So I finally won something! I won a contest! There’s a writer named Lea Grover that I instantly fell in love with. The rythym of her writing. The truthfulness of her words. Unapologetic and strong but soft and mushy too. She’s someone I’d totally be friends with and not just in my head.

Lea Grover, my imaginary bff, posed this question on her blog a few weeks ago…”If you won a free blown up canvas print, what photograph would you blow up and why?”

When I was little, my grandparents lived a mile away. In their sunken living room complete with baroque hanging lamps and a gigantic green velour couch, there was a wall of pictures. Every family member was represented. From their parents stiffly posed in pre-Russian Revolution sepia tones… to their wedding photo… to my mother and uncle… and then all the grandchildren. It was arranged on the wall in almost a diamond shape but not really. It was perfectly askew. There must’ve been fifty photographs. I knew I wanted to have a wall of pictures like that when I grew up.

When we first got married, our walls were full of wedding and honeymoon pictures. My mother in law, on a visit from Florida, said “Jeez, you’d better have a baby. There’s too many pictures of the two of you here.” She was right. We had the quantity but not the diversity.

Then Noah was born and the wall grew. We had a mini photo printer and I was always on the lookout for frames at garage sales. His face was everywhere.

July 2010, the accident happened. A swimming pool accident. In an instant he was gone. And all his pictures came down that same day. I couldn’t look at his face. It was the worst pain in the world.

It took about two years for me to even be able to look at a picture of him. Video was still impossible.

Six years have passed. We have a three year old daughter now. She knows about her angel brother Noah. She knows which of her toys were his. She says “Noah gave this to me, right Mommy?” and I see her trying to make sense of this mysterious brother we talk about.

A few months ago I  was having trouble trying to print out a photo to put into a locket I had. I printed it out too big onto an 8.5 x 11 piece of typing paper. His face covered the whole page. And for the first time since Noah died, I hung that picture on the wall.

It’s hanging behind the door in Miriam’s room. I see it every morning and night. Sometimes I stare into his eyes and try to see if he knew he would be gone just two weeks later. What would that look like? Like he’s saying sorry? Like he’s saying goodbye? See ‘ya, Mama. I’m done here!

Sometimes I just glance at his face and sometimes I stop to stare. But in the last few months, it’s gotten easier. The lump in my throat has gotten a little smaller. The tears don’t involuntarily fall like they used to. I feel more in control of myself when faced with that face.

So back to my bff Lea Grover’s contest. I wrote that I felt ready to look at Noah’s face again. That I would love to have something solid and real like a blown up canvas of his face.

I still get confused sometimes. I’ll need to touch one of his socks that I keep in my glove compartment. Or touch one of the few toys we kept. That will bring me back to reality. The reality that he was here but now he’s not. I want to see his face. I want our daughter Miriam to know his face.

When our new canvas print arrives and the typing paper version comes down off the wall, I’m sure somedays I’ll only glance and somedays I’ll really stare.

 

In the beginning I couldn’t eat a thing. I remember eating at the Shiva right after coming from the cemetery. My brother Barry brought me a plate of food. That is tradition. Someone brings the mourners a plate of food. Lox, bagels, sliced cucumbers. I remember thinking how Noah would’ve loved all this food . And being confused at the platters being there and him not.

I had a hard time eating because now Noah couldn’t. It felt like I didn’t eat for months. I couldn’t stand thinking about him never eating that béchamel and mushroom pizza we used to get at Trader Joe’s. Or him never eating an apple in the shopping cart at Shoprite ever again. And then throwing that apple on the floor in the third aisle which was the candy aisle. We would share a bag of chocolate licorice as we shopped and I would pay for the empty bag.

I tried to tell myself he was somewhere where there was no need for food. No snacks. No meals, no shopping cart treats.

When I was a little girl, my mother would make cakes from boxed Betty Crocker mixes. My favorite was a fudge mix with tiny chocolate chips that was so delicious. Yes, the finished cake was good. But the batter…oh my god. I would sneak spoons full of the batter when my mother turned her back before she poured it into the non stick pan. Chocolate waves folded onto each other. And while I remember all of this clearly, what is most vivid in my mind was this thought:  I couldn’t wait until I was older and I could make this batter all by myself and eat it all with a spoon. I wouldn’t even bake the cake.

The stage of depriving myself food, especially anything that Noah loved (and that was a lot of things) lasted a long time. I lost a lot of weight. By the time we began fertility treatments about nine months after the accident, I was eating so little. The pleasure of food was lost. But at some point, I went from the need to deprive myself of what Noah could no longer have to not being able to stop eating. I don’t remember exactly when or how that shift occurred.

The stress of fertility treatments, money, and the brokenness of our lives made me look for something that gave some pleasure. Writing or drawing was too difficult at the time. The introspection that required was impossible. Food binges became the easy way to escape and squash the thoughts and feelings for a little while. I found myself constantly in the kitchen. Eating. Anything. No food was safe. I didn’t even know what being actually hungry felt like anymore.

I gained and gained weight. I never weighed myself but I ballooned to the highest weight I’d ever been. I was out of breath and out of my mind. I never looked at my body anymore. Just my face and hair.

And then we switched doctors and our lives were about to change yet again. There was a medical study being conducted that, if we qualified, would save us many thousands of dollars in our next fertility cycle attempt. We told the doctor we would do anything to get another chance. He smiled and said the nurse will call.

I got that phone call in an  Ulta Beauty store. Shopping for lipstick probably and looking for makeup that would continue to hide my sadness.

I answered my cell and went off to a quiet corner of the vanity lit store. I was told in the most sensitive way possible that, based on my current weight, I needed to lose 55 pounds to qualify for the study. And I needed to do it in about 2 months to stay within the deadline of the study. The nurse then said that she doesn’t want me to hurt myself and that it’s practically impossible and she was sorry. I remember crying amongst the lighted mirrors displayed on the shelf. I saw myself over and over magnified in the shiny silver circles and ovals. I told her I will do it. I will be safe about it and I will do it. “PUT US ON THE LIST,” I begged.

I had to willingly go back to the days of no appetite, no desire to taste or enjoy. I was now a machine that had to burn off this fat to get back in the game. To have a baby again. To be a family again.

I started the very next day. I told my boss that morning that I needed his support. We had a wine luncheon to go to that day. We had them often. Great restaurants and great wine. I needed to start immediately. I remember eating a salad and beef carpaccio. And spitting all the wine instead of drinking a glass or two of the one I liked best. He gently but firmly encouraged me to keep my eye on the prize. This was the  last chance. We had to qualify.

I started walking every night after work. I borrowed a flashlight from my neighbor Kim. At first walking up any slight hill was impossible. My knees hurt. My feet hurt. I was so far from my goal. I talked to God while I walked. And Noah. And myself. That inner dialogue just never stopped.

I walked and starved and walked and cried and starved and then started to walk a little faster. I was so hungry. So that’s what hunger feels like! It had been so long. I had nights I had reached my breaking point. I cried for so many reasons. I was hungry. I was tired. I wanted my son back. I was angry at my body for not getting pregnant. I was angry I had let my gluttony get so out of hand that I may cause us to lose this chance at having a baby again.

Within the first few days of my new regimen, I went to see my regular medical doctor. This was the doctor that had to leave the room when Hal and I went to see her about a week after the accident. She went out into the hallway to cry. She didn’t want to cry in front of us. She was out there for a while I remember.

This visit, I sat down in her office and told her what I needed to do. I asked her if there was anything she could do to help me do this. She said she will help me this one time. I started a medication that would boost my metabolism and eliminate my appetite.

I would try anything. And I did. I tried a colonic. It was awful. The water flows in so strongly that it creates spasms in your stomach and I swear it felt like being in labor. I had wanted it to be an easy bonus to the exercise, starvation, meal replacement shakes, and pills. But it wasn’t. It was not only a pain in the ass but also an unbearable pain in the gut.

And then it all kicked in. I started to lose. Numbers on the scale started dropping. I was now addicted to the empty feeling in my stomach. In a way it was back to punishing myself for losing Noah. I was punished through gluttony and through hunger. That’s how much losing a child changes you. Basic functions to survive became a challenge and skewed  because you’re not even sure you want to survive.

I have never been a girl who talks about dieting. Ever. I’m more likely to talk about the latest commercial for whatever bastardized version of Mexican food Taco Bell is selling. It always looks so good on TV. There’s always a ridiculous catchy name like Burritochiladagordodelicioso.

But now my body was about pure function not form. Function follows form. Scientifically, there was a better chance of pregnancy occurring at a healthy BMI versus the form of a chips and bagels and cookies and canisters of Pringles body I had been in.

I was now a finely tuned fat burning, waist cinching machine again. I did it. I made it to the weight I needed to be. The nurses and doctors were shocked and thrilled. I just kept smiling through it all on the outside at least. My body was going to do it.  I was giving it my all. And onto the blood tests, injections, and medications again. But this time it had to work.

We scrounged for the money we needed. We knew that if we could still be here after all this, nothing was impossible. We would figure out a way. It’s like when Hal or Miriam misplaces something in our apartment. If I know the item hasn’t left the confines of our home, I always say ‘It has to be here somewhere!’ Miriam has started saying that too now. My willpower and strength has wavered throughout the time since Noah died. But it did have to be there somewhere. Sometimes it just gets misplaced amongst all the stresses of life. But you shake out that blanket or move the decorative pillows around and you will always find it somewhere.

 

 

 I remember a lot of just being quiet in the beginning. Almost as if it hurt to form the thoughts, then string the words together into a sentence, and even harder to push them out of our mouths. The sadness was crippling.

We saw Noah everywhere. Peaking around every corner. Every trace of him was hidden on the day of the accident. Hal had called our neighbors, who were heartbroken themselves, and asked them to clear all his toys out and take all his pictures off the wall. His sippy cups. His snacks. His high chair. His books. So many books.

We came home that night to the emptiest apartment anyone could imagine. Empty of all life. Empty of warmth and light. Even the smell was different. Just flat and dead. I looked around as Hal cried, “Did I do the right thing??! I didn’t know what to do! I thought this would help. I’m sorry. Did I do the right thing?”

For him to think to do that and be thinking of me that day was so…just so him. His urge to protect me was never more evident even though it was impossible. It was an impossible choice. There were no right choices here.

We lived in that apartment with Noah’s closed door directly across from our bedroom for another two months. Where I used to see his head pop up and happily yell for me from his crib, I now saw a closed door when I opened my eyes every morning. I opened it a few times. And quickly closed it. I needed to see it was all real.  It was filled with all his stuff. The sunlight that used to come through his plain tan curtains was serene and sad. I was sad. But not yet serene. I’m not sure when the serene part comes.

We moved to a new apartment two towns over. I had started a job in a wine store one month after I became a mother without a child. Hal went back to work. He was struggling. I threw myself into my job. Hal was barely holding on. He was able to take a medical leave. I guess I went on autopilot. It must’ve seemed like I was doing great. I pushed outward. Hal pulled inward. And when we met in the middle at home together, we were still that couple on our wedding day. Just very, very lost and sad.

We starting going to temple every Friday night. It was someplace to go. Someplace where we could just put every ounce of what faith we had into following along in the prayer book.

A few weeks after the accident, we were at a Friday night service and a young, simply lovely and genuine Rabbi was leading services. Rabbi Glazer led an interactive sermon in which she asked all of us the following question: Tell me about a time in your life that you felt a sense of wonderment and closeness to God? The Rabbi told us a story about a hiking trip she took as a teenager and being overwhelmed with the natural beauty of a national park.

A lady named Claire stood up. Claire, I believe, is close to ninety years old. Her body and voice shakes badly from Parkinson’s and is as beautiful and elegant as a movie star. Claire told the story of swimming with barracudas for her 80th birthday! It was fantastic. I laughed for one of the first times since the accident.

Rabbi asked for more people to share. My hand suddenly went up without really knowing what I was going to say.

Something along these lines came out of my mouth:

“We lost our two year old son three weeks ago. And I am overwhelmed with the love of my husband and our strength right now. I don’t really know how we’re doing it. And I’m in awe of the strength God and this congregation is giving us.”

There was the clichéd audible gasp after the first sentence from everyone around us. And then the tears flowed everywhere. The rabbi and I practically ran to each other and hugged. I didn’t want to let go.

After the service was over, we were bombarded with people. Such love. Everyone introducing themselves, crying along with us. One old man quietly whispered he lost a daughter many years ago and  “it’s not easy but it will get easier.” He releases balloons on her birthday every year. I told him I loved that idea.

We received so many cards and gifts in the weeks after. Flowers, food, a beautiful engraved locket with Noah’s picture, picture frames for when we were ready to see his picture again, books of comfort, and so much more. Prayer chains were started by friends’ churches which I thought was lovely. I love the concept of a prayer chain. I didn’t really know what it was before we needed one.

A manila padded envelope arrived one afternoon in that time period of endless deliveries. Inside was a knit shawl in colors of browns and blues. It was perfect. The note was from an old friend I’d seen once at a reunion in the last 20 years. Lisa had the ladies in her church’s knitting circle make me a prayer shawl. The note explained that the ladies all pray and knit for a few hours every week. I was overwhelmed. I wore that shawl constantly. Even in the heat of August. We both needed it.We needed any drop of comfort we could find.

Signs and symbols became the focus of our days and nights.

To be continued…

 

We thought we would always be the couple we were on our wedding day. All of us do, don’t we? We were fast and furiously happy from the first date. Even before that, with endless phone conversations and flirty IM’ing.

We met online on Jdate. Hal wrote to me. I ignored it. Six months later, I wrote to him. He was angry I’d never answered him. And I accidentally insulted his mother in my first communication with him. I mistook her for Janet Reno in his profile picture of them dancing. Seriously, I did.

Our first date was perfect. Hal was stage managing a play. I came to see the play. He left a balloon animal, a flower, and a card on my seat. He came out to meet me when he saw me in the lobby. The box office lady knew who I was. Everyone did. We locked eyes. His were bright blue at that moment. Mine were relieved and smiling. Yup, this was it. I even called my best friend, Stacy, at intermission to say “Game over, I found him!”

A few weeks later, we found ourselves at Great Adventure. The Ferris Wheel is as adventurous as I get. And that is where we started our adventure. That is where Hal told me he loved me for the first time. At the top of the Ferris Wheel. Up and down and all around. Looking out at the amusement park view from our little bucket seats. I was still crying when the ride stopped.

We were married two years later in an outdoor ceremony on a May day that was too cold for an outdoor ceremony. My dress was named Chantilly. Hal had peacock feathers and a sprig of rosemary in his boutonnière. I had beaded flowers my mother had made in my bouquet. I was thirty-nine years old.

We had tickets to see a Sunday matinee of Mama Mia on Broadway in December of that year. We were casually trying to get pregnant. By casually, I mean by just having sex like newlyweds. So I guess, we were pretty serious about it. I found myself mostly afraid of seeing a + on the stick. And then I was surprised at feeling disappointed after a few months of negatives. That morning I saw a big, bold, dark blue + !

“Hal, come look at something,” I said to him in a slightly shocked and stuttering voice. He was still in bed. He thought our cats, who had not been getting along, had maybe had a breakthrough. No cuddling cats. Just a positive stick covered in pee. I did another pregnancy test in the bathroom of the Broadhurst Theatre a few hours later. A positive in two states must be real.

Noah was born in September.

I had terrible post partum depression that hit about 10 days after he was born. We had no idea what was happening or what to do. I remember wishing Noah would just disappear. I needed help and Hal did everything he could to find it for me. I stopped my attempt at breast feeding so I could go back onto my anti-depressant that I obviously needed.

With help from my mother, I was able to be a stay at home mom to Noah. Of course at the time, I had no idea how much those almost two years with him would play over and over in my head. Pleasure and pain.

We were a happy couple to say the least. Enjoying our baby so much. Enjoying planning family Sunday adventures. “To the chariot!” I would yell and Noah would run to his stroller folded up in the kitchen. He’d drag it out into the living room of our small apartment and climb into it all by himself. Seatbelt clicked, blue shoes kicking and dangling, ready for adventure. One of my favorite memories is walking back into our apartment from the parking lot after a day trip somewhere. Noah was in the middle, holding both our hands. I remember looking across at Hal and him looking at me. We had it all.

It was the day of the accident. I was sitting next to the rabbi at the hospital. Noah had quietly been pronounced. The doctors and nurses were trying to hide their tears. One nurse ran from the room at one point. That’s when I knew.

At some point I said to the rabbi, “Couples get divorced after they lose a child, right? Isn’t that what happens?! That what I’ve heard. Is Hal going away too? Is my marriage over?”

We committed early on to beating the statistics. It wasn’t always easy. But I think if we wouldn’t have been able to hold our marriage together, it would be another “death” we couldn’t bear. We were still us. We had to morph into another kind of couple. But we needed to try to make sure the pain of losing Noah never overshadowed those vows and it was difficult. The component that made us a family was gone. It was just us again.  We were hurting and healing separately and alone. There is no name for a parent who loses a child. We lost our identities and our purpose. But if we lost each other too, we really would have lost it all.

After Noah died, we watched a lot of TV. There were certain commercials we had to turn off as soon as we saw them. Pampers commercials with babies scooting all around and anything that had to do with water. Swimming, ocean vacations, anything with water made our hearts race and hard to breathe. We talked about what we could handle and couldn’t handle as far as outside stimulus. You know what tv show seemed to be safe and soothing? Roseanne. The family was imperfect. The jokes were funny. We watched a lot of Roseanne.

Along with our intense love for each other and dedication, the pain we were feeling became a part of our marriage. Like a third wheel. Sometimes we knew how to make conversation with it. Sometimes it was just awkward and sucked to have around. But we kept on being the gracious hosts we are. We didn’t have a choice.

To be continued…

 

 

 

 

I sit in the rocking chair nightly while Miriam is in her crib. The room is lit by a beaded monkey lamp with a 7w bulb giving off just enough light. She likes to fall asleep with me closeby. Bad habit some say. But for me, it’s just as soothing. I never want her looking for me. Did Noah look for me? I hope not. But I’ll always wonder.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, honeypie?”

Silence.

“Hey mommy? Remember when we listen to Frozen music in the car and then we see Spencer and do the outer space puzzle? Remember?”

“Yes, honey. That was fun.”

“Yeah. It was, mommy.”

How big her life must look inside her head! How amazing! When do we lose that? The little things are so huge in that 3 year old brain. The little things are also so huge in this 48 year old brain.

Goodnight. Inner and outer me. We need some sleep.

---

 Three little kittens

They’ve lost their mittens

and they began to cry.

“Oh, mother dear, see here, see here

Our mittens we have lost …”

“What!? Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens.

Now you shall have no pie”

—— Miriam has been calling me “mother dear” for this past week. And I’ve been calling her “my little kitten.” She’s been wearing two mismatched mittens (that’s all I can find from last winter) and performing Three Little Kittens with such passion. When I mess up my line in the responsive reading, reminiscent of a High Holiday service, she simply stares at me and waits until I get it right. “And they began to sigh” gets confused with “and they began to cry” then gets confused with the darkly rewarding “I smell a rat close by.”

I called my mother ‘Ma.’ Not like Little House on the Prairie ‘Ma,’ but more like that guttural New Jersey accent ‘Ma.’ If my brothers and I were talking about her, we called her ‘Mommy.’ We’re all adults now and she’s been gone for six years; we still refer to her as ‘Mommy.’

When Miriam calls me “Mother dear,” it cuts through my chest into my heart and spreads like a warm fire complete with s’mores. To be called mommy, mom, mama, or anything maternal is still a shock to me. It stops me in my tracks every single time. And it happens one hundred times a day. I respond to it every single time with a smiling ‘yes?’

A big part of the pain was not being called mommy anymore. And the fear of possibly never being called it again. I remember after Noah was born, Hal started calling me “mommy” as in “Have you seen the Costco flyer, mommy?” or “Would you like coffee, mommy?” I hated it. I never said anything then but I hated it. I hated that Erica had disappeared and I was now just mommy. That’s how it felt in my post-partum depression. It took a few weeks to work through the name change and then a few months to work through the identity change. And then I loved it. Hal became “daddy” as an endearment.

When Noah died, mommy disappeared. Poof. And the original Erica was impossible to find. I now entered identity purgatory. Unsure of if I’d stay broken Erica forever or become mommy again.

Much has been written on the identity crisis women experience after having their first child. But my crisis was a little different. And I found myself pretty alone.

In the fertility world, there were many women in the emotional agony of failed cycles. For me, I knew what it was like to have that perfect baby all of us were praying for at 6am blood tests and during nightly injections.

In the child loss world, I didn’t find as many women who had lost their only child. Some days I wished I had another child to give me a reason to go on. Other days, I couldn’t imagine having to care for other children while I could barely breathe. Maybe the ones like me weren’t even able to show themselves in that damn happy sunlight that attacked me every day in those summer months. It said, “Ha ha, the world is going on and your son is gone. Too f’ing bad. You are now nothing.”

How do you start over? How do you recapture what felt like the best dream you could ever have? The answer is…you can’t. A Facebook façade may make it look like nothing ever happened to some people. Or now that Miriam is here, we can just concentrate on her and that will be our medicine. While that is definitely true, the original mommy I ///used to be/// is never far from my mind. The awe is bigger, the smiles are bigger, the tears are bigger, the fears are bigger.

Miriam’s middle name is Phoenix. We gave her that name to symbolize the rebirth of our family. I reclaimed the name “mommy” and it feels different this time. If I could spell it differently, I would. Maybe add a snazzy prefix like über or hyper.

 

 

I was twenty-nine when Princess Diana died. I was living in a historic row house in Lambertville with my boyfriend  Josh, and two roommates, Jim and Dave. We were a happy house of misfits.

I was upstairs in bed when Josh yelled from downstairs, “Princess Diana was in an accident!”

“Is she ok!?” I yelled back a little panicked.

We were a house full of Anglophiles. We watched the Spice Girls HBO concert special nightly. A few times nightly. We studied every move. Every side glance from Posh. Every eye twinkle from Baby. Dave was partial to Sporty. I never understood why. I think I liked Ginger the best. Josh loved Dr. Who and all of us were into the newest new British Invasion in music.

About five minutes later Josh came upstairs and told me the special report just came back on. Princess Diana had died.

Is there a name for the moment you receive shocking news? There should be. I remember having a hard time going to sleep that night. How could I sleep knowing Princess Diana was gone. How could I sleep not knowing where she had gone? Why did I think she was indestructible?

I was sad for quite a while. I didn’t understand why this affected me so much. I had trouble eating, sleeping, and enjoying our nightly Spice Girls showings. I was really consumed by it.

There would be times to come in my life that someone I loved was sick, in emotional or physical pain, in the hospital, or even dead. I would have a hard time living my life fully during those times. Not just being very concerned or grieving but feeling like I didn’t deserve to be happy or have happy thoughts or any fun while others hurt. I took on so much emotional weight.

After Noah died, a piece of me actually did die. An actual piece of me. I know I was obviously still in shock but I remember a few nights of sitting shiva actually feeling like a party. Friends who hadn’t seen each other in years all coming together again in sadness, support, shock, and fear. Fear of what they would find when they saw Hal and me for the first time. Fear that something so horrible and unexpected could happen to one of their kids. Fear of what to say or what not to say.

During a night of sitting shiva , there comes a time when everyone gathers together and a short formal service is held. Prayers will be prayed and readings will be read. On one of the seven nights, the crowd was particularly raucous. Like an awesome party with platters of food, an urn of coffee, two liter bottles of soda and lots of cake.  The rabbi leading the service that night had called out a few times into the house that it was time to start. Apparently it took a bit for the crowd to respond.  I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember hearing the rabbi chastising everyone for “acting like it’s a party” and feeling like I needed to stop smiling immediately at the love in the room. Or the fact that people traveled hours to come see us. Or that an old friend just reminded me of something hysterically funny we did twenty years earlier that I had forgotten and really needed to be reminded of, especially now.

The rabbi was being traditional in a non-traditional situation. Parents don’t bury their children. That is most definitely not the tradition. A beyond incredible friend of mine stopped the rabbi on his way out after prayers. She wanted him to know that we, the mourners, didn’t need to be chastised at that moment. She wanted him to know that the room took on its own life and that if Hal and I were enjoying ourselves (if those are even the right words to use) and ok with the energy in the room, he should let that happen. Not chastise us for not showing the appropriate reaction. We went back to storytelling, eating, crying, and laughing.

How do we process another person’s pain without letting it go so deeply inside us that we cease to be happy? How can we allow happiness to come through without guilt or feeling like we need to artificially stop happiness the way the rabbi thought he should.

In the past six years, my sense of humor has sustained me. I’ve never felt so deeply in my life. Felt so much. The whole rainbow. Guilt, shame, despair, extreme joy, laugh until I cry funny, anger, Hallmark commercial happy tears, you name it. Should we mourn like the old Italian ladies I sometimes see, dressing in black for the rest of their lives after their dear husbands die? I guess that would certainly be easier. Like wearing a uniform everyday that dictates emotion. I’d like that kind of help on the days I’m not sure what I feel. Like an everything bagel from a shiva platter, a little bit of everything all at the same time.

 

 

Miriam is so good at jigsaw puzzles. Like, shockingly good. She’s three and a half and is better at puzzles now than I’ve ever been or ever had a desire to be. She’s mastered her Disney Princess puzzle and moved onto her Frozen floor puzzle. That one has now been constructed and deconstructed ten times over. It’s a piece of cake now, too.

I’ve just dumped out her biggest challenge yet onto the kitchen floor. Forty six pieces of Minnie and Daisy hanging out, just shootin’ the shit. Fifteen minutes later, it’s done. And now back to the Disney Princess puzzle.

Each time she does a puzzle, with minimal help from me I must add, she says things like “we have to finish” and “don’t give up mommy” and “let’s keep going”.  I’m sure she’s absorbed those sayings from me. The irony is that I tend to give up easily. I don’t always finish. And often I really don’t want to keep going.

After Noah died, I didn’t want to keep going. I remember saying to Hal that I wasn’t afraid of roller coasters anymore. I wasn’t afraid of anything. I remember not caring if he drove a little faster on the parkway than I liked. It was freeing. I wouldn’t say I wanted to die but I didn’t care if I did.

When we realized getting pregnant again was not going to be as easy as it was with Noah, we often used the saying FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. It was the closest we could come to verbalizing the desperation we felt to be a family again. With a grain of humor. This was the only thing that would keep us going. A child. It’s a real mind game to start as the young-ish couple with the perfect little boy, a nice little apartment, healthy, happy, and in love.  And then you wake up into a nightmare. How do you not give up? How DO you keep going?

I read a lot of books about child loss. Then I starting reading books about life after death theories. Then books about angels. I also went back and re-read stories from my  collection of books on the Holocaust. I’ve always been consumed by the topic of the Holocaust. Reading the stories of human suffering helped me to put my thoughts someplace else. Someplace beyond recognition. Millions of families brutally torn apart. Some survivors made so much of their lives after the camps. Some survivors simply survived. And some did not. How was I going to survive? If they could, I could too. Right?

I would wake up. And the next day I would wake up again. The worst part were those few seconds between asleep and awake when I’d realize Noah really did die. I was living a fragmented, jigsaw puzzle of a life. This piece before I met Hal fits into this piece of our whirlwind romance. Those pieces fit into our newlywed year and then a new piece is added when Noah is born.  All those pieces fit together into our family of three. Then the folding table shakes and the puzzle pieces go flying. I leave them on the floor for awhile. It’s just too overwhelming to start putting the pieces back together. But I guess maybe I got tired of stepping over them every day. These pieces needed to go back together for them to make any sense. What picture would they make? They’d make me. And that’s the only picture I know.

 

 

I think I may be watering weeds. I’m not quite sure. The packets of seeds showed flowers but something went terribly wrong. I found that big painting of what flowers are supposed to look like in someone’s garbage. It has a rip or two in the canvas but I still love it. It’s big and pretty and I hung it with twine over the rail of our deck. I’ve had some luck with the two tomato plants I bought this year. My tomatoes were small and perfect.

At first, I was so disappointed my flowers didn’t really bloom. And then I resigned myself to growing the healthiest weeds I could. They’re tall and green and have a beauty all unto themselves. I love the crappy wooden planters they’re growing in. It reminds me of barnwood. I move my pots of weeds around until I like where they are placed. I think next year, I’ll plant artificial flowers.

I’m standing in line at the Cranford Frosty Freeze. Just an old fashioned ice cream shack. I’ve got my ‘BADASS’ emblazoned across the butt underwear on. That amuses me to no end. But I feel far from a badass. I feel very lost today. Just trying to satisfy whatever it is that’s lacking. Soft chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles is where I’ll start looking.

I remember coming to this Frosty Freeze a few months after Noah died. I sat on the bench alone with my soft chocolate cone with chocolate sprinkles. I was imagining Noah was still sitting next to me. I thought I could wish him back. Or maybe I could just pretend for the rest of my life that my son was simply invisible. He wasn’t dead at all.

We had just moved to Cranford and I was curious to see if I liked it better this time. I’d been once before with Marybeth when we both had dogs. Before husbands. Before kids. We were unimpressed with the chocolate if I remember correctly. Loretta the greyhound, however, gave the cup of vanilla a rave review.  I didn’t go back for a long time. But the chocolate was better this time even though my life was at its saddest.

So I find myself back here now. There were two young Russian guys ordering at the walk-up window in front of me. Their big, black Suburban was the only car in the lot. Every time it seemed they were done with their order of different sundaes slowly piling up on the ledge, they’d remember somebody else or something else they wanted. They kept looking at the flavor list and happily conferring with each other in Russian and then politely say to the girl at the window, “Sorry miss, something else please.” She seemed a little smitten with them. After all, politeness and an accent goes a long way. Remember Hugh Grant?

A sweaty, bedraggled suit and tie guy pulls up and gets out of his car. He gets in line behind me. I feel the stress coming off his body. He is not amused by the Russians and their growing pile of containers. He last about 3 minutes in line, huffs a little, and gets back in his car.

The sky is starting to get dark. I hear a little thunder which at first I thought was a train. The Frosty Freeze is right by the train overpass. But the darker clouds are moving in and I finally get my turn. I smile at the nice girl and we both kind of telepathically laugh over how absurdly large the Russians’ order was. I get my soft chocolate cone with chocolate sprinkles. I get back into my car and the rain starts pouring down just as I close the door. The timing could not have been better. Or more dramatic. In fact, the timing was perfect.

I arrived here lost. My secret identity of BADASS was being challenged by something I couldn’t quite describe. But the chocolate tasted good. The Russians were happy. I was happy to stand still and watch it all for a little bit. And the rain came down at the exact right moment.