Holy Exploding Cathedrals Batman! It's an Atheist!

I've been grappling with 'belief' for a lot of my life.  I've never been religious, but always had a deep sense of the sacredness of life.  I've considered myself  'spiritual', but now, I don't even know what that means. I've always been a questioner.     
  
Instead my thoughts seems to have surfaced in this dream, which just rocked me awake:

I am looking out across my city's skyline.  On the foreshore of the river are three cathedrals. 
  I hear, and feel deep in my gut, a series of booming explosions.  Resonant of a heavy church bell, and also of a cracking in the earth that pulses up from deep, an earthquake.  But what it is, is a bomb.  I see the first church pulsate outwards, shift.  Then I zoom in, and enter the church.  The church is full of people, all dead.  It is gruesome.  Blood is splattered upon the walls, merging with the religious artwork.  The people, dead, still, are all knelt in prayer.   More people, like me, have entered the church since the explosion, clergy people amongst them.  The blood has formed words, below the words that were already writ, prayers.  The blood spells 'Don't move'.   So everyone else that is entering the church, post explosion, kneels with the dead, does not move, prays blindly.  I see a flitter in the corner of my eye, running up the stairs.  I think it is a terrorist.  No-one is questioning what has happened, or seeking survivors, just blindly obeying the bloody writing on the wall.  I want to shout 'watch out, this is a terrorist attack, why are you obeying what they have written in the blood of the people they have killed?!'.   I leave.

I enter the second church.  Less people are dead.  People are walking around.  There is a table of artifacts, from other cultures or religions.  Time pieces, some kind of calender.  They are dusty and have not been kept in working condition.  I sense frustration, people are still praying, not looking after the living.  I do not feel safe, feel something treacherous lurking, just out of sight again that no-one is addressing.  I move on to the third church.

This church, I don't see dead people.  But there is a sense of hurt, of tragedy.  I see the same altar of artefacts.  I see an archaic timepiece/calender thing again.  It's kinda steam-punk.  It tells the ages through the stars, the time in the universe or something.  I seem to have some knowledge of it.  (As you do in these dreams). I check to see that it is up to date, and it is.  A woman approaches, she seems to be the Priestess, the head of this church.  She sees me checking this esoteric-steam-punk- universal-astronomy-clock and says "Yes, we keep this working, otherwise what is the point of it?"   I ask about the explosion.  She says "It's not so bad".  I say  "It was in the first church, that's a house full of dead worshippers now".

That's it, I wake up.  My head hurts, my eyes sting.  I don't know what this means.  I add it the pile of stuff to analyse, my pondering of atheism.  If you're the dream analyst type feel free to have a crack at an interpretation.

 I'm Australian, our Prime Minister is a self-confessed Atheist.  It's not such a big deal here as it may be in other parts of the world.  We don't (yet) have a government run by any fanatical right wing religion.  We can say publicly that we're non-believers without vilification.

In the on-line babyloss world I hear a lot of mama's talking about God, about their babies in heaven.   Sometimes I don't know if people are truly religious, or if it's just the expected way to talk.  I don't mind other's religion, I'm not here to challenge anyone's belief.  I don't find comfort thinking my baby is in God's hand in heaven, that I will join my baby one day, but if it brings someone else comfort then I'm all for it.  If it's your deep heart felt belief, I'm not here to challenge it.  We're free to believe in what we choose, aren't we?  Just don't insist that I believe it too.

I saw an image on a baby-loss site, of some old man's hand reaching out from the clouds, in his hand he held a little baby.  I find that image creepy.  'Kidnapper! Pedophile!' is what that image screamed at me. 

While I respect other's beliefs, all the God talk still jars me sometimes.  It's a little lonely out there in baby-loss world when you don't talk about God, when you don't believe.   I'm confronted all the time by other baby-loss mums talk of God and heaven.  Early in the grief, I was on a baby-loss forum, and said something about being a 'non-believer', that I found no comfort in it, that I didn't think my son's death was part of 'God's plan', and didn't like it when other people said that to me.  Bunch of mums chose to say that regardless of my own belief, they knew my son was in heaven and they would pray for me, quoted a bunch of biblical verses, did a bit of evangelism on me.  Meh, really, it shat me at the time, I felt unsupported and offended.

It's not just the outright evangelising that I feel isolated by.  It's the casual presumption that I think my baby is in heaven.  The presumption that I believe in God.   It's not a given that we are all Christian.  It's not a given that if I'm not Christian, then surely I must be..some other religion?  Buddhist at least then?
 Faith?  Hm, what is that?   Faith in the human ability to traverse the tragedy of life, based on a moral compass that does not rely upon a supernatural deity to guide me in my thoughts and actions?   That in fact, humans are capable of having a moral compass without believing in a Deity, without a deity to tell them that 'hey there people! murder is wrong! (and you can't be trusted just to be good, so I shall threaten you with a burning hell damnation to keep you good).   

The Mr and I, early on, wanted a t-shirt that said:
 "My son died.  It was God's plan.  God must be an evil motherfucker".

I've never been 'angry' at God since my son died.  I did not feel punished by 'God',  I did not turn my back on 'God'.  I just don't believe in an Interventionist God, so not really anyone to be angry at.
I just had the average my-baby-died-the-world-is-a-shitty-place rage.  No-one to blame it on, no-one to take the pain away.   Just my good old resilient self to salve the pain.
 I've been heard to say 'nature's a bitch'.  My son dieing was what happens in nature.  Umbilical Cord Accidents.  Nature is chaos.  You can't control it.  Shit happens.
You deal, or you don't. 

My comfort comes in knowing that my son is part of the Big Cycle.  

The Big Universe. 

 Re-absorbed into the evolutionary chain, his dust becoming the air, the soil, the water, elemental, entering the life cyle again.   

In his blood was me, in my blood is him.  

In our blood is an atom of water from a dinosaur.   Right there is my comfort, my sense of the big picture.  

I don't need a God or Heaven.   I have it all here on earth.

I don't want my son to be in 'heavens nursery', waiting for me, when there is no good reason why he shouldn't be here with me.  

He's just dead now.  If he has a soul, it's free, to do whatever souls do..no waiting around for me to die.   

Maybe,  just free to join the life-cycle again.  It won't be as Jackson Bear anymore though; Jack is no more.  It hurts, it stretches into the distance, this acceptance: Jack is no more.

I find it a little selfish thinking the notion that he should be in heaven waiting for me.  

Sure, maybe on the surface it doesn't seem as comforting this not believing that I will see him again, but that's what I believe.  That's the enormity of his death, why death of a child can be so devastating.   

Is that what religion is for?  A human construct to make us feel better about the finality of death?  Except that bit about Jesus I suppose.

All this questioning of my beliefs in the last few months.  I've delved beyond my initial 'don't believe in an Interventionist Supernatural Deity who created the universe and keeps a watch on us, listen to prayers, punishing and forgiving as He sees fit' to 

'well then, do I believe in a soul?' 

 I used to.  Used to believe in re-incarnation.  That we went beyond our bodies.  Soul everlasting etcetera.  I don't know now.  Jury is still out on the soul question.  I don't know that my dream addresses any of that.  It's just left me pondering in this dawn light.

I've linked below to a very special song video that I'd like to share.  It is the song we were going to play at Jack's funeral.  'Into Your Arms', by Nick Cave.  It speaks to my and my partner's beliefs, and is a song that we listened to constantly in the weeks after Jack died.  It still brings me undone, when I need to be undone, to sit with the grief, and with the love.   The video is simple, beautiful and haunting with it's portrayal of the faces of loss, and I hope it gives something to you.
Here it is: Into My Arms

Right Where I am 2012: One Year 8 Months 3 Days.

I'm new to the blogging world, a late bloomer if you will.  It's taken me well over a year to blog about the grief, to write anything anywhere about it actually.   I've lurked in the blogoshpere of stillbirth blogs for a while, and came across last years Right Where I Am  project .  I'm trying to be brave and participate this year.   Writing this has been confronting, making me look at where I am right now, because right now is not somewhere that I'm proud of, or somewhere that I'm particularly comfortable with sharing.  I'm no light on the hill saying 'it gets better'.. The grief is harder on me today than it was 4 months ago.. Still, writing this has made me tell myself that wherever I am is ok for me, so thankyou Angie for getting this project together.

Today I weeded and pruned a garden bed, in the early winter sunshine.  A garden that has lain neglected for 1 year 8 months and 3 days.  It was the garden I planted when I was pregnant with Jack.

I spent my pregnancy on my hands and knees planting my favourite blue flowers in a border around the bed.  Masses of lobelia, and between the roses, brilliant blue cornflowers.  Blue for my baby boy, growing fast inside me.  I loved that my due date was in spring, and knew this garden I was planting would be in bloom for when he arrived in the sunshine time.

We never brought Jack home to that garden.  He died and was born on his due date, spring equinox.  The blue flowers blossomed right on time too.  We picked the flowers and put them in the coffin with Jack, our little bird nestled amongst the flowers.  Bittersweet.

That garden has taunted me all through my grief.  I ignored it.  Let the weeds grow back, let the roses grow wild, dead rose heads turning to rose hips.  It nagged at me, I sneered at it.  I didn't want to know.   It hurt to look at it.  It hurt to think about growing flowers when my baby is dead.

Finally today, that sunshine demanding that I spend some time in it before the depths of winter arrive, I gave in.  I didn't go out there with a rush of energy, enthusiasm, or with the old delight that I used to find in gardening.  It was just something that had to be done.  So I did.  That's where I'm at with the grief- I'm able to do the things that need to be done now, but it often starts out empty, I force myself.  I cut those roses right back.  I pulled up weeds, the sun warmed me, and I found myself thinking about new flowers I'd like to plant.  I tried not to see Jack, my 20 month old ghost of a boy digging through the soil looking for worms. 

Because I see him sometimes now.  Not really see him, not all Ghost Whisperer style.  Not even a presence, I don't see signs; white feathers and rainbows are just from my white budgie and uh, sunshine refracting through rain.   I just have these moments now, where I get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen and think 'where is he?'.   I walk in through the back door, and think 'where is he?'    He's always just around the corner.  Just out of reach.  Toddling down the hallway, I can almost see him, almost hear him.  Those moments, those absurd thoughts of  'where is he, what's he doing, he should be drawing on the wall with crayons and why isn't the house toddler proofed' set up a quiver in me.  Like a ping in my gut, that reverberates through my body turning it into jelly, till it reaches my eyeballs and stings them.  All in a millisecond.  So I'll be walking to the bin, put something in it, and bang, tears.  Just for a second.  I'll be mid-conversation with someone and ping, it's there.  No-one knows it's happening but me.  I'm wondering where my boy is, and why he isn't playing with my friends little boy, and the world keeps turning.  I can picture Jack, what he'd be doing at the age of 20 months, more clearly than I could picture him at 6 months, so in a way, it hurts more.  The rawness of his death has been taken over by the sadness that he is just not here, living.

The grief isn't jagged like it used to be.  I get through days without crying.  It's been ages since I smashed any crockery.  I laugh.  I crack (bad) jokes, and have whole conversations that don't include Jack.  I don't have urges to tell the lady at the shop that my baby died.  Much.  Ok, so I wanted to tell the new receptionist at our Property Manager's office the other day, but I didn't.

 But lately the grief has turned dark.  There's a new edge to it.  It's come on the heels of acceptance.  A total misery.  I don't cry all night or day, but I cry in a moment and it fills me with a despair that didn't used to be there.  There's no new rainbow baby.  There's no other older child.  I have a depressive disorder, or is it p.t.s.d?   Whatever, I'll let the phsychologist ponder the label while I live it.  It's episodic, this epsiode I'm in right now triggered by major family stress.  So here it is, the grief walking along with the black dog.  What a party pair.  It's hard.  I have not found peace.  My Grief is not linear.  It's not 20 months down the track, and here are the increments of my acceptance, the stages of grief ticked off, not going back to that one, moving down some linear road to peace.  No. 

Sometimes it's raw again, with even more hopelessness, because he's still dead, will always be dead, and the road stretching out in front of me is empty without him.

 Acceptance is not what I waxed lyrical about at Jack's funeral, because I was determined to only feel love, to let my love for my son be the dominant sense at the funeral, not tears and anger and bitterness, because I didn't want the world to see me rocking on my knees like a crazy woman, because I was gonna be GOOD at grief.
I was gonna kick griefs ass with my zen-like acceptance.  But now acceptance is kicking my ass.

 Oh yeah, acceptance is a bitch.  Acceptance is the knowing that he is never ever going to be here.  That the grief and loss always will be instead.   That if I have another child, Jack will still be dead, and I will still grieve for him.  A new baby will have a different mother to the one that Jack would've had.  A new baby, his younger sibling, will have a mother that is a little bit broken and always wondering where her first born is.