Thursday, August 13, 2009
Passing the Time
Spent the afternoon at Mom and Dad's house in the backyard listening to their fountain burble, knitting with my Mom. It was fabulous. So fabulous, that when it came time to head home and make the zucchini and corn thing I was planning for dinner, I called Bruno instead and said, "meet me at Mom and Dad's: we'll order pastrami!" And he did, and we did, and OK, it wasn't NY pastrami, but it wasn't zucchini either!
Prophetic Comment, or Invitation to Eat Less Ice-Cream?
Yesterday, as I was walking through the streets of San Francisco on my way to an audition, a homeless man walking toward me stopped dead in the street, looked me up and down, and then announced, "It's a boy! And it's beautiful!".
From his mouth to.......
From his mouth to.......
Monday, August 10, 2009
Without a Net
Last night I dreamt I was on a highway trying to get somewhere, and the highway kept splitting off in all these different directions. And somehow they would all lead to the same place, they were just different options with different terrains, some better suited for trucks, some for motorcycles, etc.
I had no idea which route I was supposed to take, and I kept making choices and was totally fearful that I was choosing routes that weren't best for me, or would take much longer, etc. And all the while I was moving forward at great speeds with no time really to make these decisions.
Right before I woke up, I had chosen a route that was leading me on a very very steep road, practically vertical, and the route was called The Wire, and I suspected that at the top of the climb I was somehow going to have to drive on a thin wire. I was concentrating on the asphalt in front of me, but I was becoming very very worried about what, exactly, The Wire meant, and whether I would be able to traverse it.
I had no idea which route I was supposed to take, and I kept making choices and was totally fearful that I was choosing routes that weren't best for me, or would take much longer, etc. And all the while I was moving forward at great speeds with no time really to make these decisions.
Right before I woke up, I had chosen a route that was leading me on a very very steep road, practically vertical, and the route was called The Wire, and I suspected that at the top of the climb I was somehow going to have to drive on a thin wire. I was concentrating on the asphalt in front of me, but I was becoming very very worried about what, exactly, The Wire meant, and whether I would be able to traverse it.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
After All
Staying true to form, the lead up to today proved harder than the actual day. Don't get me wrong, there was an awful lot of crying today, but it was the clean, "I'm really sad", or "I'm really moved" kind, not the feet stomping, hair tearing, "I want to smother myself with a pillow" kind. Phew!
It's amazing how much we dragged our feet about actually getting to the day. Last night, we found thing after thing to do, avoiding going to bed until far after midnight. We both tossed and turned most of the night, aware that I gave birth at 4:46 and 4:48am one year ago. Despite our restlessness, we both missed the actual hour.
We woke, and Bruno made breakfast while I composed the "One Year Update", and then we ate outside and slowly, slowly began the work of the day: remembering. Not that we don't remember all the time, but today was a more conscious process, a conjuring up of the ghosts hiding in corners, so we could face them head on and perhaps convince them to move on.
We knew we wanted to get in the car and drive south, find a beautiful beach off Highway 1, and scatter some more of the boys' ashes. The amount of time we took to get out of the house and on our way was almost comical. We were both terrified and doing everything we could to delay. And in our mutual procrastination, we were as gentle with each other as we were the day we left the hospital.
Finally on the road, we talked some more, aired our different sources of guilt and regret, did our best to mollify each other. We wound our way through the mountains, and when we finally spilled out at Highway 1 and saw the gorgeous blue Pacific, we pulled into the first beach we came to.
We had a picnic overlooking the ocean, and then created a makeshift barrier from the wind to light candles on the little cakes I'd bought for the boys. I had shown them to Bruno before we left the house, and he broke into big gulping sobs. I hugged him tight and felt so blessed to have as my partner someone so in touch with his feelings and able to let them out, able to let me console him. On the beach, we lit the candles and just managed to get in a round of Happy Birthday before the wind blew them out. We ate the cakes, and tried to take in and even enjoy their sweetness.
We then took the boys' photos and the urn with their ashes and walked on the beach. We walked and walked, letting the hot sand warm us, listening to the crashing of the ocean. We found our perfect spot, with a view of cliffs in the background and in the distance, rolled up our pants and stepped into the water. Like the call of the Shofar at the High Holidays, the freezing temperature of the water forced us into consciousness. Awake, and clinging to each other, dizzy with the cold and emotion of it all, we added some of Pedro and Archer to the surf, and watched as the waves rolled in and rolled out, senseless to our tears. We told our sons we love them, and we invited them to go back into the world, to flow out with the water and see what they could see. That was when I burst into big gulping sobs, and Bruno held and consoled me. And then we sat on the warm sand and looked through our pictures of them right after their birth, and remembered some more.
We spent the rest of the day clinging to each other like newly-weds, wandering down Highway 1, strolling through Santa Cruz, and we got back home, we both admitted to feeling relieved: it was a beautiful day, after all.
It's amazing how much we dragged our feet about actually getting to the day. Last night, we found thing after thing to do, avoiding going to bed until far after midnight. We both tossed and turned most of the night, aware that I gave birth at 4:46 and 4:48am one year ago. Despite our restlessness, we both missed the actual hour.
We woke, and Bruno made breakfast while I composed the "One Year Update", and then we ate outside and slowly, slowly began the work of the day: remembering. Not that we don't remember all the time, but today was a more conscious process, a conjuring up of the ghosts hiding in corners, so we could face them head on and perhaps convince them to move on.
We knew we wanted to get in the car and drive south, find a beautiful beach off Highway 1, and scatter some more of the boys' ashes. The amount of time we took to get out of the house and on our way was almost comical. We were both terrified and doing everything we could to delay. And in our mutual procrastination, we were as gentle with each other as we were the day we left the hospital.
Finally on the road, we talked some more, aired our different sources of guilt and regret, did our best to mollify each other. We wound our way through the mountains, and when we finally spilled out at Highway 1 and saw the gorgeous blue Pacific, we pulled into the first beach we came to.
We had a picnic overlooking the ocean, and then created a makeshift barrier from the wind to light candles on the little cakes I'd bought for the boys. I had shown them to Bruno before we left the house, and he broke into big gulping sobs. I hugged him tight and felt so blessed to have as my partner someone so in touch with his feelings and able to let them out, able to let me console him. On the beach, we lit the candles and just managed to get in a round of Happy Birthday before the wind blew them out. We ate the cakes, and tried to take in and even enjoy their sweetness.
We then took the boys' photos and the urn with their ashes and walked on the beach. We walked and walked, letting the hot sand warm us, listening to the crashing of the ocean. We found our perfect spot, with a view of cliffs in the background and in the distance, rolled up our pants and stepped into the water. Like the call of the Shofar at the High Holidays, the freezing temperature of the water forced us into consciousness. Awake, and clinging to each other, dizzy with the cold and emotion of it all, we added some of Pedro and Archer to the surf, and watched as the waves rolled in and rolled out, senseless to our tears. We told our sons we love them, and we invited them to go back into the world, to flow out with the water and see what they could see. That was when I burst into big gulping sobs, and Bruno held and consoled me. And then we sat on the warm sand and looked through our pictures of them right after their birth, and remembered some more.
We spent the rest of the day clinging to each other like newly-weds, wandering down Highway 1, strolling through Santa Cruz, and we got back home, we both admitted to feeling relieved: it was a beautiful day, after all.
One Year Update
Dear Friends and Pedro and Archer lovers new and old,
Well, if you can believe it, today marks the one year anniversary of the birth and death of Pedro and Archer. We, frankly, are stunned that a whole year has gone by. In most ways, we feel the time has slipped past at an alarming pace, and we don't feel quite ready to have reached this day. And in a few ways, the year has been agonizingly, painfully slow.
We wanted, one year later, to thank you all for all your love and support in helping us honor our sons while finding our way through this grief. Each one of you has played a tremendous role in helping us stay afloat, and for that we are profoundly, eternally grateful. Thank you. And I thought that, on this Archer and Pedro's birthday/memorial, I would take a moment to recap our journey thus far.
As most of you know, after we left the hospital in Portland, we continued down to the San Francisco Bay Area and forged a life here. We rented a house in San Mateo, a suburb about 15 miles south of San Francisco, a lovely place with lots of green coming through all the windows and a gloriously tacky Tiki Room outside that has been a wonderful place to host people. Bruno found a great job despite the horrible economy and works very hard as the VP of Product Management and Strategy for a data warehousing start up, Sensage. I reached out to schools here and clients past and drummed up a bit of a tutoring business, tutoring everything from GMAT to SAT to 8th grade Astronomy. My business is still in development, so I'd be grateful if you could think through your Bay Area friends and pass my name along! And in January, I began to act again, and had fabulous luck in that area: I did a 6 week Equity contract in San Francisco performing in 4 wonderful plays with fantastic directors and castmates: a truly joyful time. I also booked an agent, had lots of auditions, and have been included in numerous new play readings, each one a complete blessing. I have never been more grateful for being an artist: art has truly been reviving my soul these last 6 months, and I am fully re-committed to making sure there is good art in the world.
We've biked and hiked and kayaked all over the Bay Area, and taken trips to Tahoe and Mammoth. Bruno hit a very bad spell through the winter where he hemorrhaged a disk in his back (stress?!), a very bad period for us, but countless physically therapy sessions later, he is feeling on the mend, thank goodness. His work has taken him all over, including several trips to Japan and Europe, and is threatening to take him to Brazil next. We still find it hard to be away from each other for long.
We attended HAND (our grief group for neo-natal death) religiously for about 6 months, and now attend sporadically for touch ups, or to lend our experience to others just starting on the grieving path. We have made many friendships there that I think will be lifelong and we are so so grateful that the nurses in Portland steered us HAND's way. Our recovery would have been impossible without HAND.
Emotionally, this year has been a roller coaster. Grief, despite the "stages" is not linear: you don't complete one stage and leave it forever to start battling the next. They all mix together, they come back at surprising moments, leaving you stripped naked vulnerable again just one week after you thought you were finally firmly standing on the ground. Holidays are outrageously hard: letting go of visions of what we thought our Thanksgiving, Hannukah, even Valentine's Day would look like with two boisterous boys. Every time we travel in a car, we are brought back to our cross-country trip and riddled with guilt: no matter how many doctors tell us we did not cause this, that is the hardest thing to let go of. The desire to know what caused this loss so we can avoid it is so strong, as is the feeling that, as parents, we failed to protect our sons. We are still working these feelings through, and I suspect we will be for years. Maybe the guilt will lessen once we have a child who survives and we can raise.
We have not wavered in our desire to start a family, although we have been sorely tested at this point. After losing the boys, we have been pregnant twice, and we have lost both pregnancies. It is pain on top of pain. I have known women who have had trouble starting or maintaining pregnancies, but I have never full understood how debilitating and all consuming it is. Feelings of being broken, of failing to do what comes so easily to others, of being an outside to a club to which it seems the rest of the world belongs: it is awful and soul-ripping. We are doing everything we can to have another child, and I fight daily to retain my sanity and goodwill toward others, especially those with enormous baby bellies who work out next to me at the gym!
But along with all the pain, sorrow, anger, grief and guilt, we have also found our way to laughter again, to joy again. We have reconnected with old friends and made many many new friends and we cherish our friendships with new eyes and hearts. We have held on, at least in moments, to some of that perspective we were so keenly aware of when our grief was fresh. We try to retain the lessons of never knowing what someone else is going through, of practicing empathy and forgiveness toward all. We try. We fail often. But we know a different side of the world now, and so we continue to try.
This blog, which I started when we left the hospital, is still going strong. It has been a great source of comfort to me to have a place to organize my feelings, to share our experience, even to find my funny again, and I'm very grateful for my readers and their comments.
With love and gratitude to all, and wishing Happy Birthday to Pedro and Archer,
Lisa and Bruno
Well, if you can believe it, today marks the one year anniversary of the birth and death of Pedro and Archer. We, frankly, are stunned that a whole year has gone by. In most ways, we feel the time has slipped past at an alarming pace, and we don't feel quite ready to have reached this day. And in a few ways, the year has been agonizingly, painfully slow.
We wanted, one year later, to thank you all for all your love and support in helping us honor our sons while finding our way through this grief. Each one of you has played a tremendous role in helping us stay afloat, and for that we are profoundly, eternally grateful. Thank you. And I thought that, on this Archer and Pedro's birthday/memorial, I would take a moment to recap our journey thus far.
As most of you know, after we left the hospital in Portland, we continued down to the San Francisco Bay Area and forged a life here. We rented a house in San Mateo, a suburb about 15 miles south of San Francisco, a lovely place with lots of green coming through all the windows and a gloriously tacky Tiki Room outside that has been a wonderful place to host people. Bruno found a great job despite the horrible economy and works very hard as the VP of Product Management and Strategy for a data warehousing start up, Sensage. I reached out to schools here and clients past and drummed up a bit of a tutoring business, tutoring everything from GMAT to SAT to 8th grade Astronomy. My business is still in development, so I'd be grateful if you could think through your Bay Area friends and pass my name along! And in January, I began to act again, and had fabulous luck in that area: I did a 6 week Equity contract in San Francisco performing in 4 wonderful plays with fantastic directors and castmates: a truly joyful time. I also booked an agent, had lots of auditions, and have been included in numerous new play readings, each one a complete blessing. I have never been more grateful for being an artist: art has truly been reviving my soul these last 6 months, and I am fully re-committed to making sure there is good art in the world.
We've biked and hiked and kayaked all over the Bay Area, and taken trips to Tahoe and Mammoth. Bruno hit a very bad spell through the winter where he hemorrhaged a disk in his back (stress?!), a very bad period for us, but countless physically therapy sessions later, he is feeling on the mend, thank goodness. His work has taken him all over, including several trips to Japan and Europe, and is threatening to take him to Brazil next. We still find it hard to be away from each other for long.
We attended HAND (our grief group for neo-natal death) religiously for about 6 months, and now attend sporadically for touch ups, or to lend our experience to others just starting on the grieving path. We have made many friendships there that I think will be lifelong and we are so so grateful that the nurses in Portland steered us HAND's way. Our recovery would have been impossible without HAND.
Emotionally, this year has been a roller coaster. Grief, despite the "stages" is not linear: you don't complete one stage and leave it forever to start battling the next. They all mix together, they come back at surprising moments, leaving you stripped naked vulnerable again just one week after you thought you were finally firmly standing on the ground. Holidays are outrageously hard: letting go of visions of what we thought our Thanksgiving, Hannukah, even Valentine's Day would look like with two boisterous boys. Every time we travel in a car, we are brought back to our cross-country trip and riddled with guilt: no matter how many doctors tell us we did not cause this, that is the hardest thing to let go of. The desire to know what caused this loss so we can avoid it is so strong, as is the feeling that, as parents, we failed to protect our sons. We are still working these feelings through, and I suspect we will be for years. Maybe the guilt will lessen once we have a child who survives and we can raise.
We have not wavered in our desire to start a family, although we have been sorely tested at this point. After losing the boys, we have been pregnant twice, and we have lost both pregnancies. It is pain on top of pain. I have known women who have had trouble starting or maintaining pregnancies, but I have never full understood how debilitating and all consuming it is. Feelings of being broken, of failing to do what comes so easily to others, of being an outside to a club to which it seems the rest of the world belongs: it is awful and soul-ripping. We are doing everything we can to have another child, and I fight daily to retain my sanity and goodwill toward others, especially those with enormous baby bellies who work out next to me at the gym!
But along with all the pain, sorrow, anger, grief and guilt, we have also found our way to laughter again, to joy again. We have reconnected with old friends and made many many new friends and we cherish our friendships with new eyes and hearts. We have held on, at least in moments, to some of that perspective we were so keenly aware of when our grief was fresh. We try to retain the lessons of never knowing what someone else is going through, of practicing empathy and forgiveness toward all. We try. We fail often. But we know a different side of the world now, and so we continue to try.
This blog, which I started when we left the hospital, is still going strong. It has been a great source of comfort to me to have a place to organize my feelings, to share our experience, even to find my funny again, and I'm very grateful for my readers and their comments.
With love and gratitude to all, and wishing Happy Birthday to Pedro and Archer,
Lisa and Bruno
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday Pedro. Happy Birthday Archer. We love you both very much and we miss you profoundly.
Love, Mom and Dad
Love, Mom and Dad
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Let Them Eat Cake
Just so no one gets too worried, I cried my way through most of the morning, but then got myself to my acupuncture appointment, where, THANK GOODNESS, my storm cloud mood shifted and lessened and lifted. As the acupuncturist removed the eye-pillow, an involuntary prayer flew out of my being, "Please protect A, B, C and D" (my four currently pregnant friends). I can't tell you what a relief it was. I know if I can feel hope and prayer for others, that I can find my way to feeling it for myself too.
On the way home, I stopped by a fancy bakery, and picked up two darling petit fours, in chocolate brown and white, shaped like little presents. I also bought a set of mini-candles that spiral gently around. They are called "Curly Candles." I don't know if it is the right thing to do, I am making all this up, but I decided we would need these little birthday cakes to try, tomorrow, not just to mourn, but also to celebrate Curly 3 and Curly 4.
On the way home, I stopped by a fancy bakery, and picked up two darling petit fours, in chocolate brown and white, shaped like little presents. I also bought a set of mini-candles that spiral gently around. They are called "Curly Candles." I don't know if it is the right thing to do, I am making all this up, but I decided we would need these little birthday cakes to try, tomorrow, not just to mourn, but also to celebrate Curly 3 and Curly 4.
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