The Hands that Help

I feel like it would be very ungrateful of me to not mention a huge act of service that has recently made a huge difference in our lives.  I don't know if it's the holidays or the natural ebb and flow of the grieving process, but I have been feeling very "broken" this past month missing my Aria.  I have always been the type of person to just suffer quietly and put on a happy face for everyone else so I didn't expect any extra attention with everyone so busy getting ready for Christmas.  But then two weeks ago we had a late night doorbell, and when we opened the door there was a gift on our porch and a note explaining that we would be receiving "12 Days of Christmas" gifts along with a nativity piece each night.  Last night we received our final piece and were able to finally meet and thank the several families involved.  I was so overwhelmed each night by this act of kindness and the knowledge that there were so many people taking time out of their day to do something nice for us.  I frequently shed tears at our nightly doorbell-ditch when I was reminded of that.  I don't think they had any idea how much this touched our hearts.

This has definitely not been an isolated event these past few months.  We have received so many acts of kindness while we've been mourning our Aria.  There's no way I can remember all of them in one sitting but just to mention a few:

• Our bishopric came and visited us at 11pm one night in the hospital because that was the only time we could fit them in
• I had several close friends who visited me in my hospital in the days following the C-section when I was alone because Michael was at a different hospital with Aria.  They just sat and listened while I tried to process what was happening.
• Our neighbors mowed our lawn for almost two months straight.
• Our neighbors organized a neighborhood effort to finish working on our front yard which we had started right before Aria was born - they manicured our lawn and trees and even planted our flowerbeds.
• Almost everyone I personally invited to come to the NICU to see Aria made the effort to come, even though it is a huge pain and a long drive for a 20 minutes NICU visit (but oh how grateful I am that other people besides family were able to meet her in real life!  And how grateful and surprised I was that pretty much everyone left with leaky eyes)
• We had meals brought to us for a week after I was discharged from the hospital.
• So many people stepped in to help with playdates for Bennett so that I could make my daily NICU visits.
• Our immediate families deserve a post all of their own really, but they did so much in the way of taking care of us and Bennett and making themselves available with little to no notice.
• A friend I hadn't talked to in years sent Bennett a book all the way from where she now lives in England.
• Several friends sent gifts or flowers, both after Aria was born and also when she passed away.  
• Our employers were both so incredibly supportive and understanding and gave us as much time as we needed with no pressure, as well as sending gifts and attending Aria's funeral.
• I actually had 3 different offers from sweet friends/relatives who offered to make a funeral gown for Aria.
• Aria's sweet nurses still keep in contact with us.  We owe those ladies our lives and sanity during those NICU weeks!
• I have a drawer full of cards and notes that people wrote to us with how Aria affected them.
• Mike had a friend who sent him a box of comic books as a "pick me up."
• Our extended families participated in a family fast near the end of Aria's life to help us feel peace about what needed to be done.
• Our brother-in-law took a day off work to help us take professional photographs - the only family photos we will ever have with Aria.  They will hang on our wall the rest of our lives.
• Another NICU mom whose sweet baby passed away a month before Aria contacted me and was so sweet and supportive during the initial grieving process.
• All of the staff at Primary Childrens who were always so kind to us and never rushed us into decisions and always treated our concerns with respect.
• Our old ward we moved from earlier this year who sent cards and little gifts up with a friend of ours.
• A couple close friends who came and just spent hours at our house cleaning, cooking, and playing with Bennett while I just walked around dazed.  
• Everyone who took the time to come to Aria's funeral, even though it was in the middle of a workday.  It was an open invitation and we were surprised and touched by some of the people who came that we might not have normally expected.
• A couple people gave me certificates for salon services to de-stress
• My coworkers stepped in without complaint while I missed so much work over the summer
• All the many, many people who leave comments on our blog or Facebook posts.  We love knowing people care!
• ....and so, so much more. 

My whole life, I have been very blessed to be on the giving side of acts of kindness like this.  These past few months I have been broken and battered with heartache, but I have been saved and humbled over and over again as I have been on the receiving end of so much love and kindness sent our way.  At least once a week I have someone different who randomly emails or texts just to let me know they're still thinking about us and these little "love notes" keep me going for days.  And the people who aren't afraid to bring up Aria in conversation (I love talking about her!) I am so blessed to know so many wonderful people in my life and am so grateful for all of you.

It's Been a While

Just a little note to reassure everyone that we're still here, and still writing.  I don't know how long or how often I will write on this blog later down the road.  For now I still think it will be fairly frequent, since we're still trying to mentally process and write down the last 6 months of our lives.

I do have a few valid excuses for my absence in November.  Part of it had to do with the fact that I spent almost every night working on a couple other Aria projects (which I can't go into too much detail yet, but I will).  Part of it was Thanksgiving craziness, of course, especially since we hosted this year.  Part of it is just the whole sadness emotion which makes me totally not motivated most nights.

(Part of it is that the "A" key on my keyboard is broken, which makes typing super annoying.  Do you know how often you use the letter A???  I mean hello, Aria's name is half "A"s on its own! I am resolved to buy a new laptop by Christmas.)

I have a ton of future posts pending (don't I always?) but here is the update on life in general:

I feel like we are a little worse off than we were the last time I blogged, 6 weeks ago.  Definitely still better off than we were right after Aria died, but still a "two steps backward" kind of thing.  I'm really not sure why.  Nothing really specific has happened to make this last month harder.  Although the onset of all the fall/winter holidays has definitely been a very blatant reminder that she's not here.  With Halloween came the start of "the holidays" in our home, which always starts with Halloween because that's my favorite holiday!  Definitely feeling the absence of our baby girl during these holidays as we are having to reconstruct what our original plans had been back when we thought we'd have a new baby in tow. . .figuring out a 3 person Halloween costume instead of the 4 person one I had picked out a long time ago. . .not taking pictures of Bennett and Aria at our annual Pumpkinland trip. . .pulling out all of Bennett's "Baby's 1st Christmas" stuff and feeling the pain of not needing one for Aria. . .etc etc.

We also just passed that point where last year at this time, I found out I was pregnant.  So now everything that comes up carries the reminder of "well last year when we did this I was pregnant" kind of a thing.

Maybe part of it is just the weather too. . .I always get kind of depressed in the cold.  I'm definitely one of those people that is much happier soaking in warm sunshine.

I know that part of it is that I am just lonely! (Which doesn't mean I'm just sitting around all day doing nothing.  I am busier than ever, but it's been surprising to see how lonely you can be at the same time)  Specifically - I miss my old friends!  I feel like I've lost a lot of close friendships since Aria died.  I don't think this is one of those things where our friendship is forever changed because my friends don't know how to handle my grief.  Maybe it is.  I don't know.  But I think a lot of it just has to do with distance now.  We only moved to Lehi in March.  Before that, we were in Spanish Fork.  So for example, I had two separate friends that I would see or do kid-swaps with like once a week, because they also had only one kid and coincidentally their kids were boys that were only a few weeks younger than Bennett.  So we were constantly chatting or texting or whatever and comparing where the boys were at and giving each other tips and stuff.  Coincidentally, both of them were also pregnant again and due a couple months before me.  I was ecstatic.  I figured once all the babies came it would be more of the same, just hanging out all the time and doing playdates and comparing stats.  Except that my baby died and theirs are thankfully healthy and happy and developing little personalities.  So not only am I much farther away now which already makes it hard to hang out, but I'm also in a much difference stage of life because I just have Bennett, and everyone else is catering to the demands of a newborn.  I have other friends down there too that I used to see a lot that I just haven't been able to see nearly as much since moving here.  And I haven't really made any "hang out" friends here yet.  I've been trying, it was just a lot easier in my old neighborhood where all the other women also only had one or two little kids and we could get together easily.  Here most of the families are a lot more established so the moms are busier because they have kids old enough to be starting school and stuff.  I'm still glad we moved here, I know without a doubt this is where we are supposed to be right now.  It's just one of those things.

Anyway, like I said, there hasn't been any specific event or anything to explain why we've been missing Aria more heavily recently.  I've just noticed a few things these past few weeks that indicate that we're going backward a bit.  I am back to crying super easy now whenever I think about her and honestly cry at least a little almost every day now again. We're not sleeping as well as we had been 6 weeks ago - although thankfully it's not as bad as it was when Aria first died.  Also, Bennett isn't sleeping as well either, which I find strange.  He had been doing really good at staying in his bed but suddenly is crawling into ours a lot again.  He also seems to be regressing just a bit on some things, or at least resisting learning skills that other kids his age are able to do and it's going to start causing problems soon.

I have been thinking about maybe trying some bereavement counseling (well for Bennett and I at least, I can't speak for Michael).  I've had a therapist before but that was a long time ago and we didn't do any kind of grief counseling after Aria passed away.  I think we just figured that we didn't need one, because although we were grief stricken we weren't like mad at God, or asking the universe "why", or clinically depressed, or anything like that - we were just very very sad and nobody could fix that.  But lately I've been thinking that maybe it's enough just to be so sad and to have someone else to talk to about the grieving process, especially now that it's been long enough that most people don't think to ask us about her and how we're doing much anymore.  I definitely appreciate everyone who does though.  I get at least one person every couple weeks who will randomly text or facebook or email me to say that they had been thinking about Aria and just wanted to let me know that she hadn't been forgotten.  I love it when that happens, it keeps me going for days!

Here's to more posts hopefully coming up soon. . .I do have quite a bit to catch everyone up on!