Sticking out the STUGs (36 days)

Last week was bad with a capital B.

I knew it would be: Wednesday was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death and Friday was the anniversary of my first son’s death. That’s a lot of anniversaries.
I felt prepared for it - I lightened my work schedule and planned around dinners. I pre-ironed my husband’s work shirts so I wouldn’t have to worry about it later.
But mostly, I felt OK. I allowed myself to sleep in on Wednesday after I dropped my daughter off at school and I had just decided it was time to get ready for work when I got the email.
It was from my best friend. She is pregnant with her second child and didn’t know how to tell me.

The email sent me into a tailspin - a screaming, crying, sobbing, unable-to-get-out-of-bed tailspin. I called my babysitter and asked her to keep my daughter overnight. The kid didn’t need to see me like that. I called my boss and said I wouldn’t be in to work. I called my husband at work and cried. Then I called my counselor and set up an extra session for Friday.
Then I crawled under the covers and cried for two days straight - then I went to counseling on Friday and cried some more. I cried and I cried until I couldn’t see from my dehydrated eyes, until I couldn’t talk from my raw throat.
This, my counselor tells me, is a STUG - a Sudden, Temporary Uprising of Grief. I have them about weekly, to some degree. I pass the cemetery and get a little choked up. I held a baby for the first time since I lost the boys the other day. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to cry.
My counselor said that while my STUGs will level out, while they will become further and further apart, I will experience them for the rest of my life.
And so STUG management has become my new normal. But not since I lost my second son have I cried and carried on like I did last week. It overtook my whole self. I wanted my babies - one in the crib napping and one ready to be born any minute. I wanted the exome results. I wanted answers and solutions and a future that doesn’t include weekly STUGs.
I love my best friend. I want her to be happy and have happy, healthy children. I never would wish to take away even a drop of her happiness.
But the reality of her announcement is that she will have an easy pregnancy marked my baby showers and maternity clothes, and my babies are gone - the second one literally would have been due this week or next.
Her babies will be in her house, mine are cremated. She will buy Easter basket goodies for her children - I fill plastic eggs with gravel so they won’t blow away in the wind at the cemetery.
I feel very alone in my pain, though I know that many, many other women have faced my situation or worse. All I can do right now is wait - 36 more days - for this exome. How many STUGs will I endure until then?