NEW YEAR'S EVE-A PAST, THE PRESENT

This morning my Alabaster Box is principally for "All Mine". This is to tell them about the most devastating day in my life. Next month I will have lived 3/4 of a century so that is a lot of days. 

It is New Year's Eve, 2014 and I really don't like New Year's Eve. I have been awake since before 3 this morning with another New Year's Eve on my mind but then that day has been much on my mind for a good bit of this year so this morning is not so different from the last several months.

It was December 31, 1959, I was 19 years old, one month shy of 20 and I was 9 months pregnant with my second child who was due at any time. There had been problems for most of my pregnancy with bleeding and labor pains, trips to the doctor only to be sent home when the labor stopped.

A couple of months before, my mother was in a wreck and was seriously injured. My tv hadn't been on so I had not seen the news, didn't know until my brother and sister knocked on my door. They sat me down before they told me Mom was in the hospital. She had told them she was afraid that I would lose the baby now. 

Back to New Year's Eve, I had stayed the night before at Mom's and Dad's so I wouldn't be alone in our apartment while Len worked on the 3rd shift. When he came in we went home but he had plans to go hunting at his Mom's and Dad's in Indiana and as he was wont to do, he would do as he planned no matter what. I told him today was the day I was going to have this baby. He was rather upset with me for having the audacity to upset his plans. 

There were no pains or other indications that today was the day but I just had that feeling. The baby was moving oddly. Not the gentle stretching and moving about but a wretching, flopping that I had never experienced before or since in my later pregnancies.

Len was like a cat on a hot tin roof. He said he had some things to do and would be back shortly but shortly didn't come. 

By late afternoon, I knew I had to call someone because labor had set in and I was at home by myself with 2 year old Jeff and had no car. It is a good thing Mom was able to drive after her wreck and had gotten another car. We took Jeff to their house to be taken care of by my Granny, called the doctor and went to the hospital in full blown labor. 

Labor stopped once again but it was decided that I should stay at least for the night and Mom went home. 

I could hear the girl in the next room having such a hard time. I found out later that she and I were the same age, she was the daughter of one of Len's coworkers and she had a breech birth. 

I drifted off to sleep when things quieted after she was taken to delivery but excruciating pain brought me out of that. The nurse couldn't believe the baby was already crowning because she had checked not long before. I was rushed into delivery but was told the doctor wasn't there so the baby couldn't be born right now. I was groggy but had the sensation of the baby moving out and being pushed back in several times then was given something to knock me on out. 

"Carolyn, Carolyn", the doctor was trying to get me awake. "The baby didn't make it". He had a permission for me to sign to allow an autopsy to be done on the baby. I was 19, I was alone, I was groggy, I was heart broken and I signed the paper. 

The baby was a boy. I named him Larry after my brother. He was born before midnight on December 31, 1959. He would be 55 years old today. He would be handsome like his older brother, Jeff. I know this because they tell me he looked just like Jeff had when he was born 2 years earlier. I never saw him or held him. He was named Larry because I had been so sure this baby was going to be a girl but Larry bet me if it was a boy he was to have his name and he won. Larry had been my rock through this pregnancy. He took photos of the baby for me but they were destroyed before I could see them. He and Len were the only ones at baby Larry's graveside as I lay in the hospital unable to be there or help with any arrangements.

This bothered me for many years that Larry didn't have a proper, respectful goodbye-that he was in a graveyard by himself till 1995 when I could have him moved to be with my Granny with his family in attendance. His two grandmothers [both of his grandfathers had passed a few years before], his brother, Jeff, his younger sisters-Kim, Donna, Melinda, his nieces and nephews, his aunts and uncles were there and I was there with his dad for a graveside service.

with my Granny

As I said before, this day, these months, have been on my mind almost constantly since August 4 when I got the call of another 19 year old who would be going through the same grief. In that case, there was no forewarning of anything wrong with the baby but there will always be that missing piece, that hole that can't be filled with anything for both those two young people. I think the room is the same as it was the day the door was shut after Isabella-cwainscott.blogspot.com/2014/10/isabella-in-gods-hands.

So, my children, my grandchildren-"All Mine": 

I've never gone into all this deeply before with any of you. This is why losing Isabella has been doubly hard, it has been being 19 again, it has been waking up in a delivery room again to be told "the baby didn't make it", it is seeing the grief and hurt Erin and Travis are going through and not being able to do or say anything that can lessen or take it all away.

This has been a hard year with losing Rick, then Isabella and going through cancer surgery and radiation but I am looking forward to great things for the coming year.

I am going into 2015 knowing that I will see them all one day. We are going to have a great time together. 

May God bless and keep you

Carolyn Wainscott