Odds & ends

Mrs. Spit had a beautiful post earlier today about the garden she's created for her son Gabriel, and the recent purchases she's made to include and honour her four other miscarried babies there.

I didn't want to say so in my comments there, but her post reminded me of a garden stone I saw a few years ago in a Hallmark store. The inscription?

"We tried. It died."

It cracked me up -- not only as a succinct explanation for my lack of a green thumb, but also my lack of offspring. Imagine the looks on people's faces if we provided THAT as a response for the "do you have kids? why not?" questions!! (OK, I have a warped sense of humour...)

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Another one of my work colleagues left us recently to take early retirement (and boy, I am I jealous...!!). She sent out a mass farewell e-mail that ended in a striking quote, & I Googled it to find the source (Sarah Ban Breathnach):

"When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present -- love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure -- the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth."

I think that's going up with the others on my sidebar. ; )

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The Toronto Star published a story today about a new, time-limited exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (affectionately known by locals as "the ROM," pronounced "rom"): the mummified remains of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian baby, which has not been publicly displayed since the 1950s.

One sentence in particular struck me:

"According to the ROM, the well-preserved shroud’s colourful symbols and images speak of parental love and show the baby being embraced by the jackal god Anubis while a grieving parent makes offerings to its spirit."

Plus ca change...

I encourage you to watch the video attached to the story. It brought tears to my eyes -- not so much the sight of the mummies themselves, touching as they are, but the Egyptologist's comments about how common it was for the ancient Egyptians to lose a child, and their belief in the afterlife and in maintaining an ongoing relationship with the dead. I think we (not so much we, who have lost children, but we, the general public today) have a lot to learn from them!

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I recently went into my closet to look for one of my infertility books. (Yes, I keep my infertility in the closet -- both literally and figuratively, lol). I got rid of a LOT of my infertility & pregnancy books years ago -- donated them to our pregnancy loss support group -- but I did keep some favourites stored in a plastic carton in my closet, including my "souvenir" copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

I didn't expect to find the well-worn folder containing ALL my temp charts -- months & months worth. Or a fat stack of pamphlets I collected at an IVF seminar I attended, organized by a local infertility support group. I honestly thought I had tossed this stuff eons ago.

I threw the pamphlets into the recycling bin, & had dh shred the temp charts. I tend to be a packrat, but I honestly didn't feel the slightest pang as I heard the shredder whirring.

I did, however, feel a pang when I pulled my treatment diaries -- stuffed with receipts from our RE's office and other paraphernalia -- out of the box. I haven't looked at them in years. Those, I'm not prepared to part with yet (maybe ever).

It occurred to me that while I wrote in great detail about my pregnancy with Katie & its immediate aftermath, I haven't written a whole lot about what came afterward -- our struggle through infertility treatment. And I'm fast approaching the 10-year mark of when we made the decision to stop treatment & continue to live childless/free. It occurred to me that there was probably fodder for a post or two (or 10, lol) in there.

So the diaries are sitting with my other reading material in a pile beside my bed. One of these days, I'll get up the nerve to delve into that part of my past once again & share some of it with you. (One of these days...)