So today is just two days shy of Jacob's 11 month birthday. Sadly one of the nuns who I've talked to several times at the monastery where he is buried is currently in hospice care and not expected to live long. Dan was asked to make the coffin for her so he is downstairs working diligently to finish. We have a van that is too small to fit the kids and a coffin so after a LOT of calling yesterday, finally one place had a truck to rent so we can go to the monastery together as a family and also visit Jacob's grave. Something we don't get to do very often as it's three and a half hours away.
Last night, for the first time, probably of many times to come, I had the experience of picking out flowers for Jacob's grave. To even write that sentence seems unreal, much less actually doing it. Gazing over the array of flowers at Trader Joe's I found ones that reminded me of our wedding and some white hydrangeas which I've always loved. Not the way I've ever spent a Valentines day in the past and nothing I ever thought I'd have to do, even in old age. Is flowers what I want to bring? What do you take to your son's grave? What would be more meaningful? What kinds of questions are these? Sometimes the reality of what my life has become since March 17th, 2012 is too much for me to still even wrap MY head around. It seems surreal, like a dream, or some weird alternate life. I'm not overly sad today, but I'm not overly happy either. It's that weird space in between a space that only a mother who has lost knows. The space between Heaven and Earth where you have to try to find a compromise between reality and desire. A place where space and time seem to go by so slowly and our true desires, to be with our babies, will never be achievable on this earth.
I remember the first time we went back to Jacob's grave it was just Dan and I about 5 months after he died. I'll write about that more later in a future chapter but one of the most meaningful conversations I had that day was with Mother Lyubov, the one who is dying right now. I told her how I felt so bad that I'd not been back more to see Jacob. She told me how her mother had lost a child, one of five or six children that she did have. They never went to her brothers grave and when she was older she asked her mom why? Why didn't we go? She said her mom very simply said, "because I had 5 other living children here to take care of that needed me." She comforted me in that statement and in the wisdom her mother had. Her brother was not "there" and neither is Jacob "there". They are in a far better place and I believe that with every fiber of my body. Mother Lyubov also said that she suffered one or two miscarriages herself and mourned the loss of her babies. She warned me to not do ultrasounds as you never know the effects. I have thought about that several times since we met that day. Last night, not sleeping, I thought how interesting it was. Here is a nun, someone that has dedicated the second part of their life to God and even she, in her amazing faith, still questioned what we do as standard practice in today's culture. I am not sure that she herself had ultrasounds but she knows other moms do and still wants to find a way to stop such a painful loss. Dan and I always do ultrasounds and are not worried but I am not sure if we'd had a miscarriage instead would that have been a question I had. And honestly even if you do find something abnormal in an ultrasound and know ahead of time, it does not make the pain of loss any easier. A loss is a loss at any point and I fear the pain is the same. A lot of the moms that I know and have talked to that have had a miscarriage or stillbirth wonder, what if we had or had not done this or that in regards to why their baby didn't make it. I feel blessed that I at least know the why, that Jacob didn't have a trachea, however why he didn't have one, I've wondered that several times. Should I have been more diligent about taking my prenatal vitamins? Was my egg damaged in some way or Dan's sperm? How could everything on Jacob form so perfectly except that one thing, that one MAJOR thing? It's a pure miracle that he formed as beautifully as he did and that I really did get to hold such a precious baby in my arms if even just for hours and dead at that. He was beautiful in death, not scary and not to be hidden.
As we prepare a final resting place for Mother Lyubov, I can't help but be a little bit jealous that her road is almost over. That she is so very close to meeting her children that she never did get to hold or lay her eyes upon but that she's mourned all these years. One thing I have from Jacob's death is that although I do not seek it out, I am not afraid of death anymore. I'm not sure I ever really was, never really thought about it much, but having a piece of Dan and I eternally on the other side, separate from me that I can't see or touch, knowing it will hopefully be a very long time until my time comes, when the time does come, there will be a joy in my heart and a peace and eagerness to breathe my final breath and finally look upon Jacob's precious face again and be with him for eternity. Please keep Mother Lyubov in your thoughts and prayers as her road ends.
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