How Many Hurdles?

Yesterday, I had surgery. Another hurdle to jump over in our journey to have another child. As I sit here recovering, I can’t help but think about how much more difficult this journey has been than I ever expected. And how confused I am at how it happens so easily for other people, and we just keep getting new hurdles thrown in our path.

I can’t lie – I’m running out of steam. I’m not quitting by any measure, because my ultimate goal is still to have a living child. But I really don’t know how many more hurdles I can jump. I’m just tired.

Yesterday’s surgery was to remove scar tissue from my uterus. I went into the day thinking it was just another thing to check off the list, we’d get through it, and we’d move on. But it’s been more physically and emotionally painful than I’d prepared for.

The physical pain and discomfort is caused by a balloon filled with saline that now fills my uterus. It causes some pretty serious cramping and makes any other position but lying down uncomfortable. I have a tube hanging between my legs that connects to this balloon, which weirds me out in ways that I cannot explain. I will have this until Tuesday and will be on medication for a month. At the end of the month, my doctor defines a successful surgery as me having a “horrendous period.” That’s how good news goes in my world.

The emotional pain was something I hadn’t really prepared for. As I lay in a hospital bed yesterday waiting as people got me ready for surgery, I looked up to heaven and pleaded with God that this be it. That this is the last of the hurdles before getting a chance to try again. I feel, in some respect, that I’m asking God for an easy way out. But let’s be honest, nothing about what I’ve gone through has been easy. And I don’t even have an easy path forward – it will still be IVF that gives me the greatest chance for a living child. At some point, I just want someone, maybe God, to acknowledge that I’ve been through enough. I’ve certainly been through more than most people I know in getting to this point. So when is enough enough?

My biggest reassurance yesterday came in a sign from my daughter. Just before I was taken in for surgery, the nurse led me to a bathroom down the hall. I had to walk through another patient room to get there and hanging on the wall was a painting I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. It was a large painting of a rainbow with the words “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” around it. Surely, a sign from Vivienne that she was with me through all of this, sending me a rainbow the only way she could inside of a hospital. Nothing that any doctor could have said to me could have reassured me more than seeing that painting.

And so now we soldier on, trying our best to hold on to the hope that this really is the last hurdle, and keeping firmly focused on our goal. It has been more difficult to get to this point than I ever could have thought. I’m so very tired, and my reserves are low. But, I’m not giving up. All I can ask is that please God, let this be the last hurdle. I’ve given it my best fight, and I don't know how much fight I have left.

Dreams

After Vivienne died, I would hear stories from other loss Moms who would talk about having dreams with their children. I was so jealous because I wanted a visit from Vivienne in my dreams so badly. I just wanted to feel close to her and feel her presence so much. I didn’t really have these dreams. Another loss Mom once said that maybe our children don’t visit us in our dreams because they know how painful it would be to wake up from it. The roles were reversed and our children were looking out for us and doing what they knew was best for us.

For a long time, I didn’t have any of those dreams that I wanted so badly. Early on, I had 1 strange dream where Gordon and I were living in some Asian country. We couldn’t speak the language, and we didn’t know how to get around. We got lost trying to get home from a bookstore. I took the dream as a metaphor for feeling like strangers in a foreign land in our regular life and for how lost we felt navigating through it. And then I remembered that in our dream we had a daughter. She was an older teenager, probably about 17. She helped us figure out our way home. I never really got a clear picture of her, but I knew she was there. At the time, I wondered if that was as close as I was going to get to Vivienne coming to me in my dreams.

Lately, I’ve had 2 dreams where I really felt like it was her. They are both very brief, but very memorable (and I don’t often remember much from my dreams). The first was a few weeks ago. I was at a doctor’s office or hospital (guess I spend so much time at those places that I now go there in my dreams) finding a seat in the waiting room. It was really crowded, and I couldn’t find a place to sit. I turned around, and a little girl ran up to me and grabbed onto my leg. She turned around and told her Mother (who wasn’t me) – “I want to sit with this lady!” I patted her on the head, and we found a couple of seats. After we sat down, I turned to look at her, and she wasn’t there. There was an adult, a stranger, sitting where she was supposed to be. Just like that, she was gone.

The second dream was more recent, and far more direct. In the dream, I walked downstairs at our house. It was nighttime, and I was in the pajamas I was actually wearing while I slept. As I stood at the bottom of the stairs, I looked into the kitchen. There was a young girl spinning around in circles with her arms stretched out to her sides (like Julie Andrews on that hilltop in the Sound of Music). She was laughing and having fun. She was clearly a spirit/ghost – kind of like you would see in the movies where you can see through her, and there is an aura around her. When she saw me, she stopped and looked at me and smiled. In the dream, we both knew that we could not go to each other. So, we stood and smiled and waved to each other. As she started to disappear, I started to blow her kisses, and she giggled. And then she was gone.

Each dream only lasts for a few seconds, but they are each seared into my brain. It is painful to wake up after seeing her. But, it also gives me some peace. I talk to my daughter in heaven all of the time. Multiple times a day, I look up to the sky to tell her how much I love her and miss her. Sometimes, I say it as a question, “you know how much I love you and miss you, don’t you?” And sometimes, she sends me a sign to let me know that she knows. I think of these dreams as those signs – she never says it, but I know her visits in my dreams are one of the ways she lets me know she loves me and is with me. I hope she keeps sending them, because I’m missing her constantly.

Making a Choice

Since Vivienne died, I’ve read many books about loss. I guess when you’re on a quest to find meaning and answers, you look everywhere in the hopes that you’ll find a glimmer of something. A few months ago, I read a book called Choosing to See. I remember finishing it and my husband asking me “did it help?” As with most books I’ve read, there are parts that are helpful and there are parts that aren’t. What I didn’t realize then is that maybe these messages stick with me and become important when they need to be.

The book deals with the author losing her daughter in a tragic accident. She mentions several times throughout the book about “choosing to see”—seeing messages and meaning from her daughter everywhere if she just opened herself up and chose to see them. I chalked it up to the fact that her daughter was a little older when she died (she was 5), so she had more memories to draw from. I’m learning now that I just wasn’t ready for that message when I read her book. Lately, I’ve been opening my eyes more and choosing to see, and I’m finding that Vivienne is everywhere.

I told the story of the butterfly who visited me on Mother’s Day. That was really my first moment of feeling a strong message from Vivienne. It gave me such peace and hope. Since then, I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open to feel that again.

I see her everywhere now. I’ll look up to the sky and see one particular cloud, and I can feel her peering over the side to look down and say hello. She’s in a ray of sunshine, a flower, and the birds chirping. I read in another loss Mom’s blog about how a breeze feels like a hug from her lost child. And now, I close my eyes and feel my daughter hug me every time a breeze goes by. I still cry because I wish the hug were real, but it’s something, and I’ll take whatever I can get.

A friend and fellow loss Mom told me a couple of weeks ago about hearing her daughter’s name. After she lost her daughter, whenever she heard a child called by the same name or saw her name somewhere, she smiled because she knew it was a message from Reese. Vivienne isn’t the most common name, so it’s not one I hear very often. Shortly after she died, we heard it once, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. We were watching the Emmy’s, and Melissa McCarthy was accepting her award. At the end of her speech, she looked at the camera and said “go to bed now Vivi” to her daughter. We both cried. Since then, I haven’t heard her name very much. But since this Mom told me how she hears her daughter’s name as messages, and since I’ve been choosing to see, I’ve seen and heard Vivienne’s name multiple times. I read it in People magazine where some semi-famous person had a daughter she named Vivienne, and I heard it on a TV show, where they said it over and over again. Each time, it made me smile.

I’ve written before about how the rainbow is Vivienne’s symbol, and how I look for rainbows everywhere. I still do, and I still hear them in songs and see pictures of them and think of Vivienne. But, I also think I was so focused on finding this rainbow to have some grand message from my daughter that I missed all of the everyday messages she was sending. But now, my eyes and ears are open, and she is sending me messages all of the time. I know that some day, she’ll send me a rainbow. I also now know that every day, she’ll send me a hug in the breeze and countless other little messages of love.  And I hope that I see each one, and she feels my love right back.