One month anniversary

September 22, 2010

He might want to remain anonymous so I won't use any details, but someone who has been following my blog has offered me a very generous thing-to stay at his B&B for a respite. I leave in a couple of hours. I don't know how well this is going to go over since my agoraphobia has gotten a little worse, but I am going to try. I'm taking my journal, some books, and my medicine. I hope to do a lot of reading, writing, and sleeping.

I cried yesterday when I remembered that it was the one month anniversary. I stood in Toby's room for a long time and looked at his little things and then I remembered, again, that he is not coming back. Sometimes, Sam asks why we can't just go to the hospital to get him and I wonder that, too.

We still don't have the official autopsy report back yet and I am both dreading this and anticipating it. I'm afraid it won't give us any answers, but I am hoping.

For the first two weeks I was in shock. I barely remember what we did. The circus sticks out in my mind a lot. Now, I'm feeling numb and that's a different kind of pain altogether. I can't remember what his little head smelled like. I don't remember what the weight of his felt like. It takes longer to bring his face into my mind. The only image I can clearly see is the one where I found him lying in bed, already turning blue, and that one haunts me. I can't get it out sometimes.

I did something really stupid a few nights ago. I was already feeling sad and upset and I got a not so nice message from my father-in-law. Instead of dealing with it logically, I cut up my forearm and wrist. I've gotten worse cuts from the blackberry bushes but that's not the point. I had sat there all day trying to think get that image of Toby, already dead, out of my mind and the look on Pete's face when he realized that he was dead out of my mind and then that message was the last straw.

Actually, that's not true. The last straw was when Pete's so-called friend had his "best interest" at heart and wrote on my blog that I was "quite disturbed" and a "piece of work" and that I "couldn't even blame it on grief." The father-in-law thing just pushed me over.

I argue with my husband because he claims to be able to deal with these things better than me but sometimes I think it's because he doesn't deal with them at all. He's not getting the nasty text messages because Mom confiscated his phone when they started. But that didn't mean that she and I didn't get them. He didn't get the nasty e-mails either. Aside from losing my child I've been accused of being a bad mother, killing my child, being a bad wife, ruining my husband's future and a variety of other things. So no wonder I'm not coping well. And when I complained about this on Facebook one of my in-laws actually commented and told my friends to "Fuck off" when they were trying to support me. It's all a big mess and really none of it should matter because I lost my baby and that's the only thing that I want to focus on. Pete's friend said that he was so pissed at one of my blog entries that he had to go for a run. Well, we're so sad here that sometimes we forget to eat and on some days I am so agoraphobic that I have to stand inside and reach my arms out as far as I can to collect a package from the UPS man.

We've ordered copies of every picture that we ever took of Toby and that also makes me sad, knowing that there will never be anymore. What we have now is all we will ever have. I could have hundreds of photo books made and put the pictures in different orders and even play with them on Photoshop, but that's still it. There will never be any new ones.

Some of my friends are having a yardsale this weekend to try to raise money for his funeral expenses and a headstone. I don’t even know what to say to them about this. It's so nice. I cried the other day thinking about him not having a headstone and my mom said it would be okay, that he would have one by Christmas. That made me cry harder because his Christmas presents should be toys and clothes-not a headstone.

When we had his picture taken at the hospital they took my email address and for some reason I get thee emails telling me what my baby is going at this time. Like "now at week 11 your baby should be…" only he's not. He's in the ground.

My friend Karen has taken two nights away from her own family this week and stayed with me so that I can have someone to talk to. I want to talk to Pete but it's hard. He says it's because he's always with Sam (which is not entirely true because sometimes I am and sometimes Mom is) or because I'm on the computer (also not entirely true) but what I really think it boils down to is that he just doesn’t want to talk to me and he's making excuses.

Sometimes, and I know this is awful, I envy those people who have children with illnesses because at least they can fight for them. They can run tests and seek treatment options, and sometimes even get better. We had no chance with Toby. We didn't even know anything was wrong. When I went to bed that night he was a healthy, happy, baby. He'd laughed for the first time that day. When I woke up, he was dead. We had no chance to fight for him.