I have regrets. Never live with regrets, you say? Well then you must not have lost a child. While I understand that statement is meant to read, "You can't change the past so there is no use in dwelling on what could have been", I insist on regretting as I wish. I try not to dwell daily, but sometimes the regrets peek out.
And I'm not talking about ones from college or anything like that. Although I'm not discounting those. I'm just not focusing on them right now. It's funny how certain events in your life trump anything and everything else you went through that was thought to be monumental and devastating.
High school breakups? Not so devastating. My 3-year relationship to a deadbeat, barely a drop in the hat.
Losing my son, absolutely crushing. There's just not a whole lot that could personally happen to me that would top that.
My regrets are all related to things I wish I had taken the opportunity to do while my son was bodily with me in that hospital for those 3 hours. They're personal, but real. I'll always wish things were different and it breaks me thinking of such things. For better or worse, you all get to read these completely personal regrets. If you aren't a BLM, I'd appreciate if you abstained from commenting on them or bringing them up-- not because I fear a breakdown, but because they are personal pieces of myself that I'll never be able to change. And also, a breakdown would be imminent.
- Not taking a lock of my son's hair
- Not seeing his body naked
- Not physically kissing him
- Not taking his handprints
- Not seeing his eyes
- Not taking a photo of Ray holding his son
I read someone's blog and read the comments about having locks of hair. It struck me in that moment that I don't have Andrew's hair and I want it. And if I did, I didn't know where it was. That spurred a trip to the nursery where I saw bags full of things that went untouched. That look identical to how they looked December 5th. It's like a time capsule in there. A great, big, baby time capsule of what could have been and what used to be my {hopeful but damned} reality. I rummaged through plastic bags of haphazardly strewn bottles and pacifiers my husband quickly emptied from shelves in our kitchen to de-baby the house before my entrance back into our lonely home.
I found the bag given to me by the hospital staff. It included pamphlets on grief, small booklets about losing a child, Andrew's footprints, crematorium paperwork, and 3 boxes of mementos. One box is from a woman who lost here baby. It was obviously her project to honor her daughter. There was a label attached to the box that read something to the effect of "Mommy to Hadley, born into heaven on March 21, 2009". In that box were various angel items. Pins, candles, etc. The next box held Andrew's little beanie hat (melt), baptism outfit, a pair of booties, pants, and a blue top that said something about heaven on it. I didn't buy the outfit. These were all supplied by the hospital clearly for dead babies. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have a hospital bag with me. It was all in the car and Ray was too afraid to leave me to go get it. And it was about 0 degrees outside. But mostly because I was an unpredictable basketcase of mess. The final box holds the blanket he was wrapped in, an envelope of the mysteriously strange (and eerie) gold ring they took photos of him with and some beads on little safety pins. One of them has a bead with the letter A for his name. I didn't understand these things, but I figured they were just standard procedure or small mementos given by other BLMs. Now that I live in the baby loss world, I am starting to piece together why we were given these items. Since Andrew was our firstborn baby, I couldn't compare normalcy to my experiences then. That was all I knew. And finally, the little card they put on those beds with the birthdate, baby's name, mother's name and all the measurements. His card was placed in the box. That probably hurts more than anything-- he wasn't a baby bed candidate and I'll never have one of those cutesy photos of him with his stats in that plastic hospital bed.
Heavy post. I've mostly stopped crying, but just couldn't let go of these thoughts and needed them documented. I'm sure as time progresses I'll add to the list of regrets. And while they will forever be regrets, I will try to live knowing that I did the very best I could in that moment of grief. I know I did. I don't dwell on it daily and I don't beat myself up over it. But it doesn't mean I can't wish circumstances were different. There hasn't been a whole lot I didn't want different in the last 7+ months actually.
Right. I'll work on that.
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