Anniversaries are Difficult

Difficult anniversaries

Anniversaries are difficult for me.  I feel like I never know what I want.  Do I want to be with people or alone?  I feel like I should do something that includes the children, that I should help them mark the days of Mercy.  And yet, doing anything with our brood of four is complicated, emotional, and intense, even in the best of circumstances and I find myself exhausted.

We went away to Bloomington this weekend.  We ate Thai food and hiked one of our favorite trails.  We saw good friends and enjoyed our Airbnb, but we were all one edge.  The children seemed especially whiny and taxing.  Our final day was marred by freezing rain and a child vomiting.  It is a difficult thing:  trying to enjoy time together as a family while mourning Mercy. 

I wish that there were more moments of pure delight, where I could experience the reality of Mercy without the tinge of sadness.  And every year, I have to release the day to be whatever it will be. 

In 2005, I reflected on these complicated anniversaries, writing

February rolls me over, exposing a soft underbelly of grief.  We went to the Great Wolf Lodge again this year.  This is the third year that we have celebrated Mercy’s birthday by decamping to the Cincinnati water park.  Our visit was delightful; Jemima scurried about in her life jacket while Ada and Magnus darted in the wave pool.  Moses was content in our arms, lulled by the din of hundreds of splashing children.  We ate pepperoni pizza in the evening and had donuts and omelets in the morning.  The children slept the sleep of the happily exhausted.  We spoke of Mercy often and brought cupcakes to celebrate her life.  All in all, it was a good time.  And yet, as we drove out of the parking lot and began our wintery trek home, I began to cry.  No trip is happy enough, no experience rich and rewarding enough to ameliorate the terrible, submerged truth:  we are marking the horrible, traumatic, and untimely death of our daughter. 

As the tears fell, I felt weary.  Four years have passed and perhaps there are fifty yet to come.  Each year, February will hold the birthday and the death-day of my Mercy Joan.  The weariness that I feel is not the weariness of the old; instead, it is like the sudden exhaustion of a small child.  I feel myself running, frantic and engaged, from one activity to the next.  When the moment of exhaustion hits me, I am entirely consumed and feel as though I cannot take another step.

I wonder, how do you mark the difficult anniversaries?  What wisdom have you gained over the years? 

I am grateful that I do not mark these anniversaries alone.  Each year, there is a handful of friends and family that meet me in meaningful ways.  I will write about their affecting gestures in my next post.    

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The physical toll of grief

Mama, Papa, and Mercy Joan

On February 25, 2011, I stood and spoke at Mercy’s funeral.  Her stiff body lay a few feet away, tucked under a multi-colored quilt sewn by my mother.  As I reexamine and reflect on the journey of grief this month, I begin here, in the searing pain of those early days.

Mercy Joan Mertes.  For most of you, today is your first physical encounter with Mercy, this is your hello to my girl…and my soul aches that for all of us, this is a farewell.  Standing here, I invite into the space of this mother’s lament and I wonder:  who was Mercy Joan?  What weight did she have in this world?  And how will I step beyond this moment?

Most of you have met Mercy through photos, e-mail updates, and, most importantly, through prayer.  We knew early on that Mercy would struggle.  An ultrasound warned that her condition was serious, her ultimate prognosis unknown.  And so we waited and we prayed, seeking healing, begging peace, and practicing patience.  Hundreds of friends and family, spread from California to New York to Nairobi, joined with us, loving Mercy and our family through each unfolding day.  Your prayers carried us.  My pregnancy, although overshadowed with uncertainty, was a time of great joy.  Mercy trekked through the hills of Bloomington with us as we marveled at the colors of fall.  She spent hours with Magnus and Ada on the playground, and even went to the ocean.  Thank you.  Thank you for loving my little girl.  I hope that Mercy drew you closer to the God that hears. 

From the first, Mercy Joan was a sister to Ada June and Magnus Emmanuel.  We joyously incorporated her into our family rituals.  Ada and I talked to her constantly.  She became a part of our bedtime routines, with Ada supplying her voice for prayer time.  Mercy even had her own song, the doxology, which we would close with every evening.  Magnus loved to blow on my growing tummy, and I can only imagine that Mercy laughed to hear her brother’s jolly buzz.  Mercy’s eyes were closed through much of her life, but when Ada arrived in her hospital room, she was eyes wide open for more than an hour as her sister sang to her, stroked her face, and taught her how to twirl.

Mercy was also the daughter of the best father I know.  Luke has loved her well through every moment of her life.  I am profoundly grateful that Luke is Mercy’s father as well as my steadfast, weeping companion on this path of grief.

Mercy Joan was my daughter.  She nestled inside me, filling both my heart and my womb.  We went on long, plodding runs together.  Together, we sat through (and passed!) a semester of graduate school.  We read stories to Ada and covered Magnus with tickles.  Each kick and jostle was mine to savor and cherish a secret assurance of the robust life that was within me.  Yet, I knew that the safety and protection of those nine months could not last.  That trembling and trusting day would come, the unveiling of Mercy to a world of wires and tubes, pain and uncertainty.  And oh, how I ached, how I longed to once more wrap her inside me and shelter her from the rasping ventilator and the beeping machines that were her companions. 

Although we knew that bringing Mercy home would end her life, I awaited her arrival with joy, longing to see my little girl’s face.  And the moment was indeed joyous.  A tiny hand stretched upwards to my face, a red mouth open and free from tubes.  As Mercy’s moments stretched to minutes and minutes to days, we were delighted by Mercy.  A walk by the pond, sitting near a bursting fire, nestling in for a night’s rest…and the embrace and caress of so many family members.  All of these memories are ours to cherish for a lifetime.

And in this blessed mess of memories, there is the soul-searing moment of clutching her warm, dead body and weeping over her stillness.  Where do I go from this place?  How will I move through the days, forward from the body of my Mercy Joan?  I have no easy equation, where sovereignty plus suffering equals peace.  My words are few.  Yet, as I mourn and moan, there are two cries that rise up with equal fierceness.  My first call is raw pain:  I hate that Mercy is gone.  I covet her weight in my arms and will mourn her every day of my life.  My second cry is to God.  He has not been far from me.  He cares for me with a mother’s strength and tenderly caresses me with a father’s comfort.  He holds my daughter and He holds my days. 

Oh Spirit, draw near.  Lord, have Mercy.  Christ, have Mercy.   

It felt important for me to speak at Mercy’s funeral.  The eulogy was like a graffiti tag:  Mercy was here.  The day of her funeral and burial emptied me.  Afterwards, friends and family gathered at my parent’s home.  They were there to support me, to offer comfort, but I could not endure another interaction. 

I remember hiding in the TV room.  I crowded between the children and took refuge in a few minutes of The Lion King.  However, even Simba soon began to grate.  I stumbled down the stairs into the basement.  A friend came, set a fire, and left. 

I don’t remember most of what people said to me that day, but I remember the fire that Daniel silently stacked.  I remember the English muffin, lightly toasted with just an echo of butter, that Emily offered the morning after Mercy died.  There were pyrex dishes that appeared, heavy with tomato sauce and sympathy.  Friends cleaned our house and vacuumed out the Explorer.  As words faltered, these gestures were solid and true. 

Early grief is intensely physical.  My thoughts and emotions were desperately recalibrating and my body was in flat-out denial.  Denial reeks of soggy cabbage.  My breasts were leaking milk, yearning to sustain a days-dead daughter, and I soothed the pain by layering cabbage inside my maternity bra.  As a side note, in the long accretion of female wisdom, it was discovered that cabbage leaves ease the pain of engorgement. 

Cabbage was just one more example of resonant, physical care.  Jill, a friend of my mother, faithfully delivered the purple heads, slipping comfort into the crisper drawer. 

Now, when I hear about the car crash or the divorce or the diagnosis, I put on my apron and bake a loaf of bread.  I arrive with a chai tea latte or an offer of childcare.  Especially when the sorrow is fresh, embodied care is immensely impactful.  Offer a hug, clean a toilet, send a bar of chocolate.  Words are important but incomplete.    

I am struck by a question I pose somewhere near the end:  Where do I go from this place?  How will I move through the days, forward from the body of my Mercy Joan? I have no easy equation, where sovereignty plus suffering equals peace.  My words are few.  How to move forward, indeed.  In my next blog post, I look at what happened when the funeral flowers faded and the sympathy cards stopped.

February feels...unpredictable

Last Wednesday, Indiana temperatures plummeted to -13 degrees.  Yet, by Sunday, women in tank tops were pushing baby strollers in the afternoon sunshine.  Then came the heavy rains:  my neighbor’s yard is under a few inches of muddy water.  I heard someone refer to this as the bi-polar vortex. 

The tempestuous weather of February seems appropriate; it finds strange symmetry with my inner world.  February is the month when my daughter, Mercy Joan, was born.   February is the month that she died…and I find myself feeling as unpredictable as the weather. 

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. wrote a tremendous book on trauma called The Body Keeps the Score.  The phrase is fitting and evocative:  each year, I feel the approach of her days in my body.  My pelvis is weighted by the memory of a life carried and lost and I am acutely aware of my midline incision.  The days can feel disordered, so very tiring, and I echo Frodo’s musing:  “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” 

How do people carry the weight of pain and disappointment as the years slowly stack, one on top of the other?  Time is not the ultimate healer; the passage of years cannot bring a dead dream or a dead daughter back to life.  And yet, time has changed the heft of my grief.  I discover myself and my loss differently with each passing year. 

So, for the next few blog posts, I will be looking back at some of my February writings from years past.  With this backwards glance, I hope to gain perspective and perhaps even some wisdom from what the years have held.