Maternal Observance

https://youtu.be/GCyqhi55O-8 ~ Gone Too Soon~Daughtry


“A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending...”  ― R.J. Gonzales

“Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But, the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn’t wish it away. I prayed that God would bless us with a baby. Each child is a gift, and I am proud that we cooperated with God in the creation of a new soul for all eternity. Although not with me, my baby lives.”  ― Christine O’Keeffe Lafser, An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers after Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death

I hate this day!  It is my third, least favorite day of the year.  The other two days are the days that I lost our babies, who, for me, would have made this day a joyous celebration.  It is a day when the facade that I have carefully put into place, that tells the rest of the world that it’s okay most of the time for me, crumbles all around me, because it’s NOT okay, and it never will be. My truth is unearthed and exposed, once again! Seventeen and 14 years later, and the sting of their losses is still acutely felt.
William David and Adrian Rae – my gifts of immortality, who unfortunately became immortal before their father and I did.  It goes against the grain...
This last week, I have tried not to venture out any more than I have to, because I cannot bear to see all of the various assaults to my senses that have no adverse affect for anyone who hasn’t lost a child through miscarriage or stillbirth or early child death – all of the Mother’s Day cards, boxes of candy, offers for THIS perfect Mother’s Day gift or that one! “Send your Mother a special bouquet of flowers; take your Mother out for a well-deserved lunch...” It’s ALL too much for the heart of a mother such as I, to bear!   It’s like the scab that’s been covering this wound, is ripped off, once again and the pain becomes overwhelming, in the blink of an eye.  It is a stark reminder of what we lost – what we don’t have – what we’ll never have.  It is an un-welcomed admonisher that I am a childless Mother here upon this earth.
I see pictures of friends with their children on Facebook and Twitter, and hear about the gifts given, all deservedly so, but it makes my heart hurt.   It’s not jealousy on my part, because I could never be jealous of such wonderful blessings that my friends and loved ones share with their children and vice versa.  It’s more about all the life-experiences that my husband and I did not get to share with our children, that is driven home on a day like today with brut force.
Perhaps, this year is a particularly bad one for me, because this would be a milestone year in our household, had I carried my pregnancies to term: our son would be looking at colleges and our daughter would be entering high school.  Oh....it makes you wonder.  WHAT would they be like?  What things would they be involved in at school?  What, if any career indicators would be evident? {Everyone knew early on that I would probably be a writer in some capacity.}
Then, Tom made mention the other night, after he came home from a local baseball game with some friends, that he glanced around at one point and saw a lot of fathers there with their sons.  It made him acutely aware, in that moment, of a longing that crept out and made him sad, because he never got to take our children to a ball game – no ball park dogs, Cracker Jacks and ice-cream cone pig-outs to share with excited children.  There was a sharp pain that came in that realization, then all the other short-changes, resulting from those losses, somehow began to fall out and tumble down like a set of dominos, after the first one begins that descent: graduation, college, mating rituals, et al.
I listened to him, with tears in my eyes, because of what my body stole from him.  I will forever carry a guilt that I, as the one of us who could not deliver these babies to term, bear. I, inadvertently, took a legacy from him in addition to me, because my body was not able to hold our children for nine months, before it delivered them to us.
People, outside of this circle that we are in, never understand that burden that I, as the mother carry.  No one blames me for this, but me. Of course it was nothing that I did on purpose.  On the contrary, I was told that my body fought to keep my first pregnancy viable longer than it should have been able to sustain it {story for another day}.  It was nothing that I WILLFULLY did, but my body was the betraying culprit, nonetheless.   If one didn’t feel some guilt over that fact, I don’t believe they’d be human.
Every year, as Mother’s Day rolls around, I start to feel the pall of  FAILURE begin to move through me like a wildfire and depress my senses, like a coffin’s cloak, wrapped around this day.  It is a day of personal sadness for me.   I try to make the most of it – to find some joy in it.  However, the tinge of sorrow will always be a part of it.  Always....There is simply no way around it.
I think the most difficult part of this day, is when people ask if we have children?  I do not deny them.  I respond as graciously as I know how, thanking them for the happy greetings and telling them that we have two angels in heaven.  That response does not lend itself to further conversation, except for apologies, and “the look”, which can only be defined as one of pity.  I don’t like pity.  I welcome compassion, but not pity.  It is my responsibility, thereafter, to say something pleasant or upbeat, for example, to whoever is tending to us at a restaurant for lunch, so that their experience with us in the aftermath of that Q & A, will not to be an awkward one.
The good of this day is that I am still blessed to have my mother with me.  I celebrate her everyday, however, so I don’t need a special day set aside to do that.
And, as this day begins to wind down, I feel the gritting of my teeth lessening, and my endurance, the one I have mastered lo these many years, in my attempt to make it to the end of this day with my heart not completely battered and bruised, now almost at hand. Tomorrow will be a new day in which to begin again, and I won’t have to think about this annual display for another 3~65.  For me, therein lies the blessing...

“Ann: How my heart has ached. How empty I have felt. How I’ve ached to hold my two babies.”
― K. Howard Joslin, Honest Wrestling: Questions of Faith When Attacked by Life

Child of Mine & Puppy Dog Kisses

Elmer Javier Bosher-Perran

Came to live with us on September 19, 2009

"You are my sonshine...."~Author Unknown

*Please take a moment to listen to both songs; I dedicate them in memory of our son, William.

http://youtu.be/33Zd8fEsQAk [Fly - Celine Dion]
https://youtu.be/8Gwitx5SXN8  [The Day - Babyface]

Today is a milestone day for me and my husband. It is the day, had the doctor’s predictions been accurate, that our son, William David Bosher-Perran, would have turned 13. Thirteen. That’s a big number in a child’s life~it’s when they’re on the cusp of young adulthood. Thirteen years is also a short lifetime, and that’s what we’ve missed with our son: his short lifetime. We’ll also miss his adulthood; his middle age and so forth. Our son never touched down on the landing pad, so to speak.
He took flight half-way through my pregnancy in 1998 and went back to heaven, from where he came. He trailblazed it back. He was our little shooting star miracle, and he was a miracle, if only for that brief moment. Who knows why it happened? Perhaps, he heard the news on television through my stomach one night and thought to himself, "No way do I want to be a part of that! Sorry, guys, but I am outa here!"
If that was the case, really, who could blame him? It’s a tough world we live in, and it gets tougher by the year. Vitriolic. Harsh. Maddening. I worry about the children growing up in this cesspool of disagreement, stalemate, and bleakness. I worry about their futures. I don’t have to worry about it for my children, however. Is that a blessing? If I’m honest, which I always try to be, I’d say it was a mixed one. Nonetheless, I would have liked the chance to try and give them both a good life - to parent; to teach; to nurture them. I would have liked to have left some legacy behind that said Tom and I were here, that we loved each other...
Something greater than me had other plans. The doctors said my body fought like hell [their words] to keep William viable. There was a modicum of comfort in that thought, at least. Still, it didn’t escape me that the only tug-of-war I got to have with my child, is one that I lost. I never was very athletic. But, I am very philosophical. He wasn’t meant to live here with us. I don’t know what he was meant to do? The lesson of him coming and going like that, is something that I haven’t quite figured out, and I probably never will. Trust me, it haunts me sometimes...
In any event, losing my sweet William was the first of two such blows for my husband and I. I’ve taken some hard knocks in my life, but that’s one I’ve never fully risen from. It was a brutal hit. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I don’t think the greatest boxers in the world could get up from a blow like that. It not an attempt at grandiosity. Anyone who’s gone through this, will tell you the same thing. It’s brutal and devastating! And, there’s a lot more upset involved than not getting a big, solid gold, bejeweled belt at the end of the go-round. Unlike boxers, though, mothers and fathers who’ve lost their children through miscarriage and stillbirth know how it feels to simultaneously have the stuffing knocked out of us, while the rug is yanked out from beneath us for good measure. I mean, common wisdom would dictate that if the cosmos is going to level you flat like that, the world, at least as we know it, should shatter. Losing William felt just like that... There was a shattering of hopes and dreams.
I think a lot about that sometimes: why some people who desperately want children are deprived of them? Why others, who could care less about them and treat them like garbage; who toss them into a bag with duct tape over their mouths and bury them in the woods behind their houses, in cold, shallow graves with no markers, as if they were nothing more than an unworthy, inconvenience, are allowed to even have them in the first place? It’s a mystery. On the fairness scale it teeters somewhere below the zero mark. But, such is life. It’s filled with cruel ironies and unfair disadvantages and bitter pills...
The loss of William and his sister, three years later, are my bitter pills in this lifetime. They are my regrets – my do-over wishes...you know, the wishes one makes when they fail at something and ask for a do-over, because they know in their heart that they can get it right, if they just had one more shot at it. I stopped asking for do-overs after my second miscarriage. Should I have tried, one more time, for "the charm" of a third time? I wasn’t brave enough. I can take a strike or two, and I have. But, I don’t like the words "you’re out!", unless, of course, I’m at a baseball game, and it’s directed at the team I’m not rooting for...I was rooting for us.  I didn't want us to have to hear the "I'm so sorry" words again.  It was the best I could do for the home team at that point.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that life is a series of ups and downs – wins and losses. I’m not good at losing! I’ve got a competitor’s spirit. I get it from my parents. Who knows? Maybe, I should have tried again, but after the second loss, it just kinda felt like the cards were stacked against me–us, and I regretfully told my husband, "I can’t do it!" It’s not that I’m afraid of taking a risk. Lord knows, I’ve risked a thing or two in my life, but I’m very protective about my heart and my husband’s. I know how much they can take, and I don’t think either of us could have gone down a third time.
It was one of our "for worse" moments that the wedding vows we took together alluded to. He never blamed me for not wanting a third go round, and he never held it against me that I couldn’t give him the children that he would have been great at fathering. I remember one time when I apologized to him for not being able to carry them to term, he wrapped his arms around me and told me he had all he needed "right here,". He was referring to me standing inside the circle of his enclosed arms. I rested my head against his chest, and thanked God for gift of him. My losses have been great, but so have my gifts...
I don't take them for granted.
We so wanted children. We could have given a child a lot. [For those of you thinking adoption, at this point in the story, that’s a story for another day....] Anyway, we could have done that for a child - given him and her a lot - love, education, security, fun....we should have been able to try.
As I think of how we should have been able to try, I hear that haunting lyric in the chorus of that Rolling Stones song "you can’t always get what you want...",  echo in my mind, and I know it’s just the way life works sometimes. Sometimes, you get the gold like I did when I got my husband. Other times, you don’t even place, like what happened with our babies.
Then, when I think about that last line, [yeah, I think a lot...] Marlon Brando’s words from On the Waterfront come to mind: "I coulda been such a contender!"
I feel a long sigh release from me, over that thought. Oh yeah. We coulda been such contenders in the good parent department. I believe that. It seems a waste that two children lost out on all that love and nurturing. It is a deeper chasm of loss that we feel by being cheated out of that privilege. Does that sound bitter? Well....there are moments, ya know?....I’ve previously copped to that personal struggle. I work very hard to rise above it - that bitter pill. Some days, like this one, I think I’m more entitled to feel a little cheated and be a little more bitter over this particular loss.
I'm human after all.
My husband and I were talking about William yesterday. Thirteen.
"God!" he gasped when I brought it up. "Has it been that long already?"
It feels like a long time, but the pain of it is still yesterday. Not the crying every moment pain of it, but the raw, open wound of it...every year, at this time kind of pain. Actually, it happens twice a year, this particular pain – the day I lost him, and the day he was scheduled to be born. It’s when the scab knocks off of the wound, and it opens again - gaping open. The longing for and wondering of what we don’t have and what we missed out on are the predominate "ouches". Just for those days, it really "ouches" all over again! Okay, maybe Halloween and Christmas and Mother & Father’s Day and....well, you get the picture. Otherwise, we think good, happy thoughts of our angel, William, who’s making his mischief in heaven and giving my father and Tom’s parents a run for their money.
I wrote a poem about him years ago that’s called the same thing as this blog entry minus the "Puppy Dog Kisses". Our grief counselor suggested that I put my thoughts on paper about what this loss meant to me right after it happened. Yes. We went through several months of grief counseling. Some losses, require a little extra help coming to grips with. This was one of those losses. Anyway, she’s the one who suggested that I do it. She knew I was a writer. She thought it would be theraputic for me. It was. She was good at counseling. Her name was Mary, and she cried when I read the poem to her in our following session. She apologized to us for doing that, but she was a mother, you see, and she understood the magnitude of grief that comes along with losing the possibilities that come along with having children. I appreciated someone outside of our family shedding tears over William’s loss. I can’t explain that other than to say that it felt like someone other than us regretted that the world may have lost another Johann Bach or Albert Einstein or Georgia O’Keefe or Kate Chopin with the loss of our child.
She hoped I’d do something with the poem to help other couples and especially women who were in the situation my husband and I are in. I was never quite sure what to do with it? Perhaps, I’ll share it some day.
In the meantime, my husband and I were reflecting about what this young man of ours would be like at 13. It’s hard to imagine? I like to think he’d be an avid reader, like me. I like to think he’d be great at math, like his Dad. It’s hard to imagine what he’d be like - who he’d be like? Still, we do. We always will...
Then, two years ago, God put something in our lives that put a BIG smiley face on this day. My sister-in-law, Kathy, was in cahoots on this. She found a brother for Chuey, our Chihuahua puppy, and she brought him to us. We met in Baltimore, Maryland on this day in 2009. It was a gorgeous day, just like today. Kathy, God bless her, brought Elmer into our lives...our little cowboy puppy, who’s all snips and snails and puppy dog tales. Yes, I spelled it that way on purpose. Do we have stories to tell on him! [Another day...]
He is a pure light, genuine, feel good, bundle of love. He gave me a snuggle-cuddle after he was placed in the arms where our children would normally reside for snuggle-cuddles. He [and Chuey] fill that void in very fun, wondrous, happy ways. It’s no where near the same thing, as having our children here with us, but I think William approves.
I imagine he’s been up in heaven for a lot of years now hollering the way young boys do when they get fretted over something: "Please, someone! Give her something to hold and love! Give her something that will slobber her face with wet kisses and cuddle with her in her chair and make her think that she’s the best thing since Wonder bread...."
Well, Baby, you got that wish! Not once, but twice. I’m loaded down with snuggle-cuddles, wet, slobbery kisses and little ones who think I’m the best thing since Wonder bread! Isn’t symmetry ironic at times?  Two bundles of love fill my arms...
Then, in my mind, I hear him protest, "Mom! I’m NOT a baby!"
And, I follow through with the words my mother always said to me whenever I said that to her. "I don’t care if you’re 80 years old, you’ll always be my baby!"
That’s a tug of war I win...always...
So, these are some of my thoughts for today.
I’m attaching a picture of Elmer [one of Chuey will come another day...] so that I can share his sweet, funny, munchy self with everyone. There’s love in his eyes....pure love and light. It’s a simple thing but so necessary on a day like today. I’m a proud puppy Mama! Something sweet has helped replace the bitter. Coupled together, it equals bittersweet. It’s an apt description of what this day has become. Yet, when I think on it now, I chuckle a little over the irony, because this day gave me a sweet, funny little boy to love after all. Tender mercies...you learn to take them where you can get them.
Elmer and his brother, Chuey are tender mercies. They both help fill the void of significant losses in my life. They are blessings, and I am grateful.
This isn’t to say that I don’t still shed my share of tears today, but the last couple of years, it’s ended with heart smiles and lots of puppy kisses to make it all better.
Does it? Nothing will ever make it all better or make it okay or empty the sad place in our lives where our children would-should be. But, they’re safely tucked away in our hearts where love abides, and they’re in the happy place, over the rainbow where all things are bright and beautiful.
I’ll dry my tears now and sign off. I’ve got a puppy – scratch that....make it TWO puppies who want to play as our son up in heaven gives two thumbs up.
I listened to my sweet William’s songs today that are listed at the beginning of this entry. Yeah, they made me cry. Elmer and Chuey, however, don’t put up with that for long. They do whatever they can, short of standing on their heads to cajole the tears out of me and chase them away. Then, after they’re certain all is well again, they pounce, urging me to play. I fall for it every time.
In case you don’t know, playing with puppies – well, it’s kinda like falling in love. Hearing them bark and playfully growl as they wiggle their tails, dance all around me and try desperately to lick my face, is kinda like hearing angels laughing from up above...and God...God continues to bless me by adding sweet - a whole lotta sweet into my bitter...

                                             Picking up Elmer in Baltimore, MD~9/19/09