"And the World Spins Madly On."

Yesterday was my first day back to work after we discovered I misscarried a third time. I woke up and all I felt was dread. I was in tears at the thought of facing it all. I just I kept thinking since Tuesday was my day off, I would just call off Monday and give myself the extra two days. But the logical part of me knew, whether I went back on Monday or Wednesday, the first day back after the loss would be hard. It did not matter what day of the week it was. It did not matter how many days I was out. One day would have to be the first day back after loss. One day would have to be the day that life went on.

I think there's part of you when you suffer a loss, any loss, not just that of a child, that makes you look at the world differently. You get so engulfed in your grief that it is incomprehensible that everything hasn't just stopped. Because to you it should. Because to you it has.

There's this part of you that wants to scream at the grocery store clerk when she tells you to "Have a nice day.", "I WILL NOT HAVE A NICE DAY. SOMEONE I LOVED DIED." There are times long after the sympathy cards and the flowers come, long after whatever closure is supposed to come with the ceremony, that you will sit alone with your grief and nobody is calling to console you anymore. "Grief lasts longer than sympathy."

After my first two losses, it was months until I did not have to pause before I answered the question "How are you?" For awhile when someone who knew about my losses asked me how I was doing, I had to wonder "Are they asking me in that casual way people do to be polite or are they asking me in context of my loss?" I live in context of my losses. Would I have made it past the twelve week mark, that week that so significantly decreases the miscarriage risk? Would I be twenty weeks today and know the sex? Is today an estimated due date? Or, as it is almost a year later from when we started this journey, did I lose a baby on this day? All those things determine, how I am really doing on any given day. Every day I live with my losses. But I live.

So I got up yesterday and went to work. I waited on guests and did the rest of my daily activities. Because life goes on. The pets have to be fed, bills have to be paid, the apartment needs to be cleaned,etc.

In fourth grade, our teacher read the class a poem about a family that suffers the death of the husband/father. The mother makes items for the children from the deceased father's clothes. When the children ask her why she is destroying their dear dad's things, she responds, "Life goes on,children. I just forget why." Indeed,life goes on.