Be Mine

My Baby,

I don't know anything about you really. 

I don't love you for your personality, or your looks, or your attitude.  I don't know any of those things about you.  I love you because you were mine.

Someday I hope to know all of those other things about you.  To know if you are incredibly observant like C.T., packed with spunk like Lily, or caring and affectionate like Amelia.  To see again that sweet little body - the face with the nose that reminds me of your sister Lily and the toes that looked like mine. 

But for now, you were mine and I was yours and that is enough to make me love you for the rest of my life (and longer).

-Your Mom

This Girl

Back in the winter of 2006 I had a very clear message put into my mind to have another baby. Right away. And so we did. And we got this girl:

Amelia Rose. (This is a picture from about a year ago.)

She has been a joy to me in a unique way.

When she was still a baby I started following some blogs written by women who had recently had small children die. I was drawn to these blogs...I cried reading them and would think about what these women were going through and wonder why I was so compelled to check in on them. I started to get quite worried that the reason I felt drawn to these stories is because something was going to happen to my Amelia - that I would lose her. It was a very real fear and I felt anxiety about it. Once she reached about 18 months those fears receded and I no longer felt that way.

Now it turns out that the fears I had about losing my girl were real, but misplaced. I was worrying about the wrong girl.

I have often reflected lately on that feeling I had to "have another baby, right now" and wondered if I got that prompting so that Amelia would be here with me now as I go through my struggle. Since she was born the song I sing most to her is "You Are My Sunshine". That is very true of her. She lightens me when all my skies are gray. She brings me immense comfort. She is a joy.

Her birthday is the same day I had her little sister. Those two girls will always be linked in my mind. There is much that they share. I can't help but think how lucky the each would have been to be able to grow up with one another as sisters.

People talk about finding comfort in the possibility of raising children who have died in the millennium, but honestly, I don't feel that comforted. Even if it turns out to be true for me, my children will not be able to grow up together. C.T. and Lily and Amelia wont be able to have memories of her as children together.

Lily is almost exactly the same age as I was when my little sister was born. I remember so much about when Sally was a baby. I remember "helping" to take care of a baby. Lily would have been so great at that. So great. She would have loved it so much. This would have the been the only sibling she remembered as a baby. Same for C.T. for that matter. This wold have been the one they actually remembered. I am sad about the opportunity they have lost. The opportunity we all have lost.

I think Amelia has brought great comfort to C.T. and Lily also.  She is kind of our family mascot right now.  I don't know all the reasons why I felt I should "have a baby, right now", but I'm so glad I did.  I know Amelia is meant to be with us, and we are all so, so grateful.

Quote

I like to check in on a couple of blogs of mothers who have lost children. One of them is "A Daily Scoop" by Stephanie Waite in Las Vegas. She wrote a post recently that included this statement:

"There is a sense of failure that comes from losing a child. It devastates your self image as a mother. No matter how they died, there is a sense that you failed to keep them alive. That is built into your DNA - Keep them alive. To fail at that, even if it was out of your hands or you know it was God's will for them to go at this time, is devastating."

So true.

Foothills and Valleys

I know the usual phrase is "Peaks and Valleys", but I can't say that I've made it to anything close to a peak yet. I have managed the foothills though. Sometimes I don't stay there for long before I find myself on the downward slope to the valley again. Last week I would say I was at one of the lowest places in that valley, but this week I am striding up to the foothills again. That's how it goes, up and down, up and down. So, sometimes I may write about the view from the valley floor, and sometimes the outlook may be more broad. I hope you don't mind when I describe the scene down low - I don't want to keep it completely to myself, but I also don't want you to think that I have lost hope of ever climbing out. I don't know what this journey is going to look like for me. I just take it how it comes. I'm not going to pressure myself to feel happy, or say that I feel at peace with my life. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.

A Tight Space

I feel the way I think people with claustrophobia must feel. My chest tightens. Breathing takes thought. The world around me looks surreal. I concentrate to keep myself from breaking into tiny shards of myself. I feel this way not when faced with an elevator or a room with no windows, but when I open eyes in the morning and am faced with life. Nearly every second of the day I feel this way. And I think, "This is crazy. Surely this can't be. Surely none of this real." And many times a day I realize that, yes, it is real. This is it. This is life now. My life is a tight space. I can't breathe in it. And sometimes, I don't even want to.

So I live each day, telling myself that really breathing is not optional and I need to just do it. So I do. And lots of people think I am fine. And I am fine. Fine. People can live like this. I can live like this. I have to.

Gift

I am giving myself an early Christmas gift. I am giving myself permission to feel whatever comes and then LET IT GO.

That may involve writing about it. Between this blog and my journal I have saved hundreds of dollars in counseling fees.

So, what I'm saying is, I may write about things that are making me sad or mad at that moment, but I'm writing it to let it out - to not have to hold on to it anymore. That includes my recent feeling of thinking that no one is my friend. I'm letting that go. It is a very real feeling, but it does me no good to hold on to it. So I've decided to assume that everyone is really my friend and would talk to me if they knew how and just move on. The end.

Words

A simple question like "how are you?" is so much harder to answer now. I want to be truthful. The answers I have been using don't feel all that truthful. I say:
"Fine" (That is not really true)
"Okay" (Not really true either)

So, what is true? In my search for words I find some to be more fitting than others. In those first few days the only word I could think of to answer this question that sounded true was "heartbroken".

These days I think of the word "bereft". It makes me think of "adrift", which is accurate too.

Of course, there is always "sad", which is more often than not true. I still cry at least twice a day, but it is not always as intense as it was in the beginning.

Even though I don't really know how to answer the "how are you?" question, I would still appreciate being asked by someone who was willing to get the real answer. I feel like when people ask me this, they are just waiting for the "fine" or the "okay". They don't really want to get into it. Most people don't ask me anything at all. In fact, most people don't talk to me at all. Or, if they do, it is a brief conversation about something else with a total avoidance of the most obvious topic. It hurts my feelings to have people talk to me without ever saying anything about this situation. It is painful to have people pretend like nothing ever happened - because something happened. Something big happened. When they ignore that, it feels like they are marginalizing the whole experience and its implications to my future. It feels so lonely, and frankly makes me feel angry. If I know someone has experienced a major loss I hope I won't go on as normal around them, acting like nothing happened and assuming that they can carry on life as usual. There is no life as usual for me anymore. I feel as if I have changed forever, and I don't know what the new me is like at all. I just know I don't want to be the same. In some way, not being normal is the only way I can acknowledge my baby who is not with us. No one else seems to want to acknowledge it, so it is left to me to act differently, to change, to show the world outwardly that I am no longer the same inside because if I don't they will never remember. They will never realize that she was here, and now she's gone, and it is so very real to me.