Like vomit sick.
I thought I would feel differently.
I thought moving it would bring me a step closer to healing.
Today I tackled this --
It has sat under my dining room hutch for three years.
It has stared at me, reminding me every.single.day.
I didn't know what to do with it then.
I still don't.
Opening it was a sucker punch.
Cards that tell me how sorry people are that my baby is dead.
A box with casts of her hand and foot prints.
A locket of her hair.
Her pacifier.
There is a tiny bit of matter on one of the casts.
A speck of something --
Maybe dust.
Maybe blood.
It was the last thing on my daughter's hand when she died.
It is entombed forever in that cast.
This is so fucked.
All of it.
No one should have a box like this in their dining room.
No one should have cards saying, "I am sorry your baby died."
No one should have a few strands of hair as the only remaining DNA to prove their child existed.
I thought it would be a relief to move it.
I thought I would feel better --
I don't.
My grief is like this box of items.
It may appear neat, tucked away in some corner,
but peek under the cover and you'll see --
inside it is still just a mess.
I have a box, too. Filled with the same things. It's full of an energy that physically punches you in the gut when you open it, like in a cartoon. Breaths are taken away with each item you move and touch. I've opened my box three times in 8 years. And each time I have it open long enough to feel the energy from Charlie's things and then know that I will break if I don't shut it and put it away. Sending you so much love and strength. ((hugs))
ReplyDeleteI am sending you light and love, I have no other words.
ReplyDeleteI too have a "box", but it is a basket in my closet in my bedroom, and I look at it everyday too, and it kills me. There is something horrible in knowing all that remains is those few items, and I cannot look at them and I cannot throw them out. love to you
ReplyDeleteI have a box as well. But I haven't had the nerve to open it yet.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's box sits in the closet right now. I felt like a horrible mother for not being able to look at her stuff. I promised myself that I would put her pictures in an album for her first birthday. That was 4 months ago...I still can't look at it. Sending you strength and peace...
ReplyDeleteI see our box every day, and love to look at the outside. My husband made it, and he carved her name on the outside in gorgeous script. I even run my fingers over the letters of her name. But opening it, that is something very different. Seeing the clothes, hair, hats, footprints. Picking up the clothes and realizing they don't smell of her anymore...those things I leave for the "dark days" where no matter how much it hurts, I need to touch her things. And most other days of the year, it just looks like a decorative, pretty box-not one filled with death momentos.
ReplyDeleteI have a box, too. I have no mementos of Meredith in there, no hair, no hand moldings, nothing that ever touched her. Even I never got to touch her except to kiss her as I left the funeral. Strangely, the cards have helped & still help me. Some people wrote the usual platitudes but I know they cared. In some small way they cared. It does definitely hurt, though, that there has to even be a box like that. (((HUGS)))
ReplyDeleteI have a box too-I even have the exact same box from the hospital (with the green ribbon tying it shut)that I see in your picture. Mine stays up on a closet shelf (and has been there for almost six years). I look through some it from time to time. When I was cleaning the closet I found some random cards that belonged in the dead baby box. Some days I'm still pretty mad about the whole situation. But I am glad to know I'm not the only one with a box.
ReplyDeleteI just did the same thing yesterday and was on the verge of tears the rest of the day. It sounds like that will never get better. BTW, Adelyn has the exact same memory box as Peyton. I don't know what to do with mine either. It was in the nursery that was to be hers, but as we prepare for our rainbow baby's arrival in the next few weeks, I fee like I should move it out of there - but where to?
ReplyDeleteOur box of C's stuff is in the bedroom. I always intended to make a scrapbook or baby book or something similar, but I never could. That still bothers me. What's more, I couldn't bring myself to make the same baby books or scrapbooks for my living children either just because of that.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's been over eight years since she died. That aspect of it--dealing with tangibles and mementoes--doesn't get easier for me with time.
Oh god, my box looks just like this. Both from the outside and when you open it. I have a tiny scrap of Hope's skin. Her skin was peeling and it was on the sheet of paper they laid down on the scales to weigh her (which we got to keep as a memento, gee thanks). I'll never throw that scrap of paper out though, because of that tiny bit of her skin stuck to it. Same with the dried blood on the paper measuring tape that took her length and head circumference measurements.
ReplyDeleteI hate that's all we get. I feel sick, too.
xo
I have a box too. Two of them actually. One with all my son's clothes that I can NOT part with and the other with the "stuff" from when he died. The clothes box stays at the end of my bed - usually with laundry piled on top of it - just so no one will open it. The other is in a drawer beside the bed. My heart breaks every time I think of opening that drawer....
ReplyDeletePraying for your continued peace <3
Sending you hugs and prayers.
ReplyDeleteKristin.. as morbid as this sounds.. I wrapped up my cards in birthday paper.. along with a few other treasures. each year on his birthday I open them and read them (and yes that is a MESS) but it is ours. Oh yea and I even put stuff in his stocking that I set out at Christmas. His hat.. his blood pressure cuff. his cold cap.. the last thing that touched his hands hangs in JJ's room now.. handprints giving little dude a high five before bed. XOXO Girlie.. Brandy
ReplyDeleteEmma has a box - the same box as her older brother and her older sister (but not her younger brother - I couldn't get the same one for him). Except that they have 2 - birth stuff and then the pre-school pictures and craft models etc. I actually love her box and its contents - I cry when I open it (usually just around her birthday) but I find those tears cathartic. But, I hate that she will only ever need one box because there won't be more memories to preserve.
ReplyDeleteI am astounded by how many have a box. I'm just sitting here feeling... I don't even know what I'm feeling.... a primal sort of grief. What an awful thing Kristen. And of course, not awful that you keep it but awful that it is ALL you and so many others have. This is one of those posts where the comments make me cry as much as the post itself. How many boxes there must be out there? I am so sad.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter has a box too...just like her big brothers....at first it was a reminder of everything that I had lost...now I have brought a beautiful butterfly, pretty and pink box that I have everything in that somehow helps me remember that I had a daughter and she mattered..what makes me sad is that the box will not fill up much more...like my sons did....
ReplyDelete:( I am so, so with you on this one. xx
ReplyDeleteI opened my box twice since Zachery passed. Each time it took me right back to just after he died. It is up in the attic now, put away by the movers when I moved. I know when I move again I will come across that box and have to open it again. Keeping you close in my thoughts in the next week Krissy and always, Michelle
ReplyDelete