Frozen in time, as the seasons change, where are all my signs?

Sunday, the flags flew.  They were beautiful.  I cried seeing them hanging in the breeze.  One flag I’ve talked about before threw me for a loop.  Gabriella Grace.  Her sweet face on that flag, and oh those names.  Gabbie, like my Gabbie.  Grace like my Gracie.  And then out of the same fabric her flag was sewn.  I met her grandmother, and grandfather.  I thought the names themselves were strange.  But when they introduced themselves to me, and hugged me and thanked me for what I’ve done, which really isn’t above and beyond nor deserving of a hug, they saw my sister’s flags and asked me who the Szefler flags were from.  I told them my sister had lost three pregnancies and one of which was twins.  It turns out they were Szeflers, and a relative of those baby angels’ father.  So months ago, when I was looking for answers as to how and why I didn’t know she was slowly falling asleep forever within me I thought that I somehow had missed signs: my friend had lost one of her twins; my students all used to tell me not to reach up that they were told it can cause bad things to happen to the fetus but I’d ignored them; that my former extended in-laws had posted on facebook about losing a baby whose name was Gabriella I had thought how sad it was to see my baby’s name in an obituary.  That Gabriella, the one of the obituary, was THE Gabriella of the flag that got me weeping in my car at the post office, THE Gabriella that is a sort of distant relation.   I know I can’t have known the signs, or even have guessed at them.  I, at one point, thought I totally missed the warnings set before me out of ignorance.  But who would have thought? 

I cried on my way to work today.  I don’t know why, except to say that I felt her loss deeply.  I ignore it a lot mostly because I’m busy.  I chase away the “why” questions knowing that there are no answers, much as I would try to ignore an errant child who constantly questions the reasons for a request to behave.  The weather changing makes me sad. 

The leaves changing colors and blowing across the street fly like butterflies in a flittering and fluttering manner, erratically skittering by, but again they are not butterflies.  They made me think of butterflies dying, a thought that made my throat tighten.  Isn’t enough that my Gabbie is gone, but I need to think of butterflies leaving too?  So I researched butterflies, with all the time I don’t have.  I knew of the monarchs that fly to warmer parts each fall, but not all butterflies leave or die, at least not just because there’s winter.  Some sleep all winter, as butterflies, as an egg, as caterpillars, as pupa and then in the spring they’ll awake to fly again.  One website even claimed, that occasionally, on a bright, warm, sunny, winter day a butterfly, such as the Dark Cloaked Mourning Butterfly, may confuse the weather with a spring day and come out of hibernation to fly heavily in the sunlight.   I wish I could see a butterfly in the midst of a winter warm streak.

The change in weather makes me sad.  It means holidays are coming, and snow will bluster outside, and butterflies will sleep.  Even the leaves won’t rush by pretending to be butterflies, instead they will be wet and heavy with snow.  I take one day at time mostly, so I haven’t allowed myself to consider the holidays yet; I hate the thought of them.  To pretend they enthuse me for the girls will be hard enough, to lie to myself that I’m looking forward to them would just be stupid.  I am not looking forward to them, to winter, and I think the butterflies have all already gone to sleep.  At least the fall gives me pretend butterflies.  I miss my Gabbie.   Everyday, all day, with every breath.  Forever. 

I have two minds: the one that goes on about my day, about my life, waking up each morning, working, making dinner, being a mother to my girls, being a friend to my friends, being a teacher, and wife and sister and daughter; and then there is the one that is stuck in spring, holding a baby who was born still, remembering her sweet face frozen in time, holding my breath waiting for her to breathe, looking for butterflies, and wondering silently what I ever did and knowing that there is no answer for that question because I did nothing, and trying to make peace.