When Least Expected

"Well... he never existed."

Shock, replaced immediately by incredulity and hurt. The above words were spoken to me by my brother, in reference to Aiden.

I had just been mentioning that I was planning a trip out to see our grandmother to introduce her to little Kevie as her first Bailey great grandson. I corrected myself right away, which confused my brother. He asked who the first was if not Kevin Jr., and I just said matter-of-factly that Aiden was.

"Well... he never existed," was my brother's reply to me.

The Aftermath

It's been a week since Aiden's birthday. I'm restless, tired, and emotionally volatile. Last weekend was really okay for part of me, the surface I show people so they don't worry, but underneath I'm torn up inside. Last week I had a birthday party for my dead son.

There was no little personal cake for him to tear at and make a mess of, no toys for him to play with, no ribbons or presents or anything that would make celebrating his birthday feel right. I mean, we did the best we could under the circumstances, what with not having an actual baby boy there share our love and joy with. You can read all about it in my wife's blog, so I'm not going to go into detail about what we did.

I feel so lost and unfulfilled. We always talk about this hole in our hearts, the void our children left behind, and everybody has a snappy, optimistic suggestion about filling that hole with love or charity or whatever random virtue is supposed to make us feel good. I don't want to do any of that, though. That's Aiden's spot. He belongs there. Is it utterly selfish of me to want to keep that hole empty for him? 

Kaiser Irritante

Let's go a bit off topic for a moment and talk about something that's been crawling under my skin recently: Kaiser Permanente. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this company, it's a large, self-sufficient medical practice/insurance company, almost like a club. So you purchase membership to their insurance and then you get access to their doctors, hospitals, and facilities. Nothing wrong with that. It's their advertisement campaign that's driving me batshit crazy.

The first thing that bugs me is the quantity of advertisements packed into any given hour of radio. Now, to be fair they do take breaks of a couple of weeks in between their ad blasts, but when they're going strong it seems like every time I turn on the radio I'm guaranteed to hear one of their ads with the bad music and Allison Janney jabbering away at least twice for short trips of 15-20 minutes, and closer to 6-7 times if I spend any significant time traveling. Thanks Kaiser, but I don't need C.J. from The West Wing badgering me about health insurance non-stop throughout the day.

Letting Go

A few weeks ago my grandfather passed away. Before you start feeling any sympathy, let me tell you a bit about this guy.

When I was a child my parents brought him into our home, because, honestly, I don't think anyone else would take him. He was a miserable person to be around, always 'joking around' by ferreting out your deepest insecurities and jabbing witticisms down your throat to make you feel as small and insignificant as possible. It wasn't hard for him, he was a genius. He was musically talented in multiple instruments, first class at chess, and his memory was nearly flawless.

So a young boy of 5, of course, was an easy target.

Going Foward

Writing here is really hard for me. Admission of feelings is a foreign thing to most guys. We're strong, we're stoic. We beat our chests and pretend to be invincible. We stand tall in the face of adversity, and face danger head on. We try to convince ourselves that we're modern day superheroes, and, to their credit, our female counterparts let us believe it.

But when it comes to admitting to a weakness, no matter how well deserved, guys will tend to balk.

This isn't a blanket statement, of course. I know there are plenty of men out there in touch with their feelings and completely comfortable sharing them. Neither is the above meant to alienate or effeminize those particular guys in any way (and yes, I just made up a word there). I just mean to point this out to try to help define why it is that, for me, coming here isn't the easiest or most desirable thing to do.

I do it anyway because I'm a man, and, damn it, if a thing's difficult then it's a challenge to best... But really I do it because it helps ease my burden, and at this point I've neglected my burden so long it's begun to weigh heavily on my heart.

Special Thanks

By the way, I want to thank Francesca from Small Bird Studios for the blog overhaul. Much less 'Template Blog_01' and much more 'Kevin: Aiden's Father'. If you have a blog as well and are looking for a little flair aside from the default templates, go ahead and shoot over to http://blogdesigninspire.com/ and check out her work.

Fatherhood 2: Second Chances

Today we're 6 months into pregnancy with our second child. Every second of every day has been a heart in your throat experience. Expectation is that something horrible is going to go wrong. Every morning I find myself asking Angie how baby boy is doing. Is he active? Has she felt him move recently?

So far all is well, but I'll always have that nagging feeling that at some point, for whatever reason, I'll get a call from the doctor's office, 'Angie's here, we need you to come right away. No we can't say what's wrong; just come as quickly as you can.'

It's terrible living with this amount of fear... But there's also hope that in 3 more months I'll have a healthy son squirming in my arms and basking in my affection. That hope is enough, for now.

From the Heart...

I was sad today. It's been a few weeks since I've felt the weight of his loss... That's an odd concept. Something missing, being gone, but having a tangible feel and substance. Maybe that's the metaphysical law of spirit: the more you take away from it, the heavier it becomes. Who knows? In our lifetime I doubt we spend enough time in introspection to really grasp the dimensions of the soul. I doubt I'd be smart enough to figure it out if I had dedicated my entire life to it. If it's even possible to figure out. If the soul even exists. So many suppositions...

Anyway, I was sad. It came from a TV show called Modern Family. Phil and his son Luke have just an amazing father/son relationship. They goof off together and feed off the others immaturity. Phil hangs on to his sense of fatherhood and knows he's there to protect and guide Luke, but he knows how to have fun with him, and you can tell they're best friends. It's the relationship I imagined I'd have with Aiden. I crave it.

Two Be or Not Two Be

Earlier I wrote about feeling like two people vying for dominance in my head, the old Kevin and the new, and I think those two personalities have come to a silent agreement. There’s a harmony between the two of them as they learn to co-habituate inside my skull, and things have actually become very peaceful for me.  However, I often wonder if there‘s ever going to be a time in life again where I don’t simultaneously feel two ways about something.

As some of you who read my wife’s blog know, she’s pregnant. That is such an amazing and exciting thing for us, and I can’t describe how happy I’ve become knowing that Aiden has a little brother or sister coming along. At the same time, I’m scared witless. My head fills with doubts and fears I didn’t foresee.

Dear Aiden,

             As I write this I’m sitting at your grave site. There’s another baby being buried today, and a lot of people around. I hope you’re there to meet and guide them through their new home in heaven. You know what it’s like to be prematurely taken from your parents, and you can lend support to your new friend.

                I’m less sad today. I feel guilty about that, but I know it’s what you want for me. I know that you’re in a pure form now, and all you want for mommy and daddy is to be happy until we can be with you again. We’re trying, son. It’s so difficult to be without you, though.

                Mommy and I slept with your favorite shirt last night. I know you never got to wear it, but somehow I just know it’s the one you would have loved the best. It brings us a little bit of comfort to hold something physical. In the hospital we only had a few hours to be with you and kiss your face, which is more than I suppose a lot of parents get, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough.

There’s so much I wanted to say to you today, but now the only thing I can fit through my mind is that I love you and I miss you. I guess that’s enough, though, isn’t it? That’s really all we have now is love for you and wishes that you were with us.

Take good care of your friends up in Heaven. I hope to be with you again someday.

Thinking fondly of you,

Daddy

More on me...

Sometimes I get a feeling when I write that what I'm putting down is pure gold. Then when I go back and reread everything I find that it's really just average at best. I read a short essay by Stephen King one time that basically said if you want to be a writer, you have to just write and let someone else take over reading. If you go back and read your own work you'll find that you want to change too much, and when you're through with the editing you'll have something completely different from the original more often than not.

So I'm trying to take a back seat to my editing process. I'm going to write my ideas down once, breeze over it for spelling and grammar errors, and move on. If what I put down is crap, I'm sure I'll hear about it. If not then good for me. That being said...

I have been spending a lot of time on me lately. Over the past 6 months I've been trying to be Kevin Before Aiden. That's not to say I was trying to forget my son, but I think I was trying to forget the grief of losing him. I tried so hard to be this person that I was, that I was missing the person that I am now.

My Own Worst Enemy

Words go here. Thoughts, ideas, concepts, dreams, desires... the fabric of a world unseen except in the mind's eye.

That was a pretty self-indulgent sentence, am I right?

Anyway, I began this blog to really explore what I could do with the written word. I wanted an outlet for the inner monologue that I rarely share. I consider my thoughts and ideas to rank as a distant second to complete silence, and I wanted to break that pattern of thinking while also improving a skill I've often thought I could excel at. In addition, this was to be a place for my grief to find release. I could place here, for any who cared to read, a depth of emotion and sadness that I never fathomed I would feel.