sorrow

Gracie saw a picture of a baby on Facebook the other day and asked me if it was Gabbie.  My heart flipped, “No, Baby Gabbie is in heaven Gracie.”  She nodded and went about her day.  I’ve been thinking about it now for days.  I am surrounded by babies everywhere except in my own house.  I want to hold them but am afraid to weep over their tiny fuzzy heads.  I’m afraid my heart will grow so swollen it will burst out of my chest, or shrivel up from the pain so that I it’s hard to breathe.  I have given up on asking why I don’t have mine.  The answerless question has been replaced by a collection of butterflies that have taken up residence in my stomach. 

 Sorrow is exhausting you know.  It drains, and squeezes, and interrupts the day like an unexpected guest or moves throughout the day like the air you breathe.  It is violent and piercing like a storm, or soft and aching like the sunshine with a warm breeze, burning you without knowing until you sit down on your bed at night and realize you’re hot and painful to the touch.  Sometimes I go the whole day and a thought comes on me like a door closing in my face, striking and painful.  Other times I wake up and the pain is there like a muscle ache tweaking all day long.  Sorrow makes your grow older too quickly, and tired too soon.   I wonder if I look older.  I feel old.  I feel old and sad and abused by sorrow.  When people look at me do they see in my eyes how old my soul feels?  Do they hear it in my voice? I’ve always been told I have an old soul.  I wonder if it’s old and crippled, bent over like now. 

I have found myself on my knees in prayer lately.  I am not even sure what it is that I pray. People say you bargain to Him when you’re in grief.  I don’t.  What is there to bargain with for a god who can have anything and control anything that he wanted?  He’s already taken what I wanted most desperately and I refuse to give up the things left here that keep me mostly sane. I have wondered if I’ve done something wrong in my life and should be asking for forgiveness.  But how can that be?  I’ve made mistakes but I’ve always tried to live my life by doing the right thing.  I’d think that is what he’d want.  I try to ask for help to make this sorrow lessen, and perhaps he’s listening.  I mean I have less tears most days.  Or maybe I’m just out of them.  I ask to make time hurry but then I take it back.  I don’t want my girls to get too big too soon.  I read on a grief support cite that “God is just as angry at your loss as you are.”  Do I think that’s true?  I’m not sure.  That creates way more theological questions than I can consider answers to right now.  If it were true than how could it happen?  Why would children suffer and die?  Why would there be tiny angels?

People ask me how I’m doing.  I say “okay.”  I don’t know what they expect me to say.  I could say great, and lie my face off, maybe they’d feel better with that answer.  How can I ever be great? One of my babies is in heaven.  I still can’t say “dead.”  I don’t like that word.  I usually say “okay.”  To some, who can guess any way, I tell them “I have good days and bad days”.  That is the truth.  Telling them that my bad days make it hard to get out of bed and even harder to give a crap about what I have on or how I look, seems cruel.  Telling them that the only reasons that get me up on bad days are the girls and Derek, would probably make them more concerned; no one wants to hear that.  Not when they are moving on, and want to get past it, and want to think that I’m past it.   So I tell them simply that I have good and bad days.  And that is true too.  Truthfully, the pain is less extensive.  I can go about most days with only the aching sadness not the sharp stabbing painful kind and I don’t cry so much that my eyes swell nearly closed, at least, not usually.