Hanging Mittens

So many women pay tribute to their lost babies. And for the last few months, after losing two babies, I think this has been too painful a thought. I cannot clip an angel pin to my blazers- that just isn't me. I cannot buy birth stones as my babies we not born. I admit, I have ridiculed the symbols in my mind and have not been able to understand how doing something symbolic to honor my unborn children would help make matters better.

Today, my husband and I had to pass time before a movie and we hit the mall that was attached. We wandered around with no real destination, no goal. The loads of strollers and babies grabbed at my heart and tugged as if it were war. The children popping up from every corner of my vision dug a hole in my gaping wound... and then it all collapsed when I saw the babies being propped up like dolls in the window of a studio wearing bunny ears, surrounded with painted eggs, pastel background to boot.

I collapsed. The tears streamed so hot and so easily down my face. It is like a cannon ball bursting through the core of my being- it takes over. I have never in my life experienced something so powerful as the grief I feel with the loss of our two babies. Nothing in the world, in this life, in any book, on any blog, in any grief group will ever prepare or completely heal someone for the loss of a child, a baby, even a fetus. They are different levels of loss- but they are as deep and vast as the Grand Canyon. Nothing can fill that hole.

My husband held my neck to steer me away from the window with the propped babies in bunny ears. He pointed me forward. He was driving me like a car...trying to avoid a crash, a scene, any more pain. But the pain is always there, even when I steer clear of it.

We stumbled into a dollar store to look around for nothing. My eyes were out of focus and my heart thumping from the near crash of human and public displays of total pain and sadness. I came across little tiny mittens. One pair of green and one pair of blue. I had to buy them. I wanted to honor our babies - and it was then that I understood the symbolism.

I decided right there and then that we would take these little mittens and string them in the tree that we planted when one of our very close friends died 15 years ago. In that tree are bells that my father hung the day Spence was buried. When the tree was planted 15 years ago I could reach those bells. Now they pierce the sky and I would need a ladder. Beneath the tree is Spence's grave. On his grave there is a poem that Spence wrote before he die, It reads: "You cannot beg a rose to stay, oh why does it have to be that way."

I don't think Bob knew how to handle my request at doing this but said "If it will make you fell better...." I think the idea of creating a symbolic remembrance really caught his breath like an unsuspecting fish nagged by a hook. I don't know if it will make me feel better but I am going to do it anyway. I am not sure if anything will make me feel better. But the mittens.... somehow... they belong in the tree by Spence. And in my gut I know that.

Bob and I are going to take these mittens, a step ladder and pin notes inside and hang them by the bells. This is the perfect place. The mittens can see the mountains and feel the wind. They will see the first flower pop its head through the ground when spring wakes through the cold winter. They will see the sky and hear the birds. They will feel the hot sun and see the stars. They will be together as they should be - in death as they could have been in life. Perhaps, they are all together looking down together...

I am sorry for every ridiculing physical memorials of miscarried children. I wasn't big enough or strong enough to fathom the idea that someone could actually draw more relevance to an unborn child than necessary... and through this blog and my writing, I have come to realize that no matter what the age of a baby that is lost, 2 months 20 years, there is always relevance to a life and a life that has been lost. I can't not honor my babies.