Surviving Owen - Part 3

After letting Owen go, I spent the next 24 hours in the hospital. Grief counselors, lactation nurses (to tell me how to let my milk dry up) anyone that could try and help came to talk to me. Family, pastors from church, friends... it is all a blur now. All I wanted to do was go home and yet, I did not want to leave the hospital, because that was where I had held my son. I knew that going home without the baby I came in to deliver would be devastating. I was right. We cried as we drove back to our apartment. The next few days were a blur as well. Someone had come and cleaned my house for me... family started coming in for the funeral, people brought meals, played with the boys, tried to help bring some normalcy. Flowers were delivered, money was donated, a burial plot was chosen and my grandfather was kind enough to pay for it. We had no money at that point in our lives and somehow what we needed was taken care of.   The day before the funeral my hair dresser and another friend treated me to a day of pampering. They treated me to a hair cut and color, a manicure and pedicure, a massage, they picked out dresses, shoes and jewelry for me to wear to the funeral... it was such a gift that helped me face the next day. I could not think straight coherent thoughts. I would forget what I was saying in the middle of a sentence. But, love was poured out all around my little family. 

Each night though, I went to bed sobbing. I sobbed in the shower, I sobbed on the couch, I sobbed on the stairs. I would wake up in the morning with tears rolling down my cheeks even while I was sleeping. The pain felt unbearable at times. I remember reading a poem by another mother who had gone through this (the hospital did an amazing job at providing materials to help us think and prepare and ultimately start to grieve). In this poem, the mother talked about standing in the shower and her breasts would she tears of white... It wasn't until I was experiencing that cold reality that I realized that my whole body was grieving the loss of my son. 

The morning of the funeral I put on a CD and listened to one song that had become very special to me during the time of separation, when I had to face that my marriage had changed because of other people's choices. The song title is Held by Natalie Grant. The chorus says

This is what it means to be held

How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know

That the promise was when everything fell

We'd be held

I clung to that song, and the promise that somehow God was going to hold me through this. Everything sacred had been torn from my life, my heart, my arms. That morning I asked God to hold me... because I could not stand. On the way to the funeral Owen's father and I, through our tears, sang another song that we had learned in church.  "I Call Your Name" by Ricardo Sanchez. The only words we could remember that day were "I call your name, Lord you reply. You send your kingdom to stand by my side" so we sang that line over and over. Trying desperately to hold on the promise that we were not alone in this grief, that He had promised not to leave us. There were over 30 people at his funeral that day. I was shocked, but so grateful that people we barely knew came and stood with us at the worst moment of our lives. We had only lived in Gainesville for a little over a year. 

As the days, weeks, months began to pass and the hard work of grieving started, I hated it. I got angry, I yelled, I screamed, I cried. I comforted, I prayed, I continued to worship, and I talked (because frankly, that is what I do best). I went through a stage of being absolutely terrified to cry and to feel the pain of his death. I was afraid that I would never be whole again, that I would never stop crying. But as I did keep walking through it, God brought peace, comfort, healing... it was very, very slow... but, the healing came. 

A couple of months later, I was introduced to another couple who's son had just been delivered stillborn. Shae and I comforted each other. Down the road, I would meet others, I would pray with women who were in labor with a child that they had yet to deliver but they already knew that child was dead.  God allowed me to share with them and they were comforted. Strangely though, I did not feel like that was the purpose God had for little Owen's life. I knew that there was a purpose because I am promised that in Jeremiah. After Owen's death, I was reminded of that verse in 29:11 that says I know the plans I have for you..." As I struggled with God about why... He simply reminded me that He had a plan even for Owen's short life. 

I did lose over a year of my life grieving. Sadly, what had been designed to bring a couple closer (having a child) began to tear my marriage apart. As we each grieved in our own way, and on our own... as we got further and further apart... everything that had been bad about our marriage before rose to the surface. Within a matter of months, anything good that had happened in our reconciliation was undone. The choices we made to isolate from each other in our grieving gave way to other choices in our marriage that would ultimately completely end us. 

It has been four years since my precious baby was born. I did not die with him. I did survive the pain and the grief. It was painful beyond description, there were days when I thought it was going to be more than I could bear... but it wasn't. Eventually, healing came. I can now think of Owen, talk about him, miss him, love him.... and be so incredibly happy that I will see him someday in heaven.  I walked through the pain and the grief and came out on the other side. And, about 16 months later I was blessed with another child being placed in my arms. This child was also a miracle. She was a gift from God and although she will never replace Owen, she is a sweet reminder that good things still happen, even after all that is horrid. 

When the day came last year, that the man I was married to laid his hands on me for the last time in anger... as I faced what I knew I had to do... I realized that I had survived so much worse. I had survived the splitting of my heart. I had lived through the death of my son. And not once had God left me. Not once had I had to do it alone. I knew that day in October of 2009, that what had happened in 2006 had left me with the strength I needed to walk out of the marriage that was destroying me. And not once have I been alone on this journey. Not once has God left me. Not once have I looked back, because I have already Survived Owen.