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Prior to having her gallbladder out during pregnancy, Allison's daily readership was about 35 people per day. During bedrest, it shot up to between 110-150 hits per day and remained that way through the birth of the twins and her son's neonatal death. The day before her daughter, Zoë died, she had 176 hits. The day her daughter died, she had 253 hits. And the day after her daughter died, once news got around the Internet, she hit 2349 unique visitors. The worst day ever became, in Wordpress speak, her "best day ever"--a log of the day she had her highest traffic and a date printed on the screen whenever she opens her Wordpress dashboard.
It is something so small, it's only a reminder of the day she had her highest traffic, yet in a world where online traffic spikes during tragedy as well as celebrations, she cannot be the only person out there who is forced to stare at a date that she doesn't always want to confront when she logs on to write a blog entry.
She wrote a plea to the very same people who put that number on her dashboard with their support to replace it with a different date, a random date, that she could look at each day and remember how the community came together to simply help another person: not for any gain or even to read a particularly witty post. But to help someone remove a date which is painful to view on a daily basis next to the unfortunately named section "best day ever."
So here’s what I’m asking. Can you help me change the post that is displayed for that one stat on my two blogs? Please? Just help me make sure that January 24th, 2008 isn’t listed as my “Best Day Ever.” Pick a day next week, next month…any day and send people my way for that one day. I don’t care what day it is, whenever it works for all of you. It doesn’t even have to be to a certain post. Just so long as more than 2,349 people visit here and more than 1,784 people visit Sweet Zoë . It has to be all in one day though. It doesn’t have to be both blogs in one day but it might be easier.I thought I could be bigger than it, that I could ignore it, but I can’t and I can’t fix it without your help.
Today is the day we picked for that day. Just a random day in the blogosphere to help out a mother in mourning. Please take a moment when you finish reading this post to click on Our Own Creation and Sweet Zoë and bump that day off of her blog dashboard. Forward these links to friends and family and ask them to do the same. It began at midnight GMT and continues until midnight tonight, GMT.
Photographer, Heather Powazek Champ, had a post over a month ago that touches on the what ifs inherent in loss:
Derek and I didn’t lose a parent last week. No, we had the misfortune to experience another miscarriage — our second within six months. And while we couldn’t have been further from careless, it’s hard not to want to second guess every choice and decision that we made during that brief seven weeks. My head and heart bounce around through the various stages of grief with alarming elasticity. Mostly, I feel like I’m standing at the edge looking into a bottomless well of sadness.
There is a quiet ache to her words, a sensation familiar to those experiencing loss. The movement of the head and heart.
I was thinking about that post when I saw the photograph this week of the doll left behind on the chair.
Relaxing Does Make Babies had a post about how loss affects siblings this week--especially those who are still not born. She writes:
I realized today, when I was thinking about being pregnant again, that I was thinking about Devin’s little sibling. I can’t remember me thinking about it like that before - I know I’ve mentioned to others briefly how our next baby will be our second, but in my head thinking about pregnancy was always a keening need to fill a
