The Birthday

It's coming up this week, my angel's birthday.  I haven't started feeling it yet, which is good.  I always like when I can avoid thinking about it for as long as possible.  I'll deal with the emotional field mines when they come.  It would be nice if they can wait until Thursday, her actual birthday.  This countdown to blast off emotions reminds me of her actual birthdate, which is 3-2-10, 3210, a literal countdown to ground zero.  Even as I write this, I'm hearing one of the songs that helped me through the dark days after her loss plays.  It's "Be Still" by Hillary Weeks, who I understand is the number one Christian recording artist.  Several of her songs spoke to me when it felt like no other light could penetrate the dark cloud in which I resided.  It's only as I write this and hear that song that I feel that day coming like thunderclouds dragged toward me by a merciless wind.

I know I will survive.  I have survived five others just like it with a trip to the LDS temple, a birthday party to celebrate her short life, homemade presents from the kids, her abbreviated baby book, and an angel food cake.  She would be seven.  That's a big girl, full of personality and hugs I won't receive until we're reunited again.

I have to work that day.  I'm not sure whether to view it as a blessing (that busyness will help me not think) or a curse (that no matter what I do, I'll be unable to do anything about those thoughts that will come).  There is just no winning on that day or on her death day four months later.  I'll try to turn it into a celebration and see if I can turn that day from the deep emotional dark hole I fear it may be to a day full of smiles and gratitude that I got those four months with my precious angel.

Casual

It still occasionally comes as a shock when I hear of someone casually talking about deciding to have a baby, as if that's such an easy choice for some people.  For a lot of people, it really is.  Once one child gets to a certain age, many people simply expect you to be considering the next.  People just assume that considering leads to acting, which leads to a child.

And then there are people who struggle with infertility and/or serial miscarriage like me.  There is no such thing as "expecting."  The only thing I'm expecting on the rare times I do get pregnant is loss.  There is no such thing as casually deciding to have another baby.  After fifteen [sixteen?  I've lost count] miscarriages in a row, seventeen losses in a row, including Alli's passing, I won't try again.  Pregnancy would be synonymous with loss.  One follows the other.  And I can't go there again.  There will be no rainbow baby for me.

Most of the time, I'm fine with this.  I've come to terms with this after so many years.  But when someone talks of having a baby as a casual or even possible choice, I'm reminded of the choices I no longer have.  I can't expect people to stop talking like that.  As with everything, I just have to accept it's going to come and try to be happy for the other person for whom it is a choice.

Count Down

I find that as our angel's birthday and death date/angelversary approach, I become more fragile to triggers.  I found a poem my sister-in-law wrote to my baby, one I don't look at because of the way it sets me off.  And, of course, it set me off because Alli's birthday is less than a month away.  I heard of someone else's angel's birthday coming, and I cried for that person's loss and for my loss as well.  And just talking about the songs I've emotionally attached to my angel got me crying.  Josh Groban's "A Breath Away" is not one I can hear without crying.  I mentioned Evanescence's "My Immortal" in conversation the other day and broke out in tears.

Last year, Alli's birthday was a fairly happy one.  We had an angel food cake for her and looked at her pictures.  We threw her a party and invited her cousins.  It was a good day.  But it's not always so.  I can hope it will be like that.  But I know I've already stepped foot in the emotional landmine time that is the month before her birthday, and I never know how things will go.