Show & Tell: Purple Gorilla

This week's Show and Tell will be a little different. I came upon this poem from Beautiful Mess. She posted about it awhile ago, but I never really appreciated her blog until I read her post about her blogoversary. She wrote about how she never expected her blog to be about grief and her mom dying, but that's what ended up happening. I wanted to skip over my blogoversary, which was last Sunday, because I didn't want to dwell on how much pain and grief I had written about over the last year. When I read Beautiful Mess' post, I was glad that someone else was writing about grief too. I didn't feel so alone. I, too, never thought I would write so much about trauma and grief this last year. Heck, I didn't even really know what trauma was, and I never really had to face grief the way I've faced it in the last year and last couple of months.

Beautiful Mess e-mailed me this poem, so I'd like to share it with you too. I cried when I read this.


Grief
by Matthew Dickman May 5, 2008

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla

you must count yourself lucky.

You must offer her what’s left

of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish

you must put aside,

and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,

her eyes moving from the clock

to the television and back again.

I am not afraid. She has been here before

and now I can recognize her gait

as she approaches the house.

Some nights, when I know she’s coming,

I unlock the door, lie down on my back,

and count her steps

from the street to the porch.

Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,

tells me to write down

everyone I have ever known,

and we separate them between the living and the dead

so she can pick each name at random.

I play her favorite Willie Nelson album

because she misses Texas

but I don’t ask why.

She hums a little,

the way my brother does when he gardens.

We sit for an hour

while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,

crying in the checkout line,

refusing to eat, refusing to shower,

all the smoking and all the drinking.

Eventually she puts one of her heavy

purple arms around me, leans

her head against mine,

and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.

So I tell her,

things are feeling romantic.

She pulls another name, this time

from the dead,

and turns to me in that way that parents do

so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.

Romantic? she says,

reading the name out loud, slowly,

so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel

wrapping around the bones like new muscle,

the sound of that person’s body

and how reckless it is,

how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.


My purple gorilla came to me again Friday night. I was thinking about all the physical things I am doing to get ready for another "mission impossible" IVF cycle. The one thing I haven't been doing is communicating with my spirit baby. I haven't talked here lately about it, because I cry everytime I think about it. I don't want to talk to my spirit baby, because I am afraid. I am afraid of being heartbroken again. The truth is, I'm so sad she didn't come. It's not a guilt trip on her or anything. It's how I feel. I fell in love with her. It's like she died.

When I went to the "Gifts of Grief" movie a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how I didn't think there was anything good about grief. The moviemaker asked me, "who died?" I was dumbstruck. How do you talk about someone dying who never existed? I just said, "it's complicated." I didn't think the moviemaker, or anyone else in the audience, would understand. She experienced the grief of losing her father whom she was very close to. I didn't understand my grief at losing someone I didn't even know. I found that part of me was embarrassed and ashamed.

I checked out a book from my library about grief. Although I had heard this before, it really stuck me when I read the words on the page:

"...love and grief are inextricably intertwined - to love is always to open oneself to the grief of loss"

I loved my spirit baby. She may still be around, but I don't know. I know she has been with me a long time. Years, I think. I've been too afraid to reach out to her. If she's really gone, well, I can't really go there right now. A part of me hopes, but the grief, it still comes like the purple gorilla.

Grappling with Grief

I saw grief drinking a cup
of sorrow and called out,
"It tastes sweet, does it not?"
"You've caught me," grief answered,
"and you've ruined my business.
How can I sell sorrow,
when you know it's a blessing?"
- Rumi

Grief is not a popular subject. It is exactly what the counselor and I talked about last Thursday at BigShotFertilityClinic. To their credit, they finally figured out that those of us who live near the satellite office were in need of counseling services. I signed up for the first slot. I liked the counselor. We talked about how I deal with grief. I do feel it. I do not try to cover it up, in general, with things like alcohol, TV, or food, though I have to admit, chocolate is my friend at times. But there is only so much grief I can stand. We talked about how I feel isolated by my grief. I notice that many people, including my DH, have a hard time staying with my sadness or anger.

Tonight, I went to see a movie called, "The Gifts of Grief". The documentary highlighted seven people who had lost loved ones in many different ways. I was moved to tears many times, but I could not feel that I have had any of my own gifts from grief. Perhaps I am still too sad and angry.

What have I learned from grief?

To cut out the BS of life: I don't have time for people who claim to want to help me, but just say that to soothe themselves. In the discussion after the movie, one woman talked about how she wanted to write a book on how to deal with a grieving person. She said that telling someone who is grieving, "just call me if you need anything," was not helpful to her. She described how the responsibility was then put on her to do something at a time when she was not functioning. This wisdom could be applied to anyone going through a crisis or trauma. I felt like this completely during my time of crisis while pregnant. I can't tell you how many people told me this, but who never really showed up in a real way to take action or to sit with me. I got lots of advice on what I should have been doing, but I was not functioning and could not do those things that were talked at me about. I didn't know what I needed, so how could I call someone to ask? Or I didn't believe that someone could really give me what I needed, so why bother asking. There were plenty of jealous women who were not pregnant or who had never been pregnant that avoided me, or worse yet, said hurtful things, acting out their own pain. There were the doctors and the healthcare providers who didn't see me, even though I was telling them of my difficulties. It was as if they all had this image of "you'll be fine" instead of seeing the truth. It was as if I was invisible. If they believed someone else was taking care of me, there was not a problem. I feel this way about grieving as well. As long as I'm functioning, people don't really see how much I'm hurting. It's easy to hide the sadness and anger by withdrawing, but I don't really feel like I'm living much of the time.

I don't really know of any resources out there that deal with the grief of going through infertility treatments, regardless of their outcome. If you know of those resources (i.e. have read the book, not just heard about it), please pass them on.

Someday, I may appreciate the blessing of grief. I know I have much more compassion for those going through infertility than I had before, so that is one gift. Can we be there for each other as we grieve day after day, month after month, year after year with each loss related to fertility treatments? Or does it feel better to cheer those on who continue to do treatment after treatment? I want to hear from those women who are in the trenches, dealing with these losses. I am guilty of not writing about how I feel, for fear I will turn off my readers or be viewed as a negative person, but the reality is that I am grieving still from the failure of our FET and from last year's loss as well.

We all have a story to tell about our grief around infertility. I'd love to hear yours. Do you have any gifts from your grief to share?

The Baskin Robbins of Grief

Today, I learned I have a new flavor of grief. Anniversary grief. I guess it's kinda nice to have a name for it. It's not the same grief as the grief I had last year grief. I'm not big on talking about this anniversary, but yeah, it's been kicking my ass, especially because of how close it is to Mother's Day. I lived, but I think I'd just rather be in another country where they don't celebrate Mother's Day on that actual day. I actually feel much better, emotionally, since Sunday passed. I holed up in my house, but that wasn't enough. I also could not turn on the TV or read the newspaper lest I be reminded of what day it was. Really, it was hopeless.

I did get a nice Mother's Day gift. I talked with my mother for half an hour! For those who have not been following my story, my mother has this thing about talking on the phone, as in, she won't do it. I haven't talked with my Mom since I visited her last December. My Dad will talk a blue streak with you, but my Mom refuses to get on the phone. The love didn't last long. I got an off "joke" e-mail from my Mom two days later that went like this:

A man boarded a plane with 6 kids. After they got settled in their seats, a woman sitting across the aisle from him leaned over to him and asked, "Are all of those kids yours?"

He replied, "No...I work for a condom company. These are customer complaints."

I'm the youngest of six and my oldest sibling is seven years older than me. It's no mistake that my Mom found this funny, but to me, I just felt sad. Who would want to be thought of as a customer complaint? Thanks for making me feel wanted, Mom. If she had actually used some birth control, which I think would have been the best thing for her sanity and all of us in our family, I wouldn't be here, which is really ok by me.