Raising sweet warriors

When you’re little it seems that your parents can take away all your pain.  Your mom takes care of cuts and scratches, cuddles with you, cries with you, makes you feel pretty, makes it so you’re a good person with a big heart, and then heals your wounded heart from breakups.  Your dad is the quiet observer who rescues you from the big problems, teaches you to be a hard worker, helps you learn to ride a bike, to drive, coaches you, and helps you with your homework.  Between the two of them, they are an unbeatable force that can help you to face the world. 

             Now I am a mom. I could not fix my Gabbie, I could not bandage her so she’d be okay and her daddy couldn't have known she was fighting.  I’m trying to be okay.  It still hurts to think I couldn’t have known.  I get it was no one’s fault.  I do.  I just wish…

 I wish my mom could heal my heart, and my dad could fight the fates and bring my baby back.  It’s a little girl’s wish.

As I type these things and have my quiet tears, Gracie turns before me from her toys.  She pauses and looks at me.  She crawls up on the couch and puts my arm around her.  Inches from my face, she reaches up and quietly and with much concern, wipes the tears from my cheeks.  “Why you cry mama? Are you okay?”  She kisses me on my nose and says, “Gracie loves you mama.” 

In her face I see her sister, touching my cheek and telling me it’ll be alright.  My Gracie is my grace.  My mom and my dad may not be able to heal me or fix this like I may have once thought they could, but they have raised me to be strong and loving.  They have raised me and I have raised, am still raising, my girls to be the same.  She may be only two, but in her sweetness I see the kind of mom I am. In Sky, it’s also there.   I wish their little sister could be here to see it, too.  It is not a gauge of my ability to be a mother, that I could not fix my youngest, just as it is not a gauge of my parents that they could not fix this. There are no easy fixes no matter how I wish there were.  From others, I'd have taken their sorrow and held it all myself so that they would not have pain.  But this is a pain that cannot be taken.  

They cannot fight this, just as I could not fight for Gabbie.  I am glad my parents have made me who I am, so I could have my girls be who they are.  My girls are my warriors.  

 The hardest part about being a parent is seeing your child in a battle that you cannot fight.  The littlest warriors are sometimes our angels.