in the meantime my sister had also obtained her US citizenship (my brother-in-law had done it a few years before – having to give up his Dutch citizenship, but my sister could keep dual, the kids already had dual citizenship since birth). They bought.

So something along this line would have been my initial thought for a post. I didn’t dwell daily on missing my mom. I was even glad that the tensions that were there sometimes between us and my parents (mainly because of stuff my mom did that irritated the hell out of my hubby) were now gone. I did miss that I couldn’t call her regarding my pregnancy, talking to my dad about it was just not the same. But since we lived far away, she hadn’t been present much in daily life, so that just continued. If I stopped and reflected, I could get very sad (and still can) about the memory that is gone. My mom remembered everything, my dad remembers hardly anything, She was a better listener, or at least made an effort to register things from our daily lives –my birthday was almost two weeks ago, on a Friday, of course my dad called when I was at the pool for my prenatal swimming that I’ve been doing every week since September – and I cried when I heard his voicemail, knowing that if my mom still had been alive, she would have remembered, and they would have called early, to catch me before I left.

For the first anniversary of her death we went to Paris with my dad and his girlfriend (I didn’t want to drive all the way up to Holland and wasn’t sure airlines would still allow me to fly). I had mentioned to my dad a few weeks earlier that I wanted to light a candle for my mom at the Notre Dame cathedral. We would also take a walk at the Père Lachaise cemetery. My dad’s girlfriend would be there, but she had already indicated that there would be enough opportunity for my dad and me to take some time apart and mourn. It all seemed to be a good plan and we were enjoying the weekend and the fact that we were spending time together. The day we arrived we took the walk at the cemetery (beautiful views over Paris), I saw a grave of an artists we’d been to an exhibit of once when we were vacationing in France. He made a lot of (crazy) paintings with violins, which I really liked and I had tried to get (a reproduction of) one of his works, but to no avail. I made a photo of the grave. I asked my dad if he’d seen it, he said he did, but he didn’t remember the vacation story. I emailed the photo to my sister. She didn’t remember either. My mom would have.

The next day, November 19, we went to Notre Dame in the morning. When we arrived there it seemed my dad wanted to split up – but not the way we had talked about, but him staying with the girlfriend. He was nervous. I told him I wanted to light the candle with him, what the girlfriend and my hubby wanted to do was up to them, if someone could take the toddler, that would be good. So finally my dad asked his girlfriend to walk around with our toddler, while he and I lit a candle and hubby was there too to take a picture. Then when we had taken our moment, my dad asked me to give the girlfriend a hug later, because this was difficult for her too. I didn’t really react at first, but when I was outside again I screamed “No” in my head. This was our moment. If someone needed to be comforted it was me not her!

Then a few days later, when we were all back home, my dad called me and told me he and the girlfriend had had an argument. Apparently she had first said she didn’t even want to come to Paris, because it was too hard. Then she still came, but had said she didn’t want to come to Notre Dame with us, but in the end she did. I was mad. I told him she could have opened her mouth at breakfast, when we were discussing what to do that day. But maybe it was also my dad, because he always wants to have everyone around him and do everything together, so maybe she did suggest she would go do something else and meet up with us later, and he convinced her to come along anyway. I don’t know. I told him they should find a way to deal with it. I understand it is difficult, but my dad clearly still doesn’t know how to manage dealing with mourning my mom and having a girlfriend, but it doesn’t work this way – we now cannot talk about my mom when his girlfriend is there, so even though when we see each other we all have a nice time, and I don’t blame him for having found someone new (yes, it was soon, but these things sometimes just happen, that’s life), but we can’t shut out my mom. The girlfriend should not see my mom as competition. They are incomparable anyway.

That was the anniversary weekend. A month later it was my birthday, a week later it was Christmas, and I entered the final month of pregnancy. On Friday I made a very ordinary but apparently completely wrong movement and pulled my lower back. It hurt the entire weekend, I couldn’t bend, walking was difficult, etc. Thanks to some stretching and massaging I started feeling a little better on Sunday afternoon. On Monday evening the osteopath thankfully had time to see me. These are the to-go to specialists in France for muscle aches, back pain etc, but I always forget that they are part shrinks (they work from the ‘cranio-sacral’ standpoint, I’m more used to physical therapists or chiropractors who massage or ‘crack’ you and give you exercises), so there I was, lying on the table and then the question came, if something had happened recently. So I first said no, and then I said well, maybe I’m missing my mom a bit more around the Holidays and the nearing end of the pregnancy, and oh, there was this thing that happened around the anniversary of her death… So while he was working on me, my back pain went from a 5-6 to an 8  - which the osteopath said was perfectly normal, because I need to release it all, it will start to feel better soon and disappear in a few days.

The hour on the massage table made me reflect again. On how I have lost an anchor place with my mom’s passing, on how difficult it can be that that one person, who knew everything about me, is just no longer there. And I thought about the text again that was on a condolence card someone sent us last year. It’s part of a poem by a Dutch (Christian oriented) poet:

Zeven maal om de aarde te gaan, (to go around the earth seven times)

als het zou moeten op handen en voeten; (if necessary on all fours)

zeven maal, om die ene te groeten (seven times, just to greet that one person)

die daar lachend te wachten zou staan. (who would be waiting there, smiling)

Zeven maal om de aarde te gaan. (to go around the earth seven times)

Sometimes the urge to just wanting to see her, touch her, one more time, smiling, like she used to be, before she got sick, can hurt so much. And I wish her grave wasn’t 900 km away, and I could go visit it often,  and just sit there, and be with her in spirit.

(and yes, my back is already starting to feel better…)

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. 

WiseGuy and Lola

My heart aches for WiseGuy, whose little Lola passed away two days after birth. WiseGuy was kept in the dark for almost a week. If you want to help remember Lola, please visit Kristin's blog.

Eulogy for my stillborn brother

I have a brother. He would have celebrated his 40th birthday today, but he was stillborn, so we never got to know him. My mother had him with her for almost nine months, felt his kicks, his hiccups, until one day those were gone. She called the doctor, a young and inexperienced replacement, who came and told her she shouldn't worry, he thought he still heard a heartbeat. About 10 days later she gave birth to a lifeless son - the medical personnel treated her like she was a stupid, ignorant woman. My dad was not allowed to be in the delivery room with her, they were not allowed to see the baby, to see if he resembled mommy or daddy, nobody had ever thought about memory boxes with foot or hand prints in those days... They were led to believe it was for the best they never saw him - that he had 'blown up' because he had taken in all the amniotic fluid.

My dad and granddad buried him while my mom was still in the hospital. She wanted to visit the grave later, but she was afraid to ask, they weren't supposed to talk about it anymore, so she never went. She didn't get to say goodbye...

They were supposed to forget - just get pregnant again and have another baby. Don't think about this one. But of course they didn't forget, they couldn't, the pain remained, even after my sister and I were born. They didn't talk much about it, I always used to forget the date, until I noticed one of them shed a tear or they gave each other an emotional hug and then I remembered...

Now that I have been pregnant myself and am blessed with a healthy baby boy, I will never ever forget my brother's birthday anymore. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for my mom, those 10 days without feeling any life, knowing something was so wrong, but the doctors not listening to you. My parents are going to the cemetery today, for the first time after 40 years, even though the grave is no longer there. And I'm so happy Carly honored my Names in the Sand request, it is good to see his name spelled out.