Warning: if you have come to read this blog for hope and inspiration, you won't find it today.
4 Years since You Slipped Away-
Hello baby girl,my FAITH,
I used to write you so often- daily turned to weekly to monthly, and now I try not to. Some would think that means I'm getting stronger, but those that have lost a child know it means I'm running. I have to ignore my reality in order to survive. Four years of torture has been my reality, and it is a life sentence. Yes, I wake up every morning to this reality and decide to live- to live for you and for your brother and sisters. Not for me... I don't want to be in a world that is not complete. A mother should not have to live in a place where her child has died. I try really hard to fight this everyday, then the day comes, the anniversary of when you left. Then the day we heard the dreaded words, im sorry there is no heartbeat. Next, the darkest day, yet with the most beautiful moments of holding you for the first and last time after 23 hrs of labor. Begging you to look back at me. You have to do all the things that Grace has been waiting on you for. You have to wake up. She won't wake up.... I chanted the words, i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you hoping it was enough to last a lifetime. It wasn't enough... I want and yearn for so much more with you. The trick to all of this is learning to deal without ever getting what you want. A want that feels like a need. This is where we shove reality away. Today, I will have my moment and shove it back down as deep as I can, and be the mother I know you would want me to be. I am your mom too though. I want nothing more than to cry this day, this weekend away. I don't want to smile...
The last few days have been torture. So many emotions and thoughts swirling around in my mind. This seems to happen when I put off addressing my feelings. Well, I have spent the last few evenings taking all of my anger and sadness out on your garden. I usually enjoy your garden. I think of how much you must like it because you send so many butterflies for me to watch each morning as I get ready. Well, lately I have ignored your garden like those feelings. The weeds have overgrown most of the flowers, yet some have managed to keep living. Those flowers represent your love to me, it will never die. The weeds are all those feelings I have thought I successively shoved down deep enough to not feel. Sooner or later, if I want to see the beauty in this life or your garden, I have to deal with the weeds. So I did. Like a mad women, I ripped them all away with my bear hands(because Mema aka Granny Clampet(sp) broke the garden sheers :/) I spent hours crying and ripping away. At the end we had a beautiful garden again. I wish these feelings were that easy to rip away.
Your butterflies have arrived this morning. All 48 of them. One for each month without you. I remember journaling my plans before your first birthday. Little did I know that the first birthday would be the easiest. I was so excited that I thought of releasing butterflies for each month without you, and how beautiful it would be to see more and more as you got older. Oh, it will be beautiful, but all those butterflies represent so much pain. I want so much to be optimistic today. I do so much to keep you alive in this world. I will go to my grave making sure people know that I have five children. Grief is so draining though. It is a constant battle for me to make your short life something positive and not all of this I'm writing about. I have met so many wonderful women because of you. After you died,I became so jaded to the people of this world that have not buried a child. Don't get me wrong there are some crazy people that I have dealt with, BUT one by one you and God have sent some amazing people into my life to break down that wall. First,my twin Sara: we became so close during my pregnancy with you. She has never treated me differently, but has always offered a shoulder to cry on when I need it. She has stuck by me no matter how crazy it has gotten. Second, the angel that I know you chose before you even left, our nurse Sherry. I don't think she will ever realize just how much she has done for us. She is a friend for life because of you. Third, and I don't think she would even think she would be on the list, but she is and it is well deserved :) Amy, she does work in the infant loss world,but I can sit and laugh and talk about nothing and in the next moment we are planning a candle lighting for Oct. 15th. It almost feels like she is another angel mom. ;) Cathy from Jackson hospital has from the beginning of us donating baskets there has always been so receptive to my advice and genuinely cares for angel moms. There are many more, but these women that do not know from personal experience what it is like to bury a child, still as women know how painful it would be. This journal was supposed to be dark, all of the emotions I have pinned up inside for months. Instead once again, Faith, you make me find the good in everything. I refuse to find the good in your death. I could say without you dying, local hospitals would not have baskets.... Well, someone else could have and i would love to have all of my babies and help them do something in memory of their baby.I could say there would be no CBRS in Alabama... Someone else would have fought for it. I could ignorantly say as others do that Hope would not be here... I'm fertile and this would be the exact age that you would have been if I were about to have #5. I don't see the things I do as something good that I do because you died. I see them as my way to keep my daughter alive in this world. It is that simple. Women that you meet that have buried their child and they are doing great things, they are doing them to keep their children alive in this world and to change the way this world perceives infant death. We don't like being part of a taboo subject. Our children are beautiful
People that have made a difference in this world. no matter how short their lives were. They are beautiful and I will never stop talking about my daughter, my lving children's sister, the little girl that has done more good in this world than most who will get to live 90 years.
I am forever grateful for all the angel mamas and their babies that I have met along the way. There are too many too list. I never thought that my tomboy self would ever have so many girlfriends.;) I do, and I wouldn't and couldn't survive this without them. Thank you to you all.
Once again, you have brought me out of the darkness with your beautiful light. No matter how down I become, your beautiful light makes me see the good. Death, sadness, grief, anger will not win. I love you my gorgeous daughter. You are forever cherished and never forgotten. Thank you for all that you are and who you have made me become. I will celebrate you even through the tears.
Love,
Mommy
