grief's journey - maybe, I hope, because that implies movement on my part.

I thought it might be good for me to mention that yesterday was a due date for a baby girl I named Jordan. She was lost to me in a traumatic early second trimester miscarriage, in which I nearly lost my life. The aftermath of this incredibly horrific event spilled into every area of our life when weeks later, when I was still recovering in bed, my husband was laid off work. Already at a tipping point, he suffered greatly in a depression that lasted for roughly three years - though parts of those years were better and parts were worse - he was under or unemployed for about that much time. Already a mother of one, I picked up what slack I could in those years and burdened my friends and family with my endless needs for support, love, encouragement and ideas. I was blessed enough in those areas to have people in my life who were not willing to let our family go down on their watch. There is no replacement for having people like that in my life and I will be replacing none of them any time soon.
Our emotional recovery took its own time. I cannot look back on one day that I think, okay, that was the day. It took years to even think to myself - have we reached some fragile peace that can be shored up with time and better memories? We took turns grieving over our loss, then over the tail spin that began that year, each having to move slowly through time, much of it on our own, yet under one roof, sharing a boy who was growing from toddler to preschooler before our eyes.
We carry to this day the financial burden of those years, eeking out our livings with three kids, knowing time was lost on the financial goals that make one's fit into this world a little easier- we are two people in our thirties living in suburbia, married for nearly 12 years and we do not own home. This is not the norm in these parts -- but neither is our decision to have three kids and have me stay home with them - the lay-off can't take all the blame there, but the leanest years we had a couple are still what sketch the edges of our canvas.
We might have rolled along this way indefinitely, wandering if we were forever tainted from the experience, forever on the outside of what we used to call normal life. Then, one day, we were pregnant. I suddenly knew there was no ticket back and our only choices lay ahead of us. I was terrified of another loss - what it might do to him or me or us. I lived in a foggy terror and took short visits to happiness and hope that I feared being punished over - I made it through the very, very worst round of anniversaries I ever had to - pregnant on the date of the miscarriage, 11 weeks, spotting, and still hadn't heard a heartbeat & pregnant on the phantom due date - a day which I habitually had bled through up to that point. The moment the pregnancy began, our recovery was what you'd have to call on the fast-track. Nothing ever could have gotten us, just as we were, to the next goal post aside from that. We moved forward and threw into the mix of birth dates, due dates and anniversaries, a third set.
And thus we lived for a while, all dates separate and distinct, the roles they played in the shaping of our year. The months we got pregnant, the date of the miscarriage, Thinker's due date, his actual birthday, Jordan's due date, LP's due date, and birthday - even making it through a second very early miscarriage when LP was still a babe in arms, yet another set of dates, all achieving this crazy, crazy effect in which there was hardly a single month of the year that I had not been pregnant, nor was there a season without some anniversary of something that could set my body into a fully regressive mode to bleed or lactate at the slightest autumn sent or the first bloom of the magnolia. Then the pregnancy with LB, all slightly off kilter from the other dates, filling in whatever blank spots may have been left (up til that point I not think I had ever been even the slightest bit pregnant in July for example). All the moments of joy and loss jumbling together until one day I looked back and realized in less than 10 years of marriage I had been pregnant 5 times - and I had spent the first three years on the birth control pill. So that was actually 5 pregnancies in 8 years, and it was a small wonder I could hardly escape a moment from all of that to breath.

This year the magnolia's bloomed incredibly early. We had a week's worth of summer in April here in New England. The blooms opened fast and died quickly in the heat. We hadn't had much rain. The year we bought and planted a magnolia tree on Jordan's due date, all were in perfect bloom on May 3rd. I will always do my grieving when they flower. This year's due date was marked by a little milk flowing from my breasts in the shower yesterday morning and today as well. I was at a conference up at church and took a brief walk to check on the magnolia we planted. I was alone at church - which never happens - so I took my time on the walk. The property is rather large and lots of it still wild. It was a wet and cold spring day. Our trees flowers have darkened with each year. I seem to remember picking out a pink-blooming tree, but each year I notice its hue is closer and closer to purple. It is odd as that is exactly the opposite of how I feel about what to do with the phantom due date of May 3rd. Each year I feel less need to have it stand out from all the other days. It is much more than a blip on the radar screen and much less than it was the first year it rolled around, the date I had dreaded in my hearts for months - and yes, it was just heart-wrenching as I though it would be - and 7 years out, the day is swept up into the current of life, one of the many, many drops of water that make up the stream.