Day 7: You Now

Day 7: You Now
Oct 7, 2013

Even now almost a year and 7 months to the day, I still find it hard to get out of bed some days. Most days the only reason I do get out of bed is the obligation to work but on days off it's the smiling face of my baby Ronan that pulls me out of my funk and gives me a reason to be happy. Most days are good days at this point, but the dark days are darker than most people can even imagine. My husband and I still struggle with our new reality and quite honestly without Ronan here I don't know that we would be as far along in our healing process as we both are. The death of a child is hard on a marriage even when no blame is placed and I thank my lucky stars that so far Marshall and I have managed to make it through together. We did go from a couple that never fights to a couple that rarely fights and I can't imagine how a couple already in turmoil could ever cope with losing their child and still manage to stay together. We have started to realize that when we do fight they are almost always originating out of some pent up anger or frustration from Nolan. I don't think that will ever go away. What has happened is that Marshall and I have learned to better deal with our pain and frustration and we have worked on communicating our inner turmoil better so it doesn't come off as anger towards the other person.

I've learned that the pain doesn't go away, we just become better at concealing it from the rest of the world. I still cry every time I think of Nolan (which is every single day) and every day I write a post about him. I've also learned that it is possible to be happy again when I thought that was never going to be my reality again. I still find it very difficult to answer some questions like, "is this your first baby?" I dread meeting new people while I'm holding Ronan knowing that I'm about to lie to them just to avoid a discussion I don't want to have. Nobody wants to hear about your dead baby, they only care about the one that is in front of them. Sometimes I think people forget that we are still grieving, that we got pregnant again immediately with Ronan and that our wounds are still very raw and fresh. But very few people think to ask how we are doing any more. For those who care to know, when I tell people at work, "I'm here" when asked "how are you," rest assured it was a bigger struggle to get "here" than you will ever imagine.