The Trouble With Angels

I can tell you exactly where I was when Dale Earnhardt died during the 2001 Daytona 500. I was watching the race at my parents' house with my little brother (I can't believe that was twelve years ago!). I remember the shock when Earnhardt didn't climb out his window. I remember his son, who moments before finished second in the race, running back down the track to get to his dad. I remember Darrel Waltrip's excitement that his little brother, Michael, had finally won a Winston (or Nextel, I don't remember who was sponsoring) Cup race. I also remember him asking "Dale's okay, right?" and no one answering him.

The whole thing was some sort of bizarre Greek tragedy. The old champion struck down while the new champions (both Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt, Jr drove cars owned by Dale Earnhardt) on the track he'd battled his whole career. Honestly, I remember crying a little. It was so sad. Dale Earnhardt and my dad look alike. I'd just watched a man die while chilling with my little brother eating snacks and watching a race. It was sad.

It's not a bad thing that I cried. It's not even a bad thing I remember it so clearly. Things like the Newtown tragedy, 9/11, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Waco, the Challenger explosion...they become part of the warp and weave of our national tapestry. We all experienced them. They are a part of all of our shared experiences.

But we are not all mourners. We are not the ones primarily effected by the lives lost in each of these tragedies (unless someone reading this actually lost someone they knew and loved. In which case, my apologies and sympathies). And that's something I think occasionally gets lost.

I first thought of this when I read an interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr about how difficult it is for him (the man whose father died a few car lengths behind him) when people want to share how his dad's death effected them. How hard it was for him to heal when people constantly wanted to relive that moment with him.

I thought of this again when I read an article about the aftermath of Newtown in the New York Times Magazine. Several first responders to the scene were interviewed about how they are coping. It was mentioned that the boxes of teddy bears and thank you cards sent by well-wishers from across the country served as triggers.

So now is when I risk alienating some friends and readers. Many, many people (in both the real and blog world) wanted to do something. They wanted to reach out to the people of Newtown, to the grieving parents and first responders. Sometimes those instincts can lead good people to do hurtful things with the best possible intentions.

That leads me to the trouble with angels. OUR trouble with angels.

After Lila died people started giving us little ceramic angels. To remember her by, every single person who gave us one said.

To remember her by? Lila is our baby. For nine months she lived in my body. For the entirety of life she was with either J or me, except for when I had to have surgery and my mother kept her. I don't need ceramic angels to remember her by. Instead, they've become these slightly creepy reminders of the fact our child is dead. And what do I with them? How can I discard something bought in the memory of Lila, even if they freak me out and I have no idea what to do with them?

I see a lot of people who want to give the people of Newtown proverbial ceramic angels. I'm asking you to please reconsider. Everyone of the dead left behind parents, other family members, friends, classmates. If you aren't one of those people, please consider your actions carefully.

If you want to do something, donate to a charity the survivors have nominated. Don't nominate to a  charity the family might not support in a victim's name. But please remember you are not a primary, secondary, or tertiary mourner. These people didn't lose a feeling of safety or watch the happenings on television and cry about it. They buried their children. Or they experienced the day first hand, in Newtown.

Don't let your need to do something overtake the actual survivors need to grieve. And heal.

Our Girl

When we celebrated Lila's first Christmas we had no idea it would be her only Christmas; indeed, that we would have less than forty-eight hours to spend with her. SIDS is just...a bitch. Lila was beautiful and developmentally on target and a voracious eater and had learned how to smile and was learning how to control her hands to pet Emily and loved laying on J's chest and insisted on being held every moment she was awake. And then she was gone.

We lost her two years ago today. Instead of focusing on what we lost, we are choosing to take a moment to concentrate on what we had. So we are posting some of our favorite pictures of our darling girl.

Lila on her birthday. When I was picking pictures to post I almost skipped this one because I was afraid she'd be embarrassed when she's older. Acceptance is not an everyday thing,

Laying on a quilt my grandmother made in her gender bending blue onesie. We were boring her.

Lila was always curious about everything. She looked at the world like she really wanted to figure it out.

I'm pretty sure she was watching Emily in this picture.

Lila's Christmas.

Changing clothes is just so tiring!

J was eating a candy bar while holding when Lila did her trademark throw herself at what she wanted (I've never seen a newborn who could toss herself about before) and she threw herself right at the chocolate bar. I wiped out her mouth, but she was super excited about what remained!

Thank you all for reading.

Framed!

When Lila was born, someone gifted us with a collage photo frame, similar to this one.

Photo Courtesy of Amazon

I don't have a before shot of our frame. Whoops! Ours actually says "Bundle of Joy" on the side. It's very, very sweet. However, and this is my problem with all collage picture frames, I never have pictures that fit into the weird sized spaces. My good intention was to print off some pictures in these odd sizes, but it never happened. Honestly, after Lila died, I couldn't handle a lot of pictures around me. My BFF framed one snapshot for us and we kept that in the living room, but that was really it.

Finally I started framing and placing around some other Lila shots and I remembered this frame. I pulled it out of our "things we haven't found a home for even though we've lived here two years" box. Same problem, though. So what to do with a collage frame?

I realized maybe I could remove the wood strips that divided the collage frame. I took the frame apart, and voila! The framing was actually just really thin strips of wood (maybe balsa wood?) connected to the frame with heavy duty staples. Using a flathead screwdriver I pried the staples up. Then I was left with this!

It was still a non-standard frame size. I pondered having one picture made in this size, but after looking at it closely I realized it was the perfect size for 4x6s!  I just needed something to go behind the pictures. I dug through my scrapbag and came up with  a small piece of natural linen.

Success! (You'll note these pictures are heavily pixelated. This is because I'm breastfeeding in them. And I fully support breastfeeding and certainly fed Lila any and everywhere. However, I figured no one wanted to look at my breasts while they are having lunch!) Walgreens has had a couple of free 8x10 photo events (whenever I see a code, I always post it on Facebook and Twitter!) so I've scored...

Four nice 8x10s of Lila. I have a couple of dollar store frames...

 but need two more. I hope to find a couple of non-matchy frames at the thrift store, but I've struck out the last few times I checked. All the frames (the birch tones of the Bundle of Joy frame never really worked for me) have a date with spray paint this weekend, and hopefully I'll have a little frame cluster hung up by Monday!

This is the de-collage ready picture frame as it hung in our bedroom! Sadly, it was the only thing hanging in our bedroom (our bedroom is so tragic, even though we have a couple of awesome pieces of furniture in it. I'll post embarrassing pictures soon).

Total cost of project: $0. That's the way I like it!

No Idea What to Title This

Warning: this post isn't about DIY and does reference a child's death and adult depression. 

I started this blog as a distraction from the fact my life had just shattered. Shattered isn't even the word for it. Imploded? Experienced armageddon? Within an instant I went from the mother of two and a half month old to...nothing. That's what it felt like. Feels like. That my entire reason for being had just been ripped away and I was trying desperately to find some reason not to fling myself off the planet. I read a decent amount of "grieving literature" and the crazy amount of time you have when you no longer have a small human to care for wasn't mentioned it, but it should've been. A simply staggering amount of time that should have been filled with nursing and reading books and helping Lila learn to sit up suddenly yawned before me. What the the hell was I supposed to do with it? A fifty year old house with lots of problems and a blog to detail all of our struggles with said house seemed like something that could resemble a plan. A distraction. Something.

It didn't work. I mean, it did in the sense I'm still here, but I didn't have the mental ability to organize projects. There were many days when I didn't have the mental resources to organize laundry. Everyday problems that would've once been no big deal suddenly became huge obstacles. I let small problems become big problems.

The biggest problem with renovating our place is that Lila should be here with us. Each choice is loaded. Is this a choice I would make if Lila was here? When I put a glass topped side table in the living room, something I definitely wouldn't do if I had a two year old cruising around the place, does that mean I'm glad she isn't here? Rationally, no, I know it doesn't mean that. It means that the reality is I don't have a two year old stumbling around my house, leaving jam hand imprints on all my furniture. Knowing the reality doesn't make me emotionally accept it any better. Every choice I make that I wouldn't make if Lila was here feels like a betrayal of my daughter.

Our spare room is MESS. Furniture we haven't found a place for, friends stuff we were supposed to be storing "temporarily", and more are all stuffed into this innocent room so that I don't have to deal with it. Because I know what that room is supposed to be. I knew as soon as a I saw the sun pouring in the windows. It was meant to be Lila's room. It should have a pink crib and a vintage dresser and a fifties armchair J turned into a rocker for us and a bookcase overflowing with books and bins full of toddler toys. But it doesn't. It never well. So I leave it full of junk and handwave the idea of turning it into an office/tv room. Because do nothing with it is so much better than doing something I'd never do if she was here. Because working everyday in a room that should hold my daughter in all of her glory sounds like a level of hell I'd just as soon avoid.

Why am I writing all of this? Because it's the holidays, and my girl was a holiday baby. Born on Columbus Day. Buried on New Years Eve. But it's the in between. The smiles, the coos, the cuddling, the dreaming of our future as a family. And now its Thanksgiving, and it's the first Thanksgiving where Lila should be making handprint construction paper turkeys and singing silly songs. But it's not. She'll never make a single craft, never sing a song, never ask develop a favorite ritual, never eat desert. And I...will do my damnedest to smile and be happy and not rip my flesh off with my fingernails.

So, I guess my point is, I'm probably not going to get a lot of DIY done. Maybe I will. I might be blogging about a "wide variety of topics" (that's a thing, right?). I'm going to do what every grieving parent does. The one thing we often don't want to do. Survive. And surviving looks different from day to day. 

If you have someone in your life who has lost a loved one, even if the loss isn't fresh, understand that the non-stop barrage of images of happy families and adorable pink cheeked moppets and cute holiday traditions might just be making them want to open a vein. Try to be understanding when they aren't the "fun" people they once were.