Christmas

I didn't think the holidays were going to be hard for me. I was lucky that my anatomy scan was scheduled the day after Christmas in 2008, and I clearly remember sitting in the midst of the thick fog of uncertainty that followed saying, "at least this didn't ruin Christmas." And then last year, my arms filled with the soft, cuddly form of your brother at my breast, in a thick fog of a completely different, much happier variety, Christmas very well could have not happened at all.

This year is different. This year your brother is spellbound by the lights, bouncing to the music, and pulling the tree down with vigor. I spent the other night pulling things out of boxes that hadn't been seen since the Christmas just before you left us, and while your brother tangled himself in lights and shattered ornaments with his bare hands (despite our best efforts to find them all before he did), I saw your ultrasound picture in its frame on the piano, and I realized, again, that you will never get these moments. Or more that we will never get these moments with you.

I wanted to know you so badly. Maybe even more now, having spent a year with your brother. There is an ultrasound picture of each of you, still on the fridge. I can't bring myself to take them down. Today I stared at them for a long time and realized that your profiles were so similar. The only difference I could spot was that Orrin has your dad's brow line, and you, most likely, had mine. I want to know what you would have been like: what color your eyes would have turned, the sound of your giggle, if your hair would have started to curl. At the same time I know, in my heart of hearts, that you were never meant for this world. I felt it so strongly, from the very beginning. And still, it didn't (it doesn't) hurt any less.

Your presence in my life has become so quiet in the last year. And yet I feel you are closer lately. Maybe because we are fast approaching your birthday again. Maybe you know that I need to feel that you are okay out there. I'm okay here, somehow. I have become this not-so-new-mom with a big gaping spot in her heart that most people have a hard time understanding. I am a mom who gets frustrated, irritated, and exhausted sometimes, even though she has pictures of a lifeless baby in her bedroom to remind her of how lucky she is.

I am still here, living, almost two years after we said goodbye. There was a time when I couldn't have imagined this point; when two years felt like an eternity and even the smallest sliver of happiness seemed like an unattainable goal.

But here we are. Surviving. More than surviving, now.

There is still not a day that goes by that I don't think of you.

skeletons in my closet

I have been missing you lately. There isn't a minute that goes by that I don't think about you, but lately it is more than that. It's the time of year, I think. These months of fall were so heavy with hope and excitement over your existence. You, this tiny little spark in my belly, changing the way my world turned. At the end of October, we saw you on the ultrasound screen and I finally allowed myself to fall totally in love with you, even though in my heart I felt that something wasn't right. Thanksgiving brought a table full of family, giddy with anticipation and twinkle-eyed imaginations of how different the next year's feast would be.

I was so happy.

I cleaned out my closet the other day. I pulled everything out to sort and threw countless pieces of clothing into a donation pile without thinking. Then I came across a pair of maternity jeans that I only ever wore while I was pregnant with you. They were the first pair of maternity pants I bought, actually, and I loved them. They quickly became the most comfortable pair of jeans I had, and eventually the only ones I could still fit into. I wore them to the hospital. And then one day, after you were gone, I was wearing them--out of habit maybe, or just because they were still the most comfortable jeans I had--and I caught the back pocket on a nail on the deck and ripped a huge hole in them. Into the closet they went, forgotten through my entire subsequent pregnancy and following year, until just the other day, when I pulled them out and just sat with them for awhile, remembering.

I couldn't get rid of them. Is that ridiculous? They are pants. It's pretty unlikely that I will ever wear them again, but I just...can't. There are so few reminders of your life, of our time together, that I find myself clinging to every shred of evidence I can.

I miss you, baby girl.

fall

In the quiet moments, it is you that fills my thoughts. For days, I haven't been able to shake the memories. In the not so quiet moments, the grief lingers in the perimeter, trying my patience, making me anxious and irritable and distant. Tears gather in my throat, sometimes even making it to my eyes, but I cannot cry. I pulled out your blanket yesterday for the first time in months, maybe even a year. Folded up inside, there is still the extra fabric we placed underneath you, stained with fluid from your open spine. I stared at it for a long time, almost in awe. It is one of the only things that still convinces me that you were real, that you existed at all. You are so very far away.

the great disconnect

I am feeling it lately, little girl: the disconnect as time stretches and expands between us, between our experience, and you just get farther and farther away. Yesterday was two years since I first learned of your existence, since I stood in the bathroom, listening to my heart pound as if it were going to explode, while the hourglass flashed. Two years since I looked down and blinked again and again, because it was early and I swore I had to be missing one of the words...where was the "not" part of it? But there was only one word on the screen, and in an instant, my life changed.

How can it be that we are coming around to all the dates again? It seems just yesterday I was reeling at the fact that a year had passed, and now two?

At the same time, I am so busy, so immersed in the work of raising your brother, that it seems a lifetime ago. I feel myself drifting. I have reached that point that I wasn't sure existed, where I don't feel quite so...haunted. You are still an ever present part of my thoughts, but there is a sort of veil over the dark parts. I can stare them in the face now without falling apart.

And, perhaps fittingly, your brother has decided to cut this post short by refusing to go back to sleep. There is no time for missing you.

unexpected anniversary

When I wrote the date down today it resonated somewhere in my mind, but it took me awhile to realize why. August 17th...not a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday. No, it was my "LMP" in my pregnancy with you. The date of my last period, the official beginning of the cycle that changed my life. I wrote it down a thousand times, told it to midwives and doctors and secretaries and genetic counselors and ultrasound techs, over and over again.

It has been two years. Already.

I miss that girl I once was sometimes.

finished

She is on my mind a lot today. I don't know why.

I keep thinking about the little things that were lost. The room we never got to decorate. The dresses we never bought. How utterly and completely everything has changed.

And it isn't a bad thing, really. I can't even imagine having a girl anymore. I love having my boy, but I am still a little bitter that it didn't all go right the first time. I'm a little bitter that I didn't really get to enjoy my pregnancy, the good one, because I was so preoccupied with the possibility that it wouldn't last.

We ran into a mom with a three month old at the store yesterday, and she was asking all kinds of questions about the baby and the birth and here I am with this perfect story, beautiful baby, and a...weight. That's the only way I can describe it. It's like a nagging feeling that I am forgetting something. I feel like a fraud. Because I'm not a normal mom, not really. I have all these dark corners, flashbacks of the kinds of moments that nightmares are made of.

I guess what it comes down to is...in my heart, I have two babies. Sometimes there are moments when the world is bustling around me and the subconscious, instinctual mother part of me sort of stops to take count, and there are always two babies there. Only one of them I don't have to wonder about. In fact, I am already finished mothering her.

That's just it, isn't it? She has no diapers to change, no boo-boos to kiss, no piles of clothing to fold and sort through and grow out of. She just came and went and there isn't anything else for me to do. And somehow, I am supposed to be okay with that.

some days

some days my heart beats too big

sometimes I am utterly overwhelmed with love for this bright and lively force of a boy in my life. my love for him grows daily (hourly, even) and it has reached the point that if I reach down and really try to feel all of it, try to comprehend the enormity of it, it hurts.

some days, the ever increasing real estate he is occupying in my heart seems to shine a light on your corner--the one that is still barricaded and reserved for the daughter who will never exist in quite the way I imagined. this corner is full of love too, stuffed to the brim, but it is different. it has to be different. there is still a hollow there, an ache. sometimes the contrast of this intense joy lighting up my life draws my attention to that darker hollow, and I feel that sadness, that weight, a little bit more than usual. I seem to realize more and more what I am missing, just how much was lost when you died. it is constantly more than I could have imagined at the time.

and yet.

without you, without the loss of you, I would not have this particular incredible child. I would not have so many things that have become strong, fundamental parts of who I am. after you died, everything changed. I used to resent that change, but I don't anymore. not really. our experience together has become part of me, woven into the fabric of my life. you are gone, and yet you are in everything I do.

some days I still wake up angry. some days I am bitter. some days that instinctual mother in my heart wants to take the pregnant woman next to me by the hair and scream at her because doesn't realize just how fucking lucky she is.

some days I stop for just a moment to shed tears for the daughter that never was, for my little broken baby that I still love beyond measure. for that once stranger of a self, lost in my own life.

I am not so lost anymore.

but some days, I still miss you.