Soul Searching

It has been a weird few days. Things have happened that caused me to pause and reassess the purpose behind this blog.

First, something bad happened as a result of my blogging: someone did, in fact, call Mental Health Services on me. And gave them...Shannon's contact information, not mine. Because the Mental Health Services dude called HIM, not me.

I told a few people about the call before I blogged about it the other day, and I have gotten many private messages since then asking me if it really happened. Reactions have ranged from anger to laughter to name-calling of this "concerned citizen" (that's what the Mental Health Services dude called him/her). Suggestions of how to deal with it have ranged from ignoring it to giving the anonymous caller a public haranguing on this blog. I have decided to do neither.

But I AM going to address it. When someone reports you to a public entity suggesting that you might harm yourself, you tend to get a little introspective, especially if the reason for the call was based on something you said publicly. So I wondered...do I come across as suicidal in my posts? That's the most ridiculous-sounding question, but if you're me, you have to think about it. So I wrote a post to clearly address that question. My fears were quickly put to rest by everyone who knows me, basically in the form of statements like, "Are you kidding me? Anyone who knows you at all knows you would never harm yourself!" Etc. Whew.

But, clearly someone thinks I AM going to harm myself. I will give this person the benefit of the doubt and assume he/she is not a troll who just wants to mess with me (it actually happened to a blogger I follow) but is someone who is truly concerned for my well-being. For that I am thankful. There are too many people out there who really do want to harm themselves but have no one watching out for them.

I have many thoughts about the actions of this "concerned citizen," but I will not air them here. That would be way too judgmental, especially because I don't know who the person is. But I will say this much: it was quite disheartening to hear about that telephone call. I know, I know: I open myself up to such things because I blog publicly. But it was disheartening to see that, to someone, I am unapproachable. I appear to be so fragile, so cracked up, that two intermediaries, one a complete stranger, has to be placed between us. Especially when I continuously beat it into everyone's heads that companionship and talking to people (not my husband relaying concerns from strangers from Mental Health Services) is WHAT I NEED. Please trust me that I am the expert in my own grief and that I, not anyone else, know best what I need to cope with Weston's death.

And that is all I will say about that. It happened, I have acknowledged it, and I'm moving on.

Neeeeext, an amazing thing happened: Weston was featured in the New York Times!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was still down about the whole incident-that-will-not-be-mentioned-again, and then I saw a blog comment from someone I only know through the Internet saying she saw Weston's picture in the New York Times magazine. I am pretty sure I screamed out loud and ran over to my copy of the Sunday Times (this happened Wednesday night. I was still only halfway through the front section. Told you I have no attention span.). Weston's picture was not in the magazine, so I checked online....and there it was. And here WESTON is, alongside Whitney Houston, Neil Armstrong, and Nora Ephron. Proud mama here! I am in awe. Well, not really, because Weston is amazing, but WOW!

A couple of months ago, I saw something from the Times asking for submissions of photographs and tributes to our loved ones who died in 2012. Well, OF COURSE I was going to submit Weston. I did, and I promptly forgot about it until I saw the blog comment. But when I was getting the submission together, I thought long and hard about which photograph to use. Do I dare submit a picture of a DEAD BABY? Weston's are so much more peaceful than the alive pictures when he had at least ten tubes attached to him at all times. Do I put my favorite picture of him alone (after he died) or the one of me holding him (also after he died)? Is it selfish to put myself in there too?

If you visit the article, you'll see for yourself that I submitted the picture of the two of us. He and I are part of each other, after all. The heartbreak of saying goodbye and the depths of a mother's love are somewhat captured in that photograph, I believe, and that is a big part of Weston's story.

So we are both in there. And so is a typo, in the tribute I wrote. Unbelievable. I proofread that thing a million times. I can't imagine that my Type-A self overlooked it. Who is more Type-A: me, or the New York Times editor? Hmmm....

So, the New York Times got it right. They are not afraid of pictures of dead babies. I vow to work on my attention span so that I can read and appreciate their articles regularly again. Seriously, words cannot express my gratitude that Weston is acknowledged and remembered.

The article completely overshadowed the incident-that-will-not-be-mentioned-again, in the best possible way. I was thrilled that Weston is having an impact, and I was feeling OK. But then yesterday was really rough. It was a challenging day with Caroline, which is truly the understatement of the year (all four days of it), and it was enough to put me back into despair. The day only went downhill from there, in all aspects.

This morning, Caroline and I went to the gym. At one point, I was walking past the kids center, and she looked pretty subdued in there. Her heart was definitely not in the game they were playing. When I went to pick her up later, she laid down on the floor and put her face in her hands. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, "I miss Baby Weston." Sigh...

So, despite the wonderful tribute to my son in an internationally-read newspaper, my heart is heavy. He is still gone, after all. It always seems to be two steps forward, two steps back. And Weston's six-month birthday is coming up on Monday. That's going to be a hard one.

The events of the past week have made me pause: are they signs that I need to stop blogging? Or stop being so personal?

I wonder. This week can be erased from the calendar, as far as I'm concerned. Blogging is usually very therapeutic, but this week it seemed to bring me more stress and heartache than anything else. But grief is intensely personal; there is just no way around that fact. More importantly, the longer I blog, the more good things I see happening: you all are loving your children more intensely, doing random acts of kindness, mentioning deceased children to their parents and then watching their eyes light up, thinking hard about the expression of grief in our culture, showing gratitude, releasing balloons, being good nurses, encouraging people, being thoughtful about how you support grieving parents, and the list goes on. All because of WESTON. How can I silence Weston's voice?

These good things happening in Weston's name are worth the pain of unmentionable incidents, at least at this point. So I'll keep going. Is this an incredibly brave or incredibly selfish decision? Only time will tell. But I fervently hope that unmentionable incidents remain few and far between.