Love cycles

No birthdays, no walking, no milestones.  D says he will miss her no less or more on her birthday than any other day so therefore, it is just another day.  And he’s right about not missing her less or more. But just another day it is not.  It is the anniversary of the day she stopped moving in me.  It is the day that I realized her heart stopped, the day that still makes me feel as though I failed.  It is the day that I held an angel, when I watched her pinkish face slowly over hours turn a purplish hue of blue.  It is the day that she changed the world with two tiny little hands, two sweet little feet, two soft cheeks, a smile I will never see, a cry I will never hear, and a heart that never beat outside the womb.  It is the day that my outlook on life changed forever.  And though I know that it is inconsequential, I think now of how I will never know what eye color she had.  Silly really, of all the things I will never know, I wonder about this one a lot. 

So, there will be no one year birthday for my baby.  Her older sisters will hopefully continue to turn ages older each year, but each year she will remain a newborn angel frozen in my mind’s eye like an antique vignette.  I still feel very empty without her.  I’ve had nearly a whole year to heal, and, while I don’t know if it’s healing or coping that occurred, I still feel such sadness.  There is a quote about character I’ve read recently; “Strength of character isn’t always about how much you can handle before your break, but how much you can handle after you break.”  I wonder if this trial of life is showing in me strength or something else.  I do not, on many occasions, feel very strong at all.  I feel tired, lost, sad and quiet.  I feel dejected.  And yet, I feel loved deeply, missed, and worried about.  Indeed, I miss the “me” that was, but I cannot find her among the wreckage of my heart.  I sometimes feel as though if only I could cry again, I’d feel better.  But often there are no tears anymore, only a deep, dark, and inky sadness. The weight of an angel is heavy, though she has wings. 

In four days, she will never turn 11 months.  How can stop counting? 

I feel bad sometimes because I want to get in touch with friends but lack the energy and stamina to pursue it. It is not laziness, but more self preservation. My world has both grown and shrank since last spring. I have met so many people and yet I prefer not to leave my house. I can't explain it. It just feels like work to get up and go about life. If I could just stay to myself, take pictures of the world and love my girls and D, would that be rude? Yet I love my friends, old and new and don't want to lose them. It is not that I am unfriendly, I am actually quite caring and giving. But caring for others as deeply as I do and showing it to them, and surrounding myself by them is exhausting. I care. I do. I care and so I feel the desire to withdraw because it's just so exhausting to feel so deeply all the time and since I feel so deeply for her each day it wears on me. I love and therefore want to share, but sharing means being surrounded by others, and worrying about their well-beings and the whole cycle of love is vicious and exhausting.

How has nearly a year gone by?  Sweet angel baby how I miss you. 

Time stubbornly marches onward

Night before last I had a dream that I was hugely pregnant and then the world nearly ended. I said that I had "to fix this" near apocalypse and that I'd have 147 days. Someone else in my dream (my "hero" who would lead me to safety) said we actually would have 149 days because we would be walking into the setting sun and we needed to get moving. We took off walking past the new chasms of the world and through towns filled with death and fearful people.

So I tried to figure out the dream when it came to me this morning as I opened my eyes. When I was hugely pregnant my world nearly ended. As for the 147 or 149 days... I'm not sure. I know that the 147th day of the year is April 25th Gabbie's angelversary--- a fact that I never knew until I was trying to figure out how long 149 days were. 149 days from the day I had my dream figures out to July 20th, an insignificant date.

But now, laying here this morning, the dream of being hugely pregnant and the world nearly ending has made me sad. I've been sad the last few days. And then I realized its the 23. The 25th we found out I lost her. But a pattern keeps emerging that I'm terribly sad on the 21st and the days that follow. What if I really lost her on the 21st? Could it have taken me 4 days to realize? I am horribly self absorbed if so. I despise this trait and am consciously trying to fix it.

In two days she will never be 10 months. My heart is still broken though time stubbornly marches onward. I will take some pictures today for Gabbie Photography and maybe for just a moment time will stop inside the lens and I will feel the beauty of the world as she would have seen it. God, I miss her so.

and yet...

I have been thinking about this entry for a while.  Sometimes my thoughts sit inside my head, sort of rolling around in circles in restlessness, as if they are looking for that just-right-perfect place and time to settle into permanence.

In the last year I have done some things that I would never have guessed possible.  I have reached milestones that I never thought of and caught stars I’ve never seen before.  None of these realizations are on anyone’s list of “things to do” and yet here I am.  I have first been given the news that no mother can truly imagine, and yet I did not stop breathing instantly, though it may have felt like I should.  I woke up the next day, and the next and the next; I have seen many tomorrows from that day that I melted on the floor in front of my baby’s urn at the funeral home.  Like an out-of-body experience, the image haunts me some.  But I have seen them, those tomorrows, and survived each somehow.  I have cried so many tears I am sometimes certain there can be no more, and yet, then again, I reach another milestone: another tear. 

I have reached out to others with losses like mine and comforted when it did not seem I could even comfort myself.  I created a project and seen it brought to fruition; it has become a beautiful tribute to her, and yet, sometimes it tires me to exhaustion to worry about it so, as though I am an inattentive parent caught up in work, and days and hours and life.  

I have taken more pictures in the last few months than I may have in my whole life, and they are beautiful and yet, many of them are, I guess only made-up memories of something that I cannot have, and so I reach for anything that seems solid. Yes they are pictures, but pictures of what? Of butterflies, and pennies, and sunsets and what?  Not her.  Not an angel.  Not a dream, or a memory.  I take pictures for what?  For me?  For her?  For no one? Nothing? Ashes?  I don’t know.  I take them, and I feel them.  I pick up pennies and I think of her.  But she was just a baby, how can she leave me pennies?  How can she give signs?  Why do I want to reach for them and yet wonder how it’s all anything? I wish I had more faith, and yet sometimes I think that I have none.  Sometimes I have none. 

 I have made more new acquaintances in the last year than perhaps in my whole life.  And, though I am glad for each, I wish it had never been. 

            All of these occurrences and yet, yet… maybe I am nothing more than what I was before.  But I am.  I am here.  I am sadder.  I am less.  What have I become if nothing has changed?  On the surface we are still the same family we were before: two girls, two parents, two cats.  We have the same goals, the same dreams.  It is as though she was never here.  And yet,… And yet my heart still hurts. 

Dear Gabbie: because feelings are irrational

Dear Gabbie,
I am writing this because perhaps if you can see this, however irrational it may be, perhaps it will help me to forgive myself, if I thought for just a minute that you forgave me too...

It is my fault. No matter what they say it is my fault. I feel that I am the only one who maybe could have saved you. I feel guilt that I did not know you were slowly going to sleep. I feel like a failure as a mother that I could not keep you safe, and a failure too, that because I could not keep you safe your sisters and your daddy feel sadness. I can't protect them either from pain and sadness. A mother should always be able to protect and fix, yet I can do neither of those things.

I am sorry that I could not hold you longer. That we had them take you from me so soon, even though I know it had been hours, I just want to hold you just a minute more, a forever minute more. I am sorry that you will not be around to eat your first birthday cake, that you won't mush it around in your hands and have a frosting smile. I am sorry that I will never have pictures of you taking your first steps or grinning with your first tooth. I am sorry that you will never kiss your daddy and feel his scratchy beard or pull your sisters hair or play in my makeup. I am sorry you will never try on my shoes or wear your sisters' hand-me-down clothes. I am sorry that your daddy will never dance with you at your wedding or that you will never tell a fib about your sisters to keep yourself out of trouble. I am sorry that you will never learn to ride a bike or be afraid of the dark. I am sorry that you will never be valedictorian or lose your phone for failing a test. I am sorry for all the things you'll never do, for the smiles and tears your sisters will miss out on and for all the kisses your daddy will never get. I am sorry for all the good-night-rocking I will never get to do. I am sorry that I failed you. I am sorry that I could not keep you safe. I love you more than I love myself and yet you are not eve here to receive it and so it floats out there like butterflies. Please forgive me.

Love forever and always,
Mommy

To hold

I carried you within me long before conception,
each month, each year a forever waiting for the news.
I loved considering how life would change in ways I could not imagine, how I'd have a baby to hold,
I thought long of how the world would grow to love you
Then you grew

And I carried you within me long before your birth
Each day, each week was a lifetime waiting for you.
I loved considering how life would be different, I could imagine it as I looked about your things that I could hold
I thought of how much you'd be loved by all, were loved already
And then you got your wings

And I carried you within me long before I knew what happened to you, each hour each minute endless waiting for the news
I loved considering how the outcome would be different, how you'd overcome, fight on, live for me to hold
I thought for sure it'd somehow be okay because my love would somehow save you
And then you were gone for good

And I carried you for no time, not enough time, want to hold you still
And I loved and hurt considering how you'd have changed if you had the chance or could, how you wanted me to hold you too
And I thought of how I would have loved you no matter what and how I love you still
Then you were memories

And I carried you
and carry you still within me for tomorrow and tomorrow still, a boundless time before me.
I love and hurt considering how life would have been with you and how I'd have given nearly anything to keep you with me forever if just to hold
And I think that if my love for you could not save you then maybe it can save me so
I will carry you within me, forever just to hold.

Outlook on 2013 after a nap...an honest truth

"And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"....

I am trying so hard to see the light.

Ok...started taking down Christmas tree because, well, maybe I'm a masochist. I took down all the ornaments saving hers for last. Her main one is still on the tree. Maybe tomorrow I'll finish. It seems as though it should still be up. There was only a few tears shed. I made it through Christmas without her. That's something. Right? And now to start the new year. Hmmm.

Nap? Check. Cup of coffee or three? Check, check, check. Gabbie's bear sitting on our bed at the in-laws waiting for me to wish happy new year to? Check. Attitude adjustment? Ummm. Check, I guess. Lets just say I'm not nasty anymore. The future is still too much to see. The past is too much to look at. The day. Today. Is as much as I can handle. Tomorrow is about a far as I've gotten and maybe a little of this week. After that decisions are impossible to make and part of me still thinks that if my decisions don't matter in the grand scheme of things, then why bother. I mean realistically if at any moment the decisions we make are totally negated then what's the point? But I guess the point is because some decisions I've made have turned out to be my biggest blessings: Sky, Gracie, and Derek, and my job and friends. I am pretty lucky in them.

So I enter this new year with two thoughts:
1."Nothing gold can stay." I need to enjoy more the Blessings that I do have because they might be gone as fast as she was; my Golden Butterfly.
2. "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." I am my harshest judge and biggest dreamer. I have to learn this year to be gentle on myself, stop doubting and fearing that which cannot be changed, and learn to dream again and love myself, because in her death I lost faith in me.

Struggling. New year woes

New Year's Eve. 2012 has me so messed up I'm not sure what I think of 2013 and the change of year. Saying goodbye to 2012 seems like closing the door on a very bad friend but a friend none the less that you're sorry to see go. Part of me thinks that if I embrace the new year it's like embracing that she's gone forever, not that she isn't but I'll not embrace it. But that part of me, the dejected part of me has my rational mind reeling. She's gone forever. I get it. The year changing, a new number, it's just another day that's all. I'm tired still. Tired, all the time tired. Even after sleeping 8 hours I'm tired. I'm annoyed. Nothing changes with the new year. I am still without her. I am still sad. I am supposed to celebrate the end of the year that left me broken hearted, took my baby for an angel, and kicked us repeatedly while we were down? Or am i supposed to celebrate the coming of a new year with a baby angel and all the firsts including a birthday that will be an angelversary? Perhaps you'd say "Look at the new year as a fresh start." Yes we also said, "Look at the new place as a fresh start." As much as I don't mind the new place I don't care for the word "fresh." Fresh? It's not fresh it's just an alternate, less desired, life to the one I could have had.
Could have? No could never have, can't ever have. I'm apparently in an awful mood. Yay for 2012. I hope the storm has passed with its eminent demise.
I'm going to lay back down, take a nap and try to adjust my attitude. And yes I know it's only 8:42 in the morning.