Scar Tissue

Hi Angel,

I was looking through photos on my phone earlier today. My phone started alerting me about a week ago that I was running out of storage, so I set out this morning to transfer photos from my phone to our computer. It is amazing how many photos I have taken in a little over a year. There were photos of your cousin Abigail's birth, of time spent with friends and family, of vacations and weekends away, and of course lots of photos of my pregnant belly.

A few weeks after I told your Gramy that I was pregnant with you, she bought me these cute belly stickers that tracked how big you were getting throughout the pregnancy. I downloaded a pregnancy photo app, and your daddy faithfully took my belly picture every week with the actual fruit or vegetable that represented your size or with one of your Gramy's stickers. Daddy would jokingly ask me which fruit or vegetable you would be the next week, and he teased me more than once about how much money we were spending on produce.

Today was the first time in a long time that I have looked at those photos, and I wasn't prepared for how they would make me feel. That's often the case with grief for me. The things I worry will resurface the pain, the things I think will make me lose it, and the things I just know are going to make me cry....they never do. No, grief catches me off guard and when I least expect it, like a rainstorm in the middle of a drought. And just as one would expect in a drought, it doesn't take much for the rainfall to cause a flood. A flood with waters that quickly rise and overflow and pick up speed, coming so fast and so hard that I feel as if I might drown.

Rose Kennedy described grief in this way:

 "It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."  

I probably would have said that time forms a scab instead of scar tissue, but after doing a little research, I found that Mrs. Kennedy's choice of words could not be more perfect. Scar tissue comes when there is a significant injury to the body. It forms internally and serves as a "glue" that holds the broken pieces together. Although it is a necessary and important part of the healing process, scar tissue isn't as functional as the tissue it replaces. As it begins to build up in the body, muscles become shorter and weaker. Tension on tendons cause tendinitis. Nerves become trapped. All of these problems lead to a reduced range of motion, loss of strength, pain, tingling, and numbness in the affected body part. Sounds an awful lot like the effects of grief to me.

Perhaps Mrs. Kennedy and I are both right though. Scar tissue can take a long time to form, and it is a secondary healing process to the formation of the scab.  A quick and dirty first step, the scab is designed to stop the bleeding and protect the body.

Sometimes after a few consecutive "good" days, I feel like a scab is starting to form over my heart. I feel like I am healing...like things are getting easier, better even. And then someone will say something or I will do something that completely rips away the scab, and I am bleeding to death all over again. My only hope right now is in the promise found in Psalm 147:3: "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." I pray that the row of good days gets longer and that my wound scabs over and turns to scar tissue soon.

Even though the pictures cause me pain right now, I am so thankful that we have them. Just like the pictures of you and your birth, they are reminders of the precious time we spent with you. One day, when my scar tissue has formed, I think I'll make a photo book with all my belly shots and baby shower photos. After all, those pictures represent the best 8 months of my life.

Love,

Mommy

The last "sticker" picture we took at 34 weeks, just two weeks before you passed away.  We were supposed to take the 36 week picture the day before we learned we had lost you, but we forgot. In my grief, it never crossed my mind to take the picture before we delivered you. I'll always regret not having that one.