Grief subsides but never totally leaves

Grief is a funny thing. Sometimes you can be doing just fine, going about life, thinking you have moved past whatever or whomever you have lost, and bam, it hits you like an anvil on the head.

I should be as flat as the Coyote on the Road Runner cartoons by now because of how many times this has happened to me. In the space of a year, I lost my beloved granny and a baby. I lost my job, one that I had been in for nine years, and then a former editor, who was one of my mentors but also a friend, passed away. It was one of the worst years of my life.

I picked myself up, dusted myself off and went on, determined to push ahead and not let life break me. I think I've done pretty well over all, but like I said earlier, sometimes, it just hits you hard enough to knock you down.

For me this time, it was an anniversary.

Our baby, Jenna Grace Belinc, was stillborn Aug. 12, 2008, but we knew the day before that she had passed away. We knew she was sick and probably wouldn't survive birth. Some babies with Trisomy 18 do survive for a few months, but with the problems Jenna had, there was no way her little body could sustain life.

I did very well in the hospital, even able to laugh and joke with the nurses a bit. I think I was holding it in, pretending all was okay, because if I didn't, if I let myself go, that meant it had really happened, and I wasn't ready to acknowledge that just yet.

In the car on the way home, with empty arms and an even emptier heart, I started sobbing, doubled over from the crying. Brian, my husband, pulled the car over and cried with me.

We had her cremated, and Feldhaus Memorial Chapel handled all of that for us in a such a caring and sensitive way. Two weeks later, we had a memorial service at our family church, Smith Chapel Methodist, with the Rev. Jack Carney and the Rev. Chris Harris officiating at the service.

I thought it only fitting that Rev. Carney do the service as he was the man who performed our marriage ceremony, many years ago. Rev. Harris was the pastor at the church and a wonderful man. I had everything planned out, the songs I wanted them to sing and even a story I wanted read.

I was surprised when my brother and his wife brought in a drawing she had done. My sister-in-law is a wonderful artist, and a few weeks before, she had asked me if I had any pictures of my granny's hands. I did, because I have a thing about hands and the way they represent love. I gave her the pictures, but I was so pre-occupied with what was going on in my life that I didn't even think about why she would want them.

The picture depicted a sleeping baby with angel wings and a hand reaching down toward her. The hands looked exactly as I remembered my Granny's hands. I had held in the tears until that moment, but seeing that and knowing Jenna was with my granny was all it took to start the waterworks.

The drawing sits on an end table in our living room, surrounded by angels we received after Jenna's death.

At the service, I asked Rev. Harris to read a story about dragonflies. I didn't write it, but I found it when I was looking for poems about loss. It tells the story of a community of water beetles, and every so often, one would climb up a stem of a lily pad and disappear forever. One of them decided when it happened to him, he would come back and tell them all about it.

When it finally happened, he fell asleep on top of the lily pad, and when he awoke, he was a beautiful blue-tailed dragonfly who was meant to fly.

"So, fly he did! And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole new world and a far superior way of life to what he had never known existed. Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them, and explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended. But, his new body would not go down into the water. He could not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he understood that their time would come, when they, too, would know what he now knew. So, he raised his wings and flew off into his joyous new life!"

After the service was over, we were out in the cemetery visiting my granny's grave and along came two dragonflies, flitting about, playing together. We all felt like it was Granny and Jenna, telling us, showing us, that they were together, and all was well with them.

Now, every time I see a dragonfly, I think of Jenna and how she has a whole new body, one that isn't broken or sick. I think of her in my granny's arms and how lucky she is to be there. It doesn't stop me from wishing she were here with us, but this image made the hard days after her death a little easier to bear.

In the last year, I've learned to laugh again, to enjoy life and to see beauty and great things where I once might not have. I'm looking forward to Ella joining the family in November and all the fun we'll have this year with Tessa, our six-year-old, as she starts her first grade year.

I'm not sad all the time, but I will always have a sad spot in my heart because something, or should I say someone, is missing. I'm sure it will always be that way, ready to sneak up on me out of the blue.

Tamara Belinc is a staff writer. She can be reached at tbelinc@t-g.com.