A New Low

There are five generally-accepted stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It is also widely recognized that there is no correct order to follow and that one can jump back and forth between stages.

With that being said, I am STUCK in the anger phase and have been for a long time, in case you couldn't tell. As time goes on, I meet more and more parents (mostly mothers), either in person or online, who have also lost children. It's generally difficult to refrain from comparing oneself to others, and that holds true in grief as well. I look at other people or read their blogs and am struck by the relative lack of anger. (Or maybe they just hide it better.) Not that they aren't incredibly sad, because they are. But I read and I read, I think, I talk to my loved ones, I pray, and there is no way around it: I am ANGRY. There is no doubt that it is my default emotion tied to Weston's death.

Weston is dead, and I am mad. I'm actually not mad at God anymore (HUGE progress), so I don't even know where to direct my anger. I am not mad at Weston (being angry at your dead child is actually very common). I am not mad at any one person or entity. I'm "just" mad that my son is dead and the results: this huge hole in my heart and in my arms.

The result of my anger: I yelled at an old lady. That is my new low. Shannon, Caroline, and Weston would have been horrified. I feel ashamed, but the old lady was incredibly rude. (See, I'm STILL rationalizing my rudeness.) In a nutshell, she didn't like the fact that I was talking on the phone, she yelled (and yelled and yelled) at me, so I finally yelled back that asking nicely would have gone a long way. Yes, I recognize the irony that I yelled that particular sentiment at her.

So, there's proof that I'm a raging bitch. Losing a child clearly brings out the best in people.

I have been a busy bee lately: purging my closet (DOES ANYONE WANT A PROFESSIONAL WARDROBE before I consign it all??), scrubbing grout with a toothbrush, combing Craigslist, redecorating our patio, making homemade Nutella, and generally keepingmyselfso

busyIdonthavetimetothinkaboutWeston.

But there are moments. Highlights from the past week:

~While finding myself on the road for an hour the other night (thanks, Craigslist), NPR's Fresh Air featured an interview with Emily Rapp, a professor and writer whose young son died just last month from a terminal illness. She wrote a book about the experience, which I've been wanting to read. While I was mostly in awe that she didn't get emotional once during the interview, I was so grateful that God essentially made me pay attention to my feelings for an hour.

~I was about to put a ten-year-old barely-worn dress in the consign pile when I noticed the brand: Weston Wear. It went back into my closet.

~A friend sent me a picture of a rainbow.

~Someone who takes care of Caroline regularly at the gym told me she is an enigma. The exact word has been used to describe Weston. I talked about it here.

~Caroline told her friend that she has a brother who died and that he was too little for her to hold.

~I have been reminded again that my friends are wonderful, empathetic, and supportive. I am pretty blessed in that department.

I am deluged with new thoughts, words, feelings, etc. I have been reading A LOT lately, all pretty intense and heavy books. My mom pointed out that I'm making up for lost time because I couldn't/wouldn't read for so long, and I think she's exactly right. My attention span is back, apparently. And I watched a movie with Shannon the other night.

Anyway, the books, the books. I have been finding a lot of comfort in the Catholic religion. I don't know if this is the place to air all of those thoughts. But Catholicism reveals God and Jesus in an entirely different way than the God of my formative years.

In some ways, I am feeling intensely private. I'm not blogging much, obviously. I don't really want to talk about my thoughts on Catholicism (I've always been relatively private about my spiritual life, anyway). Prematurity awareness events are coming up, and I don't really feel like participating. I just want to be angry all by myself, I guess. So I probably shouldn't take it out on old people.

In any event, this might all change tomorrow.

I feel like dry, brittle wax. See below.

Souls are like wax waiting for a seal. By themselves they have no special identity. Their destiny is to be softened and prepared in this life, by God's will, to receive, at their death, the seal of their own degree of likeness to God in Christ...The wax that has melted in God's will can easily receive the stamp of its identity, the truth of what it was meant to be. But the wax that is hard and dry and brittle and without love will not take the seal: for the hard seal, descending upon it, grinds it to powder.
Therefore if you spend your life trying to escape from the heat of the fire that is meant to soften and prepare you to become your true self, and if you try to keep your substance from melting in the fire-as if your true identity were to be hard wax-the seal will fall upon you at last and crush you. You will not be able to take your own true name and countenance, and you will be destroyed by the event that was meant to be your fulfillment.
~Thomas Merton (Catholic!), New Seeds of Contemplation

Now, how to melt.