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We've moved to Adelaide - to an apartment in the city - the central business district. It has been many years since we've lived in the centre of a city - not since Amsterdam in fact. We are loving it. I'm loving the hustle and bustle. I love the convenience. I love the busy-ness. I love the greenery - we live near many gardens and large parks. I love the daytime and nighttime views. I'm finding I'm not missing the ocean very much at all.
We have plans to build a house - yes, those 5 years in the lifestyle village were great, yet something was always missing. We still dreamed of building a house. So hopefully now we will do it.
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A phone conversation today reminded me that I used to have many friends. Friends that were friends before all our losses. I'm sad that I don't have those friends any more. I'm more sad that I'm not that person any more - that person I used to be before grief changed me.
The reality is that those friends were starting their families just at a time when we lost ours. And so those friendships suffered. It was extremely difficult to be friends with people when they were sending us their "newsletter" emails full of their pregnancies and their baby news and their childrens photos. It was right at a time when we were so totally overwhelmed by our grief. Our grief and our anger and denial was so profound and consuming and was with us every waking moment. News of our friends' growing families was incredibly confronting and brutal to us. We were not in a place to be accepting or joyful for others during those times.
The reality was that our grief snowballed over those years when we lost our three children. It became complex and overwhelming and left us feeling so incredibly sad and alone for many years.
So when I hear (via someone else) about a person who used to be my friend being sad about our lost friendship, I think about how their lives continued, how their children were born and lived. How their daily lives include their children, every single day.
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My lost children are part of my daily life now. My grief for them is with me as surely as I wake up and breathe and walk every day. I'm sure it will be a part of me until the day when I no longer wake up and breathe.
I grieve much more actively for the person I used to be. The person I was before I buried my three children. The person I was before I had MS.
It is difficult to explain to people. Honestly - I think most people don't want to know and most don't care.
Those friends, back then, they didn't really want to know. They were busy with their lives and their pregnancies and their children. My dead children were shocking to them. My reality didn't fit with theirs. And that's how the friendships died.
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