Thank you

I read this to our church family last Sunday:

"I was cleaning my kitchen floor last week and found myself wonder how long it had been since I last cleaned it. As I tried to remember I realized that it was last cleaned by one of you. And then I had to pause as I felt the fullness of the support you offered us during this season of our lives. Our minds and hearts are still reeling from our last year and a half with Oliver and I have barely begun to tackle the large stack of thank you notes we are blessed to need to write, but I didn't want any more time to pass without voicing our gratitude for your support for our family.

You have prayed for us. Usually I find that prayer is listed as “last but not least” but I decided to list it first because of how important prayer has become to us. Every time you prayed for us you shared our experience and pleaded our case before our God. Our situation was and is not a pleasant one, so it immensely encouraging to have you come to our home to pray with us and to know that you were praying and upholding us continuously on your own.

You visited us in the hospital before and after Oliver was born, and some of you were even able to see us up in Portland. You gave me rides to and from the NICU so that I could be with Oliver until I was able to drive on my own again. You have fed us countless meals. Some of you faithfully brought us a meal every week, and some made batches of my own recipes so I could have them on hand. A few of you offered to be a babysitting nurse and learned about Oliver's care so Joel and I could go out for an evening. You fed our cats and got our mail when were stuck in Portland for two months. You helped coordinate getting some of Oliver's food from our home freezer to us in Portland when my milk supply dropped from the stress. You mailed us books and music from our home. Your brothers and sisters in Corvallis and Portland brought us food up there and even stayed the night several times to help care for our girls. You helped transport and host our daughters as we got ready for discharge, and when we got home we found that you had deep cleaned and picked up our home and put food in the freezer for us. You handmade Oliver's baptism gown at the last minute when you realized that I didn't have one for him yet, 48 hours before you gathered at our home to celebrate God's covenant love and care for our family. You cleaned our toilets, vacuumed our floors, and mowed our lawn. You stayed up all night with us to help us stay awake and attentive when the night nurse had off. You dug holes in our garden and gave me flowers. You gave us counsel and supported our marriage by babysitting so we could have date nights. You washed and folded our laundry. You taught me how to run Oliver's emergency back-up generator. You helped us with childcare, and some of you came over almost every week to help watch our girls when I had to care for Oliver between nursing shifts or run errands. You gave little gifts and surprises to our daughters to make them smile. You helped us with many aspects of Oliver's memorial service and hosted our extended family, and continue to reach out to us as we enter the season of grieving and adjusting.

I'm sure I've missed some things but that's what I remember. Thank you. Thank you for being the physical hands and feet of Christ that mercifully and graciously kept us from completely falling apart this last year. Thank you.

I also want to tell you about the witness you have been in serving us so fully and with such endurance. Most likely you are not aware of how your expression was an example of loving and serving Christ to many people we met along our journey over the last year and a half. In each step of Oliver's medical progression, beginning with a few days after his birth, we met with a variety of social workers, case workers, and palliative and hospice workers whose job it was to offer us practical survival help as we lived with Oliver's medical conditions. Also, the doctors and nurses would often compassionately check in with me to make sure we had adequate help. When I described the support you gave us and assured them that we did not need any information or help with childcare, meals, transportation, cleaning, therapy groups, etc. etc., they were often surprised and always very much impressed. Again and again I heard them say things like “wow, you are really blessed to have an amazing community! That is really rare.” It is easy to take our church family for granted, but even a brief consideration of what our lives would have been like without you or any Christian support network is unimaginable to me. Your support for us provided many opportunities to talk to the medical community about our church family and our faith.

Thank you."

I only cried at the second sentence, and then I was able to gather my stage presence together and continue through the rest of it.  

And I will add to that our thanks to all of you who have cared for us from afar.  You also have prayed for us.  You have hosted us in your homes.  You have sent us financial gifts and flowers.  You sent us a box of organic, allergen free snacks and boxes of goodies for the girls.  You sent us care packages with surprises for all of us, and you ordered pizza for long distance.  You crafted special gifts for Oliver and for us in his memory, and you gave us a tree in his honor.  You flew and drove out to be with us the week after Oliver died and wept with us at his memorial service.  You mailed us dozens of cards and letters even literature to help guide us through grief. You sent gift cards to treat us and help add pleasure to our lives. You keep calling to check in with us. You read, and continue to read, these blog ramblings of mine and encourage me to keep writing. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  We thank God for you.

Phone Call to Heaven

Nora talks to Oliver all the time.  It is usually brief and goes something like this:

Nora (with the toy phone between her ear and shoulder as she walks around the house):
"Hi Aulver, it's Nora"

Pause.

"I'm really sad 'cuz you died."

Pause.

"What are you doing today?"

Pause.

"Are you walking and talking?"

Pause.

"Are you playing with Mr. Rogers?"

Pause. 

"I love you too!"

Pause.

"Ok.  I will talk to you later, bye!"


Oliver is very much a part of our daily conversation.  Sometimes he is visiting, playing with Elsa like an imaginary friend.  Sometimes Nora will randomly put on a forlorn face and say "Mommy, I'm sad Aulver died."  Sometimes Elsa pulls out her Oliver memory book to show visitors (like the guys who came to fix our computer!).  And the girls adore little babies.  They do so well with little ones, and love to play with them.  They ask "when will God give us another baby?" and we keep saying we don't know if or when that will happen, so I am so very glad that there are many babies around us for them to enjoy for now.

Water lilies

I haven't been taking pictures lately (because I have been too busy cleaning out my house!), but I need to start again because I've found that photography really helps me focus and hunt for the beauty and blessings each day. 

 

One surprising beauty in our backyard is that our water lily is blooming!  It has only bloomed once in six years, and this spring we've had seven flowers so far!  Some of the lily pads are over 8 inches in diameter and they are almost completely filling up the upper pond.  Elsa keeps waiting for the frogs arrive and jump on them.  Because that's what attracts frogs - big lily pads for jumping on, of course.

 

 

Felt fears

I feel I am coming to a closure (for now) of a few weeks of feeling some of the fears that exist within grief. 

One of the classic lines on grief that keeps popping up is from C.S. Lewis: "No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear." 

The feeling of fear is very strange and feels inappropriate in spite of its strength, but it fits too.  And it doesn't matter if you know the fears are incorrect and unfounded, they still are there and I feel them even though I know better.

I found that I hated seeing the days move on past his death and memorial service.  I kept rounding down the number of weeks that had passed and felt myself fighting the passing of time.  I felt pain at knowing how much time had passed since he left.  As if somehow if it all still only happened a few days or a week ago, I would be that much closer to holding him alive. 

It is probably related to the fear of forgetting him as we "move on" with our lives.  Again, I know better than to believe that this is true, but the process of creating a new normal for our family feels like forgetting even though it is good and necessary and right and not forgetting at all.   

I fear that his medical conditions will be remembered more than his calm, peaceful, contented personality, or his curious and flirtatious coos.

I fear the loneliness of remembering him while the days move ahead and the world goes on.  See, it is confusing; I fear both forgetting and remembering. 

I fear the cautious silence of the conversation tip-toeing around him when I suspect that others have thought of him but everyone wants to be "sensitive" so no one mentions him.  Trust me, I expect that Oliver will rarely be far from my thoughts and you can't make me feel sadder or worse by anything you say.  Yes, I may cry sometimes, but that's the risk of being my friend nowadays.  It is much nicer to talk of my baby than the lonely claustrophobia of remembering him by myself.  Thankfully this has not happened often, and
in general I am so thankful to be surrounded by such good friends who are willing to live with me through this.  They help minimize this fear by talking openly with me and accepting my general awkwardness in conversation and at play dates.

As I mentioned in my previous post, below, I feared that I was not crying as much as I should have. 

I was initially fearful of the feelings of relief, even though, just as with these other fears, I knew better and I know to accept the relief as a good, positive gift and as part of God's providence for us.

We are relieved that we are no longer in emergency mode 24/7.  We are relieved that we no longer have to manage his intensive care.  We are relieved that we are not going to have to care for him for years and decades.  We are relieved that we did not have to make a difficult choice about when his life would end.  We are relieved that each time we did have to make a decision about his care our choice was very clear to us and we do not regret anything that we did for him.  We are relieved that his death was gentle and peaceful and at home without emergency.  We are relieved that he is well and whole and at peace.  I am okay with and comforted by this great relief, and thankfully I don't feel guilty about it at all. 

I have also felt considerable comfort and healing within the strong eternal perspective that Oliver's life has left me with.  I have always tried to live in the light of eternity and have found much comfort in dwelling on the "big picture" of God's covenant plan.  Despite my efforts, the relatively petty worries and troubles of yesterday, today, and tomorrow regularly consume my thoughts.  Having someone precious "on the other side" has made my eagerness for heaven incredibly stronger, and I find that I have been living in a very different light.  (One small example of this is how I reacted to our minivan - when we purchased it I stressed over the decision and getting all the replacement parts at the right prices and such, but when it died a few weeks ago I was just ok.  It really doesn't matter - when/if we need a new one we'll figure it out.)  That eternal perspective feels literally cemented into my heart now.  When I counter the fear of time passing away from Oliver's death with the impatience of having to wait for my own death it gives me peace for the waiting. 

I am thankful to be on the upswing of addressing and acknowledging the felt fears, and they are slowly dissipating one by one, at least for now. 

Instrumental grieving

I have not written for a while mostly because I have been too busy cleaning out my house.  In the last few weeks I have been driven to systematically go through every bit of our home and deep clean, declutter, and re-organize.  I am being more brutal about getting rid of stuff than I ever have before, and it is consuming me to the point of distraction. 

When I realized that I wanted to spend every waking moment focused on this project (or collection of projects) I wondered what was going on.  Am I reacting to Oliver's death by effecting extreme change in areas I can control?  Am I trying to "fix" our house since I couldn't "fix" him?  Is it that the eternal perspective that Oliver's life cemented into me is causing me to be sick of material things and driving me to make our home as simple and functional as possible?  Am I so disoriented and tired that I just can't focus on anything except my own little projects of interest?

I was especially concerned it was becoming a grief avoidance strategy.  I've been concerned that I have not been expressing enough emotional grief because I have been crying much less than I thought I would (though I do cry), even though I think of Oliver frequently and we talk about him all the time.  So I am not avoiding the pain, but I am not responding to it they way I thought I would.  Girls are supposed to cry more, right?

Thankfully a good friend passed on some valuable information about grieving styles that was very affirming to me:

In their recent work Kenneth Doka and Terry Martin talk of “transcending gender stereotypes” and describe two main styles of grieving—the “intuitive griever” and the “instrumental griever.” ...

Intuitive Griever:

• Feelings are intensely experienced.
• Expressions such as crying and lamenting mirror the inner experience.
• Successful adaptive strategies facilitate the experience and expression of feelings.
• There are prolonged periods of confusion, inability to concentrate, disorganization, and disorientation.
• Physical exhaustion and/or anxiety may result.

Instrumental Griever:

• Thinking is predominant to feeling as an experience; feelings are less intense.
• There is a general reluctance to talk specifically about feelings.
• Mastery of oneself and the environment are most important.
• Problem-solving as a strategy enables mastery of feelings and control of the environment in creating the new normal.
• Brief periods of cognitive dysfunction are common—confusion, forgetfulness, obsessiveness.
• Energy levels are enhanced, but symptoms of general arousal caused by the loss go unnoticed.

Patterns, according to Doka, occur along a continuum. Those grievers/responders near the center who demonstrate a blending of the two styles experience a variety of both patterns. One pattern may be more pronounced than another depending upon the loss and the personal connection to that loss. This pattern suggests a need for even more choices among adaptive strategies than for the griever who is more fixed in either strategy mentioned above.  (from Grief Counseling Resource Guide, A Field Manual) 

Another site provided this definition:

Instrumental mourners experience and speak of their grief intellectually and physically. They are most comfortable with seeking accurate information, analyzing facts, making informed decisions and taking action to solve problems. Remaining strong, dispassionate and detached in the face of powerful emotions, they may speak of their grief in an intellectual way, thus appearing to others as cold, uncaring and without feeling. (from griefhealing.com)

While I am definitely a blend of the two, I think I am mostly an instrumental griever.  I am by nature a doer, so it makes sense that my primary processing technique is to take all the energy of the stress, fear, confusion, pain, and sadness and redirect it into a project.  I have also keenly felt the confusion, forgetfulness, and obsessiveness! 

This may have also played into why I threw myself into learning all I could about Oliver's medical conditions and managing his care in such a detailed way.  It was something I could do in the midst of all the mess. The difficulty now is that I get really focused on my project (the obsessiveness part), and it feels so good to be doing it, but I still have to stop to mother the girls and make dinner.

I think it also explains why I was driven to make and do things in Oliver's memory.  I planted a tree that Joel's aunts and uncles gave us in Oliver's memory and ended up replanting the whole front garden bed.

I ordered a photo canvas of the best picture we have of Oliver to hang next to Elsa and Nora's canvases. 

I keep working on filling up his baby book/memorial book.   I kept two of his outfits and framed them with a few of his special things.  I generally have given away, donated, or packed up all the other baby things, but I have kept these few things. 

It has been very good for me to have these projects, and I am thankful for the affirmation that my less expressive grieving is within the "normal" range of grief processing.  So that's why I haven't written in a while - I've been too busy cleaning my house!  I also wanted to write it out my friends and family to know that, even though I may not express the pain emotionally all the time, it still is consuming much of my energy and focus, even though I am redirecting it into my projects and my usual dry humor and sarcasm.  And you are welcome to come over anytime and enjoy my cleaned-out house!