Christmas Ornaments

I've been meaning to get this blog post and these pictures up for awhile.

I have been lucky enough to go to 2 Face2Face meetings in the past 2 weeks.

The first was the Toronto West meeting at Jackie's shop on November 11th. I had been talking to Jennifer over Facebook for a week or so and got to meet her in person for the first time, which was really nice. I also got to meet Lisa for the first time. I always feel an instant connection with other babyloss Mom's. I realized yesterday that I've known Jackie for a year now. We first chatted on Facebook around this time last year when I was at my Mom's house after she broke her ankle and before I miscarried Cub. Jackie has made such a difference in my life and I feel so privileged to know her.

We made some Christmas ornaments that night. The only thing I like about Christmas this year is making ornaments for my babies. Christmas isn't as painful as it was last year, but it still hurts and I'd be happy to just go away over the holidays and come back when they are done. Anyway, here are some pictures of the ornaments made at that meeting:

Jackie helped with some of these. She is so artistic and creative. I didn't trust myself to use the wood-burning tool to inscribe Cub's name on the tree without messing it up, so Jackie did it. She also pretty much did the ornament for August, I just chose the shell and the ribbon. 

On November 19th, we went to Akemi's shop to make more ornaments. I met Jennifer on the GO train and we went together. We spent 4 hours there, making ornaments the whole time and talking. I met Valerie for the first time and got to learn about her little girl Sophie. I've known Akemi since the summer, but never got much of a chance to have a good talk with her so it was nice doing that. 

These were harder to make than I thought. Akemi had so many materials to work with, it was hard to decide on what to use. I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. I have some ribbon to attach when I actually put them on a tree, I just haven't attached it yet.

I also went to a memorial service for lost babies on Tuesday night. Jackie told me about it. It was a very nice ceremony and the woman who organized it was very welcoming (she lost a baby girl 25 years ago). It was at a Catholic church and was a mass. I haven't been to a Catholic Mass since I was 10, when I went to a Catholic school because I was in French Immersion and they only had it at Catholic schools. So on Tuesday I was worried that I would do something wrong, that I wouldn't follow the correct protocol. I think I did OK, although looking back I can see a few times when I didn't do something right. I hope it wasn't claringly obvious to anyone.

For all of the people who were there for the first time, there was a candle at the front for each baby that you would go and light. Because Ted didn't want to come (he doesn't like these ceremonies as he just feels so sad at them), I went up by myself. I had to ask Jackie which one the Paschal candle is, as that is what we were supposed to light our taper candle from to light the babies candles. I was glad that there was one family before me so I could see exactly what they did and copy it. The priest read each of my babies names and I lit each candle after he did.

The candle I used to light the other candles

There was a communion and I didn't know what to do about that. When I was in elementary school, we went to church every Friday and the non-Catholic kids didn't go up for communion. At one point, the priest invited everyone to the altar and I thought that was when the communion was going to take place so I didn't go up (3 other people didn't go up either). It turns out they just went up and he said a few works and people shook each others hands. Then they all sat down and the priest came down and said that he was going to start communion and if you didn't want communion, cross your hands over your chest and he would give you a blessing. Well, I felt like a bit of a jerk for going up for a blessing when I didn't go up to the altar before, but I figure I need all the help I can get so I went up anyway.

After the ceremony, new families went up the front to pick up some items that were made for their babies.