More Grief

Monday night, I realized I was struggling with depression. It seems funny to even say this. I've never been depressed. I didn't even suffer post-partem depression. Instead, I experienced what Don fondly refers to as "Post-partem elation". After being sick for 8 - 9 months, I gave birth to a beautiful, special baby and felt better, all at the same time. Now, that's something to be elated about. I experienced this with all my pregnancies. No depression here.

The closest I ever came was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after Daelyn was born. He had some medical problems from birth and wouldn't nurse, which created a tremendous amount of stress, especially tacked onto the end of a nightmare pregnancy. He didn't act quite right, and I kept telling nurses and doctors (not mine, however, who would have believed me, but wasn't on call when I had Daelyn), only to be rebuffed and told that the baby was fine. It wasn't until the third night in the hospital, when my nurse was a close family friend, that I poured out my heart and concerns, and she listened. She immediately took the baby from me, took a blood sample from his still-bleeding heel (he had just had a blood test for jaundice), and called the pediatrician on call. Daelyn's blood sugar was dangerously low, thus the lethargy I had been noticing. The lethargy caused him to be too tired to nurse and the lack of nursing added to the low blood sugar - a vicious cycle. The pediatrician ordered the nurse to stay with me while I nursed and observe the baby, then to do another blood sugar test and call him back. BINGO!! Someone finally was able to observe what I had been telling them was happening. When the nurse entered the room, it would stimulate the baby, and he would nurse great for about 2 minutes. Then, it was back to sleep. The nurses never saw the "back-to-sleep" part - only the wide-awake 20-second nursing marathon.

When they finally released us from the hospital, five days after delivery, we went home on formula. No sooner did we settle into a routine than Daelyn started crying, well, shrieking, really, all the time. At two months, he was diagnosed with severe reflux and put on medication which was about as easy to get him to swallow as it is to force a fully inflated balloon down the sink drain. There was lots of spitting up, screaming (him as well as me), and crying (mostly from Don - ha!!). Thank goodness, he outgrew the reflux by his first birthday. But, somewhere along the line, I began to notice that I felt great upon waking in the morning but, by the afternoon, I just wasn't able to cope any longer. After Don and I talked about it several times, he encouraged me to call my doctor. The nurse laughed.

"Dr. Christie's been waiting for your call," she told me. "She says you're not suffering from depression - it's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - and she expected you'd call and need some help." She put me on some mild medication and, presto, in two days, I felt better. In 3 months, I was ready to get back to real life and get off the medication.

This thing this week, though, is different. I haven't wanted to eat, I'm exhausted all the time, snippy with Don, edgy with the children, am prone to cry at the drop of a hat, and have absolutely NO JOY. For those of you who know me, that's just NOT me. It finally occurred to me on Monday night that I was suffering from depression.

Tuesday morning, after Deanna's dental appointment, I took her back to school. Her teacher is an old family friend who lived with my family when I was a teenager. She asked me, very seriously, how I was doing, and I began to tell her. While I was talking, the truth became clear to me. I was struggling, still, with the death of my friend, Theresa, two months ago.

The funny thing is this. Theresa and I were not close. We knew each other, our children attended the same school, and played on the same soccer teams, and we bumped into each other a lot, but I had never been in her home and could count on one hand the conversations we had had. So why was I struggling so much with her death? I decided I needed to go and get prayer.

The answer finally came to me while I was being prayed with. I was angry with Theresa for dying and leaving her children and husband behind. While I didn't know Theresa well, her husband is a cherished friend. He and I grew up together, were in the same homeroom all the way through high school (in a small, Catholic high school where you knew every student by first name), his family lived just up the street, and his sister was my best friend. We even went on one date during high school - nothing romantic, just good friends. Later, when I moved out on my own, I lived in a duplex and Joey and his mom lived in the other half. We used to bang on the bedroom walls to let each other know in a friendly, we-grew-up-together way, that one of us was being too loud. Sometimes we banged and yelled greetings through the wall. I'd hear him practicing the guitar and applaud for him when he was done - things like that. Just friends living next door to each other.

A couple of years ago, we attended our high school reunion together with our spouses. I kidded with him about how many children he had and he joked right back with me. After all the years since high school, Joey and I could still talk like friends that saw each other every day. Without any preamble, we were able to jump right into the "big" topics, the important things. We were childhood friends that still respected and appreciated each other.

But I'm talking about Joey in the past tense. It wasn't him that died. It was his treasured wife. For the last 20 years or so, since Joey discovered Theresa and fell madly in love, he could hardly string a sentence together without her name in it. After her death, I took dinner over to the family one night. We walked outside to talk, and Joey asked me, without preamble or pretense, if Don and I talked regularly. He had no regrets about his relationship with Theresa and he wanted to pass his wisdom along to me. It was such a caring, loving thing to do.

So I grieved for Joey. Then, last week, I kept his and Theresa's two youngest children - Tessa, who's 3 and Michaela, who's 6 months. Tessa needed a lot of holding and mothering, and, somewhere in my heart, I decided I needed to be that for her. While I knew it wasn't possible, nor prudent, somehow I couldn't let go of the desire to take care of these little girls every day, to give them continuity in their lives, to put my own life on hold to serve them. And, thus, depression set in. I have my own family and their needs to tend to. While my heart is in the right place, I was taking on a false burden, which became very obvious to me when I got prayer.

The burden lifted almost immediately, and I began to smile and enjoy life again. While I'm still grieving the loss of Theresa to her husband and children, and would love to be able to reach out to those children, I know it's not what God is calling me to - at least not in this season. What He is calling me to is to pray. That is how I can support them the most while still taking care of the needs of my own family.

I turned on Christmas music today and began making cookies, a changed woman. The Season once again holds joy for me. While I'm still tired, my taste for food seems to have returned and the edginess is gone. I WILL pray for those children, and reach out to them whenever I see them. But I will not try to be their mother. I won't feel the need to be everything to someone else's children.

They don't need a replacement Mom right now. They need lots of loving aunts. That's what I want to be.