to honor her

I went to the cemetery with my in-laws to water the flowers on the graves of family: cousin, great-aunt, grandparents, great-grandparents; they are our family in heaven watching out for us.  I never met some of them.  I hope they would have liked me.  On the graves of Grandma and Grandpa Swader is an iron butterfly on a metal stick stuck in the ground go hover in the air next to the gravestone.  I hope there is a place for them to meet her and that she is held and loved until I can hold her someday.  I didn’t say anything to Derek’s parents.  What do you say to someone to tell them that you noticed that they try in their own way to honor my baby-loss too?  It is their loss too.  Sometimes I forget that she is something to other people too, outside the immediate us, I mean.  It’s just she was so mine and so close, and she left me so quickly, and it hurt so damn much.  I know that people grieve on their own, like me, I cry in shower, or in the car, or in my pillow, on Derek’s shoulder, when I make dinner by myself, and in the dark.  My sadness doesn’t need to be others' sadness.  Part of me writes this blog for me to grieve, and part of me writes this blog so she’s not forgotten.  I’m afraid of time rolling by and the world moving on and she becoming a forever gone kind of thing.  I don’t want her to be forever gone.  Words here, on the internet, and saved, and in print become a forever thing, like I wish she were. 

                Part of me wishes I had a place to go to honor her and to sit and think.  I wish I had a place marked with her name so the world would know she was someone loved and her marker would be able to be read for as long as the world will allow it to be.  I have her ashes but where do you put the ashes of a baby?  She went nowhere except with me, where do the ashes of a baby belong?  With me?  Forever?  Everywhere?  I can’t imagine spreading her ashes anywhere just yet.  I don’t even like leaving her ashes at home when we camp.  But I think too, that I don’t need a place for me to go to love her, I love her every day.

 I think of her everyday certainly.  All day long I can feel the loss of her in my soul.  I have been trying to honor my love for her by doing things to appreciate life more since she didn’t have enough of it.  I try hard to enjoy the girls; although, Gracie is trying on my patience she is sweet and goofy and Skyler is getting older more opinionated, though she is beautiful and good-hearted.  I wish they could have known her, and she them.  I have tried things I may not have tried before: four wheeling, jet skiing, trailer camping.  I just want her to be loved, and if trying to enjoy what I can of life, even though it is without her, is the only way to do that then that is what I’ll do.  I still cry often because I miss I her terribly and because the unjustness of it still lingers.

I went to a party on Saturday where I knew there would be babies.  The babies were there, but there were also friends and children and fun.  Drawing away from others because they have babies is not something I want to succumb too.  Derek and the girls should be able to enjoy the company of others even if I have trepidations about it.  So I went, anxiety ridden but not willing to let it get the best of me.  The babies seemed to be everywhere, but so did the kids.  They were so full of life and fun, and sun, so were Sky and Gracie.  I love to watch them laugh and play.  My heart hurt to hear the grown ups talk of their bundles sleeping patterns and hair (or lack of) and eating.  But they should talk of those things, they should be fawning.  I just wish that I could too.  I didn’t cry.  Not until one of the babies cried.  My very first thought: I miss that sound.  I looked to Derek, in an attempt to make light of the crying and to imply how some of parenting is less desired he commented: “I don’t miss that sound.”  He didn’t mean anything by it.  He would take all of it if it meant having her back.  But that his very words were mine reversed and out loud, I couldn’t hold it anymore.  Away to the truck I fled, hoping no one saw what I know was written on my face and seeping down my cheeks.  Derek met me there.  He knew.  God I miss her, and although there is so much beauty, this world is truly an f’d up beast to give me something so wonderful and then snatch it away and then to have the very thing I wish for all around me everywhere to watch but not have, is cruel.  And still I haven’t held a baby, I'm afraid to.