Life is good

Yesterday I had to make some phone calls that were very difficult to make. I googled the local funeral home/granite store to find a marker for Kyson’s gravesite. Ugh. I don’t like my son’s name next to that word. Resting place? Kyson’s resting place. That’s weird too.

As I search, I try to muster up the courage to place the call. Meanwhile, my grandma is cooking up lunch, and the mood in the house with my uncle, aunts, and cousins is jovial. It just doesn’t seem like the right time to make a call like that. It’s an excuse to put it off even longer. I shut the laptop and go to the bedroom to wipe away a few tears before I end up sobering up the mood in the house.  At that point, it had been 5 days since he was born and I felt the need to get this ordered soon. I put it off til that afternoon.

They said it would take 1-2 weeks to get the marker customized. Not something that would be ready in time for the funeral anyways. So I guess it doesn’t matter how soon I get it ordered. We’ll have the funeral on Wed after we get back from my brother’s wedding. Adam and I have decided that it will just be me and him with our pastor there. It would just feel odd having our friends and co-workers there without any family. All our family would have to fly up for it, and we don’t expect that. It’s been good to be around family this week. Plus my mom and sister came quickly for the delivery, and that was more important to me than being there for the funeral.

I do feel bad for Adam. I left him to go to Texas to visit my family. It was a vacation I had planned before any of this happened. It turned out to be ok timing for me to still go on this trip a couple days after the delivery. But now he’s home by himself. He says he’s ok, and I’m sure he’s getting by, but it's still just not a good time for us to be apart. Hopefully Buster and Toby (our dog and cat) are keeping him company.  I know our friends are too. We’ve had some friends bring by a couple meals, which is really helpful. Thanks, guys! The food, gifts, kind words, posts, texts, calls and cards from everyone have been very uplifting. It’s encouraging to look on facebook and see the comments and status posts about the loss of a baby, or posting the link to my blog. I can’t thank you all enough.

There is one good thing that has come out of all of this so far. The love that I've felt for Adam has never been stronger. Our connection is so much deeper. Having a part of him growing inside me was such an amazing feeling, as I’m sure any mothers out there reading this have experienced. It’s even stronger after going through this together.

I have to admit, as silly as it sounds, I’ve been sleeping with a teddy bear. At our birthing center, mothers who have lost their babies get the Sarah Bear. I think the story behind it is someone lost their baby and wanted to give moms something to hold as they leave the hospital since they aren’t leaving with their baby. I have clung to that fuzzy little bear every night since Kyson and I parted. I hope it’s a phase I grow out of, but for now, it’s comforting. The necklace with the ring on it (the one I got from the hospital that Erin took his pictures with) has also been around my neck since my mom got the chain for me. I hope to get his name engraved on it if it’s possible. I’ll take it to a jewelry store to see if they can do that.

Do you ever associate a song that was popular on the radio with a specific time in your life? A song I really like that's been on repeat in my head is Good Life by OneRepublic, both before and after receiving the news about Kyson’s prognosis. The lyrics don’t have much to do with what I’m going through, but the words in the chorus are a general perspective I’m maintaining, despite all the grief and sadness. “This has gotta be a good life, this has gotta be a good life, this could really be a good life, a good, good life.” The melody is soothing. Life is still good. The colors of life are sharper when you go through something heart-wrenching and come out of it a better person. The highs are higher. The good is better. The sweet is sweeter.

Interestingly, another OneRepublic song, Apologize, is what I associate with the first time I lost a baby in the NICU. Lyrics unrelated, the emotion of the melody is cathartic. The death of a few babies that I’ve cared for and loved in the NICU has helped me prepare for this grief. Obviously losing my own child is much more heartbreaking, but at least the process of grief is a road I've walked before.