Grief

I haven't posted here for over two years. 

What a two years its been, a journey I never would have chosen but am incredibly thankful I've been on. I look back on my thoughts and actions and heart motivations back before this time and hardly recognize myself. I feel changed in ways I didn't think were possible. Really, like a different person.

The amount of joy we had in having Noelle as a part of our family is hard to grasp. Every moment we savored. We celebrated every milestone, we got to know our daughter, whom it had felt we lost before we ever got to know her.

Yet even though her fragility was always before us, we had no idea how close to us death was.

Noelle died on February 27th, 2016. She was sick with a nasty virus, Metapnuma Virus, and she was having episodes where her heart rate went very high and her oxygen saturations went very low. She was in the PICU at Childrens, only for two days. During the middle of one of the episodes, the doctors decided to intubate her to help her breathe, but after they gave her the intubation meds, her heart stopped beating and wouldn't start again. My husband and I were there watching it all. I prayed viscerally out loud for the hour we watched it all happen, I listened to her oxygen monitor tone get lower and lower as she faded. I physically couldn't do anything but utter prayers under my breath. With every breath I begged God to heal her. 

Finally after 45 minutes of CPR, we asked them to stop. Death had won Noelle's little body, her soul was now with Jesus. 

I scooped up my precious Noelle's body until the warmth faded. I memorized every inch of her. That hour some part of me died too. I mean that in an emotional way, but in a physical way as well. People came and left the room without my knowledge. My memories from that day are so dark, as if there was a shadow everywhere, clouding everything. The darkness felt thick on my body. It still does some days. 

Noelle wasn't going to breathe or blink or cry or Gah! or eat or wave or move or grow or, anything. Her body was there, but it was a shell. A beautiful shell... And we had to leave her there, my precious baby, in the basement of the hospital. And we drove home without her and I was torn into pieces. 

It was hard not to throw up. My mouth didn't even salivate when I put food in it, it just crumbled up dry in my mouth. The food tasted like dirt for many days

Grief is a funny word for what we entered into that day: the pain of not being able to connect with someone you love, permanently. Trauma is another word I didn't understand then: the shock of experiencing something you shouldn't, something that shouldn't have happened. The trauma of seeing someone you love mutilated.

I didn't know how deep the darkness could be, or the depth of the pain that comes when your child dies. It is beyond words. It seems only those who have seen and felt pain in that way understand, in my experience so far.  I've heard the pain that comes with losing a child likened to losing a limb. It doesn't ever lessen, in a way, you really only get used to the pain, and find ways of dealing with it. Because Noelle will always be gone, now. 

Every interaction with every person I have ever known or will know is now totally different and flavored by Noelle dying. It is utterly overwhelming to think of how many years I may have left on this earth without her. For many months after Noelle died, I struggled to think how I could survive through this. 

Holidays, family gatherings, simple things that I once experienced with simple joy, now bring immense amounts of pain with them. It seems joy will never come again without a wave of sorrow. I long sometimes for the innocence of joy before Noelle's death. 

There have been a few things that have brought comfort: 1. Jesus 2. Helping others in Noelle's memory 3. Peter and the girls.

I'm hoping to write more to process. It's messy. It's raw. It's not very edited. But I'm hoping sharing my journey may help me and others.

Laura