About What Was Lost

It has been five years since our firstborn, Philip, died.  There are few days that pass that I don’t think of him in some way, even fleetingly.  My heart still aches with his absence, and I’m still angry on some visceral level that I was robbed of the chance to be his mama.  There are so many things I could write about Philip, but that isn’t really what I wanted to say about it today. 

I painted this icon of St. Philip in memory of our Philip

What I want to write about is how Philip’s death has made me much more fragile than I ever thought possible.  I lost my innocence with his death, and once lost, can never have it back again.  It is a soul-deep wound.  It’s not the sort of wound like a thorn, where if you pull it straight out, it heals clean and easy.  It is the sort of wound that changes you on an existential level.  I think of my life in terms of before Philip and after Philip.  I feel I can hardly relate to the person I was before him.  And perhaps I learned a few things I needed to learn about compassion and empathy, but mostly I just learned about pain.  A pain so deep and so wide I thought I’d never see the other side of it.  I became a fathomless glassy black lake of grief.

The icon corner in our bedroom.

As with many things I find hard to explain myself, I turn to books to explain them for me.  The following exerpt is from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (one of my favorite series).  While the context is different, I felt the sentiment to be very much the same.  Jamie is explaining to his wife, Claire, how he feels after an extremely traumatic event.

“I think it’s as though everyone has a small place inside themselves, maybe, a private bit that they keep to themselves.  It’s like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives—maybe it’s your soul, maybe just that bit that makes you yourself and not anyone else.”  His tongue probed his swollen lip unconsciously as he thought.

            “You don’t show that bit of yourself to anyone, usually, unless sometimes to someone ye love greatly.” The hand relaxed, curling around my knee.  Jamie’s eyes were closed again, lids sealed against the light.

            “Now, it’s like…like my own fortress has been blown up with gunpowder—there’s nothing left of it but ashes and a smoking rooftree, and the little naked thing that lived there once is out in the open, squeaking and whimpering in fear, tryin’ to hide itself under a blade of grass or a bit o’ leaf, but…but not…makin’ m-much of a job of it.”  His voice broke, and he turned his head so that his face was hidden in my skirt.”  (Diana Gabaldon, Outlander, NY: Delacorte Press, 561).

My own fortress was blown away with Philip’s death, and it was a long time before I no longer felt defined by my grief.  I still miss him, still think of him, and wonder what would have been.  I still bitterly regret not taking better pictures of him after he was born.  I’m still angry at the hospital personnel for their careless indifference during the whole traumatic process of his birth.  I have few memories of Philip that aren’t filled with the pain of his loss.  I hope someday to remember more often those few and fleeting moments when I felt with him.  The day I felt him move against me, that rapid fluttering that told me, Hello Mama, I’m here!

  

I wish I could say that this post was about how I’ve found peace and healing from what was lost.  That isn’t my story, at least not yet.  I hope someday to find those things.  I think the best I can say, five years on, is that while my fortress may be gone forever, at least I’ve rebuilt the shelter, with a roof to keep out the rain.