Mother's Day

[Jess]

I hate Mother's Day. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. About four years ago, I had a miscarriage 3 days before Mother's Day. It was a hard time for my husband and I and we never got to the point where we felt emotionally recovered enough to try again. Then he died.

 

Mother's day is the day I mourn for the family I was supposed to have, so I thought, but wasn't meant to be. Instead I lost it all.

 

I hate Mother's Day.

[Blue14]

I am so sorry for your loss. I hate it too. I could never get pregnant despite years of trying. Each Mother's Day is a stab in the heart that is even worse since I lost Bob. If we'd been able to have a child at least I'd still have a piece of him and would still be part of a family. Big hugs to you.

[Tatianakm]

Jess, oh how I know all too well that nagging feeling on Mother's Day! For years I hated it, as if it was a slap in the face, a notion that somehow I was a less of a woman, damaged goods. I wanted to have a child so much!  After several attempts at trying, some setbacks and heartbreaks along the way, one very wise nurse once told me that I needed to do what was the hardest things for me- give up control and put my trust in my doctors and just go with the flow. Being used to be a decision maker personally and professionally, sometimes a control freak, it was very hard. But I realized that I could not influence an outcome, just had to trust and hope for the best. I became pregnant at 40 and gave birth to an adorable baby girl at 41. Unfortunatly, my first Mother's Day I am facing alone with my 3 months old daughter, in deep grief and still having to give up that control. Grief is beyond my control...still hate Mother's Day.

 

On a positive note, for you starting a different phase of your life, motherhood can be a very real possibilty, if you still like to pursue it. You can PM me if and when you would like more details and advice about that journey.

[MrsT85]

 

Mother's day is the day I mourn for the family I was supposed to have, so I thought, but wasn't meant to be. Instead I lost it all.

 

 

Tim and I were waiting until he finished his teaching degree to start a family - he would have been done in May 2013, we were planning to have one more care-free summer together, and then I'd start trying to get pregnant in early September 2013 right after I turned 28.  I'm a type 1 diabetic so even a best-case-scenerio pregnancy would be high-risk, so I really really wanted to have a child before 30 to try to limit the risks to myself and the baby-that-never-was.

 

He died April 2013.  Less than a month before he finished the teaching degree he had spent the past 6+ years chipping away on and less than six months before we had planned on starting to have a baby.  I had literally just stopped taking birth control pills a month or so before his accident to try to get my body back into the regular hormonal swing of things...it made the timing of everything feel even more unimaginably cruel than it already was.  I never wanted children before I met Tim, but he was such an amazing person that I changed my mind and couldn't wait to see what a combination of our two brains and hearts could produce.  We'd even picked out names - Morgan Margaret for a little girl and Ian Jacob for a little boy.  He would have been such an incredible father, and it certainly adds a special twinge to my grief to know that the world will never see the wonderful person he and I could have created together. 

 

On a positive note, for you starting a different phase of your life, motherhood can be a very real possibilty, if you still like to pursue it.

 

I guess for me thinking things like this really isn't much of a comfort.  Yes - I may still have time to be a mother, but that's not really the point.  The point was to have HIS baby.  To start a family with HIM.  Like Blue14 said before me, if we had the chance to become parents together "I'd still have a piece of him." 

 

((HUGS))   

[Mizpah]

A widow friend of mine put it best when she said, "All of our babies died when he died."  The babies they never got to have, the babies DH and I never got to have, and all of you too.  One of the hardest parts of losing him was knowing there was no piece of him left in this world.  Even though I now have a daughter (with a widower), it breaks my heart that he never got to be a father (he was a ball of love - he would've been amazing at it), that there's no living being who may have his eyes or that one mannerism or anything.  His native language was Hebrew, and he never wanted me to learn, because he wanted to have a secret language with our kids.  We were about to start "trying."  Every time we walked past a reflective surface - a mirror, a storefront, water - he'd grab me and make me look at us and say, "Look how beautiful our babies will be."  Sigh.  All our babies died when he died. 

[Jess]

Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I figured people here would get it, even if I started the day not wanting to check the forum at all because I figured there would be a lot of Mother's Day threads that just twisted the knife in my heart. There was and they did, but I am glad I changed my mind and decided to air my pain since I'm clearly not all alone in it. I am sorry anyone shares it, but thankful we're in it together.

 

Childless widows are a largely silent minority on this board, but for me there is something unique to the experience of being childless. We lost our entire chosen family. While I know that raising a child or children alone while grieving is a near impossible task at times, this is not the part of the board where such qualifying statements are necessary. It is nearly impossible to find a reason to keep going when all of the life is sucked from your home. No comfort of any other human. It's just you and it sucks. We stand apart because we found our reasons on our own to carry on. That deserves to be celebrated, too.

 

Today is a better day.

[MrsT85]

Childless widows are a largely silent minority on this board, but for me there is something unique to the experience of being childless. We lost our entire chosen family.

 

Thanks for starting the thread, Jess.  I remember right after he died, thinking "I've lost all of our children before I even had the chance to create them, to meet them...."  Very similar to Mizpah's friend, I guess.  Everything I had been planning to build my life around for the next 50+ years was just gone and a gaping, smoldering hole in my life was all that was left.   

 

We stand apart because we found our reasons on our own to carry on. That deserves to be celebrated, too.

 

Thank you for that too.  I've always struggled with pretty strong self-loathing, so this isn't the kind of thing that would ever even cross my mind to think.  I give most of the credit to my friends and family - I think those first handful of months I would have been content to just bury myself in a hole with bottle of something to keep me company and never dig out.  It would have been easiest for everyone in my life to just let me.  But most of them didn't, so most of the credit for this new life that I've built belongs to them for not leaving me behind even when I was nothing but an emotional anchor tugging them down into depths with me. 

 

[Tatianakm]

We lost our entire chosen family. While I know that raising a child or children alone while grieving is a near impossible task at times, this is not the part of the board where such qualifying statements are necessary. It is nearly impossible to find a reason to keep going when all of the life is sucked from your home. No comfort of any other human.

 

You are right, Jess and I am sorry if I upset you. I did have a chance to have a piece of my husband, so in that sense I am not totally alone. You are correct, I have no idea what it would be like if I was left all by myself. I am so thankful for my daughter, although sometimes I wonder if it had to be some sort of cruel tradeoff-  in order to have her, I had to give up him- and that makes me feel so guilty, as if I contributed to his death somehow. But I guess I should use another part of the board for this...

[Jess]

No harm done at all, Tatianakm. Promise.

[sandrine2279]

Hi

Jess you're so right.

when I met him he asked me if I wanted to have children.

I told him that I was already 34 years old and I tried not focus on children since I didn't know if I would find the father.... last year I knew it would have been so stupid to miss the joy of having his child...

now everything hurt's so bad. young couple before me this morning when all I can do is buying flowers for him.... blond children who should be ours...  mother's day.. father's day ... it was really his dream and he wanted to do it with me.

 

hugs