June 30, 2010

This morning I woke up a little bit more early than usual. I sit in my bed for a little while, watching the news and then I crawled out of bed and went to take a shower and get my day started. Yesterday was a more difficult day, but I worked hard to make it a gentle one.

It seems that on every really difficult day, something happens to make it more bearable. Some little thing, that I always view as a gift from my daughter. Yesterday, when I missed her the most, the phone rang. I ignored it. When the light began to flash, indicating a message, I decided to see who it was. The message brought my ray of light. My little gift.

The message was from the photographer from Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. He had our pictures. Not just the CD with the pictures, but a DVD and ten 8x10 printed photographs that the photographer himself picked out. He wanted to know if he could come by the next morning (today) and drop them off. I called him back quickly. I didn't want to miss him, or my chance to get the pictures as soon as possible.

I woke up a lot last night. I was excited to see my daughter. To see our only family pictures.

I sat, showered, dressed and waiting for the phone to ring this morning. The call came right around 9am and the photographer told me he would be by in an hour. I counted down the minutes.

When the photographer finally arrived, I was outside waiting for him. Partially because I didn't want my dog to scare him and partially because I just couldn't wait the extra 2 minutes it may take him to walk into the house. He seemed to be in a bit of a hurry anyway, so it worked out well for both of us.

The second he left I ran inside to look at the pictures. I took some time to myself, I went through each picture and I cried. They are so beautiful. Alexandra looks so beautiful. She looks just like Steve. I knew she would and she did. Her perfect little nose, that sweet little nose that I got to see for such a short time.

I waited for Steve to come home and take some time for himself to go over the pictures before I would post here. The reason for waiting? I am going to share with you all, the pictures of our family. The pictures of one of the hardest days of our lives, the day we buried our little girl.

I will not warn anyone to look away and I will not apologize to anyone that may be offended by my daughter's pictures. I invite you all to see Alexandra.

Help Me, Help You

On Sunday it was the anniversary of the day we found out that Alexandra had passed away. I knew it would be a hard day so I decided to do only gentle things. One of those things was to make some pictures for a few loss moms that I have connected with. I haven't posted the pictures because I never thought to ask for permission and those pictures are private. I have spoken to one woman and she told me that I could post the picture I made for her daughter. Her daughter's name is also Alexandra.
I am not a photographer, so obviously the pictures aren't as perfect as some, but making them makes me feel a sense of peace. Knowing that the feeling I get seeing that someone has taken the time to do something with my daughter's name is being passed on through something I am doing.
That's why I would like to make some more pictures today. So, if someone reading this wants their child's name done, please comment and I will take the picture.

And for everyone that does, thank you for helping me by letting me spend some time doing something for your child.

June 29th, 2010

This day marks the two month anniversary of the day I gave birth to Alexandra. The thought was right there in my mind when I woke up. I wonder if making plans for today was a good idea...Should I have just made today a day to stay home and keep to myself? I just don't know.
This doesn't fit with my feelings for today, but so many people have reached out with such kindness about Alexandra's grave that I wanted to give an update.
 Late yesterday afternoon the grounds supervisor called me. He was kind and empathetic. He apologized profusely. He explained that the people that dug the other child's grave should not have piled the dirt on top of Alexandra's. There was no child buried in the spot directly between Alexandra's and the other child's and there was no one buried on the other side for the entire row. He said that it is possible that they did it so that the weight of the new dirt would push the old dirt down more. He also told me that we can't know for sure, but it is possible that the weight pushed Alexandra's rosary into her own grave further and so it's just buried in there. We will never know and we will never see that rosary again, but it does take a little bit of the sting away to know that she may still have her rosary. Steve felt that this may be possible, but he seems more sure that the rosary is in the other grave. It doesn't really matter though, it's gone no matter what and that is what hurts the most.
The conversation I had with this man was exactly what I had expected when I had called the cemetery in the morning. He apologized, he asked questions for clarification, he explained that he's sure they didn't mean for this to happen, they must not have noticed the rosary. He told me that he was going to make sure that everyone there knows that this cannot happen again, they have to be more diligent about checking the tops of graves if they have to pile dirt on them. He was polite and understanding and explained things to me in a gentle way. He told me that neither he nor his staff want to add to anyone's grief and they are all very sorry that this happened.
We can't get the rosary back, we can't take the shock we felt when we discovered this away, I can't wipe my memory of how that woman spoke to me yesterday. We CAN understand that accidents happen and sometimes people make mistakes. We got what we wanted, an apology, an explanation, a promise that this will not happen again, and most importantly, a sympathetic ear, to hear us and understand how much this has hurt us.
I am still waiting for the city to call. I have not forgotten how I was treated, and I will not forget. The woman that I spoke with yesterday morning needs to, at the very minimum, be reprimanded. I don't think she should keep her job. I don't think she should be allowed to work around people that have suffered a loss. She clearly is not able to show any empathy to grieving families and that should be considered a fundamental part of her job.

June 28th, 2010

The first though on my mind when I woke up this morning was to call the cemetery. I waited until Dayne was awake, settled and watching a good show, so he wouldn't disrupt the call. My expectations were simple. I expected the person on the other end of the phone to apologize. I expected some sort of excuse "Oh, there was two different shifts that did the digging and filling..." or "This was a horrible mistake, our workers must have missed the huge rosary sitting directly on top of the grave" You know, something that I wouldn't accept as a GOOD excuse, but something. I also expected that they would tell me that they would, of course, make sure that something like this didn't happen again, they would make sure that the people responsible for this were informed of what they did, how it impacted my family and made to understand that this was something that should...no WOULD never happen again.
It was for this reason that I started out calm in my explanation of what happened. The response I got from the woman on the phone was not calm in return. I did not get my expected apology on behalf of the cemetery staff, I did not get my promise that this would never happen again, I did not get an excuse or explanation of what may have happened. Instead, the woman on the phone gave me attitude, treated me like an idiot and was completely flippant about the entire situation.
Her first response, before I was even finished explaining my problem was to tell me that I was assuming this was what happened to my daughter's grave, that I didn't know for sure. Even though everyone else I have spoken to (including two different people from the city) agree that it's obvious that my daughter's rosary was buried in another grave. I could have accepted her statement, it was one that had fluttered through my head as a possible excuse, but I quickly dismissed it because of how obvious it was that what I was saying was the truth and not an assumption. My refusal to accept and politely counter her assertion that I was just some idiot that didn't know what she was talking about came from the attitude that the woman on the phone had.
She was horrible. Not only did she have this disrespectful attitude with me right off the bat, but she continuously cut me off while I was trying to speak, she refused to acknowledge that the staff there could have done anything wrong. When I tried to tell her that there was empty spots all around my daughters grave, where they could have piled the dirt, she told me that I didn't know that, saying "Not everyone can afford a headstone you know!" Yeah,  know that you idiot. I told her that when we paid for the plot we were told that there were no other children buried on either side of our daughter and none had been buried there until this one. She said nothing in response to that.
I carried on to tell her that the people had removed my daughter's pin wheel and stuffed animals and tossed them above her grave carelessly. She cut me off again to say "It doesn't matter because you're not even supposed to have stuffed animals there!" I was dumbfounded. I thought that she must be thinking of some other area of the cemetery. I clarified "There are stuffed animals at all the graves in the children's area" to which she replied "Yeah, because we know what people are going through, but it's illegal, there are bylaws you know!"
I would like to point out that, when I called the city to lodge a complaint against her, I was informed that there is no such bylaw.
At one point in the conversation I said "We just lost our daughter and now we have to deal with this, don't you people understand how important these things at her grave are?" she responded that she knew exactly how I felt because she lost a child last year. I could not hold my tongue. I did not believe her, if that was true, she would not be treating me like this, she just wouldn't. So I responded asking "Oh yeah? Did someone desecrate YOUR child's grave?" She told me that no one had desecrated MY child's grave. I disagree. The definition of desecrate is to violate the sacredness of something. I would say that is exactly what they did to my daughter's resting place.
The woman at the cemetery kept me on the phone for 15-20 minutes with nothing but cruelty the entire time. I was hysterical when I got off the phone. I called Steve at work, crying uncontrollably. He told me to take a few minutes to calm down and  call the city and lodge a complaint, and I did. I hope she loses her job.
I also contacted the media. That cemetery doesn't want to deal with one grieving family kindly, they will deal with the general public, and I guarantee they will be far less forgiving than we are.
I am currently waiting for the outdoor staff supervisor of the cemetery to call me. I'm also waiting for someone from the city to call me back. It's horrible that after everything we have gone through we are not considering looking into digging up our daughter and moving her somewhere else. Away from my grandfather, away from the area where I have connected with her since just a few days after she was born. Somewhere new, where she will be alone. And it's not fair. I will have to relive that whole time and it is breaking my heart.

Furious

Today Dayne and I had a peaceful day. We played in the yard and I used my painted rocks to make some pictures for some other Angel moms. It made me feel very calm.
I waited for Steve to arrive home so that we could go to the cemetery and when he arrived, Dayne and I were outside waiting. As I type this, I am trying to remember what we talked about on the way there. The memory has escaped. Instead, it's place has been taken over by what we discovered when we arrived at the cemetery.
As we pulled up Steve pointed out that another child had been buried beside Alexandra. A wave of sadness swept over me. That poor little baby. As we got closer we noticed that the mound of dirt over Alexandra's grave was bigger and we questioned why. As I walked up to her grave I noticed dirty stuffed animals thrown on the cement area where a headstone should be and I thought I must be walking up to the wrong grave.
I wasn't.
It was in the moment that I realized that someone had thrown my daughters stuffed animals and pin wheel up there that Steve noticed something far worse. His words were choked out, "Where's the rosary? Where's Alexandra's Rosary?" I felt my head snap quickly towards the mound of dirt and he was right, it was gone.
The realization washed over us that the people that worked at the cemetery had done all of this. It became obvious that when they dug the plot beside Alexandra's, they had removed her toys and tossed them aside and they had piled the dirt on top of my daughter's grave. This realization led to the understanding that this meant that when they filled in that grave, they pushed our daughter's rosary into it.
My brain shut down. I sat down and started pushing the dirt aside at the top of her grave to put her toys back where they belonged. It was all I could do. I'm terrified of bugs, I noticed the ants and the spiders crawling in the dirt, and on my hands as I moved the dirt, but my hands didn't stop, I was on auto pilot. When I finished putting the toys back I became aware of my surroundings again and I noticed Steve...He was digging frantically. He was wearing white work gloves and he was pushing aside all the dirt. Searching desperately for the rosary that we had lovingly chosen on the same day we picked her last outfit, her last teddy bear, her last everything.
But he wouldn't find the rosary, because the rosary is buried in someone else's grave now, and the cemetery is not going to go digging there looking for it. It's just gone.
Steve is furious. I am furious.
How could someone be so disrespectful to us? To our daughter? Don't they care? What is WRONG with these people? That last question, that is the one that keeps going through my head. WHAT is WRONG with these people? Have they no hearts? Forget their hearts, have they no BRAINS?
When we arrived back at home I cried. I was numb at the cemetery, and then furious, and then the sadness hit, like a punch in the gut. And I cried.
When I was done crying, I called the city's 24 hour line and I lodged a complaint. Tomorrow I will call the cemetery and lodge a complaint with them. They can't get my my daughter's rosary back, they can't make me feel better, but they WILL know what they have done and how they have hurt us. And they will NOT do this again to another family. They will understand, when I am done with them, that what has happened is disrespectful, cold hearted and terrible and it cannot happen again. And they will understand how important that rosary was to us and how they can never replace it.

I understand that I have glossed over the fact that another child as passed away. I feel horribly for this child's family and I hope that they find peace. I have no real words for how sad I am to see that another child has joined my daughter.

June 27th, 2010

Two months ago today we were sitting in the labor and delivery while they searched for our daughters heart beat.
Two months ago today they told us that our daughter was gone.
Two months ago today my family was broken.

An angel opened the book of life
and wrote down my baby's birth.
Then she whispered as she closed the book
"too beautiful for earth".
~author unknown

A Step In The Right Direction

We have a park by our house. Right across the street actually. We call it the "ice cream park" because the park has a little area that is made to look like an ice cream stand. The park being there was a big reason why I fell in love with this house. Dayne loves the park and asks to go there almost every day.
Yesterday we were playing at the park and Dayne was looking at the pebbles and started to talk about Alexandra's pictures. He likes to look at the pictures that we get for her, with her name. He remembered the picture of Alexandra's treasure bean and asked if these were the same kind of rocks. They're pretty small, so I told him that they probably weren't. At that time Dayne had one of his brilliant moments. I notice that sometimes when a child says something, it's exactly what you were thinking, only more to the point. Sometimes when children have ideas, they are the most perfect ideas. Sometimes Dayne has the thoughts and ideas...I'd like to say that he often does, he's at an age where he his understanding of most complicated things is more abstract.
Dayne asked me if we could make a picture with the rocks for Alexandra. His idea was so sweet, so I built on it and asked him if he'd like to paint some of the rocks and use them to spell out her name on the park. He was immediately excited, his idea AND painting, how could you go wrong?
So, we decided that's what we would do, but first, we needed paint.
The dollar store has a ton of different colors of paint, and different kinds too. The issue with this is that this store is in an area that I have not been able to walk to or from since we lost Alexandra. The Thursday before we found that Alexandra had passed away, one week before she was born, I had taken that walk. My last walk with her. The last time we were alone together.
But Dayne was so excited and he wanted to do something for his sister. He wanted her to be with him at his park and I couldn't not do it and I couldn't make him wait until someone else could take him. I HAD to go. And somehow, taking that walk again, with Dayne, to do something for Alexandra just felt right. So I did it.
As we walked, I concentrated on Dayne. On our conversation. We talked about how he could hear the water running in the sewer, he asked if the whole world could flood which led to me telling him about Noah's Ark, which led to a lot of questions and talk about God and why Dayne thinks he's invisible and has super powers to see everyone in the world. I learned a lot from Dayne during that walk.
At the store we picked our paint and a few other things and we made our way back home. The walk home was similar to the walk there but with less conversation. Dayne had gotten a "lightsaber" that made noise, so he ran ahead swinging it around telling me that he was saving me from the bad guys. He told me that I could be the beautiful princess and he was protecting me. It was a nice walk and I didn't cry.
When we got home I was proud. I called Steve at work to tell him and he said "I guess you were ready" As I told him, I cried a little bit. It's one of those things...I'm happy that I did it. I'm happy that I found the strength and that the strength came form Dayne AND Alexandra. I'm happy that I took that walk for such a good reason.
But I'm sad. I don't want to let go of any of my memories of Alexandra and I feel like, by taking these steps forward, I am letting go of her. I don't want to let go of her. It isn't logical, I know it's not. I know that she will always be with me, the memories will always be with me and one new memory won't cancel out an old one, but the thought is still there. A tiny little cloud. It's a step though, the first tiny little step.
Oh, and if you're wondering about our little project, we painted the rocks. More accurately, I painted the rocks while Dayne painted a beautiful picture for Daddy. We waited for them to dry over night and today, after we finished up all our other daily things we went over to the park, when no one was there and took some pictures. I would have liked to spend a bit more time, but we had to hurry because kids come and go a lot and we didn't want them to get in the pictures or anything! Of course, I have a million more ideas for these painted rocks and my daughters name, so there will be many more pictures.