Wishing you courage

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow'."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Friday, October 24, 2008

Memory lane

In the mindscape and bodies of baby lost mama's there are weird anniversaries. Not just dates but events too.

On the very bad day of October 31, 2007 one of the first items on the agenda of a busy day was to get a flu shot. Then a prenatal visit with the anatomy ultrasound, then a fun, joyous Halloween night! Of course, the nightmare began with that ultrasound.

One of the tasks today was to get a flu shot. It's been on my calendar for weeks but any thoughts about it were kept in a quiet corner of my memory. Until driving in to work today when suddenly, there in the forefront "Getting a flu shot was the last thing I did before ..."

Before.

Before excited hopes for the future were snuffed out. Before wishes and prayers for this pregnancy to lose the label of "threatened miscarriage" turned out to be misguided. Before holding my son when he was much too tiny and then spending months thinking "I wonder what he will look like when he is born at full term", before forcing my brain back to the reality that I will never know what he will look like as a real baby because he is already dead. Before my marriage slid into stagnation. Before I severed friendships. Before I realized that it is not time to re-instigate communication with my mom because I don't feel up to dealing with her pouting, guilt trips, and troubles. Before I learned to be open and honest with my feelings and then learned to be very selective about who I am open with.


I opted to convince a colleague to wait in line early for our flu shots rather than wait for most people in the building to cycle through the large conference room that was now set up with nurses, sanitizing wipes and syringes. The screening question "did you have any adverse reactions to last years flu shot?" was met with a simple "no". The flu shot didn't cause my baby to die, but it's now part of a complicated and sad story.

I needed to get it over with early so I wouldn't anticipate remembering that last years injection happened just hours before life changed.

If life can change for the worse so quickly is it possible that it can change for the wonderful just as quickly? Today I'm pretending this is the case and that perhaps in a few hours everything will turn around again.

4 comments:

Sara said...

You just never know!

debbie said...

What a nice thought about such a difficult experience.
Here's to hoping!
xo,
me

Ya Chun said...

I am glad you were brave enough to get a flu shot again this year!

And, it's a matter of when good things happen to those of us who have been thrown down and kicked around, not a matter of 'if'. Just when.

Meg said...

What a wonderful outlook. I believe that YES, things can change just as fast. Even just that joke your husband made was a turn in the right direction. I hope. You truly deserve all the best!!!