This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 4:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You’re all bloggers. You get it. Do you ever have a post planned, down the the last, hilarious “zinger” ending, then something happens in your life that makes that post seem so foolish and irrelevant that there is no way in good conscious you can put it up? I’ll post the one I had planned later, when it is respectul to do so.
Everyone knows my son has been born, and that he is beautiful and amazing and perfect. The delivery was early and tough. I’m not going to lie to you, I found myself throughout the process thinking “Oh, man, we are NEVER doing this again…we just don’t do childbirth well. We have a hard time. We have bad luck.” It was an emotional process, to say the least.
Several years ago, after Frankie was born, I had a breakdown. Aline was at the hospital; it was late at night. I went out in to my backyard, worrying about my daughter’s survival. I leaned up against the back wall of my house, next to the bay window where no one would ever see me, even though there was no one there, and cried like I have never cried. There is something that guys do. They hold everything in and they don’t let anyone see that they’re hurting for fear of being viewed as weak or unsupportive. But they DO hurt. This particular time it just all came out. It needed to come out. I dried my eyes, took a deep breath, tried to make it look like I hadn’t just bawled my eyes out, and went back in to my empty house.
I thought I would make it past the breakdown this time. Dominick was born early, but not that early. He was 7lbs, 6oz, and was out of the NICU in less than 24 hours. This was EASY compared to Frankie. I was still freaked out, and worried about my wife’s health, but it didn’t seem like something worth crying over. I was A-OK and in control.
About a week after he was born, and had just come home with Aline, I was at the market. I had let the house go, and there was no food anywhere to speak of. A new mom and her family have to eat, so I was replenishing the pantry. I heard the text alert go off on my phone, and grinned as I pulled it out of my pocket, expecting to see another congratulatory message from friends or family on the birth of our son. As I stood in line at the checkstand, listeneing to the New Yorker checker making jokes, I read the following message.
“Diana passed away tonight. Please don’t text me or call me.”
Diana was the one-week-old daughter of a girl I know fairly well. I remembered initially feeling that this girl was far too young to have a child, and even admit questioning her decision to keep the baby when she knew there would be complications immediately following birth. But, throughout the pregnancy, I looked at the little ultrasound pictures she had all around, heard some of the things she told my wife and friends about her excitement and came to realize that this girl was ready to be a mother. She changed my mind, and I admired her strength and dedication to her unborn child. She proved me wrong.
I had the breakdown again. Right there in the market. I hid it until I got to the car, then it just flowed. So badly that when Aline saw my face when I walked in the door she panicked because she thought something terrible had happened to me or to the new baby. I just couldn’t stop it. It was less than manly for sure but, once and a while, I need to be less than manly.
Once again I have been reminded, this time through this girl’s terrible and tragic loss, how lucky I am. There are people out there going through things so unimaginable that they would probably kill to enjoy the experiences in my life I call diffucult. My life – my friends, my children and my family are beatiful and perfect…even with what I consider to be faults. I have absolutely no right to complain about anything, and will wake up tomorrow with a renewed appreciation for everything I have, the experiences I have been through and the incredible people around me.
Life is beauiful and terrible thing; the more I live it, the deeper my love/hate relationship with it becomes. There is one thing of which I have become certain. If you don’t take a few minutes every day to love every little bit of it, you are doomed to go through the tiny portion of it you have left missing every single gift it has given you.
Rest in peace, Diana.
-Matt
June 10th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Oh, damn Matt. I am so sorry to hear this. And I think you’re dead on in that last paragraph, for sure.
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June 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
You have it nailed; a terrible and beautiful thing. My thoughts are with you, with Diana’s youg mom who was so ready, with every.single.person who has to go through stuff like this.
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June 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I’m very sorry.
“If you don’t take a few minutes every day to love every little bit of it, you are doomed to go through the tiny portion of it you have left missing every single gift it has given you.” – Amen
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