Land mines

It has been one month since we lost our baby girl at 23 weeks and I am glad to say that I'm almost through what I have come to call the land mine stage. It's the stage of grief where the world is a mine field and you just don't know from one moment to the next what harmless thing is going to explode in your face to bring you back to that ugly torturous place where you can't control your grief, where you sob in public places, where you feel like the worst moments of your life are now on display for friends and strangers alike.

Case in point. For me Church is filled with land mines. On my first Sunday back after losing Lyndon, I sat down and I made it through the hymns and thought success, the hymns are usually hard for me after a loss, they are designed to bring emotions to the surface. But I made it through and thought "I'm handling this, I can do this." And then the first speaker stood up. A woman in our congregation who is due one month before I was due. I tried to look every where but at her belly. Her topic, being of good cheer during trials. KABOOM, My self control is gone. I lasted for about 3 minutes of her talk before I left. The next Sunday was even worse.

For a while it seems like everywhere you look there is some one who has what was taken from you and unfortunately the nature of the beast is that the don't talk like they appreciate it. Women who are pregnant complain. A lot. Women who have babies complain. A lot. They're entitled. They're uncomfortable, they're tired, it's not all sweetness and light. I know that, I remember. But for those of us that have had that taken away, those little complaints and comments are like explosions in our heads and our hearts taking us back to our grief as if it were fresh and new again.

Luckily the land mine stage doesn't last forever. While there are always going to be your personal mines that will explode in your face, probably for the rest of your life, but it will stop being a 10 times a day thing and it will slow down to once a day, then, once a week and so on. Eventually you'll be able to go out in the world just like everyone else and strangers won't know that there is anything wrong and friends will tell you how well they think you coping. Those aches in your heart will be yours alone to share if you choose to, not because you can't help it. And that is a good thing.