Poorly Prepared and in the Twilight Zone

I can’t imagine life a year from now.  I can’t imagine life a month from now.  Hell, I can barely imagine life a day from now.  Our house is under contract for sale.  We are supposed to be given a closing date by the beginning of August so that sometime in August we will be living somewhere else.  Somewhere Gabbie will never be. 

D says that he can’t live his life looking backward at things that have happened.  I understand this notion.  But I don’t think I look backwards.  It’s more of living by looking forward to a future that is unimaginable.  How can I imagine a life without my baby?  How can I imagine a future without a child that I had?  If she had been born alive and breathing and growing and someone had taken her from me I’d have raged like a mother lion.  Don’t take my child and expect me not to fight!  But, there is no one to fight.  I get to fight my confounded mind, and time, and grief, and exhaustion.  I get to pit what my body KNOWS as reality--- I had a child... and what my mind believes--- she should be here still, against reality--- she’s gone forever and I still have to imagine the future.  I live each day in a sort of unstable bubble of acceptance that swirls with disbelief.  It is not that I don’t believe she’s gone, I absolutely do; with every muscle, tendon, vein, artery, organ, cell, chromosome, thread of spirit, to the deepest depths of my soul, I know she’s gone.  The phrase, “She’d want you to move on,” is like a foreign language.  She’d want me to move on?  I think she’d much rather BE HERE.  And move on?  To an unimaginable future without her on a date we haven’t yet planned, to a new house we haven’t picked, in a neighborhood we don’t know, to have a future without her.  Ha… it sounds like some fictional tale of the sorts of Tim Burton.

I know we were going to sell the house anyway.  That is inconsequential because all of the reasons for selling (and there are MANY) remain the same except one: we no longer need more room.  But the matter at hand is that all the changes that I had planned on facing anyway are now compounded with the major change that I cannot UNchange.  I used to think I dealt satisfactorily with change.  Used to… good phrase (there’s my old sarcasm!).  Now I don’t know if I deal with change at all.  I can’t tell.  Am I just watching things change around me with my hands thrown up in the air in complete self-effacement, taking all this as a humbling lesson in life? Or am I raging against what Fate, Destiny, God, the world (whoever decided to deal this torture) is trying to accomplish around me like an irate child throwing a hissy fit because I didn’t get my way?

I try to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for facing the world each day.  I feel like at any moment it will maul me to an unrecognizable mass if it decides that it doesn’t want me to get too settled into what I THINK will happen.   Yesterday’s episode from the Twilight Zone at the dentists’ office is an excellent example that totally threw me.  I walked into the office accompanied by a small yellowish-white butterfly (a forlorn sweetness… hi Baby Girl).  And then the Twilight Zone started.  Now I wish I’d at least been forewarned by the tell-tale music.  But instead it started with every recently-post-pregnant woman’s situational “when are you due” crap from a well-meaning but totally naïve stranger.  (You do know that you never ask a woman that right?!  Not EVER!)  The woman behind the desk asked me if the heat was getting to me.  When I responded to more than one prompt of this with… “Um no it’s not too hot,” (trying to give her a get out jail free card) she suddenly must have realized her error, and back-pedaled with, “I remember even after I was pregnant how hot I always felt.”  Then she saw my chart and said, “When did you have the baby?”  I responded with “I just had her two months ago”… and before I could add a single word onto the phrase she’d already called through the office to the dentist , the technicians and receptionists, “SHE HAD THE BABY!”  The next hour was spent with congratulatory remarks that had already gotten way out of hand.  Not one asked me about the baby, they just reminisced about their own, or what number in their family line they were, until I was getting up from the chair when the dentist (a man! The only man present in fact!) finally asked how she was and how my delivery went.  By then, I couldn’t tell them.  I couldn’t watch every face in the office fall, or hear apologies, or be asked for an explanation.  I couldn’t make them feel like crap when, on any other day of perhaps their whole life, with any other woman, their enthusiasm for a new baby would be accepted, appreciated, and even expected.  So I said, “fine.”  It was anything but “fine”; I felt anything but fine.  I made it out of the office without a tear.  I walked back to the truck without a tear followed by a small light yellowish-white butterfly (Thank you Sweet Baby).  I got in the truck and suddenly I could see nothing through my tears except that butterfly.  I heaved deep gulping breaths of sobbing pain.  I felt as though I lied.  She was not fine.  It was not fine.  I was not fine.  The world WAS NOT FINE!  It had been both easy and painful to just say fine.  It was easy because I didn’t have to watch the shattering effects of it, and painful because I somehow felt as though I had lied to them, to her, to me.  Most days I want to scream from the windows of my house “Stop making so much noise, I’m grieving here,” or yell from my car to jerky drivers, “move out of my way I’m sad because I don’t have my baby and don’t want to have to deal with you stupid ass and your stupid stick people family stickers right now,”  but instead of telling them I lied.  Now I will either have to face them for real when the Twilight Zone is not so wayward and confess if it’s brought up again, or just switch dentists entirely to somewhere where they don’t know me, which is a much more inviting idea although totally unrealistic.  But at least it’d be an imaginable part of an unknown future.  How nice in a way, it would be to just avoid.  But when have I ever, and I do mean EVER avoided something?  With my chin held high and my sarcasm as a shield I have, through my whole life, never avoided.  I might be non-confrontational, but I don’t avoid. 

This blog here, it makes me not avoid.  Avoidance, does nothing to make long-term life easier.  Avoidance means someday I will have to face it.  I cannot hide from the truth.   I’d love to avoid the hard days forever.  I wish I could avoid the truth like it’s not the truth at all.  I HATE with my whole being the “firsts” of a Gabbie-less, a baby-loss, an unimaginable future.  I cannot run, dip, weave, or duck from this Gabbie-less future.  I just hope that, even with my mental preparation, the world is not always as cruel as this Twilight Zone.  I apparently don’t know how to prepare for the Twilight Zone which is perhaps why I cannot imagine this Gabbie-less future, because many days, in regard to this, at least, I am stuck in a perpetual Twilight Zone.   And that leads me back to the quandary of deciding how to adjust to change.  Do I go with the me whose hands are thrown up in the air like the Carrie Underwood song giving up control to an unseen worker of the universe or the me who is fighting against the onslaught of unjust treatment of having to live an unimaginable future in a world that is deciding my life for me?  Who will win I wonder?  One seems weak and the other bitchy.  I like neither.  I wonder if I can find a happy medium. 

Empty

Yesterday I cried, a lot.  Facebook had pictures of friends’ new babies plastered all over it like a parenting magazine advertisements, with proud parents and smiling friends.  I’m glad the world is right for them.  Gracie is noticeably getting older: going on the potty, day one of Operation Lose Binky, and talking up a storm.  My baby isn’t a baby anymore.  And of course, it’s been 2 months since Gabbie has left us.  It feels like forever since she’s been gone and yet it still hurts like it happened yesterday.  I’m not healed enough to patch the emptiness I feel when faced with such stark contrasts of everything that I don’t have. 

Derek’s afraid that I’ll miss life around me while I cry, because I won’t be able to see it through the tears.  He wants me to be the smiling, joking woman he married.  I try.  I know he feels badly when I’m sad.  I don’t think I could hide it even if I wanted to.  But I do think that I play with the girls more, and spend more quality time with them, I hope they can’t always see the sad.  And I try to show him that I love him more than words every day. I hope he sees it. It is hard for me to understand his grief process and for him to understand mine.  He seems to be much more at peace with it than I am.  I cannot fathom that peace yet, though I try to find some.  It’s hard to find it when the place in my heart that she would have filled is empty.  My heart was full before I knew we were pregnant.  The girls and Derek were enough.  Then I had Gabbie too.  And even before I knew she was a ‘she’, I loved her.  My heart grew to make room.  It grew to accommodate a place for another girlie into our family.  Then she was gone.  Now I have an empty spot that cannot and will not ever be filled.  I have arms that were expectant of a baby to hold.  I held her in the hospital, and now I have to be content with just that memory to appease my proverbial empty arms.  I was mentally prepared to be the mother of an infant.  It’s different to be the mother of an infant versus the mother of two growing girls.  I know I have my two girls, but they don’t rely on me anymore like an infant would.  Skyler is nearly self-sufficient with just a bit of guidance, and Gracie is all about her independent “Gracie do” phrase every time I ask her if she needs help.  My babies aren’t babies.  I should have a true baby, and I don’t.  And it’s empty.  But one cannot explain empty, not really at least.

It’s sort of like when you realize you left something behind that you have with you all the time, and you aren’t really sure where you left it, but more intense.  It’s an empty like when you really want something, or crave for something and can’t comeby it, but less superficial.  It’s the feeling of early love when your significant other leaves and the instant they walk out the door you wish they’d turn around and come back, but deeper.  It’s similar to your first teenage love ended, without an explanation, and you think your world has ended, that you’ll never find another, but truly you’ll never find another.  It’s like losing or breaking a trinket that your favorite person in the world, or not in this world, has given you, and it can’t be fixed, but not in a tangible way.  It’s like the sound of the term paper you worked so hard on for a professor that is accidently ripping as you take it from your bag, but more agonizing.  It’s like a thunderstorm that rolls over your house when you are at your loneliest and every raindrop that falls is like one more tear that cannot be contained, but sharper.  It’s looking forward to holding a tiny warm miniature combination of you and your best friend that represented your love for each other, and realizing that she’s not warm, she won’t ever look at you, and you can never take her home.  It’s realizing that no matter what you would never have been able to save her, that no matter how close she was to you or how perfect she seemed she would never breathe, never again have a heartbeat, never wrap her tiny fingers around yours, never purse her lips in sleep, and never come home.  It’s the feeling that forever you will be minus one, even if you add more, have another child, buy a puppy, or bring home a kitten.  There is nothing in this world that will ever take her place, and no matter what, her place will always be empty.  It’s that kind of empty.  A forever empty.  A deep and jagged empty.  A babyloss empty.  And even the English language has made it empty, there is no word to describe the empty that a mama without a baby to hold is. 

I told Derek that I hope miracles are performed this summer.  Work is not something I’m mentally or emotionally prepared to face just yet.  Sometimes I wonder if taking care of other people’s grown-up babies will be more or less tolerable now.  I have two months to figure that out I guess.  I have two months to figure out how to not let my empty show.

 Empty is so raw.  Empty is so lonely.  That part of me, the Gabbie part of me, is so empty. I can't wait until the full parts of my heart can make the empty part less jagged.  I can feel it working, but it's seems like it's going to take so long and empty is so stubborn. 

sick over it...

I wrote my blog yesterday and then I couldn’t sleep.  The butterflies inside were back again.  Up until yesterday I had never considered it.  I never wondered.  It never even crossed my mind.  Perhaps I was just so overwhelmed and now that time has passed I can think more clearly.  I’ve read about abortions, to educate myself, to be able to understand how and why, and just because I’m female and I think that it’s important.  At 20 weeks a fetus has the ability to feel, to hurt, to acknowledge pain in so much as a baby can acknowledge anything.  Had she been born and gotten pinched, or the shock of the cold air outside my womb been too much to bear she’d have cried, she’d have voiced her pain. That knowledge is what kept my eyes from closing last night except to blink back tears.  For hours my mind fought sleep.  All I could think about was that Gabbie was 38 weeks in gestation.  She was 38 weeks and could have felt pain.  I had imagined, as far as wounded mind can imagine such a thing, that she had softly closed her eyes and quietly slipped away in her sleep, tucked up warm where all babies are safest.    Up until now I had thought she would have passed easily up to Gramps, and that Angels would have held her close.  Now, I don’t know if her passing would have been easy.  And it hurts to think.  There is nowhere in the world that a baby can be closer to her mother than within her.  Yet even that could not have saved her from her pain.  Did she have pain?  I’m not asking the question because I want to hurt too.  I’m asking because now that the question is swimming around my head and before my eyes I want to know the answer.  Is there an answer? 

                All this time I was worried about me, and that she was gone, and that my dreams were shattered by her leaving me, how I was going to raise her sisters without her, how I was going to make sure that Derek knew I loved him every day even though I hurt.  How selfish.  How could I not have considered that my tiny baby with the bow lips, chubby cheeks, and full head of hair, may have suffered?

                The cord had been wrapped around her neck four times.  I know that technically she doesn’t breathe but her lungs would have filled with fluid and expelled it to practice breathing.  Her head would have needed the blood flow that would have been interrupted by the tightening cord.  There is no way to know how long her cord had been wrapped. Her heart rate had always been good.   Am I to believe she did not hurt?  Am I to believe that she wouldn’t have fought?  She moved so much inside me, all night, all day, sometimes violent bouts of kicks and hits, could that have been her fighting to save her life?  Could that have been her trying to get unwound and only making it worse?

                I used to joke about how big I got.  My babies had a mansion, in comparison to other women, that was huge, with plenty of room for comfort.  Each time I had a c-section the fluid was way more than the doctors had accounted for.  The extra fluid that my body produced of its own accord had provided them ample amounts of room to grow, much to my chagrin and collection of ill-fitting clothing.  I had come to accept my largeness as a good thing for her.  But now, I hate my body for producing so much fluid.  Perhaps if it had not, she would not have had the room to move so much, she would not have had the room to turn so many times.  Perhaps her mansion would not have killed her. 

                These are thoughts that have crossed my mind.  It doesn’t mean I blame myself.  I know I could not have known.  There is not a window to my insides. I could not wipe away fog and see the beautiful baby within.  I could not have known.  But God,… now that the thought has crossed my mind, how can I convince myself that my tiny defenseless baby I had lovingly conceived, grew, talked to, named, loved, … How can I convince myself that my Gabraella did not suffer a terrible strangling death right inside me and I did not know?  I’m sick over it. 

but your gone, butterfly

I never thought I’d lose you

Though I never really had you

I miss you

Everyday

I think of you, hurt for you, cry for you

For 8 weeks now

You’ve been gone

And it feels like yesterday

When the angels took you up to heaven

I held you close

And I told you that I love you

Even though you were already gone

I hoped that you would breathe

And I held my breath waiting

For you to come back to me

I had hoped that they were wrong

But your breath and light were gone

So I miss you

And I love you

For now and always

A part of me is missing

And I’m sorry sweet baby if you suffered

I did not know that you needed help

For if I’d known I’d have fought the devil

 

tears, bullshit and butterflies

We loaded the kids in the car, Gabbie too.  Friday was a hellish kind of day anyway and it took us a bit longer to get to camping than we’d wanted but we got there.  We unloaded.  Then I cried.  Or I cried while I unloaded.  We’d not have been there if not for circumstances being the way they are.  Derek says they are unrelated events.  We lost Gabbie because we lost Gabbie.  We went camping because we bought a camper… for us.  It’s hard to agree to that, but there is no argument in it.  If telling himself that works then okay, for me there’s no way the two are unrelated but it is what it is and it can’t be changed.  We did it for the girls, and for us, because of the sadness and the need for change.  And the girls had fun, and Derek had a decent time, and I did too, sort of.  At least it'll get better, the firsts of something tied to her are the hardest.  So… so we went camping and so I cried.  On and off all weekend, I cried, sometimes by myself and sometimes he would know.  I wanted him to have a nice Father’s day weekend.  Father’s day weekend when the man I love doesn’t have one of the precious children to hold that we made in love, together, to love endlessly, because she’s gone.

 “It’s just another day,” he said, “I don’t need a specific day to appreciate them or for them to appreciate me.”

So I cried again, because I miss her to the pit of my stomach that tightens and pulsates where I used to feel her kick, and I wish we had her for him to hold and appreciate.  I wanted to say that I’m sorry… I still feel as though it was somehow my fault, that I should have known, but I can’t say that because he’ll just say, “sorry for what? You didn’t do anything.” And I won’t be able to explain.  I hugged him instead and told him I love him, and I cried.  And I pretend I have fully convinced myself that it’s not my fault. 

Gabbie must have known how I felt about it all.  She’d been around all weekend, and no one but me seemed to notice the orange butterfly that swirled around us on and off all day Saturday.  No one seemed to notice her slipping through the greenery around the puppies that played or the fireplace that still smoked.  He didn’t notice her, I asked him, and neither did some of the others when I asked them if they’d seen the butterfly.  He wanted to know jokingly if I’d created the delusion of a butterfly, and then said with a smile, “Coincidence? Or not? We’ll never know.”  Not.  I know it was her.

Then it was Sunday, yesterday, and time to start my first birth control.  There’s that tightening in my stomach again.  “We don’t need another baby right now, right?” His voice.  Not so much a question, much more like a statement phrased just right to feel out the opposition.  I absolutely do too need a baby right now.  I need Gabbie.  But I can’t have her.  And it’s terribly unfair, and f’d up.  I want to throw a tantrum like this two year old here who has grown far too quickly the last few weeks that she’s hardly a baby.  She was supposed to stay a baby a bit longer.  But he’s right I guess; he’s right that physically I probably can’t handle one right now.  Emotionally, it’s probably not wise to have one now, either.  Not with all the anxiety that will go with it.  But oh how I want one.  I’m exhausted all the time anyway from not really sleeping well, what would be the difference if I were exhausted from pregnancy too?  I know it wouldn’t replace my Gabbie, I just want her damn it!  And I can’t have her and I’m so sad that I have to take something to keep from having anymore right now even though I know it’s probably the best for me.  But it makes me angry too. He said I didn't have to take it if I didn't want to.  And I don't want to.  But I do have to.  I know that as clearly as I know that birthing a dead baby is more than just a nightmare and something that may break me if it happens again. Not that I don't feel broken as it is, terribly shattered and taped back together in little shards that threaten to break apart with the smallest gust of emotion. 1 in 150 births end in stillborn births.  I've been that awful percentile once, why couldn't I be on that side again? So I take birth control partly because I'm terrified to love another one and lose it too. 

Life has decided that it’s not enough for me to have a c-section and to have my body wrecked by a baby that I can’t even show off to feed the vanity that is totally lost now, but also to now have to take birth control that initially makes my body feel like garbage until it kicks in.  Let me just say that the headaches, the nausea, body aches, the crazy-bi-polarish mood swings oscillating between anger, tears and angry tears are more than I can handle with any amount of grace. 

So awesome, I get to feel like shit, to not have any babies, and not have MY baby to hold close.  Super f’n awesome. 

with or without "her"

I was thinking of things to pack.  Tomorrow is Thursday, and we’re leaving for the camping trailer’s debut Friday.  I have to be packed.  Trailer is set; the food shopping is nearly done, now to pack clothes and whatnots.  Is it silly that I want to pack HER too?  I know that she is with me.  I KNOW this.  But, how do I leave HER behind?  The logical side of me knows that they are only ashes, that the “real” her is all around me.  But that’s not logical either.  Where is there logic in that?  “All around me,” “Real,” “With me.”  None of that is logical.  What the hell?!  How do I leave her behind?  It is only camping.  It is only for a couple days.  But, but… but… She should be there too.  We would not be there if she were here, we would not have bought the trailer if she were here.  Shit.  I’ve just realized how hard this weekend is going to be.  We should not be there.  We should not be there without her, or at all.  Yet we are, because we are without her.  And how do I leave her, the substance of her, at home?  I don’t want someone to tell me not to bring her.  I don’t know who would but anyone I guess.  Yet I want someone to talk pretend logic into me to tell me not to bring her so I can rage and cry and say “She should come too” because it’s not logical and nothing is logical.  And I never really raged and threw stuff or exploded or imploded even though I should have. 

None of this makes sense. 

This weekend is supposed to be fun and relaxing and family time.  It will be.  I will make sure the girls have fun.  But, I don’t want to be far from her for so long.  I know it’s not long, but it feels long.  We’ve stayed away similar amounts of time.  (But she should be with us.)  Maybe it is because of what it is?  That we wouldn’t be there if we had her?  (But she should be with us.)  I have no response to “how long will I want her close.”  I have no response… forever?  Until the fifteenth of some unknown month at some time in the distant or not distant future… but no… the fifteenth is too close to the 25^th, so is the 26^th.  I have no idea. 

I know she is not alive.  I know that there is nothing that I need to do with ashes that require them along.  But what if I want to hold her and cry and she’s not there.  She already isn’t there… my arms will be empty… again… anyway… 

It’s weird having a baby that you don’t really have.  And then what if I bring her and don’t cry at all… still no sense. 

None of this makes sense and suddenly I’m lost all over again and still have no idea what to do with Gabbie or without her. 

My messenger...

Monica has cancer.  She gets up every morning, she fights her body as it tries to bring her down.  But her heart soars above the pain.  She has three girls, a husband, family and friends that love her deeply.  She gets out of bed each morning for them.  She thanks God.  She thanks him for blessing her with all the things that keep her moving, and keep her fighting.  Monica has courage.  Monica has a heart the size of the ocean.  She has concern for me.  For me?!  Noble, courageous, faithful, loving Monica.  I’ve only got a broken heart Monica.  It takes some courage for those who are left behind to get up every day, true; but it takes epic amounts of it to continue with a smile when faced with such a demon as the one that stands before her.  And still she thanks God.  I did not thank Him when he took my Gabbie.  I did not thank him, I blamed him.  Yet she blames only her body.  I am envious of her strength and her courage and steadfastness of soul.  I am honored by her heart and friendship and her concern of me. 

My best friend Cyndy made a point, perhaps it was not God who took her, but the Devil instead because he was trying to make me question God and myself.  She says that he has failed.   God stepped up and made her an angel in Heaven because it was not right for the Devil to take her from me . And his plan backfired in his face! My relationship with Derek is stronger ... I appreciate Sky and Gracie more ... I am praying more ... I see signs from Gabbie. The Devil was trying to weaken me ... all he has done is made me stronger!  Maybe she is right. Maybe, although I did not get to keep her, I got something even greater.  

I’ve cried fewer tears lately.  I think my soul is in shock of life.  We’ve been so busy that it’s provided me little opportunity for sorrow to take hold.  We picked up our new camper, we plan on filling it tonight and dropping it off for camping this weekend.  A relaxing weekend will be nice.  It hurts to think that the camper would not have happened if Gabbie could have stayed for a life with us. Our house has an offer and the inspection tomorrow.  It will go well.  It has to.  Life cannot be filled with constant disappointments.  We will be deciding where our life will take us after Wednesday.  I still believe Gabbie helped us get that offer.  I think that she will help the inspection go well too. 

 I’ve thought a lot about Monica and Gabbie lately.  I have two girls who need me here on earth.  Monica has three.  Our courage and drive comes from our girls and for our girls.  Since I cannot hold one of my girls and only be held by her, I can at least ask Gabbie to keep Monica safe, and give her strength and courage; I can be thankful to have an angel on my side in heaven whose soul was too old and wise to live here on earth and whose beauty was too much for me to keep.  For surely an angel whose name means messenger from God who heralded the birth of children, would bring the grace of God to someone whose heart is so big and soul is so kind and who needs to take care of her babies on earth.  Maybe my loss of something so beautiful and old can be Monica’s gain.  She beat it once she can beat it again to live to be beautiful in old age.  And it doesn’t hurt to pray. 

Reaching...

              I posted a status update about messages or signs from loved ones in Heaven, to let us know they are there.  My friend Christina commented that she knows they respond to questions spoken out loud.  Throughout the day on Monday I felt somehow I’d been given signs.  I wrote about it in blog post about Angels and butterflies.  She said if I asked a question I’d be given an answer, but what kind of question do you ask that’s worthy of an angel?

                So I sat on my bed at 9:30 at night on Monday, and I looked at Gabbie’s bear.  “How do I know you’re there?” I asked aloud.  I didn’t expect a response.  Pulling the blanket over me, I turned out the light and fell asleep.  10 minutes into being out cold, (so just before 10) Derek came into the room with the computer and showed me the screen.  We’d just received an offer on our house.   Our realtor said it just came in. 

                Maybe this isn’t a sign at all. But who makes an offer on a house at 10 o’clock at night? Maybe it is a sign.  Gabbie was born just before 10 pm.  I asked her how I’d know.  Maybe I’m reaching.  Maybe I just want it to be a sign.  Maybe I just want it to be her so bad to know she’s close to me.  I’m educated.  I know the definition of random, coincidence and variability.  But maybe…?

                Part of me is sad that I am trying for a connection to her.  Can’t I just accept that she is gone? The answer to that is no.  My baby should not be just “gone.”  Gone from here?  Gone from me?  Forever?  To never hold or hug or see?  I want her close.  So I reach. 

                My friend Allison tells me to stop questioning that she's reaching out to me and just accept that she is. 

                I got the mail today.  A package from the hospital arrived; it was a “Certificate of Life” for Gabraella Joy Swader.  NYS doesn’t count her as having life unless she takes a breath outside the womb.  But she was alive to me.  She moved, had a heartbeat, blinked, hiccupped, sucked her thumb, kicked, so who gives a shit that it wasn’t outside the womb.  Her “Certificate of Life” is the closest to a birth certificate I’ll ever get. But I birthed her.  I have the scar to prove it.  I have the scar across my body and the one across my heart to prove she’s gone too.  “It’s just a paper,” said Derek, “It’s just a paper.”  He’s right, I know. But it’s more than a paper too.  If I’d had her the day before she would have breathed and then she would have been alive? A day sooner? Given a birth certificate?

                I hope she still has “Life” and is near me, somewhere in this universe that gives and then takes away.  And so I reach. 

                 

angels and butterflies

                A couple days ago I had a conversation about a terrible single car accident in which a young girl died but the other passengers (her parents) in the car lived.  I was, and still am, struggling to accept the randomness of life and our inability to control any of it.  The story has stuck with me of the sadness of losing a young girl to something so random, and now how terribly hurt her parents must be by the loss.  Randomness , like a baby dying only days before she was scheduled to come out, and a teenager dying so suddenly a day before her birthday are things that I just can’t wrap my head around. 

                Yesterday, in honor of my Gabbie, I recreated a bracelet, that my sister had given me when I was still in the hospital, to reflect the memory of my baby.  I changed the beads of the bracelet to soft pink, opalescent crystals, silver, crystal butterflies and her charm instead of the deep silver that they had been.  My sister, the one who gave me the bracelet has always believed that our grandfather showed himself to her in the form of butterflies.  I thought what harm could it do, maybe gramps is watching out for her. 

                Today, my husband and I received a small painting in the mail accompanied by a letter.  The painting was that of an angel and butterflies.  The letter mentioned that very accident that I’ve often thought of.  She mentioned, too, that a medium had told friends of the family that the girl didn’t suffer but was taken to heaven by angels who surrounded her like butterflies.  The medium also claimed that the girl was given the job in heaven of helping young children to cross over. 

                There is no way the friend could have been privy to any of this.  She could not have known about my conversation regarding the accident.  Nor could she have known about the butterflies.  Yet here is this letter and painting referencing both. 

                Is it possible?  Might these be coincidences?  Am I reaching?  Or is Gabbie reaching out to me?  I so miss that tiny face.  My stepfather and mother gave me an angel necklace, because she is my angel.  My father and step mother sent me a teardrop necklace to remind me that there are no tears in heaven.  I wear both hoping they are true.  I have cried so many tears down here, without her.  I just wish… I miss holding her and watching her sleep.  I miss cupping her tiny head with my hand to feel her fuzzy hair; she had so much hair.  I just wish I could have heard her cry, watched her chest rise and fall.  I wish I could have seen her eyes.  I said in my last blog that I have stopped asking why and “The answerless question has been replaced by a collection of butterflies that have taken up residence in my stomach.”  Now I realize how heart wrenching this quote is if she’d been trying to show me she’s been there the whole time.