It has been just over 4 months since I lost my 2nd baby, and almost 7 1/2 years since my first one was born.  Today she finished kitah aleph.  I never thought I would have a child going in grade school before having another.  Of course, I never thought I would be married 13 years with only one precious little girl.  I am so incredibly proud of how she is growing up- but it makes me sad that as each stage passes I don't know if I will ever see it again.

One of the reasons I was so incredibly excited for Gabbi was that it would take the bitter  out of the bittersweet moments I have as Channah grows up and moves on.  I would have had only the sweetness of watching her grow up without the bitter taste of knowing it is the last time xyz will happen.

I am watching her clean out her school bag from the year and it is making me a little sad.

What do you do when you just can't stop the tears from coming? Where do you turn when you feel like even God has turned his back? This is not rhetorical. I am looking for practical suggestions. This has been the worst 4 months of my life and it just keeps going downhill, and I am not sure how much more I can handle.

Yes I know I have the hugest of brachot in Channah and Jason. And I know I have friends and family who love me. But that does not help at 1 in the morning when I can't stop The Sad no matter how I dress it up.

Someone told me early on that there were two sorts of pain.  The early pain that burns a hole in your very brings you to your knees with heart rending agony.  And the later the pain becomes a dull ache that lives with you the rest of your life like scar tissue that never really leaves you alone.

Today while talking to my therapist I realized that I still have a real problem that comes and goes and that I need to deal with if I am going to be able to move forward.  I have chosen to call it "The Sad".  The Sad is moments of that first burning grief that come out of nowhere while you are working on living with the dull ache.  It is those times where you are overcome and inconsolable and can think of nothing but what you lost.  It is an entity of it's own and has its own timetable and until now I have been unable to contain it.  In fact, until now I did not even recognize it for what it was.  It is the essence of the pain of what I lost.

Bear with me.

There is a scene in Harry Potter, Prisoner of Azkaban where professor Remus Lupin intruder something called a Boggart to his Defense against the dark arts class.  Nobody really knows what a boggart looks like, because the instant a boggart sees you in takes the form of your worst nightmare.  It becomes that thing that scares you the most in an attempt to scare you off.  But that is it's only trick.  It has no other way to save itself from being thrown around by wizards.  The minute you are no longer intimidated by it, it is forced to bend to your will!

So what does one do with a Boggart?  One turns ones fear into a ridiculous satire of his or her greatest fear.  Scared of giant spiders?  Pictures it on roller skates with all its legs going in different direction.  The same hold true in the real world.  Intimidated of speaking in front of a group of people?  Pictures those stiff necks in their underwear.  The more ridiculous the image, the better it will work.

So I am thinking that now that I have identified the pain- now that I have given The Sad constraints and made it into something more tangible- an almost physical something I can fight- well now I just need to dress it up in it's best clown suit to be able to keep it under my control.

I picture The Sad as a giant grey cloud that comes and hovers around my head.  There are lightening bolts and thunder booms and maybe some small dark flies for good measure.  Pictures something like a bad guy in a Rainbow Bright Cartoon.  Now in my head I am making it into a little Mr. Potato The Sad.  I am giving it 2 little white arms, one holding a red balloon.  I am giving it a top hat and a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with attached mustache and cigar, I am giving it the pink converse high top sneakers I always wanted but my mom would never let me have, and a flour on it's lapel that shoots water.  How can I be sad about a cloud in a clown suit?

Ok, so I have not yet had a head on meeting with The Sad since I had this idea, but next time it shows its fluffy little face around here I am sure as hell going to try it.  Hell, it can't be any worse than some of the other stuff I have tried.  I am going to bring The Sad under my control and tell it that I am in charge of my emotions and while there will be times I will let it out and times I will need to see it and remember, those times are going to be on my terms!

When I do take out The Sad I want it to look like a beautiful little girl playing on a fluffy white cloud holding her arms out to me.  When I can look at The Sad and see that, I will know I have really started the road back home.

For all  my years growing up I learned that every yid, has inside of them, a single point of light that is there connection directly to Hashem.  The pitele yid so to speak.  That tiny spark of a soul in a Jewish neshama that no matter how far one pulls away from God, no matter how non-connected the soul to any form of yiddishkeit, no matter in how deep of a hole the light's owner might be- that tiny spark of a soul never goes out.

I spent a lot of years believing that this tiny point inside each of us that is the essence of who we are- some call it the pitele yid, some call it a shakra, some call it a spark, but a tiny point from where our entire being emanates.  I believed that from that one tiny point came everything about who we are and what we become.  

I believed God wrote our whole lives into that little point.  Our hopes and dreams.  Our wants.  Our needs.  It was the basic building block of every single person in the universe- Jew or non-Jew a like and when a person dies it is that tiny piece that returns to our maker to be judged based on how well it utilized it pregiven tools to fulfill a complicated series of tests and programs.

I believed God took out each tool one at a time and examined them.  

"Ah, a good heart- you used it well to help those who needed it.  You never let anyone struggle if you could help it.  You gave of yourself whenever you could spare it- and sometimes when you couldn't.  You used this tool well.  

"The gift of music- you used this well to cheer the elderly and to teach the young.  You enjoyed it.  It made you and those around you happy.  Yes, little spark, this tool you used well.

"A strong family name- you could have used this much better my little spark.  You could have used the schlepp with this name to help more people to build greater things.  This tool, my little spark you did not use as well as you could have.

And so on and so forth.  Once the value of each tool was added up, God would look at the sum total of you did with what he gave you and your lot in the next world would be set based on his weights and measures.

I feel now as though I have lost that spark.  Like I have lost that little package of tools that God gave just to me that was the essence of who Rachel was.  I have spent  32 years learning how to use those tools to the best of my abilities, and now I can't figure out where I put them.  It is like losing my port in a storm after running the same river for 3 decades.

For 30 odd years I was strong and tried to help others.  I ran to do favours even if they made my life harder or took time from other things I needed to do.  I stood up for what I thought was right with every fibre of  my being that I could muster.  I could go days on no sleep if it meant getting a job done for a good cause.  I loved to read, to sing, to work.  I was creative and aware of the world around me.  I saw God's hand in nature and in everything I loved.  Those were my tools.

Now I don't know where they have gone.  I lean on others for support, and have no will to put effort into anything.  I sleep to get away from my life, but in sleep I have dreams that make me want to run.  I don't read.  I barely play music.  I feel like God is a million miles away and that he has no interest in me.

So who am I now?  In 120 years how will I be judged having lost my toolbelt?  Will I find a new set somewhere along the road that I will learn to use to do good things in new ways?  Will someone come chasing me down one day to hand me my old worn out tools that I know how to use and tell me I just forgot them at my last rest stop?

They say there are many stages to artistry.

A bad artist will do bad work with great tools.

A mediocre artist will do mediocre work with great tools

A good artist will do great work with great tools

A great artist can do stunning work with bad tools.

In my day job I am a mediocre artist who can do good work with great tools.  In my life job I am now an out of work artist with no tools.

Tomorrow looks like it is CD1.  Ick.  I never thought I would be doing this again.  exactly 4 months from losing my baby.

I never thought I would bury a baby either.

Today is not a good day.  And it is not over.

I want my baby.  I want my 3 month old.  I want those tiny arms around my neck and that head on my shoulders.  Why did God do this to me?  I want my Gabby back.  Please God send me my baby.

I am finally starting to put myself back together- gluing together the fragmented pieces of the outer shell that used to be Rachel. The problem is that the inner spark, the piece of my soul that made me who I was is sputttering and does not want to light. I am in desperate need of a spiritual recharge and have absolutely no idea where to turn. I suppose if I were of a different sort of sect I would be looking for a mashbia or some such thing, but I'm not and I don't have one.

I feel like the bulb is slowly coming back together, but the filament is burned out.

Please DO NOT just send me divrei Torah as no matter how wonderful they are I can pretty much promise they will not get read. I need a real live person, or place or some other proper noun I can turn to for advice and recharging.