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.

Graduation

Recently, I went to my kids' graduation from their respective grades.  I had no idea that such a benign activity would lead to the kind of trigger I mentioned in last week's post.  As I watched the kindergartner's sing their song, it occurred to me that my little girl would have been one of them.  I usually think of my angel as a baby.  But the reality is babies don't stay babies for long.  It was one of those moments like in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty," where Maleficent scoffs that for years, her servants have been searching cradles for a princess that would long since outgrown them.  My imagination keeps searching cradles for a baby when children the age she would have been would have just graduated from kindergarten.  The tears sprang to my eyes when it occurred to me they were missing one of their number and always would be.  It was meant to be a moment of celebration, but for me, it was a moment of mourning.

I imagine there will be more moments like that as I notice more and more events she would have been part of had she still been here.  At the same time, I believe in the resurrection.  I believe I will raise her one day.  She will come back and do all of these things that it feels like she will be doing now.  But in the meantime, there will still be a hole in my heart, and I will still hit triggers like this.