There is so much noise lately.
It comes from every direction.
No one told me being an adult is so hard on the senses.
I’ve found myself complaining of headaches and backaches and neck aches a lot lately.
I think it’s from the noise.
Even when I turn everything off, it’s still in my head. So loud.
The noise is loudest when it’s quiet, I find.
During the school day when teenagers are being teenagery and in the evening when a preschooler is being preschoolery and a toddler is being toddlery, the noise isn’t so loud. It’s drowned out by immediacy of life.
But in the quiet of my planner period, my commute, my quiet time lying with Eddie while he falls asleep, my head fills with it.
Noise.
Static.
Yelling and shouting and vying for attention.
Anger and frustration and joy and excitement and overwhelm and worry and pride and anticipation and grief.
Oh the grief.
Memories are loud.
They scream in your heart and make you feel all over again the things you thought were past and gone and not coming back.
The pain, the writhing, the labor for…empty arms, empty heart.
Grief is the loudest of the noise.
Scratching and tearing demanding to be the center and then just sitting there in the middle of it all like dead weight.
Resurfacing to drown me.
The noise is so so loud when you’re an adult.
I want to go back to that warm place of being a child where the noise of the adult world is so far above me, it doesn’t make it to my ears or heart.
That place with dinner waiting on the table, two parents tucking me in, and no note of death or pain or worry in my ear.
I want the safety and silence of childhood back.
Because being an adult is too loud.
It hurts too much.

In honor of Infant Loss and Remembrance Day, I lit my candle for the two I have in heaven (snuggled there next to a picture of their little brother, Eddie) and for my niece, Bella. Who went home too this past week to be held in the arms of her Papa Steve in Heaven.
***Updated (9:21am 10/16/13)*** I just got word that Arabella Elizabeth Sluiter was delivered at 2:20am this morning weighing 1 lb, 3oz. She will always be loved and remembered.