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.