Is grief a mutating virus?

Or a crystal in the light?  Just when my eyes seem to have conceptualized the awful totality, a slight breeze or a cloud or the earth's rotation shifts the input and fragmented light blinds me with new glare, more or less intense, striking a chord within me that I didn't know existed. Over and over and over.  I am so restless and yet not able to focus long enough to create a plan or solution to this irritable lack of peace.  I can understand the appeal of drugs and alcohol, perhaps to numb these feelings, perhaps to make everything seem as strange and unfamiliar as this devastating loss.

We now have all the pieces to put together our babies memorial cards with the invitations to their service and the thank you cards.  Photos of our tiny babies accompanied by their unbelievably small and perfect footprints, together on the page as they never were outside the womb.  The last step is for me to glue the tiny hearts I crocheted to the slips of pink card stock thanking everyone for their kindnesses.  I can't quite make myself.  It's not a hard task.  These hearts have been one of my primary coping mechanisms, when I feel like I can't breathe, when I'm overwhelmed with the idea of time continuing, I have been able to focus on each of the three stitches necessary to make a heart.  Magic ring, chain four, triple crochet three, double crochet three, triple crochet one and repeat in reverse.  Like my experience as a mom, this is a very limited activity.  I learned these three stitches from youtube and have never crocheted anything else.  Glueing these hearts to cards announcing our babies' life and death is another finalization of their permanent absence.

My love and grief are creating tangible shifts in the light, just enough to render me blind and directionless.

Comfort

The cable's out.  No cable repair for a week.  I thought about telling the customer service representative that my babies died and the tv is a sort of drug that I cannot stand to go without, that HGTV must be playing in the background of my lonely days, but I managed not to.

I have been mostly avoiding music.  Music with my mom were some of my happiest childhood memories.  I had a anxious feeling during my pregnancy when I realized my music collection isn't up to snuff.  How could I be a good mom without the White Album?  What kind of parent doesn't even own the White Album?  Then I realized everything is on youtube and I calmed down.  I had thought we would rock and sing, dance and sing, clean and sing.  Every song I heard I imagined hearing again with my son and daughter.  Now it stings, all songs.

In the absence of cable I turned on a documentary about Neil Young*.  Only it isn't a documentary, just a concert with a casual lead-in while everyone is driving to the venue.  And I am on the sofa after my first day back at work, after receiving a message from a distant friend excitedly asking if I've had the babies, reading loss blogs, cold, wrapped in a blanket and all of a sudden I felt a little warmer.  Not my feet, they're freezing, but my heart.  My shredded heart feels a little softer.

Is it okay for me to feel comfort?  Am I letting my babies down?  I didn't even know that I felt like I had to only think of them, that I felt like if there wasn't succor for them there could not be any for me either.  Am I less of a mom if I can relax for a minute?  I am full of S and G, every minute, that remains steady and unchangeable.  Tears streaming down my cheeks, this moment of almost comfort, is full of sadness a sort of peaceful sadness.

*Music from my childhood and youth--no indie rock, blues or folk here today.