Grief

Dark Spaces and Other Things

I went to a dark space this past week. I went back to the land of long­ing for a child of my own.

That’s a place, while always in the back of my mind, that I haven’t been to in a long time.

It started when I found out that a newer co-​​worker of mine had triplets. So nat­u­rally I asked if this was a sur­prise to her when she found out she was hav­ing triplets. That’s when I found out that she and her hus­band had done IVF and had suc­ceeded with preg­nancy after their sec­ond try; a frozen cycle from the remain­ing embryos from her first try.

D*mn it. I was jealous.

So jeal­ous that I thought of our one failed IVF cycle and the failed abil­ity to even have tried a frozen cycle. Which then had me think­ing that if we did suc­ceed with our cycle, our child/​children would be 9 years old.

Nine. Years. Old. What a dif­fer­ent per­son I might have become if we were successful.

Maybe I wouldn’t be such a sad per­son inside. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so anx­ious all the time. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid of fail­ure like I am about every­thing in my life.

I know. I’m real­is­tic enough to know I could still be the same per­son I am today, with or with­out kids. How­ever, I do know that my fear of fail­ure stems from the belief that I grew up with: If you try hard at any­thing, you will succeed.

Except as hard as Hubby & I tried to con­ceive, we did not succeed.

Fail­ing at try­ing to pro­cre­ate was the first time I ever had to ques­tion that belief. The cor­re­spond­ing dark­ness that fol­lowed our failed IVF only allowed me more time to ques­tion whether any­thing I do would only result in failure.

So the dark place I was at this week? It all boiled down to my fear of fail­ure in EVERYTHING I do. From feel­ing like I’m a fail­ure at work, to feel­ing like I’m a fail­ure in my per­sonal life.

I’m still a lit­tle frag­ile from this past week … prob­a­bly will be for a while, if I’m being hon­est with myself … but I’m try­ing to be bet­ter. Try­ing to real­ize that some­times fail­ures can be oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment. And try­ing to remem­ber that mis­takes are really just mis-​​takes. 

I Want My Mommy

Ear­lier this week Hubby & I woke up at an ungodly hour. My mom was fly­ing out to the Philip­pines and needed a ride to the air­port. It being an inter­na­tional flight, she needed to be at the air­port at least 3 hours before take-​​off.

Her flight was at 7:00 am.

Need­less to say, Hubby & I got lit­tle sleep the night before.

With Hubby stay­ing curb­side, I was able to help check my Mom in at the air­port and say a proper good-​​bye before she headed into the secu­rity line.

What she said to me in those moments have stuck with me this past week and have made me real­ize that, as much as I think I’m okay, I’m still not quite okay.

On the way home from the air­port, I cried. Cried, because I was already miss­ing my Mom who would be gone for six whole weeks. Cried, because I knew that it was time to make another appoint­ment … one I haven’t had in about six months now.

Cried, because as much of an adult I (sup­pos­edly) am, there are still some days that I just want to be a child again and want Mom to tell me that every­thing is going to be alright.

Things will be alright, I know. Even though they’re not right now. I know this because I have the love and sup­port of a won­der­ful hus­band and … even though we don’t get along all the time … my mom.

I miss you, Mom. Hope you’re hav­ing a blast in the Philippines.

Missing Dad

It’s been a busy week, oth­er­wise I would have writ­ten much sooner. Espe­cially since the 2nd anniver­sary of my Dad’s pass­ing was this past Monday.

I would have thought that going through the first year anniver­sary would have made this year a lit­tle more bear­able, but it turns out I was wrong. It was just as hard to get through the day this year as it was last year. What made it worse was that I had to work, which made con­cen­trat­ing on things a lit­tle dif­fi­cult. (Reminder to self: Take next year’s anniver­sary off.)

I still miss my Dad. Every sin­gle day. But bring an anniver­sary into the mix and it makes it more emo­tional. I wish I could still hear his voice, his laugh­ter. I wish I could still get those silly voice mails he used to leave on my phone. I wish I could talk sports with him and com­mis­er­ate with him about the NHL lock­out. I wish we could talk about the new James Bond movie and whether he liked it or not. I just wish he was still here with us.

But alas, he’s not. He’s up above watch­ing us all and hope­fully pro­tect­ing us. And maybe — just maybe — he’s vis­it­ing his grand-​​daughter in Texas and mak­ing here laugh and smile as only my Dad could do.

I love you, Dad. And I miss you ever so much.

Thirty Days of Thanks, Day Twenty

Spent part of my day out­side today. That is, after spend­ing most of it indoors at work. But at least I got to leave in the early afternoon.

My Mom and I went to place a grave blan­ket on my Dad’s grave this after­noon. We bought a bare blan­ket and spent some time dec­o­rat­ing it with rib­bons and bows. This is the first time we decided to dec­o­rate it our­selves and we actu­ally had a fun time doing it. We did a fine job, if I do say so myself!

After­wards, we went out for an early din­ner and had some nice con­ver­sa­tion. Over­all, it was a great afternoon.

*******

So I’m think­ing that Mom & I should make it an annual thing … some­thing we can do together. Because there’s not much we do together.

It’s not that we don’t get along … it’s just that we don’t share a lot of the same inter­ests or find a lot of things in common.

I wish we could … find things more in com­mon. Which is strange to say, since she is my mother. We should have tons of things in com­mon. But we don’t.

It’s one of those things that I shouldn’t do … but I blame part of it on the fact that I don’t have children.

(Yes, I’m bring­ing out the “Infer­til­ity Card.”)

We’ve never really had much in com­mon, even grow­ing up. But I always thought that once I had a baby, I’d be able to turn to my Mom for some “I don’t know what the h*ll I’m doing”-bonding.

And even if we didn’t always see eye to eye, I would put our dif­fer­ences aside if my kids wanted to spend time with their “Lola.”

But since the kids/​grandkids thing isn’t going to hap­pen, I want to find some way to bond with my Mom; to con­nect with her.

So maybe it won’t be bond­ing over what lat­est funny thing “Johnny” just did. Maybe it’ll have to be bond­ing over what we’ve lost together … her, a hus­band; me, a dad.

What am I grate­ful for today? The time spent with Mom, bond­ing over my Dad.

Soup for the Soul

When I was lit­tle, I would typ­i­cally spend “sick days” at home with my Dad. Mom would work the day shift, while Dad would work the off shift. Such was the life of a dual-​​income family.

Dur­ing those sick days, I’d typ­i­cally be rel­e­gated to my bed­room to sleep off the ill­ness that would’ve plagued me for a day or two. And if I was lucky, I would be allowed to lie on the fam­ily room couch and watch day­time TV.

The thing I remem­ber most about those sick days was the soup my Dad would make for my lunch. He’d make this chicken noo­dle soup that I absolutely loved. And I knew I’d be feel­ing bet­ter if I’d ask for a sec­ond bowl.

It was a soup that only my Dad could repli­cate, much to my Mom’s cha­grin. Even­tu­ally it became known as “Daddy Soup,” and I’d always request it when­ever I got sick.

It was com­fort food for me; the warmth of the broth sooth­ing my sore throat. The chicken bits pro­vid­ing nour­ish­ment for an oth­er­wise lack­lus­ter appetite. The egg added that made the it taste like egg drop soup with chicken and noo­dles … The “secret ingre­di­ent” that made Dad’s soup unique. All of it just reminded me of home. And of being cared for as a child.

I think about this soup at times when I miss my Dad the most. And I know it’s because I’m miss­ing the com­fort of my child­hood when things seemed so much simpler.

Nowa­days life seems much more com­pli­cated; so much more com­plex. While I know that’s just part of nor­mal life, hav­ing this mem­ory helps remind me that I was loved by my Dad and that I am still loved by those peo­ple who reach out to me … Espe­cially dur­ing this par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult time in my life.

I’ll just refer to these reminders as “Daddy Soup for my soul.”

Weeakly

I’m try­ing to be dili­gent about updat­ing this blog at least once a week. If any­thing, let the blog serve as a sort of a rou­tine for my oth­er­wise routine-​​less life.

Okay, so my life isn’t with­out rou­tine. Oth­er­wise, why would I be at a tea house on a Sat­ur­day after­noon try­ing to catch up with some work that I can’t seem to get done after my online teach­ing sessions?

I’m feel­ing over­whelmed and anx­ious lately. There seems like there’s so much to do and not enough time to do it. I mean, I’m glad that I’m catch­ing up on some work today out­side of my home office, but then that leaves all the other house­hold stuff up in shambles.

To top it off, at the end of this month I’ll be trav­el­ing 5 days a week for the next 7 weeks, which – on top of try­ing to learn a new expense sys­tem for work (as well as quite a few new things work has got up her sleeve) – has me at the brink of a ner­vous break­down. (Or maybe I’m already there?)

My hus­band seems to think that I’ve got some really skinny ham­ster on a wheel run­ning non­stop inside of my nog­gin. He tells me this because he thinks my mind spins out of con­trol, work­ing over­time about worrying.

And d*mnit if he isn’t right. I just wish I could slow the ham­ster down enough to allow me to quit wor­ry­ing about … well, worrying.

So yeah. This is my weak attempt at a post this week. Maybe next week I’ll have some­thing bet­ter to talk about.

But for now, it’s all about the “Seren­ity Prayer” in my mind. That and a warm, hug­gable Hus­band is all that keep the ham­ster in my head at bay …

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The irony doesn’t escape me. It’s 5:15 am and –thanks to our dog — who refuses to sleep, I’m wide awake.

It’s not as if I’ve had a dif­fi­cult time falling asleep … it’s more that I can’t seem to stay asleep. If any­thing, all I want to do is climb under the cov­ers and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Depres­sion can obvi­ously do that.

And with me, depres­sion can cause waves and waves of anx­i­ety, which only add fuel to the insomnia-​​fire.

Recently Hubby and I had one of our long dis­cus­sions (one of many we’ve been hav­ing lately). This one hap­pened to start off with an inno­cent com­ment our 15-​​year old nephew had said last Sun­day when we met them for lunch.

“Aun­tie,” he told me, “you look sad” . And I couldn’t tell him any dif­fer­ently, other than to say that I’d been tired a lot lately.

My hus­band brought that up dur­ing our dis­cus­sion as a means to show me how even a 15-​​year old could see my depres­sion. And if he could see it, how many other peo­ple would see it as well?

All I know is that over the years, I have changed. Oh … I think the heart of me — my cen­ter — will never change, but the way I’ve looked at things or approach things have def­i­nitely been altered from my life experiences.

I know these thoughts are no dif­fer­ent than any other per­son in their late 30’s/early 40’s. After all, isn’t this when we begin to look back at our lives to where we were and com­pare them to where we are now? Isn’t this where we reflect back on those dreams we had in our early 20’s and think about whether we’ve achieved them or not?

You see, as I approach 40 this year, this is one of the anxiety-​​ridden things I think about fre­quently. I think about our early post-​​college years where then-​​fiancé and I would dream about our future together. We’d dream about our mar­ried life together; of kids and the large house in the sub­urbs. We’d talk about how our kids would be into sports or some sort of activ­i­ties where we would be the proud par­ents who’d show up with video cams in hand to record such moments. We talked about vaca­tions as families.

And, of course, I also had my dream of want­ing to be a Stay-​​At-​​Home-​​Mom for a spell, while wait­ing for our four (yes, four) kids to all be old enough to go to school. I also dreamt about mak­ing friends with other Mom’s; friends of our kids, where we could hang out and com­mis­er­ate about daily life with kids. I dreamed of arrang­ing play­dates and birth­day par­ties and all these won­der­ful things I could do when I became a mother.

But we all know where those dreams went. Our best laid plans … right down the potty.

While mak­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free has less­ened the “blow” to my need to mater­nal­ize (is that even a word?), it hasn’t taken away the fact that I have had to face the “Boule­vard of Bro­ken Dreams” when com­ing to terms with my infertility.

In other words, in order to fig­ure out what our next step in child-​​rearing would be … Hubby & I had to walk that “boule­vard” alone. Together, yes def­i­nitely … but alone.

So now that the we’ve passed that boule­vard … and even though it’s been almost two years now … what do we do now? What’s our next step? What’s our goal? I know that chil­dren aren’t in our future, but so what is our new future?

It’s all of those wor­ries that keep me from hav­ing a full night’s sleep. It’s what causes me anx­i­ety in the mid­dle of the night.

Which direc­tion in life do we need to be head­ing? What we can do with our lives now that we’re clos­ing in on 40 … the decade where we should feel more “set­tled” in our lives?

It has all the mak­ings of a dream­less night. A night where I’m not sure what our new dream is going to be.

Which, again. The irony doesn’t escape me.

How Winter Kills

Like the snow in Metro Detroit, I’ve been in and out of every­day life. And like the snow, my mind should be ever present dur­ing this par­tic­u­lar month, since it’s sup­posed to be the month of new begin­nings; of mak­ing res­o­lu­tions to change things.

But like the snow, I’ve only sur­faced in bits in pieces when­ever life seems to be most inconvenient.

This depres­sion sucks.

No. I mean lit­er­ally. It sucks the life and energy out of me. And throw in a (un)healthy dose of anx­i­ety with it … well it just makes life all the more interesting.

I’m try­ing my best to move past this depres­sion; doing all that I can phys­i­cally and clin­i­cally do, but the weight of this sad­ness seems to be omnipresent.

Thank God for an under­stand­ing Hus­band; one who has stood by me through thick and thin. He’s been there through the low-​​hanging, non-​​anxiety moments and all the way through the high-​​octane drama-​​fueled moments. Some­times I won­der – scratch that – I always won­der how I’ve man­aged to find my soul­mate and my best friend who still loves me despite all the bag­gage I carry.

If any­thing, Hubby (and the furkids – although the fur-​​dog has been on my last nerve lately … ) is the rea­son why I keep get­ting out of bed every morning.

Even though I’ve writ­ten the occa­sional post about the grief I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing, I know I’m not usu­ally so out­right with my depres­sion. But it has been sug­gested to me that I start writ­ing more about it, because this seems to be the only out­let where I can openly talk about my struggles.

And although this blog is (and always will be) about liv­ing child-​​free after infer­til­ity, I thought that this was my lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse where I can tell you about my life, both good and bad. So here’s where I lay it out on the line:

  • I’m still griev­ing over the death of my father. Between my two par­ents, it’s become appar­ent to me over the past year and a half that I truly was a “Daddy’s Girl.” I thrived in the moments when my Dad would play around with me and tease me. And there were the silly jokes the two of us would play on each other that only the two of us would get. And I miss those things horribly.

 

  • In the same aspect, I real­ize how much dif­fer­ent my rela­tion­ship with my Mom has always been; par­tic­u­larly now that my Dad had passed. I’ve always known that we never had that “Mother-​​Daughter” bond that is con­stantly seen in movies and TV shows; we’re just two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And with­out Dad being there as a buffer, this rela­tion­ship has only inten­si­fied … and not always in a pos­i­tive way.

 

  • Even though it’s been over a year since decid­ing to move back to Detroit, not a day goes by that I don’t miss liv­ing in Chicago. I miss the city and the atmos­phere. I miss the late night trips to Dim Sum or Korean BBQ with my cousins. I miss walking.

 

  • But what I miss the most is that Chicago rep­re­sented a new life for me. A life where Hubby & I carved out a place for our­selves; where the two of us really started focus­ing on us as a “Fam­ily of Two.” And while I love my home­town and take pride in telling peo­ple that I’m from Detroit, I miss that part of our lives where we were just far enough from “home” where Hubby & I could be our own family.

 

  • And finally … even though Hubby & I have decided that child-​​free liv­ing after infer­til­ity is our life, there are still those days where I worry about our future and what other things in our lives we can con­tribute to the greater good of our world. Will all I have to show at the end of my life is that I’ve worked hard for a liv­ing? That I loved my fam­ily and friends to the best capac­ity that I could? What about my legacy? What will I leave behind? And will I have made a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life? I know now that hav­ing kids won’t nec­es­sar­ily “sat­isfy” or pro­vide answers to all of those ques­tions, but hav­ing lost my Dad … and know­ing the per­son he was … this is some­thing that weighs heav­ily on mind.

 

I could prob­a­bly go on with more “issues” that seem to run end­lessly through my anxiety-​​ridden head, but these are the ones that are con­stantly in my stream of con­scious­ness. These are the things that keep me from doing the things I would nor­mally enjoy doing.

Like read­ing.

Or knit­ting.

Or tak­ing pictures.

Or writ­ing.

Or sim­ply watch­ing TV.

But I’m try­ing … at least I’ll try to work on the writ­ing bit.

And maybe Mother Nature will be kind enough to work on a mild win­ter for the rest of us.

Too Pieces

The day stretched on as if it were the longest day of sum­mer; yet it was the mid­dle of win­ter. It was only 4:30 pm, but dusk was around the cor­ner; the clouds in the win­tery sky mak­ing it seem darker than it should be.

She should be doing some­thing to keep her mind busy; any­thing to take her thoughts off the shades of grief that lay inside the pit of her stom­ach. Instead, she sat at her local bookstore’s café mind­lessly flip­ping through the lat­est gos­sip rags and fash­ion magazines.

Nor­mally read­ing such things would enter­tain her; would make her laugh at such ridicu­lous­ness. Or at the very least, inspire her to change her wardrobe to some­thing other than jeans and a t-​​shirt. But today, she nei­ther felt nor heard noth­ing but the silent hum inside her head that told her that some­thing about her was defective.

That silent hum had always lived inside of her for as long as she could remem­ber. She never felt pretty enough or smart enough to accom­plish any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in her life. And although she had a good career and an incred­i­ble hus­band, she never thought she could deserve to be happy.

At times in her life, the silent hum would sur­face out­wardly. When she and her hus­band found it dif­fi­cult to start their fam­ily, that hum became a silent roar. When she lost her job, the silent roar returned. How­ever, even­tu­ally that roar would once again return to a hum.

She knew that her antsy-​​ness today was because that hum was slowly turn­ing into a roar. She even knew her actions over Christ­mas was its root cause. But just like those other times, she had no idea how to silence the roar. She had no way of stop­ping such neg­a­tive, self-​​defeating feel­ings that lay rooted inside of her.

Although she knew she had the sup­port of her hus­band, her best friend in life … her fam­ily … she also knew she would ulti­mately be the one respon­si­ble for tam­ing the beast inside herself.

She also knew that in order to tame the beast, she had to get rid of the hum all together. She had to stop depre­ci­at­ing her­self and start to build up that self-​​esteem.

This will prove to be a dif­fi­cult task for her; espe­cially since she never par­tic­u­larly had con­sis­tent, ongo­ing self-​​confidence. Her entire life had been rooted in self-​​doubt with only fleet­ing moments of con­fi­dence. It would take a lot to rid her life of that silent hum.

What could she do? What *would* she do? She had already sought the help of pro­fes­sion­als; she already had the sup­port of her lov­ing hus­band. The only thing she could do is uproot those thoughts of self-​​doubt and self-​​deprecation and replant con­fi­dence and self-​​esteem in its place.

It sounded sim­ple enough; replace the neg­a­tive with the pos­i­tive. Believe that the glass is half-​​full rather than half-​​empty. Begin to believe in herself.

But why then, did it seem so much more com­pli­cated than that? Why does the silent hum persist?

Grief Bacon

I love bacon.

There, I’ve said it. And I’m not ashamed to admit that the smell of bacon brings back mem­o­ries of cook­ing break­fast for my par­ents when I was in my pre-​​teenage angst years. You know, back when I was a rel­a­tively obe­di­ent kid who only wanted to do some­thing nice for her parents.

And the taste …. Oh, the taste! Noth­ing com­pletes a great break­fast like bacon can. Espe­cially those thick, maple-​​cured strips that they serve up at Orig­i­nal Pan­cake House.

I mean after all, there is the say­ing that noth­ing can make a veg­e­tar­ian go pro-​​meat more than bacon can.

I’m guess­ing that with all this talk about bacon, you’ve fig­ured out by now that I’m not the health­i­est per­son in the world. And it’s true. I’m hyper­ten­sive. I’ve got high cho­les­terol (no sur­prise there!). And I’m at high risk for heart disease.

And given the events over the past year, I guess you can say that I’ve been lax at keep­ing myself healthy. In fact, you could prob­a­bly say that I went the oppo­site of healthy. What can I say? I’m an emo­tional eater.

In fact, I’m not just that; I’m an emo­tional over–eater. When things get tough or stress­ful, not only do I munch on chips or choco­late or candy … I over-​​indulge myself with them. And because of that I’ve gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of weight over the past year.

So what does this all have to do about bacon?

Yes­ter­day, at one of Hubby’s work-​​related events, we had sat with some friends and another cou­ple I had just met for the first time that night. Some­how (and I can’t exactly remem­ber how) the sub­ject turned to bacon. (I mean, really. When does bacon come up in a con­ver­sa­tion?!) That’s when I learned that the Ger­man word kum­mer­speck … which is the excess weight one gains from emo­tional overeat­ing … lit­er­ally trans­lates to “grief bacon.”

So there you go. Now I have a name for all the weight I’d gained.

But lest you’re wor­ried, Hubby & I have been mak­ing efforts to regain our health. First off was join­ing a gym to make time for some weight train­ing and daily car­dio. Sec­ond is re-​​learning to eat healthy again. Third … and this is the most dif­fi­cult … is main­tain­ing the moti­va­tion to keep up with both.

I guess this means I won’t be eat­ing too much bacon in the near future …

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