His 5th Birthday – May 10, 2015

It’s hard to have this blog still exist.  I recently became a blog-writer-denier, in front of someone I had just met.  I don’t want people to know anymore and I don’t want to write very much anymore.

When I was in the third grade Mrs. Long had us write essays about what we’d be when we grew up.  I wrote that I wanted to be a writer.  I was already a voracious and mature reader, and my parents encouraged me.  I overwrote and overwrite everything, but I can’t help it- I’m addicted.  I’m a logophile.  I write lists to start my day and I write sentences to organize my thoughts and long emails I have to cut down (but don’t).  I doodle words when I’m on the phone, admiring the shapes that represent the sounds that conjure up images.  It’s like magic.

I loved writing.  I used to write prolifically.  I would write on this blog every single day.

On May 10th 2010 I gave birth to a baby boy.  I helped the nurse change his diaper through little openings in an incubator and read him The Hungry Little Caterpillar and got to hold him against my chest, twice.  (I’ve written these sentences over and over and over for five years now.) Then I started writing about it.  As I was going through it, from inside the hospital I started writing how I felt on this blog.  For years I wrote everything here- from the physical pain to the horrible secret thoughts.  But five years is a long time for other people.  The people who were there back then might think you can’t get over it, and the new people…well it does’t seem fair to subject everyone to all of it.  Everything in my life has changed in these five years except the sadness.

It’s impossible for me to write anything new about what happened.  One of the most consistent sufferings of a writer is the guilt of not writing enough.  There’s always more to write.  And there’s always more a person wants to write about grief.  It changes so dramatically and seeps out so unexpectedly.  A few nights ago it appeared as humiliation.  Another time it was fuel for aggression and triumph.  Usually it’s loneliness.

The loneliness is easy to redirect because my joy for life and shattering sadness are not mutually exclusive.  I never need help looking on the bright side: I live on the bright side.  I just have a summer home on the dark side.

I am self conscious about how sad I will always be sometimes.

On May 10th 2010 I gave birth to a baby boy. I helped the nurse change his diaper through little openings in an incubator and read him The Hungry Little Caterpillar and got to hold him against my chest, twice.

He was alive and he was his own self. That’s the sentence I would say if I could.  That’s what I would tell people.

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Comments

  1. Catherine Walsh says:

    I am so sorry. I wish you had been able to hold your baby boy more than twice, changed his diaper so many times you lost count, read him The Hungry Caterpillar over and over again.

    He was alive and he was his own self. Tommy Jr.

    I think I also have a summer home on the dark side. That pretty much sums it up.

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