I’ve been wanting to sit down to write a personal post over these past few weeks, and between a busy work schedule, work on the campaign, and just plain life, it’s been impossible to find the time to do that. But today I have beloved friends coming for a visit, and while I wait for them I’m exporting a wedding and have a couple minutes to write out some thoughts while Thomas builds some block towers beside me. Fair warning – this is pretty jumbled.
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The first week of November was a rough one for me. I don’t think I’m quite in the right place to get into all of it just now, but that week, beginning with Halloween, is usually one of my favourite times of the year. It always has been, but every single thing in that week and all the months that follow has been better since Isla, Thomas, and Jude came into our lives.
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I went back to work eight days after Jude died. I know some people questioned that decision, and I considered very carefully before deciding to go ahead, but I knew very quickly that it would be the right choice for me. Something I’d forgotten in my initial fog while contacting my bride and groom was that the bride had worked previously as a funeral director. She quickly insisted that we not talk about her wedding and reminded me of her experience, and talked me through what I was about to walk into at the funeral home with Craig and one of our best friends. I couldn’t possibly be more grateful for the way this incredible woman stepped in to guide me during the worst weekend of my life.
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Today this image popped up in my Facebook memories. I took it four years ago when I was in Toronto for a family session. That first week of November I was mentioning, with all those happy things, also has a date that’s a sad one for me. Four years ago another little boy should have been born that week, but we lost him in the second trimester, on May 8th. How strange that all of my saddest dates keep circling back around to the same two sets of days in May and November.
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In the very long 23 months that it took us to get pregnant with the boys we had a lot of difficult moments and unexpected challenges. It was all harder than I could ever have imagined it would be, but we kept our eyes on the prize. We focused on the long game and remembered that while it was hard in the moment, if we were lucky we’d get to grow old with a house full of kids and chaos, and everything that would come from learning who each of them were and what they wanted for life. I repeated it to myself constantly: it won’t always be like this. Someday, no matter how it all panned out, I would wake up and that wouldn’t be my life anymore, with all the stress and heartache. The day I found this beautiful mirrored window at the AGO it felt like a reminder from the universe that I’d eventually get to the other side – whatever was waiting for me there. I’ve pulled this picture out a number of times through the years and held on to it, and it felt especially satisfying after our boys were finally here. That part was over, and the good days were all ahead of us. We looked forward to the years with our house of chaos.
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That first week of November this year also marked six months since we lost Jude. I turned 34 without my little boy and hated every second of it. I wake up every day and remember he’s gone. I go to bed every night unable to forget that we just did another day without him, and it will never be different.
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And that same bride, who walked me through funeral planning for a toddler, who made time for me a few days before her wedding for hugs and that initial ice breaking so we could just focus on the good things the day she was marrying her (amazing and wonderful) fiancé. That same bride reached out to me remembering that it had been six months, and told me something she’d been thinking about in light of Remembrance Day. She recalled a veteran saying to her, ‘my war was 70 years ago and yesterday’, and was thinking about how that was such a poignant way to speak about such a traumatic, life-changing event, and suggested that might be a good way to explain losing Jude to people. ‘It was six months ago and yesterday.’
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She nailed it. I remember telling a friend shortly after Jude died that I felt like the rest of my life was ruined, that I was looking ahead to whatever days I still have here knowing that I’d already had the best day of my life, and nothing could ever be as good as it would have been if Jude hadn’t died. I remember that year when I had my second trimester loss, and found a community of loss moms like me. I remember one of my lovely friends getting a tattoo to honour her loss, with the poem, ‘Separation,’ by W.S. Merwin.
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Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
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Every day feels like I just lost him. Every day feels shocking and painful. Every day I watch Thomas get bigger, learn something new, get into mischief. All by himself, without his partner in crime, and it all feels as new and wrong as it has since we first had to start getting used to the idea that we’d never see Jude again.
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I can’t fall back on that old mantra anymore. I can’t tell myself that it won’t always be like this, because it will. We’ll learn to live with it. We’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other. We’ll figure out how to do all of this, because we have to.
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But it will always be like this. There’s no way out of it. Jude is gone and he will always be gone, and it’ll never be something I can get used to. I believe the days will pass, but I no longer find comfort in that, knowing that the days will pass and they’ll never bring me to a life again where all of my kids are safe and in my arms.