a hope and not a promise

I was so honored to learn that I was chosen for the spring award at Glow in the Woods this morning. I have found so much comfort in the writing there over the past 6 months, and to think that others may benefit from mine as well is a wonderful feeling. It is a group that I wish none of us ever had to belong to, but I am so grateful to have found it.

The award prompted me to read through your letters again--something I rarely do. As I said in my very first post: sometimes I want to reach out and grab someone and make them understand, bring them with me to that place and make them feel the terror, the sadness. The heartbreak.

I certainly succeeded, at least with myself. Every post took me right back to those moments, quickly reintroducing me to that dark gaping hole that I have so successfully been distracting myself from. It was if I was reminded: oh yes, this happened. Oh yes, it hurts. Oh yes, it will hurt forever.

And then I get angry. How could I have let myself forget? I think of you every day, and yet I somehow manage to evade that all too familiar, consuming heartache that goes along with your memory on a daily basis. How is it that the flood of tears that came today, the gut-wrenching sobs that are seemingly beyond my control, have come to feel right? Necessary. Comfortable? Perhaps it is that they are all I have left. If I am not grieving you, then did you really exist?

We moved out of the only house you ever lived in last week. It was the same house that became my refuge, my cave, the one place that I was allowed to stay in my pajamas for days and just miss you, after you died. As I swept every particle of dust out of the empty corners, I found pockets of grief that had slipped under furniture, waiting for the moment they might be visited again. Every inch of the house had an energy in it, and it was bittersweet leaving it behind. We are embarking on lots of new beginnings this year, and yet I cannot bear the thought of putting your life, your death behind me, into a dusty mental closet of bad memories. You are more than that. You will always be more than that.

The weeks are ticking away in the pregnancy with your sibling, and I find myself starting to wish time away again. I want it to be July, when we will learn if the baby's spine is closed, I want it to be December, when (God willing) I will hold the little one, I want time to pass for this and that until some little voice kicks in and screams in my head STOP! This could be all you get! And I try to cherish it, but there is still so much uncertainty.

People ask the incessant, obligatory question, "how are you feeling?" and I have little to say. I tell them I am tired, mostly, and they laugh and say "nap while you can, those days are numbered!" I smile, because that is the only appropriate response, but inside I am saying "yes, I can only hope to be so lucky." I can only hope to be spending sleepless nights with a screaming, healthy baby, the kind that most people take for granted.

I can only hope.