Does Anything Good Come Out of All This?

My dad brought us daisies the day of the D&C...he brought me daisies when I was sick when I was little, so they have a really personal meaning. And my mom brought us this lovely little ceramic angel.

When my brother died, something a lot of people told me was you have to look for the good that came out of the situation. Like they would say, "If your brother hadn't died, you never would have met your husband," (which is a story for another post). I personally believe I would have met my husband anyway, but that's beside the point. Or they would say: "Think of how this has made you a stronger and more compassionate person." Well, I'm sorry, but nothing you gain is worth a person you love so much being killed at age 27. Nothing. Nothing made me madder than that comment.

And although I haven't heard that yet with the death of our unborn baby, I've been thinking about it a lot, for some reason. And while I'm still going to maintain that no good comes out of this situation, if I try to understand what the people who say this mean, I think it would be something like this:

People can be so kind, and you really don't always get to see that in day-to-day life. But you do see it when something bad happens. Like with my parents bringing us gifts last week and saying, "Let us know what you need, we're here for you." My friends listening to me cry and calling and texting to check up on me. My work and my husband's school making allowances for us. The kindness of the doctors and nurses the day we had the D&C. The love and support from everyone in blog-land. And back with what happened to my brother, all the people who helped the best they knew how--his best friends who moved in with me so I wouldn't have to live those first few months alone (my brother and I had lived together). My husband who I'd just met making sure I got the help that I needed. The 17-year-old who lived with me over the next year (another story for another blog post) helping me heal in his kind and gentle way. Etc.

Bad things remind me of the good in the world. Is it worth what you have to lose to find this out? No. But it is a nice thing to know.

PS. My brother seems to be sneaking into a lot of my posts lately. The anniversary of his death is next week, and right now he's pretty constantly on my mind...

Did My OB Take My Baby?

The "bleeding heart" blooming in my yard. Always makes me think of my brother who died...and now my baby, too.

So will you guys let me get all weird and metaphysical today? Just for this post, I promise...

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, my OB recently committed suicide. And my baby died at essentially the same time. And I'd just seen my OB and had an ultrasound and talked about the baby a few days before.

So here's what keeps running through my mind, and it's really upsetting me. What if when my OB left this world, she took my baby with her? I don't mean it like my OB did it intentionally, I don't think of it like that, I just think maybe there was a connection between her and my baby and if she couldn't stay, maybe my baby couldn't stay either. So if my OB hadn't taken her life, my baby would be OK.

Weird, I know. But the only time I've cried really hard about this (there's been lots and lots of kind of normal sobbing, but only one big freak-out)...anyway, the time I've gotten really, really upset about what's happened is when I've been thinking about this.

I sound like a crazy person today, but just had to put this out there.

Thanks for humoring me.

xo

Dreams of the Dead, and Is a Baby Going to Help This Situation?

I've written a little here about my brother's death, but not much. Mostly because the pain of it is still so close to the surface, even almost six years after the fact. (Kind of an unusual situation: we were living together/spending all our time together when he died.) My guess is I'll be writing a bit more about him over the the next month or so...his death was in April and this time of year that's where my thoughts seem to go.

I've had two dreams about my brother since he died--one many years ago, one last night. In both dreams, he was dead. The first one I don't even want to go into...the one last night he and my other brother, who is still alive, died by 4-wheeling way out into the desert where no one could find them, freezing to death (my brother who died actually died in a motorcycle accident).

Lots of people I know dream about my dead brother, and in their dreams, he is alive. My best friend had the following exchange with my brother in a dream:

Friend to brother: "Luke! Why don't you go visit your sister!" (My friend--his friend first--always used to boss him around; he loved it.)

Brother: "Nah, she's too sad."

I wonder if when I truly start to feel better if my brother will come to me in dreams. I really am doing so much better...the first few years after his death I was totally paralyzed...I'm not so much that way anymore...but the pain's still there and it's still very raw.

And I wonder: is this baby we're expecting going to help heal me? Will life and rebirth and joy in my life for once crowd out some of the death and isolation and grief?

Will I ever be healed enough to dream of Luke alive? I pray that will be the case.