The ornaments

Grace and Ashlyn, ALL of the baby angels are truly missed! ((hugs))

OUCH

I slammed my hand in the car door. Now I have to see a hand surgeon! So I am a gimpy for a little bit. Merry Christmas to me..
Oh, the break is below the knuckle by the pinky.

My angel baby

I just wanted to say, I miss her!

National Children's Memorial

I wanted to go to the local ceremony. I did. I could not get my butt moving. I couldn't sleep most the weekend so today a pooped. So instead of going I lit 30 candles. No kidding 30! I have "met" so many mom's that have lost children that lighting 30 was not even close enough to represent each child. I guess I was in risk of the house burning down.;)

So I sat thinking all night how paralyzed I feel at times. Not just in the way my sleeping suffers or the way my eating suffers but how emotionally I seem paralyzed. Sept seems to be the last month I can remember "feeling" anything. Even the pain I think I'm feeling, isn't really the depth of what I actually feel. Wow did any of that even make sense? I just am starting to worry about my emotional well being as well as my physical.

I told DH I wanted to try again but after everything that has gone on in our family this year I am so afraid of having another child that will suffer like Grace did. She really did. The more I watch her videos the more I see her pain. The light that slowly faded into the abyss of death. I saw it but chose to believe everything was OK. WHY? Self preservation? Or maybe denial? I think if I realized she was not going to make it I would have tried to detach myself. Not that I am saying it would have worked but for the love of God I can't stop this internal bleeding.I wonder if maybe mentally we just can't hold all of the pain so we go numb. I have no idea. Maybe I should go back to school to figure it out. I am not sure that will help considering I did see a therapist and she was an idiot with a degree.

So I am going to go light more candles. I love looking at them as they dance in the air. Lets me get lost! As I remember Grace and all of the beautiful children lost before their time! (Ashlyn's mommy I hope your well!)

Tis the season to..

Get laid off. My husband just lost his job for the 2nd time. While Grace was in the hospital he was fired. How can you do that to a man who has a baby in the NICU? WHY? Now that she had died he gets fired again? OMG I know times are slow but come on!! My family is in a huge stir of drama. It feels like we are in the eye of a tornado and it is just picking up people in it's path. My father is in the military but is getting ready to be shipped back to Iran. Well he is in the hospital now because when he flew back to the states he was sick and saw a "friend" that is a doctor. Told him it was just bronchitis and go home and rest. Well guess what? It was not bronchitis, it is pneumonia. Now his is in the hospital. And is leaving next week. If they have not released him, he says he is leaving anyways! I know many of my readers know I am of middle eastern decent and with that said my father is stubborn as a rock! Oh my goodness!
So my cousin had a baby girl about a month or so ago. Dad tells me "You did hear bout the baby right?" Um No dad well i guess the baby is missing something between the appendix and the liver? And I am not sure. She is going to need a liver transplant! I think that rest was either unimportant or I blocked it out! I will find out for sure and get back to you on here! I am just ready to step off this swinging nightmare!

As a grieving parent do you notice they either avoid you completely or think you are the sounding board for all baby issues that end bad? I don't want to be either! I seriously hate the holiday's! :(

It's been a cold long week

I found myself in the middle of pondering the joy of Christmas. I drove by a lit church with the words "Put Christ Back in Christmas" in lights. I paused for a very long time and began to rewind the years of my life. How many years did I celebrate too loud, laugh so hard I cried, lived happily through another's sorrow? Did I just not know the world didn't all cheer with joy during the holiday? Well now I know. I am the most unhappy person I know. That isn't to say others around me have not experienced profound losses or heartbreak I just happen to be so wrapped up in my own self pity I am having a hard time seeing further than my own nose. I am now in a relationship that is dying. Slowly we have started not touching, talking, meaning anything important either goes unspoken or we fake it.
So as I pulled my car over I cursed the world. They not only took my child they took my best friend and confidant. My husband was my rock, my soft place. Now it is an empty space filled with empty promises and a hollow future. I want to feel like last Christmas. Happy, decorating our beautiful house. Awaiting the arrival of the most precious gift! I want to go there.

FUCK CHRISTMAS

Blowing kisses to Heaven

Turkey Humor

Hi,

I'm not much of a cook but this really helps make baking a turkey easy.

Here is a turkey recipe that also includes the use of popcorn as a stuffing -- imagine that.

When I found this recipe, I thought it was perfect for people like me, who just are not sure how to tell when poultry is thoroughly cooked, but not dried out.*

Give this a try.

*15 lb. turkey
*1 cup melted butter
*1 cup stuffing (Pepperidge Farm is Good.)
*1 cup uncooked popcorn (ORVILLE REDENBACHER'S LOW FAT)
*Salt/pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush turkey well with melted butter salt, and pepper. Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn.

Place in baking pan with the neck end toward the back of the oven.

Listen for the popping sounds. When the turkey's a$$ blows the oven door open and the bird flies across the room, it's done.

And, you thought I didn't cook...

(oh please don't try the recipe. but if you do, let us know what really happens!)



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Last year at Thanksgiving, my mom went to my sister's house for the traditional feast. Knowing how gullible my sister is, my mom decided to play a trick. She told my sister that she needed something from the store.

When my sister left, my mom took the turkey out of the oven, removed the stuffing, stuffed a Cornish hen, and inserted it into the turkey, and re-stuffed the turkey. She then placed the bird(s) back in the oven.

When it was time for dinner, my sister pulled the turkey out of the oven and proceeded to remove the stuffing. When her serving spoon hit something, she reached in and pulled out the little bird.

With a look of total shock on her face, my mother exclaimed, "Patricia, you've cooked a pregnant bird!"

At the reality of this horrifying news, my sister started to cry. It took the family two hours to convince her that turkeys lay eggs!

Yep..................SHE'S BLONDE!

Wednesday

You have heard of black Friday, well today feels like black Wednesday. Or maybe just black 2008. I am thankful for so much but I am more fucking pissed off about everything else. I hate everyone around me that is going through their life with these stupid ass blinders on! Why can't I be "her" again? oblivious to death. Children didn't die in my world, only old people. WHY? I saw a woman yell at her daughter at a store a few days ago. I KNOW she thought I had lost my mind because she said to her daughter "If you keep it up I am going to leave your butt here!" I spun around (probably looked like the exorcist) and said "What the heck is wrong with you? You just threatened to leave your PRECIOUS child here? Well aren't you mother of the year! I left my daughter. I left her in the ground at the cemetery! I wish people knew what they were saying. You have a gift and you just threatened to leave her here. Please do, i would love to take her home with me!" I think she had her eyes almost popping out of her stupid head. I know it was just comment. Just something she as a parent thought was acceptable but really. You use the scare tactic of abandonment to get her to respond? Got take some meds! Idiot! So DH held his breath and put his arm around me and walked me to the car where I had a complete melt down. Not because I felt bad but because she didn't know better. The world seems blind at times. So maybe I was a jerk, maybe it was not appropriate but I refused to hold my tongue. So Happy Fucking Thanksgiving blind world. May you be blessed with the option to never see life and death as it truly is!

Not sure why but I found this profound tonight

Si tacuisses, philosophus manisses - If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher. (Boethius)

Sharing Our angel

I am trying to decide what to say and when to say it. Anger come so quickly that I have to actually think about being gentle. Then I see this beautiful photo of my daughter and all the gentle rushes in.



I can see the pain in my eyes and the love in my heart. I am reaching for that again. The love of my life, laying with alarms and tubes and then I see him, her father. And the [ain looks like mine. It looks as deep as mine. I love him as I watch him love her, endless, deep, wide, eternal. Why can't we have it all? Why must we kiss her goodbye? Why must I watch my heart shred as the world closes this life. Her life is here with us. OUR GOD, the ONE I always believed in has made a choice I do not understand. Now I stand at her crib. Her pillow soaked with tears. Not from a child that is crying from hunger at 2AM but of a mother crying of hunger, hunger for the love and warms of her child. Just one more moment! I am begging you. I was breathing for her, now I will die for her. This is injustice!

Didn't you get the invitation??

Now many of my friends have simply stopped calling. When they do call it is for nonsense, mundane verbiage. I want to talk about world peace, children starving and MY GRIEF. It is mine. I know this but can't anyone acknowledge I am still wearing it? Please don't look around my grief as if you could actually move it aside to have a conversation with the person I was prior to my child dying. I know you can not say the word "dead" it is not normal right? Well no matter what is going on in your life I have reserved this day for my pity party. I sent out invitations. The probably looked like a funeral announcement but trust me when I say, they were an invitation to my party. My pity party that will be truly spectacular. Crying, yelling, stomping, throwing, I mean the party favors are endless really. Oh, you have plans? Oh imagine that. You have to go shopping, wash your hair, sleep in, anything besides let me grieve. Anything but acknowledge that what I am feeling is normal, sad yes, but normal. Stop looking away when I am talking to you. Are you afraid this is contagious? Are you afraid that if you hug me your child will die? Do you think I am being punished? Like I did not pray hard enough? Or laugh loud enough? Or maybe I just did something so bad that "God" stole my child like a thief in the night! Are you serious? Does your mind really think like that? Do you need to hide when you see me coming? Don't worry I do get it. I see the hushed whispers when I come into a room. The looks of pity and fear all rolled into one strange look. I see it. Even worse I FEEL it. I would never in a million years give this pain away to anyone. There is not a person on this earth that I would ever hate bad enough to wish this upon. So why, my closest, dearest friends, can't you love me enough to let me cry. To say her name? To understand that a note to say "I'm thinking of you and Grace today" is this so hard? It seems so simple but to me it would mean the world.

I know none of you signed up for this, I certainly didn't. Please understand, this pity party is what I must do. I need to miss my baby girl. I need to know the world will not forget her. If I don't cry everyday I know she matters none the less, but since I can not wake to her cry every night I will cry for her, for me. I will walk the halls waiting to hear the call, the cry from beyond this world. I feel it. I will cry for every mother that has been hushed, hurried along this winding path. I know nothing in the world except how to be a mother that has lost her child. Do not mistake this, she is not "lost" she did not wonder off, she has died. Died. Died. And now I am dead.

My Ali,the fighter

I am so sad today. Why doesn't anyone understand? Yes I want another baby. Yes I want to feel whole again. Never will I fill the empty hole she left. Not now, not ever! I deserve to cry every single tear I will ever cry! I love her! I yearn for her! I remember her smell, her smile, her. Just her. Please tell them to stop saying this is God's will. This is the beginning not the end! Who says this is my beginning?? My life started when I had her and I died with her. I died. Doesn't the world know my merry-go-round stopped suddenly and I flew off. And hurt myself. It broke my heart. Not the kind of break your doctor can sew back together, the kind that is in so many pieces that the pieces turn to dust. They can never be the same again!
I have talked to other mother's who have lost their children. The burning in our arms is what we do. What we have to do. I am terrified I will forget what she felt like next to me. Her smile as I rubbed her chin ever so softly. Did she know my arms were not whole until they laid her tiny body in them? She had the most beautiful brown eyes. As much pain as she was in they let me in, into her soul. The window straight to her being. Did she know? Did she finally just give up the fight?

She was due June 16th. She was much too soon, too tiny. She went to the NICU. She was there fighting everyday! During this horrible time for my family, my Dh got fired! They fired him. He held our insurance! I could even bare to think about that but how could anyone do this? Own precious child was barely alive! Weeks went by and she would have good days and horrible days.
They had to eventually put a trachea tube in. I was devastated to see her like this. So many times they had to revive her. Life saving efforts, then she would come back stronger than ever. I said one day that she must need to see an angel to know she could fight this fight and win!
Then one day she coded 11 times in one day. She had lost too much oxygen to her brain. My angel was not going to make it. She no longer pulled her foot when they poked it with a needle. Her fight was nearing the end! Oh my Gracie, my darling little angel. She was my Ali, a world fighter!
I can't go on. I will finish later!

Please watch with love and compassion. Our daughter had just had the Tracheotomy and as you will see we never saw her passing coming. This about 3 weeks before she died. She was smiling and just a joy. She is very swollen from all the steroids they had to give her. :(

I know I only have one reader and actually that makes me feel safer at this time! She is so precious to me and God knows I would never let just anyone into my private pain and grief litterd life if they truly did not understand!

She was born almost 3 months early. Her due date was June 16th and she just couldn't wait and came March 21st. So tiny and beautiful. I admire her fight. I have loved for the first time. Not just with my heart like I did when I married DH but loved with my soul. She has left a footprint to little and fragile on my heart, soul and mind! I love you Gracie. Mommy misses you to the moon and back!

Seems only fitting

Well I guess today is the day I stop hiding and look out into the world. My daughter died. I said it. I don't know why I can't say that. Maybe it is so unnatural that my tongue refuses to let those words fall out of my mouth. She died. She is never coming home.

I am not sure this blog spot will ever be fit for human consumption. Probably vial to the world that has not experienced the death of a child. How could you ever explain this? The feelings that whirl around and whip you in the emotional gonads? Wow who wants that? Not me, I didn't sign up for this. However everyday I feel like I get emotionally abused. The pictures of me before she was born too soon, the wedding before we even thought we would have children. The pregnancy test that screamed YES YES YES! You shall be a mother. Freeze frame. Stop the movie from going to the next frame.

How can this be? She is not ready to be born yet. She is too little, she needs me too much. I need to feel her safe within my womb. Water rushing, ambulance, police, fireman..wait! Please don't take her!
March 21,2008 my beautiful baby girl was born!