VALIDATION

OH, HOW I LONG TO HOLD THAT SWEET BOY IN MY ARMS AGAIN. I WAS JUST TRYING TO SOAK IN WHAT HIS SOFT SKIN FELT LIKE AGAINST MINE.... I MISS IT SO MUCH!

SAMUEL LOOKED LIKE OUR ANNA...BIG, FULL, ROUND FACE... PRECIOUS! I HAVEN'T POSTED ANY COLOR PICTURES OF HIS FACE CLOSE UP BEFORE. YOU CAN SEE THE BLISTER BY HIS EYES, THAT IS ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS TO HAPPEN WHEN A BABY DIES STILL INT HE WOMB. YOU COULD SEE HIS SWEET SOFT SKIN LOOSENING UP (GUT WRENCHING) AND ACTUALLY IT HAD TORN IN PLACES ON HIS NECK, HANDS, AND TUMMY FROM BIRTH...SO SO HARD THE REALITY OF IT ALL.

SO MANY MONTHS OF WAITING TO SEE WHAT THIS PRECIOUS PUMPKIN LOOKED LIKE...SO LITTLE TIME TO SEAR ALL OF THE DETAILS OF HIS PRECIOUSNESS INTO MY MEMORY.

So it is probably pretty obvious that I am heartbroken today and missing Samuel like crazy. If you are looking for a pick me up, come back another day. If you are looking for honesty, you will get it here. Today I have felt all day that this can not possibly be my life. Today I want to be a hermit. Some days it just hurts too much to put yourself out there. There are TOO many things that set me off. Obviously, I wish it weren't the case but that is the reality of it. There are days that the reality of all of the details, which I haven't posted the half of, all that we went through last October 29th and 30th are all too graphic in my mind. Some days the memories are softer, not quite so brutally ugly. Today isn't one of those softer kind of days... much more vivid.

The time that we spent with Samuel was beautiful, yet traumatic to say the least. Will the pain that goes with seeing your child's lifeless body in your arms ever really lessen? I was so happy to see him after waiting so long. But were we really seeing him as we should have been? He wasn't pink like the rest of my babies. He wasn't breathing or making any noise like the rest of my babies. The silence and stillness of him was heart wrenching. How do see all of that and not let it affect you? How do you allow your other children to see all of that, and not wonder how it might affect them down the road. Who am I kidding, their lives will NEVER be the same either.

I don't know why, but a couple of weeks after we had to pick up Samuel's remains from the funeral home, I wanted to look at them. I was expecting to see about a handful size amount of powder, actually it was what I was told was in there. That isn't at all what I saw. Do you realize what my son's ashes looked like when I saw them? Do you realize I could see pieces of my son's bones in there? Can you imagine? I was horrified and basically freaked the heck out of Greg when I caught him at the computer... I felt like I was suffocating. Another one of my not so shining moments, but real none the less. I think that is something that they should have warned me about. There is a whole lot that they should have warned me about. We almost took them back to the funeral home to see if they could do anything about that, who knows we may still at some point. That is the reality of what goes through my mind... ALL of the memories of my Samuel, the beautiful and the really horrific.

Some days I can focus on and appreciate the beautifulness ( I don't think that is even a word:) of our family time with Samuel, but today just isn't one of them. I feel raw, exposed, pained, and alone. My heart is torn in 2, the longing I have to be with my Savior and son is so strong. And obviously I long to be here with the rest of my family. Why can't the Lord just come back now? That would make it all better. I can accept God's will, but that doens't mean that I have to LIKE it, all the details of it, all of the time.

I think part of the reason I feel so cruddy, is that pretty much daily there are those who will try to fix how I feel. Daily there are those who give excuses for or defend those who say things that are insensitive. I don't at all mean this to sound critical, I understand that things are unintentional, but they affect you none the less. I understand that they have moved on, their life is going on as normal and mine will NEVER be normal in the same sense that it was again. You know when someone says something... complaining maybe about their little one, or when I am in a situation where I can't get away from a crying baby, I would love for someone to say... "That must really stink, that must be really hard to hear other babies cry when you never heard that sweet sound of your baby boy." Yes, that is correct, the crying of a baby is sweet, precious. I remember when Elijah was born and was soooooo fussy, till we found out that he had a wheat sensitivity, my sister-in-law said, "Man how do you handle that all day." Honestly as I held him in my baby pack and carried him around, I hardly heard it. He needed me and I loved it. I could comfort him. I digress...

I completely understand that people don't really understand what might pain a person who has lost a child if they themselves haven't had the same loss. But you know some things to me seem pretty obvious... for example don't complain about your pregnancy to someone who would give anything to be pregnant again, or to someone who is infertile. Don't complain about your beautiful living baby to someone who would just about do any thing to have their baby back in their arms alive or to someone whose baby is terminally ill. Maybe describing someones perfect, wonderful labor could be tough to hear for someone who recently had no choice but to deliver their baby already deceased. Thank God that I pushed for them to try and turn Samuel's body so he would be head down and they could induce me instead of leaving me to go home for up to 2 weeks waiting for his body to turn on its own or go into labor naturally.... Honestly up to 2 weeks with my child already gone inside of me. It is too hard to even think about.

OK, so those are some of the obvious. I realize other things are not at all obvious that could hurt or set me off. For example, just 3 weeks after Samuel died we went up north for Thanksgiving. We did a Sader meal with the kids and all of the cousins. This sweet very knowledgeable man presented it for us. When he held up this little white cloth, he was telling about the symbolism regarding it and how they wrapped up Jesus' body after he died. Now, immediately my mind went to Samuel and how when I handed him over to the nurse the very last time, she carefully wrapped him up in a blanket and put a little sticker on it to kind of keep it closed. She was treating him very respectfully, but it still seemed weird, very out of my body like. Was I really seeing them do that to MY son, and that would that really be it, the last time I would see him this side of heaven? Now I completely get it, that gentleman would have no idea what I was thinking, or what I had just been through.

My point is this, when something really stinks, why not be honest and say that REALLY STINKS. That must be so hard, I can see how that could hurt. That was an insensitive thing to say. Did that bother you? Did you have a hard time with that? My heart is broken with you. The whole situation just rots.

I don't think that validation comes naturally to many. I seriously think that it is a gift for some. When people possess that gift, it is such a huge blessing to the people they interact with on a daily basis. That is all I want many days, just someone to validate my feelings and my son's life.

There are a few people who I have been very blessed with over the last 7 months, a handful, and they are a Godsend. They are ok with where I am at. They don't try to fix the situation or make it go away. They listen, they sympathize, they admit that they really don't understand because they haven't lived it themselves, but in a sense they get it because they get me. And they admit how much they miss Samuel and his presence in our lives, oh how that warms my heart. Someone else hasn't forgotten about him. I am so incredibly thankful for them. Honestly, I am not sure I would have made it through what I have been through with out them. And my fellow mommies who have also had losses at MEND or here in blog land, what a blessing they are. Obviously they just get it, no need to explain, they understand ALL that having a stillborn baby entails, the physical, emotional, the mental, all of it. Dealing with all of it affects you every day.

So there you have it, brutal honestly from a mother missing her son... for almost 7 months. Wow, he would have teeth, be sitting, making so much noise, laughing at his brothers and sister and being smothered in love by them all. And I would have been loving every minute of it. It drives me crazy all the what ifs???? What could have beens??? For Samuel's sake, I am happy for him, for me... today, that is a WHOLE other story.