December 2023 – LongLegsBigCity

Signs, Sealed, Delivered

December 24, 2023 2 Comments

(If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, start there!)

In my continuing quest for signs and strange things, out-of-the-ordinary occurrences started to stick out to me. In September, I was working from home when something bright blue caught my attention outside the window. I got up and walked toward it. It was a blue jay, sitting in the tree outside my window. Not only are there not usually blue jays in New York City, but there are rarely birds at all in our courtyard area between buildings. I kept watching as the blue jay flew around, landed back on the tree, flew around, landed again. I thought it was weird, but beautiful. I didn’t think anything else of it.

In late October, I started following a girl named Payal on Instagram. She’s a loss mom who loves to read, and she and I have similar taste in books. I was scrolling through her page when I realized that she also hosted a book club. I was intrigued. I went to the first meeting on Zoom and met 5 other loss-mom-readers from across the country. We all started following each other on Instagram. One of them, Carolyn, had twin girls, Camryn and Keeley, who died 7 weeks after Maliyah. Carolyn and I were DMing each other one day about different things we have to commemorate our girls, and she mentioned that she has blue jays on her desk, because she planted a tree for her girls and she used to always see blue jays in the tree when she first planted it. Of course, I had to tell her about the errant blue jay that hung out at my window the month prior. At the time, I had assumed it was something related to global warming, but it sure was strange to meet a loss mom 4 weeks later and have her tell me, completely unprompted, about her blue jays in a tree. Was it a sign? I wasn’t convinced, but it did seem like an odd coincidence.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to join an ornament exchange for the holiday season. As soon as I saw a post about the exchange on Instagram, I knew it was the perfect solution to my problem. You see, I wanted to celebrate Maliyah’s first Christmas, but I also couldn’t bring myself to buy her an ornament, it was just too damn sad. The perfect solution was to buy one for another loss mom’s baby, and then have someone else buy one for me/Maliyah. Enter: JJ’s ornament exchange. I filled out my Google form, and I was on my way.

Two weeks later, I received my assignment. Imagine my surprise when of ALL the people in the world (or, in the loss-mom-world), I was assigned Payal, the mom who started the book club where I met Carolyn! Even stranger, I had just had a conversation with Payal the day prior in the DMs. The DMs are filllledddd with loss moms talking to each other. I later asked how many people participated in the ornament exchange and learned it was more than 370 people. Woah.

I took my ornament-exchange responsibility extremely seriously. I knew that I wanted whoever was assigned to me to take their job seriously as well. I read the google form from Payal about 20 times. I started searching high and low on the internet, mostly on Etsy. I knew I wanted something fun for a kid, something meaningful, and something personalized. I had about 15 tabs open on my computer with different Etsy sellers, and I finally decided on one because the seller looked like she would hand-paint and personalize it.

I know this may surprise you readers because I share so openly here, but I’m not usually one to share my story with strangers, colleagues, or acquaintances. In this specific case, it was important to me that this ornament was done correctly, so I laid my cards on the table. I messaged the Etsy seller and I explained about the loss-mom ornament exchange and why it was so important. I told her I was a loss mom myself, and it was really imperative that this was special, so I asked if she’d be able to personalize the ornament. I remember sending the message and feeling unsettled. I felt it was an overshare, but I tried to tell myself, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

What happened next, I never could have predicted. I received a long message back, and she said, “First of all, I am very sorry for your loss. I lost my daughter as well. She was 16. It’s a heartbreak, unmatched.”

OMG. I immediately burst into tears. I couldn’t believe my luck/unluck. To find another loss mom… out of the 15 Etsy sellers I was choosing between. She wrote on to say that she would come up with something special for me, and if I wasn’t happy with it, I could send it back for a complete refund. I wrote back and told her I 100% trusted her judgment, and that I addressed the ornament directly to Payal’s son Zion because I truly knew she would come up with something awesome. She did, and Payal loved them (she ended up making her two ornaments, one for Zion and one for her other losses). Meanwhile, I’ve kept in touch with the Etsy seller; I wrote her a message on Thanksgiving to let her know I was thinking of her, and I plan to do the same on Christmas. Holidays are HARD and I always appreciate the extra love, I assumed she would, too. Again, I’m not sure if my choice of Etsy seller was Maliyah’s doing, but it did seem strange.

I love how she put this little ice cream cone on for Zion!

The next coincidence/sign was simply about the addressing of my ornament. As I mentioned, I had it addressed directly to Zion. I was a little nervous about this, because people have different opinions about receiving mail with their dead child’s name. I was hoping Payal would like it. The day after I ordered the ornament, she posted on her Instagram stories that she had ordered a drink at Starbucks with his name, simply because she likes hearing it sometimes and loves seeing it written. I replied to her Instagram story to say I was so glad she posted that because I addressed her ornament to him! She replied that she was so glad I did, because it’s rare for her to see and hear it.

I wrote back, “that’s kind of ironic, because I hear his name all the time since it’s my nephew’s name!” She was STUNNED. At this point we had been chatting on Instagram for about 8 weeks. She said, “WAIT WHAT?! You have a nephew named Zion?! How am I just hearing this?” She went on to say she had never met anyone with that name ever in her life. I thought back and realized I intentionally hadn’t shared that tidbit. I was wary to say, “your son is dead, but guess what, my very-alive-nephew has the same name!” I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Well, I was wrong. Payal was happy, shocked, and in awe. She took it as a sign from her Zion that I, with a nephew also named Zion, would be connected with her randomly by Instagram and then assigned to her as an ornament-buddy. When I started thinking about it more, I also thought it was stranger than I originally had thought – I, too, didn’t know a single other Zion. Also, it turns out they live 30 minutes away from each other. Another coincidence. Or sign.

The ornament I received from the ornament exchange didn’t bring any additional signs with it, although it is absolutely beautiful, and I plan to hang it up every year forever.

But don’t fret, unbeknownst to me, more ornament-themed signs were coming.

A week after the Etsy-seller signstravaganza, my friend Danielle asked me to go on a walk. Nothing was abnormal about that, we love going on walks and I often try to get 45 minutes away from my computer screen midday. This particular day, Danielle had a gift for me. She had asked in advance if I’d like something for Maliyah, because she wanted to buy it but also didn’t want to presume. Considering the fact that I thought Maliyah would be live in the flesh with me this holiday season, but is far from it, I told my friend that yes, I’d love to include her any way I could.

I did not know how meaningful her gift would be. I also didn’t know it would leave me with tears streaming/freezing down my face in the middle of the afternoon as I stood on the street corner under some scaffolding. She, too, got me an ornament, and first of all, it is GORGEOUS. It’s a snowflake, with rhinestones and sparkles. I said, “it’s so sparkly!” and Danielle said, “just like her momma.” It has a silver disk attached to it, on one side it has Maliyah’s name, birthday, and time of birth, and on the other it says, “Beloved and Bitter,” which is what her name means. I was a complete mess.

But then she had a little speech. She wanted to explain why she chose a snowflake. She said that just like every snowflake is different, every baby is different, too. She knows that we still want a living baby someday, but she also knows that it won’t ever erase Maliyah from our minds and hearts. She also said that some people think of snowflakes as “kisses from heaven.” I hadn’t heard of that before, but I loved the idea. I told her that I had just seen a statistic that it hadn’t snowed more than an inch in New York for more than 630 days, a record! I also had read that it was supposed to be a big year for snow, so maybe I’d have lots of kisses from heaven. Again, I’m not necessarily on board with the whole “heaven” thing, but it’s a nice thing to think about.

I tried to dry my tears on my sleeve so we could continue on our walk, and we headed toward Central Park. About 5 minutes after entering the park, we started noticing something falling. We both assumed it was leaves, after all, it was pretty warm and it was still November. But soon enough, we started seeing other people doing the same thing we were doing, looking around, looking up, looking at their sleeves… it was snow. The very first flurries of the season. I made us take a quick break from our walk for a selfie. It was not heavy snow, so you can’t tell from the photo, but we know it was snowing, and that’s what matters.

It’s hard not to believe there is meaning in that moment. Do I believe it’s a sign from Maliyah every single time it snows anywhere in the world? No, probably not, that’s too broad of an assumption for me. But do I believe that 10 minutes after I received a snowflake gift and learned about the “kisses from heaven” meaning, that a random first snow of the season, on a warm day in November in the exact same city where I am taking a walk with the friend who gave me the gift is a sign from Maliyah? Maybe.

Holidays are hard. Losing people you love is hard. If believing they are still around, trying to help you power through is helpful, then I say LFG. I’m in. I still haven’t figured out what Maliyah might be sending me to help me through, but I’m going to continue to look. I’m not sure if I’ll be “asking” for help to see signs, but I will be keeping my eyes, ears, and DMs open for anything to help me get to 2024.

Selfie in the Flurries. How many people in this picture? Depends if you count Maliyah.

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

I Saw the Sign… or Did I?

December 21, 2023 3 Comments

(If you missed Part 1, start there!)

Some people see signs everywhere. In fact, I was guilty of this at first. I was looking for something or anything to believe in. As with my superstitious underwear, my first believed “sign” was the most cliché of all: 4:44 on the clock. I swear, every time I looked at a clock or my phone, it said 4:44. Except then I realized no, sometimes it was 3:33 or 11:11 or 8:88 (kidding) and I said to myself, “close enough!” But it wasn’t close enough, and the reality is, those first few weeks sitting at home, staring into space, spiraling in my own thoughts, I was looking at the clock a LOT. You know the saying, “a broken watch reads the right time twice a day?” Well, EVERY watch reads 4:44 or 5:55 or 3:33 twice a day. And the more you look, the better the chances are that you see it.

I decided to throw that sign in the trash. But I still see it all the time (and notice it!) Just yesterday I glanced at my phone and look what I saw. I took a screen shot.

Despite throwing out that sign, I did start to look for more particular things. Of course, you never know what the signs will be, so I just started to look for anything out of the ordinary. Now, living in New York, out of the ordinary is ordinary. Just last Friday I saw a man’s full butt hole 3 times before 10 am. NOT a sign.

I decided to keep my heart open to the possibility of signs, and my eyes open (to things besides butts). Sure enough, I started to notice very strange coincidences.

I love music. So it makes sense that when I think about things, a song always comes to mind. In this case, as this post is so aptly-titled, I started to think of the 1992 Ace of Base CLASSIC: I Saw the Sign. It played over in my head often. “I saw the sign, And it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, Life is demanding without understanding…”

In August, Chris and I decided to go on a staycation to a hotel in downtown Manhattan. I was feeling sad (as usual) and lonely (as usual) so he wanted us to do something different and special. We checked into our room, put on comfy robes, and got into bed to watch a movie on Netflix. But first, for some strange reason Chris decided to turn on the radio. This was not a normal thing we did in hotels, so in hindsight, it made this even stranger. The radio came on, and it happened to be right at the beginning of a song. It started blasting Ace of Base. Not “I Saw the Sign,” another one of their classics: All That She Wants. For those of you who don’t know the song, or maybe haven’t heard it since its heyday in 1992, I’ll refresh your memory. The lyrics begin, “she leads a lonely life” twice over. I chuckled at this because… spot-on. You know how certain songs, you don’t know the lyrics, or you think you forgot them, but the second they come on, you remember every single word? Well, that’s what happened with this song. And imagine my surprise when “all that she wants is another baby” came through the speakers. Yep, totally forgot that those were the lyrics of the chorus. Now, in the song, she is talking about a romantic-suitor-baby, not a cry-all-night-sh*t-their-diaper-baby, but still. I thought that was pretty dang weird because we never listen to the radio, the song is nowhere near current, I had been thinking about Ace of Base constantly, and of course, I completely forgot those lyrics.

Months later, I published a blog called “My Own Worst Enemy” about having a panic attack and annoying swirling thoughts. Again, that blog was titled after a song with the same title by Lit (1999, I miss the 90’s, ok?). The week after I published that blog, I was at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and I took my mom’s car to meet a fellow loss mom for breakfast. I was having a tough weekend because another fellow loss mom had posted on Instagram that she was 28 weeks pregnant, and I just felt so far behind.

I never drive, because, NYC, but the main thing I miss about being in my own car is blasting the radio. It was Thanksgiving weekend, which meant one thing: Christmas carols! But for some strange reason, I scanned all of the stations and I couldn’t find anything Christmas! I was upset and I settled on an “80’s, 90’s and today station.” The second song that came on was, “My Own Worst Enemy,” the song from my blog that week. I thought to myself, “that’s weird.” but I didn’t think too much into it because it did fit into the theme of the station. Then, the song ended, and the very next song was “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base. Weird. Was it Maliyah? I’m not sure. But it sure was a STRANGE coincidence to hear those two songs in a row.

Now it’s been 3 weeks and I haven’t heard that song again since, but you can bet that I am listening for it everywhere.

While Thanksgiving weekend and the radio were giving me some pretty strong signals, I didn’t know that a few other signs and connections were already in motion. More on that later this week!

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Lord Give Me a Sign

December 18, 2023 5 Comments

The title of this post is a lyric from DMX, not a quote from me, but it’s topical. This week, I’m doing something a little bit different. I’ve wanted to write about signs for a long time, which means I have collected a LOT of thoughts. That also means that when I wrote this post, it ended up being far too long! Instead of posting it at once, I’m breaking it into three parts as we lead up to the end of the year.

Especially around Christmastime and New Year’s Eve, people tend to search for signs, miracles, or any indicator that “2024 will be their year.” In the spirit of all of those things, I give you installment #1.

I’ve heard people talk about “signs” from loved ones for a long time. The first time I remember truly thinking about them and believing in them was when my best friend’s dad died. I knew Stan well, both from my friend’s stories and because I had been on family vacations with them. When I was visiting Florida soon after he got sick, I went to visit my friend’s parents to hang out, even though my friend was back in New York. Her mom is a talker and she kept chatting with me and I remember him saying “Karen, stop it, she’s here to see ME!” We all laughed at that, but he was a character, and his outburst was completely predictable and on-brand. I had known him for 11 years when he died, and I was really sad for my friend when he was gone. But there was a sense that he was still around, and that he LOVED when we were hanging out together. It seemed like he was always looking out for us, and when my friend and I would do activities or travel, everything seemed to work out.

For example, we went on a trip to Costa Rica, and she had arrived a few days before me. The drive from where she was to pick me up from the airport was treacherous, and we later found out that the entire road was closed just days prior. But that day, it was open, and she picked me up with no problem. Later on that same trip, we went on a hike to a waterfall and found out that it was extremely muddy. Our hotel manager that morning said “you have rain boots right?” We didn’t. We also couldn’t find the trail head. Eventually we parked on the side of the road and saw a small sign, which led to us trekking through a private resident’s backyard. We were a little hesitant, but then this little lemonade-stand-type thing appeared with someone offering rain boots for rent. What??? How strange! We grabbed two pairs, and we definitely ended up appreciating them! Things like this kept happening.

When we were planning the trip, we had really hoped to see a toucan. We knew they are native to Costa Rica, but they are also very rare to see because they dwell in rainforests, they sit at the top of trees, and they don’t tend to get close to humans. The 2^nd day in Costa Rica, we were sitting at the open-air restaurant for breakfast when our server heard something completely undetectable to us, and ran from our table to grab binoculars. Sure enough: a toucan. He told us to run over to him and look through his binoculars. It felt like we were spotting a unicorn. How crazy!! 5 days later, on the tail end of our trip (pun intended), it was Superbowl Sunday. We discovered a beach bar with TVs right by our second hotel and we decided to go there for the game. As we walked through the hotel parking lot to the beach, we heard a bird call. It was so close, we thought it couldn’t possibly be a toucan. Also, we were on the beach, pretty far from a rainforest. But there, perched on top of a tree in the parking lot was a toucan. My friend looked at me and just said, “Stan.” It had to be him, right? Like, how do you explain that?

Many years later on her honeymoon, she saw another toucan and sent me a photo. I couldn’t even believe she had service deep in the jungle of Belize! I said that, and she replied, “toucan Stan!”

Ever since our trip to Costa Rica, I’ve been a little more open to signs. For other people, that is. For me, I still can’t fully buy into it.

Here’s my main issue: thinking that there are dead people communicating to you through signs means that you think they are still out there somewhere. I’m not sure I believe that. I have a very fuzzy understanding of my own beliefs, but I’d say a rough outline is that I’m very far off from believing in a specific physical place like “hell” and “heaven” and definitely far off from believing there’s any sort of god-figure who is somehow meting out rewards and punishments.

However, since Maliyah died, I’ve been a little more open to thinking about “the universe” and the idea of karma. It’s still difficult, though, to see endless stories of tragedy and believe there’s some sort of justice involved. It feels completely unfair, and it’s almost better for my mental health to simply believe it’s all random. I do think there’s an extreme amount of solace in thinking someone is looking out for you, and everything is part of some long plan, and I often wish I was more religious for that reason, but that’s a whole different blog.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about signs a lot recently, so I asked my friend about how and why she believes in them. She isn’t too religious (probably more than me but that isn’t hard!). First of all, she said her mom believes everything is a sign! Even pennies on the ground are signs to her mom, so she was raised to look for them (the signs, not the pennies… well, maybe both). Second of all, she said that the alternative was that there are no signs, and that believing that when people die, they are just GONE forever is too difficult. This resonated with me. The finality of it is too much. I definitely believe that a person’s body is not their person, which is why for me, cremation and having an urn was not important, but it’s nice to believe that a person’s spirit still exists.

You may have heard me say, “I hope Maliyah is out there somewhere, having a whole lot more fun than I am.” But what does “out there” mean, and how can I be sure? I have listened to some podcasts about signs, and they always say you have to “ask for them.” My issue with that is… if I don’t believe in jack sh*t, then who am I asking?? I have been going back and forth about this all year, but even without asking, I have experienced some pretty strange stuff.

Part II about that coming later this week!

Grief and Pregnancy Loss

Anticipatory Anxiety

December 7, 2023 3 Comments

There’s a lot of talk about anticipatory grief, when you know someone is going to die, and you grieve the loss before they are even gone. There is not as much talk about anticipatory anxiety. Maybe that’s because it’s just called “anxiety.” But this is a very specific type of anxiety, where you DREAD an upcoming day or event. What I’ve found, though, is that I have this impending dread for weeks and then, surprise, those days or events turn out to be not as bad as I made them out to be in my mind.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the weeks after Thanksgiving.

Leading up to Thanksgiving, I was a mess. I was worried about everything. I thought I’d break down at the Parade and cause a scene in front of 4-year-olds on the sidewalk at 6 am. I thought everyone would ask “where’s Emily?” and assume I was in a corner crying in a ball, when I turned down my sister’s invitation to her Thanksgiving dinner. I worried for WEEKS about if my parents would go around the table and ask us to say what we were thankful for.

I thought about that last one for weeks. I talked about it with my therapists. I listened to podcasts about boundaries. I discussed it with Chris. I really wanted to ask my parents in advance NOT to do this. Chris did not want me to ask them to opt out of the tradition. I imagined the worst-case scenario, where I was stuck at a table while everyone gloated about their amazing lives and then they got to me and I said, “my baby died and I’m thankful for nothing.” I thought about just getting up from the table and crying in the bathroom. I thought about what people would say when/if I left the table. The whispers, the looks, the knock on the bathroom door from my mom to check on me while I cried on the floor.

But guess what? None of that happened. I didn’t cry at the Parade. I didn’t scare any 4-year-olds. To my knowledge, no one asked why I wasn’t at my sister’s Thanksgiving table (probably because they knew why – to avoid the 9-month-old baby, born 4 days after Maliyah). And at my parents’ house, they didn’t even go around the table to ask what we were thankful for.

You would think that I would have had a huge sense of relief after, but I didn’t. I had a sense of waste and regret. Why did I spend so much time worrying about these things that didn’t even materialize? What could I have been focusing on instead? Could I have transformed those negative thoughts into positive ones?

If I’ve learned anything from the past 9 months, it’s that it’s easier said than done.

This week, I met a stranger on a plane, and through a strange confluence of factors (no screens, broken wifi, empty middle seat, shared favorite drink that they were giving away for free), we got to talking. Something about the anonymity of knowing you’ll likely never see a person again had me sharing authentically and deeply about everything going on in my life. He told me that he couldn’t believe how “happy” and “light” I seemed given what I’d been through. I told him he was catching me on a good day. But he was also catching me on a day where I had been thinking a lot about my wasted time in anxiety. I told him that hindsight was 20/20, and I was trying my best to use my hindsight as foresight. I said that out loud, then I said to myself, “wow, that sounded prophetic.”

I’ve been trying to do this. Not always succeeding but trying.

I’ve started to think back to other “big days” I’ve had in the past year, and I’ve realized that this anticipatory anxiety happens to me a lot, and every single time, the things I worried about did not come to fruition, or weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. I think it’s common for others, too. On my favorite dead baby podcasts, they often say that the lead-up to anniversaries and big milestone days is worse than the actual day. I have found this to be true.

I DREADED Mother’s Day. I deleted social media 3 days before, I queued up many seasons of British Bakeoff, and I hid from the world. But you know what, it was 24 hours. It came, it went, it was over. Was it bad? Sure. But was it horrific-can’t-live-through-it? No.

The same thing happened for my due date. I agonized. What was it going to be like? Would anyone know or remember? What should I do to commemorate it? Should we light a candle? Make something? I thought for a long time about giving back to my Buy Nothing group who gave me so much baby accoutrements. I thought about buying Starbucks cards and giving them to the first 20 people who came to my apartment building from the group, or just handing out cash to people in line at the store. But then I realized that would require interacting with people and I had no interest. Also, it required foresight to buy gift cards or interaction with baristas. I thought about running a significant/symbolic number of miles in Maliyah’s honor. I thought about giving her a birthday party.

Spoiler Alert (3 months later), I did none of those things. And it didn’t matter. But I did spend hundreds of hours thinking about them. What I actually did was go to the gym, get a latte at Starbucks (and no gift cards), shower, and curl up on the couch to watch Friends.

Then the next week, I chastised myself for the amount of time I spent worrying about a day that came and went, just like every other day comes and goes.

This week I am facing a new challenge with a holiday party for Chris’s work. Last year at this holiday party I was pregnant. Last year, there was a lot of conversation around the prediction of the sex of our baby. We were choosing to be surprised but they were all SURE we’d have a girl. They were right, but no one predicted she would die. This year, I need to face these same people for the first time in a year. I was worried for months, going through every possible scenario in my mind of what they could say, and how I could react. Then last week I was on a support group and I brought it up, and they said “they’ll either bring it up, or they won’t; those are the two options.” This helped me. Then I brought this up to a therapist and I said well what if they do bring it up? What do I say and what if I say the wrong thing or they say something dumb? And she said, “these are basically strangers, right? You see them once a year? Why do you give a sh*t what they say?” She was right. I HATE when that happens.

I needed the reminder. The spiraling thoughts are not helpful. The party will happen and then it will be over. I’ve heard many insensitive things over the past year, and I’ve survived, there’s no reason to give mental space to the what-ifs.

As Hannukkah/Christmas/a new year approaches, I’ve been thinking about this even more. Instead of focusing on anxious thoughts, I’m trying to instead simply be aware of my thoughts and allow them to come and go, just like the days do.

I’m worried about spending time with in-laws and I’m sure it will be hard to have a holiday season that looks nothing like the way I wanted it to. But then it will be over and another day will come. Another year will come. Another milestone will come. And then they will pass. While I don’t think I am completely at peace, I’m getting there one slightly-less-anxious day at a time.

Signs, Sealed, Delivered

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I Saw the Sign… or Did I?

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Lord Give Me a Sign

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Anticipatory Anxiety

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