The brick in my pocket

I have been thinking alot lately about where I am in this whole grief process. About where do I go from here. I think alot of it has to do with we are the senior members of our Pregnancy and Newborn Loss support group. And being the senior member of this doesn't feel so good. Most of the other couples/women who came along shortly after we started going have either gotten pregnant or decided to back off from going to group so that they could focus on having another baby, or adoption, or IVF. But I just keeeeep going. Thursday after Thursday after Thursday. And I feel it still does me good, it is sooo good to talk about Cayden, his birth, my feelings about him etc. because it does seem like there isn't that many opportune times to talk about him without the silent waaaaah waaaaah (that is supposed to be the Debbie Downer noise) playing in everyones head. I know it's playing in their heads, because I can see it on their faces. So strange, because a women in my circle of friends just had a baby, so it sparks the conversations about pregnancy, delivery etc. And I have stories. I have Murrays stories and I have Caydens stories. They are different stories, just as any women with 2 children would have different birth stories. And I feel like I am in a spot that I can share those stories, without crying. I can talk about the c-section I had with Cayden and it a part of his birth story, because he WAS born. But as surely as I am typing this I feel the sharp intake of breath, and feel the "oh shit, she is talking about her dead baby. how do we respond to this? ". So back to my original point, I do love my group for the fact that I can unapologetically talk about my son and tell his stories over and over and over and nobody is put off. In fact I'm supposed to tell his stories, I'm told it's part of the healing process. And matter of fact I feel pretty f*cking good about how far we have come in the last 18 months. It has been one hell of a journey and we have put in the work. Yeah work. It has been hard, tear filled, heartbreaking, exhausting work to get to this place where I think it might be time to pull back from our group a bit. So maybe it is time to pull back a bit and put the focus on moving forward, trying in earnest for a baby that "we get to take home" as Murray puts it.

I also went to see the movie Rabbit_Hole. It is about a couple whose 4 year old son is hit and killed by a car and how they deal or don't deal with their grief. The grandmother had also lost a son at 30 years old from a Heroin overdoes, but at one point they have a discussion:

Becca: Does it ever go away?
Nat: No, I don’t think it does. Not for me, it hasn’t -- has gone on for eleven years. But it changes though.
Becca: How?
Nat: I don’t know… the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and… carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you… you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and -- there it is. Oh right, that. Which could be aweful -- not all the time. It’s kinda… not that you’d like it exactly, but it’s what you’ve got instead of your son. So, you carry it around. And uh… it doesn’t go away. Which is…
Becca: Which is what?
Nat: Fine, actually

I suppose that somehow I am getting closer to the place where I too have a brick I carry around in my pocket. Like it or not, it's what I have. And it's fine actually. Where am I in my grief? I guess it really depends on the day, the amount of sleep I have had, the music I have heard, the number of babies I have ran across, the number of pregnant women I have seen, the number of tv shows with ultrasounds I have watched or if it's a day ending in Y.