Somehow, It's Harder After the Holidays

Somehow, life for me is harder after the holidays. It was true after the funeral as well. 

Funeral preparation consisted of checking off a list, with plenty of support. Pick a mortuary, check. Service date, check. Coffin, check. Cemetery, obituary, funeral clothes for us, burial clothes for Isabella...check, check. The day of the funeral was structured and we knew where we needed to be and when. My sister stayed with us and people come over that evening. 

Father's Day, the day after the funeral, was spent at the cemetery with friends and family. As people flew home and we no longer had a list of things to accomplish for Isabella, it hit us - this is now our life. Isabella is gone. What the hell are we going to do with the rest of our days when our anticipated future was snatched?

Life goes on, as it should. But it goes on. My husband and I took a long road trip after the funeral. As soon as my OB cleared me, we left. Traveling together was the best thing we could have done. We drove. We listened to audio books, talked, read aloud a book our bereavement doula gave us, cried, and looked at the changing scenery. We sat on the beach and watched the hypnotic and soothing waves. 

Then we came home. My husband started back at work and it quickly became apparent that our grieving looked different. When he was at work he found the busyness so all-consuming that he was unable to process during business hours. Hours would go by without him actively thinking about Isabella. While he was gone I had spent hours processing her death. He came home and was thrust back into the depths of anguish, yet was no further along the path himself. He would have rather been at home, but that was not an option. A friend told us that it's normal to have priorities change after having kids. Had Isabella lived, he would have wanted to spend more time at home and work would feel less fulfilling. This is still true, even though she died. 

I floundered. I found I could not be alone (which is highly unusual for me). Even now, I seek out time with other people more so than I ever have before. After I finished seeing kids yesterday, I completed my daily notes in a classroom down the hall because my office was too empty. While I am still floundering, time does continue to move on and the routine is comforting. Yet, everything seems to take more effort in the new year. 

As I looked toward the first holiday season without Isabella, I knew it would be difficult, so I geared myself up for it. I was prepared for Christmas to be dreadful and overwhelmingly sorrowful. The holidays weren't horrible. They were tough, but we also had many moments of happiness and gratitude.

While I prepared myself for a challenging holiday season, I could not prepare myself for the pain of beginning 2018 without Isabella. She does not live in the new year, and I was not expecting this onslaught of emotions facing a year she never existed in. 

The realization that she is gone and this is now my life, hits anew. Going back to work was surprising hard. Writing "2018" on papers is hard. I've had frequent disturbing dreams related to death. Now that it's been seven months since she was born and died, I'm recognizing some classic PTSD symptoms in myself. And I don't have the energy to decide if I need to do anything about it. Somehow, many days are harder now that the holidays are over than they were months ago.

Now that it is January, we have a "to-do" list. An item on our list is contacting doctors before we decide to try and get pregnant again. While there is no reason to think Isabella's death was anything but an unimaginable fluke after a totally healthy pregnancy, we are going to get a full panel of blood work done and see if there is anything about us that could put future children's lives in jeopardy. Getting in touch with my OB office is too big a hurdle right now. We just don't have the energy to call, figure out which perinatologist to see, who needs to order the blood panel, call the hospital and order Isabella's records, etc. Neither of us have the "umph" to get the ball rolling. 

When people ask us how we are doing, we say, "We're making it. Some days are harder than others." We are surviving. We are still reliable and good employees. Most days I enjoy my job. We have amazing friends, who love us despite our distractibility. And it is hard to continue to internalize that this is life. This is our story, and it is so different than we expected.