If there is someone who will say the wrong thing, I will meet them.
She was thinning out my hair about a month ago- ripping some final remnants of the Eden hormones from my head. She was telling me what a mane it was, asking why I let it get so thick and unmanageable. She was abusing my confidence, assuming self care is nothing to me. She said there was no wonder I kept having headaches. My hair was ridiculous. It went on and on for about ten minutes, through the wash, the initial trim, and into the middle of shearing my scalp.
"It's usually not like this," I said. "I mean, it has always been pretty thick, but this is mostly the accumulation from all my prenatals."
"Well, no excuses missy. You have to take care of this stuff. How old is your youngest?"
Finally, ready to snap, I carefully said, "She's just a few minutes old forever. She's in Heaven. If you're asking how long its been since I've taken the vitamins, its been almost two months."
"Oh, I'm so sorry."
A few moments of peace and quiet... then, backtracking.
"Was she your first?" Yes.
"Did you name her?" Eden.
"Do you have a picture?" Here.
"That is sad. But on the bright side...."
Oh God.
"On the bright side, you and your husband now have a little more time to just enjoy each other without kids getting in the way."
"I mean, I guess?"
"Yeah! You're young! Have fun! When your first kid comes, a man just turns into another child. You'll have your hands too full. Enjoy him as a man before you have to become his mom."
And all the other women's faces in the hair salon wore shocked brows and gaped mouths. I saw them in the mirror as my face turned deep red and I looked down to hide the tears spilling from my eyes.
"Well, I don't think so. I know my husband will be more than eager to help me parent our children. He was eager to be a daddy to her."
"You'll see. But who knows, maybe he'll be a good father one day All men are different right? Okay! All done. Feel better?"
No. Get me out of here.
I am a magnet.
-She was right about our age. We are young. We do have time to build our family. But we already started. This isn't a blessing in disguise- Eden was a very wanted baby: waited for, planned for, and prayed for. We are young, but we decided together that we were ready to be parents.
-When our next child comes, it will not be called our first child! We already have one! This time now is not "before we have children". That time was over a year ago. This time is the time between our first daughter that died and her siblings.
-"Maybe he'll be a good father one day."
Ryan will not be a good father one day. Ryan is an excellent father now. Just like me, he loves his daughter and dreams of her and talks about her and talks to her and misses her.
I wish I had told her what its really like in my house- I wish I'd told her what it's like to be a grieving mother living in close proximity with a grieving father.
I wish I had told her that I'm not worried about ever having to take care of Ryan.
I'll gladly pick up after him while I'm picking up after our babies. Because most days lately he has to pick up after me. The wife that used to wash, dry, fold, and put away all the laundry in one day now leaves a load in the washer that he restarts...then restarts again the next day after I tell him to leave it alone, I'll take care of it.
I can handle a man that acts like a child, because with that thought I picture him in the floor wrestling our kiddos, making them laugh the way he still works so tirelessly to make me laugh on days that I've done nothing but cry.
I will smile on the days when I've packed his lunch along with the lunches of our babes, remembering that in this season there are some days he goes without lunch at all because I haven't cooked all week to send leftovers and theres not time for him to grab take-out.
When he sleeps in on weekends and I am up early with the cartoons, I will remember now, when he is coming home half the days in a week to find I have not moved from the couch, the dogs have not been fed, and the blinds are still drawn.
I am not afraid of taking care of Ryan, I owe him for taking care of me. We get to take turns caring for one another. That's my observation in this season. We will just alternate picking each other up, though I haven't quite mastered the part where I pick him up and its been more of his responsibility than mine.
I don't anticipate having a man-child that cannot care for himself because that's not anything like this man I'm married to, but in the event I do for a while... well thats ok because he has been caring for this woman-child when I couldn't care for myself. Thats what marriage is: taking turns.
It's tough to describe what else our marriage is right now. I can say that his love is a few things.
It's knowing not to mention my new gray hairs when I start picking on his.
It's noticing that my brain is mush when I tell him to take the trash out since the truck will come tomorrow even though he knows it won't come for another three days, smiling, nodding, and taking the trash and recycling bins to the road anyway.
It's looking at me when the mixed company starts talking about parenting struggles and our eyes doing the communication: "you ready?"... "let's go."
It's embarrassing himself at any cost to make me smile and feeling like a king when I've laughed.
It's patiently waiting for me to get done telling him that I don't know why he isn't breaking down the way I am.
It's reminding me that we are both feeling the same pain but reacting to it in different ways.
It's approaching each subject carefully, but being adamant that there is no tip-toeing around each other- it's encouraging me to be gentle but real.
It's getting up in the morning with a heart as broken as mine and going to work and dealing with the world and coming home to screen the mail and changing the channel when a Pampers commercial comes on and making sure I really want to see the Pixar movies in public and giving me space when I need it but never leaving me alone.
It's tears and it's smiles and it's happy and it's sad and it's wild and it's mundane and it's neat and it's messy.
My husband has never been one for showing himself. He celebrates quietly, he mourns even more quietly. It is so difficult for me to accept that his grief isn't loud like mine. It doesn't scream. You can read it all over his face and see it in his eyes, but it doesn't often come out of his mouth. I have had a really hard time being ok with this:
"Are you not sad?"
I always think that I have to remind him that we have a dead baby. I don't have to remind him. He knows it every second of every day the same way I know it. He is living it in the same time I live it.
He never asks me to stop being so vocal and visible about my brokenness, so I don't know why I keep asking him to make a display about his.
Perhaps the way I can take care of him right now is to allow him to act however he needs to act without the demands of "normal behavior for the grieving", without the demands that he meets my grief criteria. Perhaps I can take care of him by giving him the grace he continuously puts into me: "It's okay. How you are feeling and how you are acting and what you are thinking.. it's all okay."
In the months following the birth and death of our child, I realize why the divorce rate among bereaved parents is so high. It's hard for two people hurting so badly to do life together so closely and not say things that just hurt each other more. Had we not had a semi-developed relationship before this, had we not worked steadily and intently on communication and patience before I got pregnant, we may not have walked in on this new normal with much of a chance.
But now when more children come, we will be husband and wife that have walked through the Refiner's Fire and we will be mother and father united to parent all of our babies. I will not ever become my husband's mom. I'm his wife and the luckiest one there ever was to be taken care of by him and to take care of him the way that spouses do.
My prayer is that I can learn to accept the love of this man in his quiet grief and not try to change how he acts. My prayer is that I will stop assuming he is not hurting and start realizing he handles his hurt in different ways from me. My prayer is that we both keep reminding each other that our daughter's life taught us more about our love than her death can tear us apart. And my prayer is also that strangers stop saying stupid things to us.
