Flags for baby angels

The Walk to Remember is today and in Gabbie's memory the flag project flies for the first time.  It's a lot to take in.  My sweet baby will be watching today.  I can feel it.  I love and miss her so much.  It is some heavy responsibility to be the deliverer of such weighted messages as these flags are.  Each flag was cared for as if it were my own message.  I am honored,  saddened, and humbled by the beauty and love in each of their stories.  I am honored to be mediating postmasters to carry these messages with me until I can let the breeze take over.  I am saddened by such heavy losses as these beautiful flags convey.  And I am totally humbled by the amount of love and the beauty of whispering messages of loss and forever love to baby angels.  It is all I can do not to cry. 
I love you my sweet darling Gabbie... I hope you see what we have done together. 

Softly gone to sleep

Your sister tried my shoes on today.  I snapped a photograph that reminded me of my school days.  Someday she'll wear shoes like those and pose for pics with a dress on and her hair all done up.  Her smile will remind me of you.  You'll never have a pic like that.  You'll never have that chance. 

I take pictures on my phone a lot since the day the girls had fairy pictures and orbs were in so many.  I keep trying to see signs of you.  A leaf fluttered down the street; I thought it was a butterfly and it wasn't.   Falling leaves and colored trees are opposite ends of time from you.  You were born in the spring when the world was waking up and life was promised new.  Now the world is slowly falling softly back to sleep to the sounds of fluttering scittering leaves as though you never left the fall when you were conceived, you were born asleep. 

I still miss you so terribly.  It just isn't fair.  Each day there are reminders of how you are not here.  "Miss what do the letters stand for on your bracelet?" They stand for the missing piece I want to say but instead I just respond, "the baby" and the student's face makes a silent "oh" and nods and on my day goes.  Each day there are several reminders similar to this.  I want to talk about you but each and every time I do it's a reminder that I'm alive without you.  I would give up each and every wish from a genie in a bottle just to have you back again.  Genies don't exist.  Falling leaves exist and passing time but not babies named Gabraella Joy.  Last year at this time you were still alive

Part of me wants to hurl things at the unfairness of it all, but instead I sit in the darkness resigned.  I wonder if you sit beside me softly touching on my hair.  I wonder if you sit beside me wiping away my tears as I try to softly fall asleep I wish I knew if you were really there. 

Time marches on

I received a flag today.  It was beautiful in itself.  But oh the beautiful irony... it was made from the exact same fabric as Gabbie's.  But the irony doesn't stop there.  The baby's name was Gabriella.  Gabriella Grace.  Seriously?! Gabriella Grace died 3 days before Gabraella Joy. D didn't seem to note the irony.  Maybe I'm reaching for it but I just don't think it's a reach.  Anyway, I wept as I read her story.  Poor sweet baby.  Why do babies die again? Oh that's right, for no apparent, nor any fair reason. 

So each and every morning when I wake the very first thought is how I miss her.  Then I drive to work and think of how life would be different if she were here while I listen to just one chatty girl in the backseat who has grown so big.  I try to push Gabbie from my mind but its like she's wallpaper waiting to be noticed.  You can't move a wall.  Then I start my day.  People ask me how I am.  I answer honestly: "ok".  I am "okay" but I don't finish with "for not having a baby I was pregnant with for 9 months" some other similar statement of fact.  "Morning" is no longer "good morning." Think anyone has noticed?  I teach all day with the occasional question about my baby or my obvious absence from work all spring.  Reminders in the middle of class that are brushed off always stop back for a deeper thought later.  Then I take the 4 flights of stairs to work off baby fat.  And eat a low cal lunch to work off baby fat.  I rush through work to spend time with my family so that I can cuddle with my girls more and be a mom more. Every where there's reminders.  The trees are changing.  The butterflies will leave.   In one week she'll have been gone for five months.  And time marches on.

I held a baby... but the words wouldn't come

I tried to write this entry three or four times.  I still don't know if I found the right words.  This should have been dated September 1. 

Addison isn’t Gabbie.  Addison was born almost exactly one month before.  She has the first name we considered naming Gabbie.  She is probably close to the size Gabbie would be, since all my girls were big.  But she is not Gabbie.  I held her though.  I haven’t held a baby since I held Gabbie in the hospital.  I held Addison, and snuggled her to me, and rocked her gently to appease her, and touched her soft head.  I held her and I cried.  I didn’t cry because I held a baby, I cried because I’ll never again hold MY baby.  I cooed at her, made faces at her and talked to her.  I cried because I’ll never get to do that with Gabbie.  I didn’t cry because I didn’t want to hold Addy, I cried because it can’t be Gabbie.  I don’t know what it looked like from the outside.  I imagine to the outsider I looked like a crazy lady holding a baby and letting the tears run rivers down my face.  Who cries when they hold a baby?  Or maybe, we all should cry when holding a baby, it’s a precious thing that can be snatched away.  It can be snatched and we should hold them and giggle with them and cry for them before their gone, like mine is gone and I’ll never get to do that with mine. Ever.  So I’m sorry if I looked like a lunatic.  We all should look like lunatics more often when we hold babies.  So thank you Al… for not minding if I made it look like you let a lunatic hold your baby. 

Early morning recurring nightmares

I had a dream last night that I needed a shelf moved but on the shelf were items that were important to me that I wanted handled with care.  The man (a friend) who was helping me rearrange was a man I, in conscious state do not recognize.  The items on the shelf included all of the things of Gabbie that I hold dear including her ashes in an urn, but also, the brother's ashes of my sister's boyfriend.  As the man began to displace the objects from the shelf I begged him to be gentle.  With nothing left on the shelf but the two urns the man responded by picking up Gabbie's ashes and saying, "what could possibly be so important" he proceeded to empty her ashes on the table.  The ashes fell out in almost an ooze of thick gel-like gray clumps.  I threw myself to the floor crumpled over my legs and heaved great sobs until Derek shook me awake.  Fat heavy tears wet my temples and pillow.  I know the dream is rooted in my subconscious but I can't put my finger on what it could mean. 
I have dreams often of bad things happening to Gabbie's ashes.  They leave desolate, disconsolate and destitute feeling all day.  Today I just wanted to cry.  How does my life move on, trudge on, pull me in as an unwilling participant when much of my insides just want to stay in the hospital and hold my beautiful baby?  My beautiful dead baby.  And now my dreams keep me from even the ability to protect her ashes. 

Back to work without baby pictures

Today I head back to work after 5 and a half months of being off, one and a half of which were waiting for her to come and the rest wishing she were coming back.  I had a nightmare that her ashes got dumped.  I can't stop crying and I guess I'll leave my baby pictures behind today, oh wait... I don't have any.  Happy first day of school. 

Colored glass

Sometimes when I'm by myself quietly doing dishes or laundry or some other mindless task, my mind wanders to other concerns, normal daily silly things like "what's for dinner" Or "what do I need to get from the store."  And then silently, like a glint of sun that blinds momentarily, it hits me all over again:she's gone.  Really really gone. Its almost a tangible thought, as though I could take the thought and roll it between my fingers and it would be a hard shiny mishapen colored glass with swirls in it like a marble.  I could take the thought and hold it up to the light but then I'd have to look into the glass thought and see the swirls would be like movie images winding and whispy and sad.  I could try to drop the thought but the sad swirling images captivate, hold me hostage so that I cannot let go. I don't want to let it go.  I do not want to let her go.  There's a villanelle poem about old men not going quietly into the night.  I don't want to let her go quietly.  I cannot let her go quietly.  I'd have given my very parts that grew her to have kept her.  I'd have gone willingly sterile if it meant that I could have watched her grow and have her own babies. 

But truly, her soul did leave quietly, like a breeze on a beach, she was there and then in the stillness she was gone.  So softly she stepped into our lives but what footprints she has left behind.  Her soul may have slipped quietly away but her spirit fights violently within me so that I want her footprint to be lasting in the sands of time.  If you could count every piece of colored glass glinting in the sunset on the beaches you could count the number of times I will have thought of that tangible glass thought that she is gone forever.  Until my own soul has to decide to go quietly or not into that dark night or fight against the sunset I am held hostage by its sadness and the glinting colors in the sands of time.  She may be gone forever physically but there will always be colored glass upon the beach.