Reentry Update (September 23rd)

(This is an e-mail I sent before I started this blog)

Hi folks,

I'm imagining this might be the last "update" in this sort of mass form: I think we're about ready to start answering your wonderful e-mails of support individually. Progress.

We are safely home from Croatia, where we had an emotional, but ultimately restful time. It was great to see Bruno's parents, although I found the language barrier particularly challenging this time. My brain just didn't have enough juice to find my Croatian. The island was beautiful as ever, and we spent our days swimming in the sea, working on the house and walking to and from town. At first, I think both of us were challenged by how lovely and lazy slow everything is there. Sort of a "how can beauty still exist in the world", combined with an "I don't like the thoughts that come in my head when I have time to think" sort of thing. But as we let that go, I think we did find our way into allowing ourselves to fall apart a bit and then be buoyed by the sea and bronzed by the sun and come back a bit more into both physical and emotional health. Certainly swimming every day and doing yoga on the porch did wonders for my feet, which I think I complained about in the last update.

We have been back now for two weeks, and are living with my parents, who moved from MD to CA while we were overseas. They have a fabulous house where we are totally underfoot and they are being very very gracious about it. Can you imagine housing two bereaved people who are basically walking emotional time bombs while you are in the middle of moving for the first time in 30-something years? Kudos to us all for still liking each other two weeks later.

Bruno has done something which I think is a miracle: he has re-started his job search. I can barely leave the house some days, and he is out there contacting people, going for meetings and interviews. And he had contacted many of these people before all of this fell out, so they ask how my pregnancy is going, and during the interview he has to explain our sad story, and then somehow help them to feel it is OK to continue: I don't know how he is doing it, and I am so proud of him I could burst (I didn't show him this part of the e-mail: he wouldn't have let me send it if he had seen it!)

I spend my days right now exercising like mad and cooking healthy food for everyone. I've regained a lot of my strength, if not my balance (physical and mental), and I've dropped 20 pounds in the 8 weeks its been since their births. 20 more to go. When not exercising, I like to throw myself into someone else's problems, like say, my parents' unpacking. Last week, I marched into their office/guestroom, opened each and every box and dumped their contents onto the floor, got rid of all the boxes and then called my parents into the room and told them to put all the stuff away. I don't know how my father didn't kill me.....

Oh, and I found us a place to live (how traditional of us: Bruno is taking care of work while I take care of the home). It is a sweet 3br/2ba house on a tree-lined street. It has a front and backyard filled with rosebushes and hydrangeas, an orange tree and a fig tree, a raised platform on which I plan to make a potted garden, and The Tiki Room, a three-quarter enclosed outdoor space with a brick fireplace, and walls lined with bamboo, hence our nickname. It is very tacky and very us. Inside, the place is lovely with a tiled entryway, an L shaped living room/dining room with hardwood floors, an entirely white, country kitchen with plenty of room and a pantry my niece Sophia is going to love to hide in (she's into hiding in dark closets just to be alone with her thoughts), a large master bedroom with a really grown up master bathroom (marble and dark wood and a fancy shower: they even hung a chandelier in there, which cracks us up), a guest room/future baby room, bathroom number two complete with 1950's pink and yellow tile, and then, the prize of the house: the third bedroom is separated from the rest of the house (built out of the garage), painted avocado green, with a beautiful round window: the sound-proof studio Bruno promised me when I agreed to move to California. I think we can find happiness here.

Thoughts like the one above are beginning to poke through, which is just great. Then other moments, each of us weep, overwhelmed by the reality of losing our children, our hopes and dreams for them. We have been attending HAND meetings (healing after neo-natal death) and they help. It is still a roller coaster, moment to moment (not even day to day yet). But we are keeping on, and grateful to each other and to our friends and families for the love and the belief that we can heal that they keep sending our way.

Love to you all, and please keep staying in touch. -Lisa and Bruno