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Four

June 7, 2007 By 26 Comments

**Edit. This post is about my son that died. I realize that this is regurgetation of facts/feelings for a lot of you. Many of you have offered condolences repeatedly. They are ALWAYS welcome, but please, do not feel like you have to keep repeating yourself if you feel like a broken record. I know that you love and care for me and my family but I realize that sometimes all that needs to be said has already. THANK YOU!**

Four years ago, right around this time of the morning, I was at the hospital, completely sick of being in labor and wondering many things.

“I wonder how big he’ll be?”

“I wonder if he’ll be as cute as my other boys?”

“I wonder what he’ll look like?”

“I wonder WHEN THE FREAK THIS WILL BE OVER ALREADY!!!!”

(FYI-When you are in hard labor, the last question usually trumps all the previous ones.)

Matthew was born three weeks early. He was due on June 26th and was born on June 7th. This was done deliberately because I was having a difficult time carrying him and been hospitalized a number of times because of it. All of my children came early, but not by three weeks. I worried about his size. James and Christopher were both in the 6 pound range when they were born, and in all the photos their hospital “Going home” outfits were drowning them. I knew Matthew would be smaller. So, I went out and got a tiny preemie outfit that was adorable and packed it in my bag.

Everyone was placing bets on how bit he would be. I guessed five lbs, but Jonathan had more conviction about his manly genetics and so he guessed 7 lbs.

Matthew weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz and was 20 inches long at three weeks early!!! He would have been 12 lbs if he had been on time!!!!

No wonder I was having such a hard time carrying him! He had red hair and was just huge. I called him my little highland warrior. I loved and adored him immediately. Jonathan was so proud. It was a very happy day for everyone. The following months were happy, productive and some of the best times my family experienced.

I don’t mean to be biased, but he was just the cutest baby. SEE?

matthew.jpg

I have about a million photos of him munching on his “Sucky thing” because I loved it. I could hang out all day and watch him. I was so happy the 3 months and 16 days that he was here. I cannot believe that he would have been four years old today. Where has the time gone?

I have a lot of people ask me if it has gotten easier as the years go by without my little bug. My answer is a resounding “Yes and No”.

I am still full of wondering questions, many like the ones I pondered on the day he was born.

“I wonder what he would look like now?”

“I wonder if his hair would still be red?”

“I wonder if he is ever here with me?”

“I wonder why this had to happen to him and our family? WHY?”

I have had some really meaningful and deep email exchanges about a mother who lost her baby a few months ago. They have made me reflect on the past a lot this week. I remember what those first months were like- I wanted more than anything to have a remote control to fast forward through all the horrible pain and get to the point where it was bearable. At the same time I didn’t want that pain to die down or go away because that is how you SHOULD feel when your baby dies. It should never abate, never subside because he was that important to me. His loss was that devastating and if the pain went away, somehow it seemed like it would be a slap in the face to how important he was to my life.

Now that some time has passed, I can see the flaws in that argument a little better, but I still hold on to a lot of things regarding Matthew and I still feel scared to let them go. I’m stubborn like that. I hate that so many of my acute memories of him are fading, I have trouble remembering a lot and there are many sleepless nights that I lay in bed desperately trying to recall everything I can. “What time did he used to go down for a nap?” “How often was he eating at the end” “Which outfits were my favorite?” “Did he ever get to see a thunderstorm? I can’t remember!”.

Thankfully, there are some moments that will NEVER go away. How I used to kiss the bridge of his nose, the way he sat in his bouncer on the day he noticed his hands for the first time. How he looked sucking happily on his pacifier and the little noises that come with frustrated pacifier munching and the time he was so desperate to eat when I was out of the shower he latched on to my upper arm and gave me an arm hickey. His brothers holding him, him sleeping on Jon’s chest.

Those memories are mine. Hopefully forever. They are the things that I think about more and more instead of the day that he died. They are the things that I want to remember and focus on and that is getting easier to do.

I am doing better. There is so much more light and hope in my life than there has been in a long time. I am trying. I am looking (Even if it is so cautiously, one tiny millemeter at a time) at ways to be better, happy and to keep moving forward. I get stalled a lot but I am trying. As I said, this is still so hard. It created this HUGE ripple effect that touched, invaded and destroyed and damaged many, many parts of my life in ways I would never have imagined and I have so MUCH fallout that I am still dealing with. There are so many days I just feel overwhelmed, bitter, angry and lost.

BUT.

I think it helps to just be thankful. I don’t do this very well because of my inherent pessimistic attitude, but I’m trying and it happens more and more often .Thankful that he was here at all. Thankful that I got to be his mom. Thankful for all the good things I have left.

I think he’d want it that way.

Happy Birthday, Little Bug. I miss you. I think about you. I love you. Always.

Love,

Momma. me-and-bug1.jpg

Filed Under: Birthday, Death, Matthew, Serious Things 26 Comments

Transplants

April 21, 2007 By 27 Comments

Welcome, welcome!

I know what you are thinking. “Wow. Such a brave, daring, bold move, Loralee!” Ok, I deserve it. As one reader put it “I was expecting your url to be something like ‘www.superstealthysecretblog.com’”. So, I realize that this is rather anti-climatic for many of you. It’s sort of like a Kindergartener announcing they are running away from home and they go to the end of the driveway with their blankie and a PB&J.

When I bought my URL, I didn’t have determined, weirdo people trying to find me all the time or I probably would have ditched the Loralee and Looney Tunes altogether. My main reason in making the hoopla was that I have people that bookmarked my blogspot site and haveno concept of search engines, nor will they ever, so just changing to .com is enough of a deterrent. I love the whole “Looney Tunes” thing and really wanted to keep it.

Don’t be afraid to link or change or rolls or links on your page to this blog. I have a pretty good ip blocker on this site and my old one and am not expecting any trouble.

This site isn’t done, I have a lot to tweak and add. Jessica (“Kerfloppy”) redesigned my banner (GORGEOUS, huh?) and she is going to play around some more, but I wanted to get back to the meat and potatoes of blogging which is to actually post n’ stuff. So, here we are. Let’s move on to something I really want to talk about. (I will bitch mightily about WordPress and its photo function at a later date. GRRRRR!)

Michelle, Brigitte and I participated in a 5k this morning!

MY FIRST 5K!!!!

Note how I did NOT say, “I RAN my first 5k this morning!” (Yah, that was NOT going to happen) I did manage to run about a third of it. It was cold and rainy and the beginning of the course was up a VERY steep hill. My poor lungs just couldn’t quite take it, so I walked at a brisk pace for a lot of it. I haven’t been to the gym in a couple of weeks so I am proud that I finished the darn thing at all. My time sucked a duck six ways from Sunday.

45 minutes.

Sigh.

At least I managed to beat Michelle’s 5-year-old, Gracie across the finish line. Her 8-year-old, Abby kicked my butt, but I guess I have to have a goal to aspire to, right?

The run was to support organ donation. This is a very important issue that is close to my heart. It also affected the lives Bridgy and Chelle. Bridgy’s mom, Josie, was the recipient of a liver. We were all very worried for her when she got it, but she is doing very well now. She even participated in the run/walk today. She came in last, but she DID IT! Bridgy and I met her at the finish line with open arms.

Chelley had a beautiful niece that was tragically killed last Easter in a car accident and her family unselfishly donated her organs.

I was not able to donate any of Matthew’s organs when he died because he had to have an autopsy. I thought they were able to use his corneas and heart valves, but I was mistaken. The day I found out was very hard on me. I cried and cried. When we were asked about Matthew donating in the hospital I hesitated for about 15 seconds. It shocked me because I feel so strongly about it, but even I hesitated. It is a hard thing to sign consent to as a parent, but I really regret that they weren’t able to have Bug donate anything. It would have helped me to know his death had at least helped another little baby somewhere.

The reason I am so pro-organ donation is that one of my best friends passed away in 1994 while waiting for a heart/lung transplant. Scott Wolfer was the first friend I made at my high school. He was two grades ahead of me, but in my math class. I talked to him because he was wearing a “Phantom of the Opera” t-shirt. We were fast friends from then on. I don’t know why we clicked so well, probably because I was a shy, fat girl with unfortunate double-processed hair, and he was blue and wore an oxygen tank all the time. We were OK being rejects because we had each other. I wish I had a photo of Scott to post, but my box of high school memorabilia was destroyed by rain.

We had five wonderful years of friendship and I will never forget him.

Maybe it is because I was so young, but even when he was on oxygen 24-hours a day, I never really thought he would die. But he did. He died waiting for a call that never came. It will be 17 years this June since my friend passed away. He was only 21. So many people die waiting to receive transplants.

I hope this post puts a more personal face on something that is often far removed from public awareness. If you haven’t given thought to being an organ donor, please reconsider and sign up. Have your donor status put on your drivers licence and make sure your friends and family know of your wishes. You can’t imagine what the agony of waiting and hoping is like and you don’t know the blessing and impact you could have on many, many lives.

Filed Under: Adventures, Death, Exercise, Friends, Goals, Health, Matthew, YAY 27 Comments

Grief and so it goes

March 15, 2007 By 1 Comment
The mourning process can be spectacularly cruel. Not just because you grieve loss of someone you love, but the sheer unexpectedness that it can slam you down with is just…cruel. One moment you can be fine, chipper and well and the next you feel like your heart is going to explode and you just want to run, run, RUN to escape it as hard and as fast as you can.

When Matthew died, there was a very strange period afterward of trying to pull myself out of funeral, burial, plans, flowers, and death, death, death consuming every single second and thought of my life. The transition was almost more jarring than when I went from an outgoing mother of three children to the mother of a dead infant in the flash of an eye on what began as a very mundane Tuesday and ended as the single worst day of my life.

I couldn’t watch TV for months. I could only listen to 2 CD’s. I felt like being around “Normal” people whose lives were focused on the trivial and mundane like laundry, dry cleaning, business meetings and if the Wendy’s line was taking too long was like taking a bath in acid.

I couldn’t cope.

Me, the outgoing person who needs people around her like people need air was a recluse: Barely able to speak to her own family. Even closest friends had to make an appointment. I feared I would never be normal again. Even worse, I feared I WOULD. To lose that feeling would be to be further away from my boy and his memory.

But.

Life goes on. As much as I hated the fact that it does and I wished I could just cease to exist, the human spirit cannot stay in such a state of grief for as long as your mind and heart would like. I went back to an existence that isn’t quite normal, but a life that a casual observer would mark as ‘Pretty good”.

This is where the cruelty of the whole process rears its ugly head. Because no matter how long it has been, how far I have come, how much I understand, accept and have healed, I can be transported back to the moment my son was laying on a gurney in a level I trauma bay, more still than any baby should EVER BE.

I had a great day, full of accomplishment, fun, love, and satisfaction. I was updating my IPOD and heard a song I listened to over and over during that horrible time. I thought I erased it because I wasn’t sure I could hear again.

It slammed me RIGHT back to the day I put Matthew in the earth.

So here I sit, alone with a lake of tears pouring onto my computer desk, and the only friend I have right now is this blog. Even if I had friends awake there isn’t anyone to bring this to. Right now I need empathy and there isn’t anyone who has that tonight.

I know I will be OK in the morning, but for tonight I have to wrestle with my memories.

(I’m closing comment for this post. Thanks)

Filed Under: Death, Matthew, Serious Things, Suck 1 Comment