Dear David,

David, my sweet son, I cannot believe that today has come. I've turned around and another year has passed. Our last moments together still seem so close to me, time has not disturbed them as it has my other memories of you. I can still feel the softness of your tiny cheeks on my fingertips. I can even remember the very second that I last kissed the bridge of your nose, it was so familiar, as if that part of you was made just for me, like puzzle pieces. I remember the feeling of your hands in mine for the last time, I will never forget your tiny palms on my thumbs and how your fingers curled around mine. I remember the feeling that I would have only this moment with you to carry me through the rest of my life. I held you trying to soak up every last second before I had to say goodbye to you. I know now that you were already home with God but those last few memories beside you are so big for me. I remember how soft your hair was and how I never had noticed the blond in your hair until it glimmered in the light that day. I remember how much I wanted to wake you up and hold you in my arms. I suppose I hadn't the ability to realize the finality of that night in the hospital, I would imagine if I did then I would have stayed there beside you until they made me leave. It was all so surreal David, sometimes it still is. Four years in most circumstances is just a quick moment passing by but four years without you to hold and watch grow has been like waking every morning to the beginning of another eternity. My journey in faith has promise and hope for us sweet son, we will be together one day and I will hold you in my arms no matter how big you have gotten, I may not put you down for a thousand years. I have not forgotten the sound of your laugh or the light in your eyes sweet baby and I can't wait to enjoy every moment of you again, I miss you so much. I love you Tiger, so much.

Mommy

Matthew 19:14 NIV

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these

As october creeps in

Things are starting to get a bit overwhelming. I'm stressed and am quickly becoming reluctant to schedule anything, regardless of it's importance. I'm certainly not sleeping well and can't stand the thought of being around other people. I've been so emotional and unable to put it into words... it must be october coming around again to beat me up and leave me vulnerable.

october is a bully for the most part but last year when November finally appeared to rescue me, and welcome my daughter into the world, I saw a faint glimmer of something more meaningful. My ability to cope seems to be progressive so, in general, I can safely expect it to be more than a glimmer this time around.

I figure october is here to keep me in line and help me never to forget just how precious life is. Once it's gone, I always have my head on straight about how blessed I am and how I could lose it all in an instant. I hate new perspective though because it always seems to come at a cost... but it's here so I should get to appreciating it right?

I have a week or so before I find myself drowning in an unforgiving month so I should relax already but the tell-tale signs of an october are upon me. I guess I can only hope that when it is done with me I find something even more profound in it's incessant need to show it's ugly face again and again. We'll see.

She has 5

My dearest friend just gave birth to her... second son, third living child, fifth baby. It was so sweet to see her happy and full of life. Kissing his little cheeks and letting him root on her nose. It is so perfect. She is such a good friend, she never judges my postion on anything, or my struggles, she just supports me and seems to float on through life enjoying the ride, most of the time:)

It was about 2 months after David died that she miscarried at around 10 or 12 weeks, if I remember correctly. I walked in after work one day, I was living in her house, if you'd call it living...a better description is existing, anyway I walked in so excited to find out about her prenatal appointment, maybe she was 8 weeks, I don't even know I guess, that whole year was a blur. Either way, I said, 'How is that little baby, did you hear the heartbeat', her response was so difficult for me, the news was hard yes, but the manner of her response was so unexpected, 'I didn't hear it, there isn't one and please don't cry about it because I've already cried about it and I don't want to anymore', she was belly-down on the sofa staring ahead at the TV while I ran into the kids room to try and stop the wildfire that had just consumed my heart.

I'm a big 'a loss is a loss' kind of bereaved parent, I don't know the journey of pregnancy loss, or the pain of never meeting my tiny baby before they return to God, but I know what it's like to miss first birthdays and never hear 'mama' from my child's mouth... any parent of loss knows these all the same, so the whole thing left me heartbroken, on top of heartbreak. Plus, I barely had the energy to wake up and take care of C, how was I to comfort my friend, when she clearly had taken the whole thing and buried it deep inside? It was over that day and time passed with no talk of it.

Fast forward 6 months to the following July, My friend had conceived again and was about 4 or 5 weeks I think, when I called to tell her that Sang and I had just found out we were pregnant, she was the first call I made after I came to terms with the fact that David wouldn't be my last, as I had planned it to be, and her words were so painful, 'Guess what, Sang and I are expecting... we get to be pregnant together!!' she was in NY or West VA or somewhere, I know she was away because I would have driven straight to her house otherwise, like I did with David. She was quiet and calm, not like her when I tell her babies are coming, and said 'I don't know about that, I'm spotting' we got off the phone and she miscarried within a day or two. Again, no talk of lost futures or broken Mommies.

She had a perfect little boy the following year and her newest little one was born almost a week ago. Still no talk of her second or third, they don't have names and we don't ever talk about them, I don't even know how she feels about that whole year of her life. I don't know if she is plagued inside by how quickly those times passed and how little attention was devoted to her losses, I don't know if she sees them as losses at all, I can say honestly that I don't know if she even thinks of them as babies and not just pregnancies... all I do know is that she has one more than me, she has 5. Three here with her and two waiting for her in heaven, things like this make me feel crazy, is it even normal to grieve for other people?

When I look at her with her children I always think of those two pregnancies and what they were to me, how her babies, here and gone, help me everyday to see that life does go on and loss goes on and love goes on and Mommies go on and on and on...

Welcome Baby A.R., you're a lucky little guy to have the Mommy you do, you'll never have to question her strength, I sure don't.

He would be about the same age...

I often distance myself now from 4 year old's, it was once 3 year olds and before that, 2 year olds... it's tough being uneasy around innocent children because they are the age David 'would be'. I only knew 3 or 4 people that had babies about the same time and I rarely, if never, see them or their children. Not for that reason, just because our lives took different paths. I was out this weekend and ran into a old co-worker that had a little girl the same time I had David, we were out around the same time giving birth.

I remember after David died our desks were together, our backs to one another but we shared an office space. Her daughter's pictures would change with the seasons, her daughter near flowers in the spring, in the pool at summer, her first birthday blowing out candles and so on... my son's pictures stayed the same... 6 months old... in late fall. They never changed, they never moved and even though C grew, I never changed his pictures out either because I knew I couldn't change David's... so C stayed 3 and 1 month for about a year and a half.

I would sob and read the bible at my desk, I would keep things of David's on my desk and journal freely when I felt like it. My desk quickly became a memorial after I returned to work. I never cared about the girl behind me and what she made of the whole thing until one day she leaned over my desk and said, "you have to stop crying and move on, you're young and you'll have more, you have to move on and take all these pictures down, it's hard for me to look at them".

I was so heartbroken, her pictures were the hard ones to look at, her coming in everyday and being fine and listening to her talk all day about what Blain was doing was what was really difficult. Did she think it would be easier for a mother to just forget her child existed and move forward... from then I called David 'my goldfish' when talking about him in front of her. She thought of him as such, just something I had that died... so flush it down the toilet, get over it and get a new one already.

I have never seen her since I left that job in February of 2007 so it's been about 2 and half years. Her daughter was with her, she was in a dress, running around with no care of who I was or why I was talking to her mother. She looked sweet and whimsical, happy and kind. I thought- 'Gosh, that's how old David would be'. David would be here beside me running into her and he wouldn't care who she was or why I was talking to her, he would be tall and talking and kind and happy. He would be as big as her daughter and if he was here I might not hate this woman as much as I do and I might not want so badly to run away and wish I had never met her.

I felt the pain rushing in the second I saw her and I thought nothing could hurt more than remembering how mean she had been, then I looked down at her beautiful daughter and I stood... corrected.

... for a little Cub's Mama-

I know so many people who would disagree with my advice completely here but as someone who wears your shoes (or some like them) everyday... I say don't face it if you can't - don't force yourself to take steps you aren't ready for, the time flys by so quickly after the first year and life, it takes over and you don't get these opportunities to breakdown or ignore it, you have to 'keep on keepin' on'.

If you're anything like me, the things you feel right now will fade one day and even though they hurt like hell- you will miss them, or at least I do. The first year after David died I felt so close to him, like I could feel him around me and I let time and the world force grief and mourning on me when I just wanted to co-exist with my loss. I still feel him and I still think of him a hundred times a day but it feels different.

Just do what you need to do and if that's to avoid it and pretend it's not there or to set up camp under the dining room table to avoid the world, then do it. You will never have this opportunity again. If you think the world around us isn't tolerant of loss in the first year, wait until you're 3 years out, that's when a fort under the table gets you a real label...

Painfully, time keeps moving and us being frozen in a world of motion has always felt to me, like being caught in a tornado... just take your time and in your time you'll find a way through the storm.

Be well Mama, you deserve some peace.

Bleeding Hearts

I took these a couple weeks ago in my Mom's garden. I always wondered as a child why my mother was so fond of this plant, it seemed so sad, the name and the little dangling flowers... not so much since David died though. Death is sad, plants are not.

It fascinates me that they grow several to a branch, leaning on one another. It makes me think of each little flower as a parent's broken heart and there is some comfort to knowing that we are all tied together in this.

My baby had, didn't have...?, would have had...?, another birthday

The day came and went. It was quiet for the most part, uneventful as to be expected. I said something at the cemetery about every year it seems like I need less from his birthday, less talking, less consoling, less tears, just less of everything. I couldn't even use the word dead on his first would-be birthday... I said 'passed' and 'gone', now I must sound bitter, I'm not but I probably sound it, because I don't even think before I speak anymore... I always feel bad when I talk about him being dead because people seem so surprised by how I talk about it. It's not that it's any easier to talk about or any less painful to say, I just don't feel the need to make others feel better about David dying, that's their path to walk not mine. I'm doing the best I can and sadly, sometimes I need to hear that he is dead because I've tried pretending that it hasn't happened and I've tried ignoring it and I've tried to use nice words to make it hurt less but all that does is hurt more that I can't even accept it.

I remember when he first died I used to walk around sighing and say "I don't know" over and over again like a lunatic. It was almost like a nervous habit... I would just say it to break the silence I think. "I don't know" and everyone around me would be like "what, what don't you know?" to which I would respond "I don't know". I remember his entire first birthday was spent crying and saying that I didn't know. I realized on his would be 4th birthday that I still 'don't know' what I didn't know. The difference is that I've stopped saying it.

I think that is all time does for mourning mothers, it's all still there, the pain and the unknown and the panic... it all still exists and controls our every move but at some point we just get so used to it that it feels normal and we stop questioning it.

I'm rambling.

Would-be birthdays are so unimaginably impossible.

rain again please

i'm left with what's left, i haven't even the words right now.

Another 24...

I am so deeply saddened this day- for reasons I simply don't understand. I want to hold my tiny child. I want to kiss his sweet face and stare into his perfect green eyes. I want to hear his laugh and feel the softness of his little hands. This yearning is so consuming and so terribly inadequate for an aching heart.

The countdown starts today... one month until what would have been my David's 4th birthday. The thought of his birth reduces me to tears. I can feel the emotion swell behind my eyes like a million forceful rivers pushing against the dam. The very thought that I cannot hold him shakes me to my core. It crushes my weakened spirit that all my efforts to remember him will not produce anything to pacify my tattered heart or appease my desperate need to be close to him today.

The numbing pursuit of any emotion other than loss, always, always comes up short. I am always left unsatisfied. It leaves me alone to scrutinize over the painful details of his death. I have no release. This, the aftermath, forbids me to remember our happy moments and robs me of the six months that he brought so many treasures and so much fulfillment to my existence. Nothing helps to satisfy my unrealistic need to separate loss from love- this juncture can not be undone and I long to embrace the joys of his brief life, so taken for granted.

I need peace, I crave something- anything peaceful.

I now know that I am bound eternally by this imperious pain to remain broken, to walk this unending road, to accept this trial. I must submit to my journey- as pieces of something once whole- I submit. I am not allowed options. I can choose only to sweep up the fragments of the person I was and carry them with me on my path...so I shall.

My little guy...

How do I know though? HOW do I KNOW?

Sang and I went to David's grave this past weekend on our way out to dinner. It was simply awful. awful. awful. I've lost my faith that all this mindless motion that I create can keep me distracted, can keep me busy.

I feel more insane this week than I did the week David died. I never questioned the "process" before. I hated it but I never had the whole "how can I change this?" feelings. Now I hate the process and I don't care to even entertain the idea that it's going to produce any other result than my son being dead. I am here, right here at disbelief and denial- isn't that step 1 in the process?

How I have come here? Where did my progress go? Who can help me?

I stood there, in the rain, and instead of seeing a headstone and thinking about my beautiful greed-eyed boy- I thought about a box holding baby bones. My child is a box of baby bones and I don't want it to be that way. I cried and I didn't care that I was losing control. It was all slipping away from me, my sanity and my composure.

I asked Sang 'how do you know? How do you know that he's there? I don't feel him!" and Sang just listened, I think perhaps unsure of how I landed myself back here at what appears to be 'square one'. But seriously now... How do we know? I used to go there and put flowers and feel him there watching me and now I am scared to think about my son being there in a cemetery in a box, in the earth. The images are unthinkable and I am broken all over again.

There is of course a horrible feeling of grief and guilt that accompany any thought of him, my tiny child. I don't want to be here in this thinking! I want to be on my way back to a shadow of who I used to be. I want to be happy when I think of my son, I want to be whole. My little baby is gone and I am broken... the only difference between now and three years ago is that I don't feel I have the right to just break down and give up- I feel like the show must go on and I will just have to keep praying for some peace.

Dear Kendra-

Kendra-
My dear friend-
My words are so inadequate today

I am so sorry that you must know this loss
and that your daughter isn't here with you
I am so very sorry that you have to live even one day without her here in your arms.

I wish you could know the softness of her skin
I wish you could know her sweet touch and the sound of your name from her mouth
I wish that you could see her blow out birthday candles and tear open colorful packages

I am broken that you will never know the sweet innocence in her brown eyes
You are forced instead to remember the flutter of hope they gave you only once

I wanted to stop the world that day, four years ago
I wanted to freeze time and allow you to take what you needed from those tender moments
but time was not mine either
Painfully, time continued on it's selfish way

I miss knowing you, with light and joy always in your eyes
I miss the beautiful person that knew pain only as a feeling, not the way of life it has become
My heart is broken to never know the person you would be had your daughter stayed with you on earth

There are no words, dear Kendra.
There are only hopes, and dreams, tiny unfulfilled futures, and sorrow this day.
Though her time in life was short, it was a lifetime, a beautiful and meaningful lifetime.

I truly love the person that you have become in her loss
A mother of strength and hope, a mother that knows a deeper love
than any mother should ever have to know
I love you and your daughter forever for what you have given me in this life.
I, selfishly, love that if we must walk this path, we can walk it together.

It is with hope that I pray this day does not consume you
I pray that you understand her sweet purpose to your life
and that you never question your devotion to her

It is with sorrow that I remind you, tomorrow is never promised
and that it was you and your daughter that taught this to me
To both of you, I am forever grateful

In love, dear Kendra I cannot wait to meet your sweet child in eternity
until then, my heart aches for you
I am so sorry for your loss,
From one mommy to another, I am so sorry.