Heather S. Ingemar's Blog, page 18

Tumbleweed 2013!

So back in April or May sometime I sent in an application to the governing body of a major folk festival in the Tri-Cities area of Washington. I filled out the forms, cut an audition CD, and mailed it off. I thought “Why not?” with a shrug, and didn’t think too much more about it because I typically don’t get picked for things I want to do (Children’s Theater tryouts or Miss-Whatever type of scholarship talent shows, anyone?), but hey, the postage was cheap and it was a fun idea.

This last Friday I received a letter in the mail. Husband walks in the house with it in his hand. “I don’t know, but this feels a bit too heavy to be a rejection letter,” he said as he handed it over to me.

Can I just say HOLYJESUSPOO?!?

I have been selected as one of the festival performers for the 2013 Tumbleweed Music Festival as put on by the Three Rivers Folklife Society in Richland WA! I get a 45 minute set on the River stage on Sunday, Sept 1st, at 12:30pm. So come on down and say hello, buy a CD, or just give me a shoutout to any friends you have who may be attending.

Irony

Irony is how when you become pregnant, everyone around you spends the next nine months “preparing” you for how hard and how tough it is to raise a newborn, and how miserable you will be when you lose massive amounts of sleep, how distasteful it is changing diapers and taking care of an infant, how you’ll never have a moment alone, ever again…

…And how truly unhappy you are when you don’t get to be awakened every couple of hours to feed them. When you don’t get to care for them after spending the previous nine months arranging your life to accommodate them. ‘Hard’ is deciding whether or not to start getting rid of all the baby clothes you were given. ‘Tough’ is coming home from the hospital, walking into your bedroom and seeing the forever empty crib, or watching as your husband uninstalls the carseat and fights getting choked up as he puts it out of sight. ‘Distasteful’ is making memorial arrangements when all you want to do is forget, or calling the insurance company to tell them that their “congratulations on the birth of your son, he’s been added to your policy” letter is out of place and you end up bawling in the ear of the customer service lady.

‘Miserable’ is sitting in the waiting room at your doctor’s office and being surrounded by pregnant ladies and knowing they will probably never know the pain you know. ‘Miserable’ is watching other mothers comfort and care for their infants or young children.

‘Miserable’ is the moments spent alone.

Back when I was still pregnant, I wrote a blog post that highlighted an article about how so many people try to ‘scare’ new parents-to-be with all the gory little details and unpleasant caveats. About the sense of one-upmanship: “oh, so you think that’s bad…” And I can say with even more sincerity now that people need to Knock It The Hell Off. Because none of you know shit about what’s ‘bad’ or ‘hard’ or ‘miserable.’ You have no clue what I would give to be able to hold my son and be able to care for him. You have no idea how I would love to be awakened by his crying at three a.m. and be able to get up and soothe him. You only think you know ‘miserable’ and ‘hard’ and ‘tough.’

And that’s the definition of ‘ironic.’

I apologize if I sound a bit angry and/or bitter. I am, a little bit, at certain times, like when I think back to all the helpful “advice” I received that made potential parenthood seem like such a horrible trial. I am surviving the LOSS of my SON, my firstborn, my ONLY CHILD, and I can honestly say that if I am ever truly blessed with a living child to raise, nothing can be so horrible as what I have just gone through. I am walking through the shadow of the Valley of Death, and while I am scared to my wits’ end, I know I’ll come out on the other side.

It’s all about perspective.

Breathe

Sometimes it is hard to breathe. The weight of my son’s loss sits heavy on my chest and I am drowning. Occasionally, I come up for air. One day, then two or three pass and I am my old self: happy, active, normal… And then I sink again in the waters of harsh thoughts and words, flailing wildly for any kind of buoy against the despair.

The hardest thing in life to accept is the fact there are no guarantees. If I could do things over, there is no guarantee my son would have survived past those initial 34 minutes. This, I think, is the way it was meant to turn out — a life-change not followed through, an ending instead of a beginning. For whatever reason, this was how it was supposed to be.

I wish God would take it all away. My pregnancy, my memories, all of it. My life-wrecking desire to be a mother. It makes me feel like crap to admit, but I want it gone. I can’t let go of it by myself, but God is not listening to me and so it sits there, festering like a sore. I want my son, I miss him, but I don’t get him back and I can’t stop missing him no matter how hard I try. Everything reminds me of how it all fell short, and I can’t help but wonder if I was right all those years ago when someone asked me if I would ever have children and I said it probably wasn’t in the cards. My son’s death feels like evidence, hard proof of the twisted truth in that statement. And it hurts all the more, like salt in an open wound. My motherhood was not supposed to be, may never be. I have to learn to accept that. Acceptance is hard and heavy, and yet again, I cannot breathe.

On the days I cannot breathe, I spend every moment fighting back tears. They sit so very close to the surface. It takes all the strength I have to make it through a simple visit to the grocery store. Word has spread like wildfire, and I am now The Woman Who Lost Her Baby. Don’t think I don’t notice you staring at me. I see you. I see your pity. You are too chicken to approach me. I wish it wasn’t so, because I appreciate knowing you care. I appreciate knowing I am not as alone as I feel.

Or, conversely, I see your accusation written on your face. Always, you’re too chicken, but I dare you. Say it was all my fault. Lambast and blame my husband for letting me stay active around the farm. Say that God punishes sinners or whatever it is you are thinking. Say it and you will pick your teeth up one by one off the floor. Don’t think I wouldn’t, either. I may be soft-spoken and quiet, but I am made of steel.

And yet I am wounded in ways unbelievable for all my iron strength. Cut deep into my core, beyond the reach of my guitar and the music in my hands. God has left me that way despite my pleas for relief, and so every day is an exercise in self-control. I breathe in, I breathe out. I can’t tell when the next wave will hit, so I take the moments when my head is above the water.

Sad guitars, part I

This last weekend after the memorial service, my grandpa gifted me with two guitars he picked up at a yard sale for free. “They aren’t much,” he cautioned, “but all they need is some new strings and they’d work for a student or you can resell them or something.”

Love you, grandpa, but they needed a tad more than just new strings… Thankfully, I like tinkering with instruments, and was grateful to have a small project to keep my hands busy.

Unfortunately, these poor instruments were used and abused.

It really frustrates me when I come across instruments that have obviously not been treated well. I was raised to respect items of value, especially something as delicate and expensive as a musical instrument. Didn’t matter whether it was worth $50 or $500 or more — it deserved gentle treatment!

Whomever owned these poor instruments did not follow the same code as I. The one that still had strings was not only strung with steel strings instead of the nylon it was made for, but the strings were crossed over the headstock to the wrong tuning machines. (Can you tell I was appalled?) They had used a twisted wire to raise the saddle, which had weakened the delicate device so it broke in my hands when I removed it from the bridge. The other guitar was missing its saddle in addition to its strings. Add to both a layer of grime, chipped varnish and binding, and assorted dents and dings, and they become a very sorry picture indeed. Many may have pitched them in the trash at first look, but a careful inspection revealed no serious cracks in the construction, smooth fret edges, and decent resonance in the soundbox. They are not pretty, but I believe they are rescue-worthy.

Time for some TLC. I have strings and saddles on order, and while I wait for those to arrive, I gave each guitar a quick “bath” (a wipe-down with a damp rag, quickly followed by a hefty polish session with my guitar chamois). I used a razor blade to smooth the sharp edges on the worst of the chips in the finish and I adjusted the tuning machines so they didn’t rattle. Today I used some special gasket glue to fill the worst of the spots where the binding was missing — it’s a weird little experiment, but I wanted something to seal the holes  to keep the guitar’s side and back from separating right there. Husband helped me re-crown a couple frets that turned out to be flattened, and so now we wait for the rest of the parts.

Betrayal and greater lessons

All the tests come back normal. My son was a perfectly healthy baby who inexplicably died mere minutes after his first breath. In some ways, the pathology reports make grieving easier: my body performed admirably, it did everything in its capacity right. In other ways, it makes it harder: there is no reason why my son should be dead. No cause to hang the tragedy on. No envelope to wrap the hurt in.

At times it is hard to not feel betrayed by God. Certain people were not happy when I first announced my pregnancy, insisting I had gotten myself in it deep, because I would not be able to handle it. It is easy to feel God sided with them. Like God gave me the blessing of my son, only to take him away to show me they were right. I was wrong to think I had what it took to be a mother. And I kick myself, because after all, I have been betrayed too many times already and I should have seen it coming… I hate feeling this way. It’s so ugly. I don’t want to blame God or be upset with Him. I want to believe He has a Plan. I want to believe I have more chances, that I was not weighed and measured and found lacking, and that should I eventually muster up enough courage to think about a future child, that one, too, will not pay the same price my beautiful son did. I want to believe I am not being singled out for misery. I want to believe that somehow, someway, some Good will come from this.

And in a way, it has: I no longer feel the urge/duty to tear my appearance down in front of the mirror. My body is beautiful and capable and healthy and strong. I see that now. For over 20 years I have been living in a self-conscious prison of my own making, and I’ve finally been handed a key. I was blessed with a wonderful, amazing pregnancy, which I had previously been led to believe was an unwise and horrible thing for me to go through. No: my pregnancy was beautiful. It was fantastic, and my respect for the outright miracle of life has grown beyond what I thought possible. For a short time, I got to live it. I got to feel it.

Maybe that’s the greater lesson at work here. Though the loss of my son is tragic and painful as Hell, I have gained (through the gentle insights of friends) a new and valuable reflection into myself. If I can remember these good things — and it’s going to be a struggle for a while — I can get through this….

In the meantime, I am writing music. My muse has come back to me with a vengeance. My head is filling up with music. This one is called “Hole in My Heart”…

I wrote this to help lay bare the struggle at work in my heart. I wanted to write a song that spoke to the love I have for my son — even though I only got to know him for a short time — and also to the pain of losing him. Of losing all the hopes and dreams for our future together as a family. I played it at his memorial service yesterday instead of “Tears in Heaven” like I had planned. My son loved my music, and he loved my guitar the best of all. My rehearsal and practice time during my pregnancy was our special time… Singing someone else’s song, someone else’s words for MY son just didn’t feel right. And that’s when “Hole In My Heart” came to me.

At first I wasn’t sure I could play it at the service. I was so nervous, up in front of the church. Unusually nervous. And the few introductory words I’d chosen to say tugged at my heart strings so strongly I nearly lost what little control I had over my tears… But when I picked up my guitar, my hands were sure and my voice remained steady.

I am sure he heard me sing for him. And my heart sings in return.

Hole in my chest

Will this hole in my chest ever go away? I am preoccupied by the thought. It feels like I’ve been in this funk for an eternity. Feels like I’ve been crying for months, and I’m tired of it, even though it has only been a little over two weeks since my son died. I should be more patient with myself, but I’m an impatient person by nature, and life goes on. I can’t be moping about while there’s farm work and house work and yard work and who-knows-what-else languishing on my To Do list. Chop, chop! I say. Quit your belly-aching and get to work! Even my physical limitations hold no sway over me: I am not being woken up every couple of hours to feed a child, nor am I fighting the stresses of new parenthood, and therefore in my mind, I have no excuse for laziness. There is work to be done.

And yet, no matter what I tell myself, the hole remains. Vital parts of myself have vanished into this invisible abyss and I find myself in the same state as our old Ferguson tractor: engine madly cranking to get going but unable to catch and start.

In the meantime, I’m racked with doubt, fear, and jealousy. What if I did do something wrong? What if this was a sign that I am not to be a mom? How can all my pregnant (formerly?) friends have healthy children and I cannot? What did they do to be able to bring their babies home from the hospital, full of life, and mine came home from the funeral parlor in a blue velvet bag that fit in my two hands?

There are no answers to these questions and it’s a huge annoyance because I want answers, dammit. Answers would help fill this gaping hole and I could get on with my life better, sooner, easier. I’m tired of tears. I’m tired of coming home and feeling myself get more depressed with every mile I get closer. I’m tired of seeing other women’s children and having to fight bawling in fetal position on the floor in Walmart because one had sandy-colored hair and dark eyes like my son would have had. I’m tired of feeling waves of jealousy at the newborn baby pics that show up on my Facebook feed.

Mostly, I’m tired of grieving. Which sucks, because I’ve already reached my tolerance and I know it’s going to be like this for months to come.

The worst part is that everyone says it never truly goes away. How can I deal with that?

I have a hole in my heart

It’s deeper than the sea

Filled with all the wreckage

Of dreams you’ll never see…

And so, my coping mechanism is pushing myself. I push myself to keep going, to do this or accomplish that. I’ve taken up a light exercise routine and started back into my historical rapier hobby within the SCA. My rapier and buckler are like old friends. I push it, too hard at times, but physical discomfort is an acceptable trade for spinning my wheels. At least when I’m attempting to best an opponent on the field, I am not at the mercy of the swirling current that drags me into that hole of crushed hopes and destroyed dreams.

No traces

It hasn’t even been a full two weeks yet and already you can hardly tell I was pregnant. My body is nearly healed from the rigors of birthing, and all traces of my brief motherhood are vanishing like fog under the sun. My gratefulness for the ease in which my body handled the physical stresses is as double-edged as a sharpened sword, for soon there will be nothing left of my son’s brief existence. Soon, he will merely be an intense memory shared only by my husband and myself, subject to the fading of time.

How sad I feel at that admission. There should be more to a legacy than an intangible memory. Old folks who pass leave much; inheritances, stories, history… All my son was able to leave us with was my altered body — which is quickly metamorphosing back into the body I had before. I used to be the girl who stressed over my curves and stomach “pook” — now I find myself wishing I could keep my pook just so I can remember the beautiful son I carried. So he doesn’t disappear completely…

We have begun packing things away. Our room is slowly being divested of baby accessories. And again: I am loathe to put it all in storage for then who’s to say he didn’t ever exist? Once all traces vanish, he’s just a memory. A box of assorted cards and photos and mementos from the hospital. A dream that never turned into reality.

And yet, maybe it’s not so cut and dried. My husband and I chose to donate his organs, and so somewhere out there, some other parents get to keep their children. That would be our son’s tangible legacy… the physical lives of these other children. Unfortunately, it is a legacy we will likely never see. To us, our son will always be a memory. A beautiful, painful, heart-squeezing, all-together-too-short memory.

We are in the process of planning his wake. It won’t be a traditional wake, as his precious life was too short to end with the sharing of many stories by people he’d touched, but I know he loved music and so, there will be music. I want to write him a song, but everything is so fresh and raw I can’t put it down yet… so I am learning Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” I don’t know if I will be able to sing well on such an emotionally-charged day, but I am going to try to sing for my boy.

Bringing my baby home

It was not how I imagined it would be.

I woke up pissed at the world, at God, at everything. I was even pissed I didn’t get the right amount of sugar in my morning coffee.

This is by far the hardest part of grief: the screwball emotions. Certainly feelings of anger, of jealousy, of fear, are entirely normal faces of the infinite beast of Loss, but in my personal life, I have had little experience dealing with them. Sadness? Depression? Disappointment? Regret? Sure, that’s all familiar territory. I come from a broken and dysfunctional family, and so those faces of emotion are entirely too well-known.

The others? Not so much.

I seldom feel true Rage. I tend to have a “slow fuse,” and I am grateful for that because my temper is an aspect of my personality I really don’t like. It’s ugly. It’s wild and control-resistant, like a volcano. A force of nature. Yesterday, I felt Rage with a capital R. God was a f-cking bastard. I screamed it over and over. He took my son from me. I had feared (at times) through my pregnancy that He made a mistake in choosing me and I had trusted Him to prove me wrong — and instead He b-tch slapped me and my husband. How stupid of us to even think we were capable of being parents! How naive! I had one chance to do this right and I blew it. We were deemed Unworthy. And I hated Him for it. I hated everyone who’d ever pressured us to have children, I hated everyone who had disapproved of us once I had conceived. I hated that our boy would never know his father’s kind touch, and I hated that I would never get to sing him a lullaby. Most of all, I hated the cruel, senseless theft of his perfect little soul. Damn You, God. Damn you.

See what I mean? Ugly. However, anger does serve a purpose, and mine was like popping the tab on a soda that’s been shaken too much. A massive explosion of words and emotion, that eventually fizzles out. After I had my screaming fit, I was drained. I began to cry. I felt guilty for unloading such nasty things. Mostly, there were tears…

Then the funeral home called. In a little, blue velvet bag just barely bigger than my hands was not how I imagined bringing my son home. And I cried.

This morning? Peace. Blessed, calm, peace. The tempest blew itself out, and I can see clear again. Yes, my son is gone. Nothing I do or say can change that. Yes, I am hurt and saddened by it — it is a hole in my life that words are incapable of filling. Yes, I still cry. He was my baby boy, and I so wanted the privilege of being his mother. My husband wanted and looked forward to being a father. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be… But it is not the end of things. It does not define me. It does not define my husband, nor the relationship we have with each other. We will survive this. Our love for each other is stronger than this.

And so, we move on.

My husband and I are beyond blessed at the outpouring of love and support we have received from members of our community, our friends and acquaintances both online and off. We are very grateful. Just knowing there are people who care is beneficial. Thank you all for showing us we are not alone.

34 minutes

Late Tuesday, June 11th, my husband and I were parents for 34 minutes.

It is very hard to write, but I feel I must. If I don’t, I’ll burst.

A while back, I wrote a post about the fragility of life, about my experiences here on the ranch raising livestock. How sometimes, things simply don’t work out like you planned. Tuesday night was like that.

Throughout that afternoon and evening of labor, I had no doubts everything would be fine. Like all new parents-to-be, I was full of hope and a fierce determination that soon our little family would be larger, and that we would hold our healthy infant son and cry tears of joy and that the rest of our lives would be forever changed for the better by the tiny little soul I was working to present to the world. When the nurses expressed concern over his heartrate, inwardly I laughed them off. Not my son! He was strong and lively — I knew him well after the last nine months. My baby boy would prove them all wrong.

As I got close, it became evident things were not so cheery. I began to feel concern as the room filled up with medical professionals preparing for emergency work, but I ground my teeth together and kept on, because there was only one way out of the situation and that was to finish what my husband and I started.

Then, he was born. Time stopped. The two, weak little cries he gave were one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. The medical team sprang into action, and we waited.

And waited.

There are no words for the numbness and shock of watching the future — the life you had planned for and prepared for — fall apart. No matter how many times I have seen it happen here on the farm, no matter how many times I have watched others go through loss… it is so, so different when it’s your own life. And it is so hard to accept. Grief is blinding. It sears a hole in your gut that can’t be filled. It sneaks into every crevice like a quiet mouse, it permeates the very air like polluted exhaust. As the minutes tick by into days, it remains in every shadow, waiting to spring out at you like a villain from a bad B-grade horror movie. You can’t escape it, can’t go around it — the only way is through. One step at a time.

That’s where I am now. Slowly taking one step, and then another. I am grateful for small mercies — loving family, good friends, sunny days, and the fact that I am small enough again that I can hold my dear guitar. A guitar is a poor substitute for the child I want to hold instead, but the comfort of music is never anything to be denied. I am a musician, and I can curl up in between those notes and let them say what I can’t. I can let them coat that seared hole like a balm. It makes it easier, though it will never, ever be truly easy.

34 minutes is too short of a time for anything, and yet, it was my entire world.

Stars

Look at the stars with me, love

See how well they shine, love

Hold my hand

I’ll whisper that

We’ll outlast them all

Sit close to me now, love

Put your arm around me, love

I’ll rest my head

Against your chest

As it’s meant to be

All the others got it wrong

Love ain’t a card-house about to fall

If you breathe it

Won’t

Come

Down

I promise we’ll be fine, love

Forever’s on our side, love

Feel my touch

Trust it’s enough

Ohh…

See, all the others got it wrong

Love ain’t a card-house about to fall…

See, they all got it wrong

Love is the brightest star of all

Just believe and

Feel

It

Shine

Sit close to me now, love

Put your arm around me, love

I’ll rest my head

Against your chest

We’ll outlast them all…