Point of Connection

As of the 29th, it has been nine years since my baby slipped beyond the veil to God.  Most of the time, it's not hard to let the buffer of time hold the pain back.  It's not that time heals all wounds so much as time allows for distraction, for forgetfulness.  It allows me to hide from the feeling of the immediate, gut-wrenching pain of fresh loss.  

As I watch my nephews and niece and others around them deal with the fresh loss of their mother's departure beyond the veil, I feel those connections.  I can understand their pain--at least as we share the common connection of loss.  I will never understand exactly what they're going through, even were my mother to die, because I don't have their exact background or emotional constitution.  But I can reach out for an embrace, distancing myself from their pain to protect myself from having to dive into my own.  I imagine many of us do this.  We feel their particular pain through their lens from a safe distance.  As the memorial went on, even as they read an essay I wrote of their mother's loss, I clung to this protective barrier.  I hate funerals because they always want to drag me back to the whirlpool of my own exposed and naked pain.  But I hold back.  I keep the distance alive and well.  

Then, we come upon the month of her angelversary, and the distance starts to shrink.  Nine years feels a lot longer, somehow, than nine marks on the calendar, nine times I've had that scab peeled back as I stare into the bloody pulp, which is all that is left of my heart.  And suddenly, I start feeling the connection.  The distance means nothing.  The differences mean nothing.  Yes, our experiences are different, but the addresses of the pain are next door to each other.  At these times, it's as if nine years never happened, and it feels like fresh loss again.  We can embrace as one, pray for healing as one, as we experience the healing power of understanding and love.  The Lord will see us through.  He knows where our loved ones are, that they are happy and continue to love us.  He will hold them in his love until we can meet them again. 

The Echo of Fresh Loss

A little over a week ago, the shock of terrible news echoed throughout our community.  A three-year-old girl was thrown from a horse and had to be taken off life support.  Everyone spoke of little else.  Those in my church community, led by our bishop, gathered at the church to pray for this little girl and this family before the final news came that she was brain dead.  We all prayed for a miracle because we know they happen.  In this case, it was that sweet angel child's time to go Home. 

Once again, my community gathered for a balloon release in her honor.  People came from miles around to support this family in their deep loss at that little girl's funeral, as she was carried to her grave not in a hearse but by a horse-drawn carriage. 

My husband and I wept for this family as we heard of their loss.  Something came up to stop me from making each event, but I rejoiced in the support they received.  I sent that little girl's bereft mother a message of support on FaceBook, and my husband attended most of it. 

I am not close to the family.  I may have seen the little girl in passing but had not met her.  But this hit my husband and me hard because we understand what this family is going through on a personal level.  It all echoes back through time and makes our pain feel fresh.  I woke in tears over a dream that my two living children had died. 

It also reminds me of how little support we received when our loss happened.  We felt judged, rejected by our community at the time because we'd failed in a parent's primary responsibility: to keep a child alive.  The undercurrent was that whatever happened, we deserved what we got.  If only all communities could understand the power of support and love at the time of such a deep and life-shattering loss.  We still felt people's prayers and did have friends and family from nearby and elsewhere come to the funeral, but I think the loss would have been even a little bit less impossible to endure if we had the kind of support this sweet family had.  I'm just happy for them that they have it and would pray for all who have a catastrophic loss that they'd feel the kind of outpouring of love this sweet family has had. 

I know some people probably question how all of these prayers did not result in a miracle.  How could such a terrible thing happen to good people?  I sometimes, I have to remind myself that prayer is about aligning our will with the Father's.  He knows the larger picture.  If we would have been most blessed, the plan for our lives most fulfilled, over the healing of our baby Alli, she would have been healed. 

But the Lord, in His mercy, knew we had to pass through hell at that time.  I can't explain why everyone loses a child, but I believe I have come to some understanding of the whys in our case.  We needed the growth, the empathy, the lessons we learned through loss. 

Faith is about trusting that He knows what we need.  We want this thing, and we pray for it.  But if we don't get it, we will still trust and believe.  That is the purest kind of faith, the faith that gets us closest to Him.  If I could have it all over again, would I choose a redo?  You'd better believe I would.  I'd give my life for my little girl rather than have her taken from me. 

I'm thankful for the blessings that have come from this loss, but I still have a hard time being grateful for the loss itself.  I can't claim to know everything, even about our own situation.  It brings me comfort to know I will hold Alli again, that we will be a family forever.  It also brings me comfort to know my heart can be healed through Jesus's sacrifice, his atonement.  In the meantime, it still hurts.  And my heart still bleeds for those who have to join the empty arms club.  I will reach out to them as often as I can. 

I believe in angels, and that they watch over us.  I believe God loves me.  I believe we can be together forever.  For now, that will have to do. 

The Tunnel of Mourning

I recently read a FaceBook meme debunking the fiction we're told that all we have to do is slog through an emotionally dark tunnel after loss, and we'll come out the other end all healed and feeling great.  It's so true that there really is no end to the tunnel.  Life changes.  We can either stare back the way we came, fighting for the dream of what we lost, or we can accept that life will never be the same.  All we can work toward is what experts like to call "the new normal."

After my baby died, I spent a long time looking behind me, longing for a way to get back into the life I left behind.  I kept feeling like somehow, I could think myself back through time and make the accident that took my baby never happen.  I could will my earlier self to do all the right things at the right times to make loss be a nightmare that passed instead of my new hellish reality.

I've since learned that I have little choice but to accept the tunnel in which I live.  The sooner I accept, the sooner I can move on.  There is no use looking back toward the sunlight, toward the imaginary protection offered by the world above, the world in which "it can't happen to me."  The tunnel is my life, my existence.  That won't change.

What can change is whether or not I let the light in, even here in the tunnel.  At first, letting the light in and feeling joy felt disloyal.  I've heard the same from friends who have lost, especially who have had a recent loss.  It feels like if you smile, you're betraying the person you've lost.  The truth is our angels want us to have joy.  We are here to learn to smile and be happy, even in the darkest night and to help others find the same light.  Even here in the tunnel, there is fellowship.  We can reach out in empathy to others who have lost.  There is healing.  The Lord can touch our hearts and lift our burdens no matter how deeply we feel we've sunk.  If we seek Him and help others lift their burdens, He will make our anguish seem less painful.

This doesn't mean all will be sunshine and perfection.  It just means we can seek and receive help to make it through those dark days.  We can know we're not alone.  I still have days when it feels like my heart is so broken and bloodied, my pit so deep, I'll never find joy again.  But as time goes on, and I seek healing, those days seem fewer and further between.  Time doesn't heal all wounds.  The Lord does.  That's why He suffered your pain and mine: so He would understand it and us.  He loves us all and wants us to feel joy.  We don't need to cling to the fiction that life is supposed to be painless for us to find joy.  The dark helps us understand and appreciate the light.  He is the light.  Let Him in.

The Power of Escape

One thing I'd like to do one day is to start a non-profit agency that pays for trips for families who have lost a loved one.  I know a trip to Yellowstone was better than any medicine just after we lost Alli.  It helped us all bond as a family and escape from day-to-day living.  When your world has changed as completely as it does for those who are fresh to the world of deep mourning, it can really help to get away from the mundane.  I know I, personally, looked around with raw, painful eyes that had been so fundamentally transformed and felt what I saw should reflect the pain I felt inside.  It just didn't feel right that headlines didn't shout that I'd just lost a baby.  It felt wrong that this piece of furniture or that blanket sat exactly where it sat when that person was alive.  I just wanted to escape my own skin.  I've been to Yellowstone several times before and since that day, but none of those trips have felt quite so magical as that one trip.

We were pondering sending my friend, who has just lost her husband, on a trip somewhere but then found out someone had beaten us to it.  I haven't had the chance to talk with her about it, but I'm sure it will help her state of mind to get away for a while.

Even after I came back from the physical trip, I found that reading and watching movies, a mental escape, helped some.  It helped to read and experience other people's (real or fictional) stories, so I didn't have to be stuck in a world so full of my own pain.  Sometimes, it helped when I was able to read other stories like mine because it allowed me to realize I'm not alone.  It also helped me see how others make it through.  Escape was such a good thing for me.  I know I'm not alone.

Funerals

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Funerals were once no big deal to me, back when they aid last respects to people with whom I had some emotional distance.  I never felt truly close to my grandparents, so their funerals didn't devastate me.  Those ceremonies simply meant they were moving onto the next logical step in their journey.  They were no longer in pain or in a world of dementia fog.  My grandma's also meant they could be together since hers came second.  Then my half-brother was cut down in the prime of his life by a murderer, who later ended up on the FBI's most wanted.  It felt like the specter of death was slowly closing in on my life where grandparents and cats could be lost but no one else.  However, I hadn't seen that brother much over the years.  I mostly felt for his wife and children and for my dad and his.  Loss had not become a meaningful companion.

Then came the year when my husband lost his father, I lost my closest brother, and, worst of all, my husband and I lost our baby, the center of my world.  They all died within about four months of each other.  Loss rocked my world and fundamentally changed me forever.  I was no longer a spectator to other people's loss.  Mourning became part of my identity.  Funerals became painful, almost impossible places to be.

A few days ago, we went to the memorial service of that friend's husband I mentioned last blog.  It was in a park and didn't exactly feel like a chapel-type funeral since it was mostly secular.  But any funeral brings up shades of pain.  I point blank refused to go to the viewing.  The real person, the person's soul that gave them light and life, is gone.  All that is left is an empty shell.  There are few things more painful than looking at that shell, especially when the person meant so much to you.

My heart broke for my friend on that day.  It continues to break every day when something brings to mind her pain.  My friend and I spent two hours just talking and crying together one day recently.  It didn't feel like enough.  When someone has had their heart ripped from their chest like that, nothing is enough.  But mourning with those that mourn is something, which is certainly better than nothing.

I know we can live with our loved ones again.  I know their spirits are still around, loving us.  I know families can be together forever, that love never dies.  But I also know it hurts today.  Funerals hurt.  We need them for closure, but they hurt.  Visiting graves hurts.  Loss hurts.  It helps to have an eternal perspective, to know that this life is just a short piece of a much longer journey.  It helps to know that our hearts can be healed by the Savior.  But it still hurts.  The best thing we can do is to show each other empathy and understanding, to show love and that we are there for each other.  No matter what and for as long as it takes.

Survived

I survived another angelversary.  The worst part was the day before when EVERYTHING hurt.  Every other thought hurt because every other thought was about her and about my loss.  The day of, we were so busy between visiting her grave, running errands, going to the temple, playing with cousins, and so many other things that I scarcely thought about the day at all.  So it didn't hurt as much as usual.

But I wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Surviving with less pain is good, right?  But did I do her justice on her day?  Does doing a lost one justice mean we have to hurt all day for him/her?  That's a hard one.  We remembered her by going to the temple and visiting her grave but missed going through her book because we were so busy.  Was it enough?

I know she wants me to be happy.  I know she hurts with my pain.  Mourning is an individual experience, so only I can decide if I'm doing it right.  But is there such a thing as "right" and "wrong" or is it just about remembering the lost one whether we are in pain over it or not?  I know that healing is about hurting less over the memories.  Does that mean I'm healing or blocking out the emotions?  I don't think there's an easy answer for that.

Faith and Healing

Morning is Unique

Mourning is an individual experience.  For each person, grief takes different forms.  A lot of people tout the virtues of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief.  When my baby smothered herself in a pillow six years ago, the support groups I joined each handed me a copy of the five stages as if it were a guide book to the experience of mourning.  Yet my experience and those of others around me seem to defy one single process, one single experience.  The five stages did not help me in my personal search for healing.  They did nothing for me except set me up for a confusing and incomplete definition of healing. 

False Expectations:

            Before my baby passed away, I lived in the illusion of safety, that just because no great tragedy had happened to me, it couldn’t.  It felt like a kind of protection that shielded me from the worst the world had to offer.  Then when my baby died, I was unprepared.  I had taken a class on trauma writing.  I had also written my master’s thesis on how reading fictional accounts of trauma and healing can provide a safer, somewhat removed space in which to deal with tragedy.  But none of this prepared me for the actual experience of loss. 

            I had heard time heals all wounds and was set up by that “guide book” I was handed for an expectation that all I had to do was let time pass, and Kubler-Ross’s five stages would happen to me.  As soon as they were done, I’d be healed.  I’d go back to how I was before my tragedy had punched a big bloody hole in my heart.  I wanted something to make it better because it hurt so much. 

The Reality

I knew, based on my experiences with child development classes, that stages meant states of being that would happen on their own in a normalized sort of order.  But in reality, I found myself going through a crazy mix of emotions, only a few of which matched up with Kubler-Ross’s stages of shock and denial, anger, depression and detachment, dialogue and bargaining, and acceptance, all of which were supposed to lead to a return to a meaningful life.  I didn’t see a lot of anger or detachment.  I couldn’t really deny anything.  And there were so many more emotions that weren’t on the list that I faced.  I discovered I could go through all of these emotions and more in a month, a week, or even an hour.  I’d skip from shock to acceptance and back to depression or hysteria then eagerness to share my story and back to depression again.  There was nothing stage-like in any of it. Even on days of acceptance, and even after returning to a meaningful life, it still hurt.  My heart still felt like it had a bloody, nasty, painful hole in it that wouldn’t go away. 

As time passed, I found ways to not think, to keep busy, to look at anything but my baby’s pictures or other triggers that sent me into fits of hysteria.  Basically, time allowed me to grow scabs over the big, bloody, painful hole, so I wouldn’t have to feel it.  But a scab is not nearly as comfortable or sensitive a tissue as regular flesh.  All it took was a nudge or poke at the edges of the scab, and I was in pain again.  

Research

So I started to look elsewhere for guidance in the healing process.  I picked up Robert Neimeyer’s book, Meaning Reconstruction and the Exerience of Loss, that debunked Kubler-Ross’s stages as unscientific.  He pointed out that Kubler-Ross’s original theory was based on the experience of dying, not on grief at all.  And he also pointed out that her theory had no scientific foundation or basis in fact, that the “stages” she defined were not stages at all.  I merely learned what I already knew, that grief involves “highly individual processes.”  What I didn’t find in either text was a useful idea of what healing would feel like for me, what it even meant.  Both texts defined healing as, basically, a return to normalcy.  I had returned to some kind of functionality, which meant by either definition, I was healed.  But I certainly didn’t feel healed.  Memories of my loss still hurt acutely even years later. 

 I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so another kind of guide I was given and studied was a variety of books by other LDS people about their experience of loss and healing.  Almost across the board, they set up a model of prayer, reading scriptures, and above all, having another baby, a rainbow baby to fill the arms even if he or she couldn’t replace the baby lost.  So we tried.  We spent years trying, only to have a total of 15 losses in a row before we walked away from trying, one baby death and 14 first term miscarriages.  All the testing brought us no answer as to the source of our problem and no rainbow baby.  We’ve recently come to terms with the idea that my body just will not carry babies to term anymore for whatever reason. 

Turning to the Source

So instead, I have turned to God for answers, and I have come to a greater understanding of the healing process than I ever did through science or pseudoscience.   Just after my baby died, I turned intensely to faith.  I prayed harder, studied scriptures more closely and with the guide of the Spirit, more than I ever have in my life.  I felt the best, the most at peace, when I sensed other people’s prayers and when I was full of the influence of the Comforter, also called the Holy Ghost.  God doesn’t want us to suffer.  If we turn to Him, he will bring us comfort.  I felt the best when I felt wrapped in His arms. 

Being healed for me is not just about being functional.  Someone could be dying inside but still live what looks like a normal life from the outside.  The best definition I have heard is that a person who is healed is able to look at a picture or other reminder of the loved one and smile over the memories and blessings more than ache over the loss.  Six years after my loss, I am not there yet, but I’d like to be.  I have moments of peace like that, but they don’t last.  However, this portrait of a healed heart gives me a goal to work toward above and beyond just the goal of functionality.  I met someone recently who has bouts of depression but otherwise, arrived at the emotional state I’m still striving for within hours of delivery of a stillbirth.  The Lord sent her spiritual experiences that immediately brought the peace and joy that have been hard-fought for me.  Everyone is different, so everyone’s experience is different.  True healing is a gift the Lord can give in His time and in His way if we earnestly seek it and pray for it.  

The key is applying the Lord’s atonement.  When Jesus suffered and died for us, he didn’t just suffer for our sins.  He also suffered our pains.  He understands what we suffer.  He understands loss, sadness, and pain.  We need to reach out to him.  We need to seek His peace through obedience, through scripture study, and through bringing the Spirit into our lives so strongly that there is no more space for pain.  He will buffer us from agony.  He will bring us joy and peace.  

One of the general authorities of the LDS church, Elder Shayne Bowen, told the story of how his toddler choked on chalk and died.  Elder Bowen went through pain, anger, frustration, and guilt.  He rejected the comforting words of those who tried to reach out to him.  But as he focused more on gratitude for what he had rather than on his pain and loss, he began to find peace and joy.  The Lord “gave him a new heart," a heart full of light rather than “darkness and despair.”  He did warn that “you will never completely get over [grief] until you are once again with your departed loved ones […or] have a fullness of joy until [you] are reunited in the morning of the First Resurrection.”  But we can still have joy, love, and peace.  We can, as he says, “continue with good cheer.”  The Lord can heal our hearts when we seek Him in sincere prayer, service of our fellow man, obedience, love, and gratitude. 

We will never be the same person we were before.  But we also don’t have to suffer for the rest of our lives, either.  Each person has a different journey, but we don’t have to make this journey alone.  We have our fellow travelers here, but most of all, we have the Lord who loves us with all his heart and wants us to find peace and joy.  

The Rainbow Fades

So far, I've mostly written blogs about the early days of loss.  If you'll pardon me for stepping out of my pattern, I'd like to fast forward to today.  I lost another baby this week, a very early pregnancy.  This is always a hard thing, but this one is particularly hard.  Almost everyone who loses a baby looks forward to their rainbow, the baby born after the loss.  This week, after 13 early pregnancies, the latest at ten weeks and the earliest at just over four, I'm finally facing the apparent fact that my body will not carry another baby.  I'll go into some detail at a later date on individual miscarriages.

But for now, I'm just processing the thought that I will not get a rainbow.  It's not a pretty thought, but I don't think there's anything we can do about it.  Some suggest artificial insemination.  What good would that do if my body just won't carry them for whatever reason?  Some might suggest adoption.  I'll get to that in a later blog post, why that is not likely to happen aside from the expense and our age.  I'm nearly forty.  My husband is nearly 50.  It doesn't even make any sense that we have been trying like we have.  But we just felt like there was another one waiting.  Now we see that it is not to be.  My body just will not do it.  I've done the testing, and the doctors come out without any answers for me.  I tried some pills I was given to try to keep my next pregnancy, but they did not help.  

In the beginning, all I wanted was a warm body to fill my empty, cold arms.  I don't think I could have then survived the thought that my arms would remain empty of another baby.  Now, I know I will survive.  It's been a long journey.  I will focus on my gratitude that I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful children I can still hold.  That won't make repeat loss any easier nor the fading rainbow in my imagination any less sad.  It still hurts.  Sometimes, it hurts so badly I still cry like my heart is bursting.  I dread the day very soon when I will let my baby clothes and toys I've held onto for all these years go.  

But I know that there will come a day when I can hold my babies.  I will live for that day, the Second Coming, when I can fill my arms with them again or for the first time, and that reunion will be forever.  And it will be very sweet.  

my Eclipse

The Mother's day before we lost Alamanda, I got a voice mail that told me my brother was dead.   He'd been my best friend all through my childhood, youth, and early adulthood.  But for a couple of years before he passed, we hadn't been talking to each other.  It is a long, ugly story.  But then, without warning, he was gone entirely.  He had been gone for a while from my life, really, uninterested in contact.  But the news shocked me, really sent me into shock.  Until that point, I hadn't lost anyone closer to me than a beloved pet, all of my grandparents, who were ailing and not particularly close to me when they passed, and an uncle I didn't see much.  These were all significant losses, and I don't mean to diminish anyone's experience who goes through these pains.  But I'd never lost anyone truly close until I lost Brent.  It hurt that we had lost the closeness we had once shared.

The news of my brother's death had not truly sunk in when just over a month later, I called home after work to find out my baby was not breathing and had been rushed to the hospital.  To lose loved ones with whom I had little contact was hard, at times devastating.  The losses of some of my favorite pets had left me reeling.  But the pain of all of these losses before did not prepare me for the loss of my baby, the center of my existence.  My older children and husband were and are incredibly important to me.  But anyone who has been a mother to a small infant knows that your world revolves around that infant.  You wake [several times a night] for that baby.  Your first thought in the morning is to tend to the baby.  Half of your brain is always occupied on taking care of that baby.  Your body, especially if you're breast feeding, is keenly aware of his or her existence and the baby's needs at all times.  To have that closeness ripped away is beyond a physical agony.  In fact, I'd rather undergo physical torture than the loss of a child.

I can't speak for all parents.  But I can speak to my experience.  There is nothing worse than the loss of a child.  Nothing.  Here is another poem written a month after the first.  The pain had become slightly but only slightly less acute.  But in my experience, there's no such thing as getting over such a loss.  Only getting through and surviving it.

"A month has passed"

A month has passed

Since I held you in my arms.

Already, the image of your large,

Blue, curious eyes peering at me

Around the breast,

Already the sense of your round warmth

Is fading from my memory

Until you are only a series of pictures

And an aching, sometimes gushing, heart

And a spirit watching me, cheering me on.

The memory of what was

Hides behind the present,

But in quiet moments,

The agony revisits with a twisting sword.

Words cannot convey the pain of your departure.

I strain for the sound of your name

On anyone’s lips but my own.

Your warmth and the glow of your smile,

The happy giggle at my silly face

Seem like a pleasant dream,

The image from my mind

Rather than a reality from my past.

I miss you more than words can say

Even as I wonder how it can be

You were ever part of my life.

Come back.

I've come a long way from when I wrote these poems and early entries.  But I know I have a lot farther to go.  Which is one reason I'm writing these blogs.  Because of so much loss piled on loss, I don't know that I can claim I've really processed or healed from my brother's death.  Often, it hardly seems real, like he just hasn't gotten around to writing recently.  Maybe I'm still in shock from both of these losses.   I struggle to find a meaning for the word "healing" when it comes to loss, at least a meaning I like.  I guess that's because, for everyone, it means something different .  

How to begin?

I found a draft from the post I made for this blog, one I never published from five years ago.  I explain what happened in the next post.

A week ago today, our four month old baby girl, Alamanda, died. I left her on the bed, seemingly far enough from the edge that there shouldn't have been a problem, and buffered from the edge by a firm pillow, then I went to work. She somehow found a way to get off the bed face first into a pillow and smothered. My husband was home and found her. He called 911 and performed CPR, but it was too late. My husband, my children, and myself are all devastated but trying to find a way to pick up the shreds of our lives and move forward.

It's hard to describe the emotional roller coaster we've been through over the last week. Everything from exquisite agony to the peace of knowing without a doubt that we will one day hold our little girl again. This blog will reflect not just my experiences but those of my husband in this impossibly difficult situation. So many others have been through this kind of pain, the loss of a child, before, but everyone's experience is different, and this is our pain. This journey is uniquely ours, but will hopefully help someone else along the way.

We are LDS, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We believe in forever families. But that doesn't always make things easy.

Today, at the week's anniversary, I marked the hours. I checked my clock and marked the hour when a week ago I was feeding her as I held her close, safe and warm in my arms. I marked again when, a week ago, I went to work, something I don't do often and won't do again for a while. I marked again when, a week ago, my husband walked in to check on her, and she was fine. Then again when he walked in and found his world had shattered around him. Then again when I called after work, and my life shattered around me as I rushed to the hospital.

The scenes are all a blur in my mind, doctors coming in to tell me they were doing everything to revive her, the doctor who came in to tell me there was nothing they could do. Then a flurry of counselors, police detectives and CPS workers whose job it is, as a matter of course, to investigate a child's death. It still feels like a nightmare in my mind. People embraced me; members of my church came to support me; my husband came to hold me up. But everything people said to me felt useless next to the aching knowlege that my baby was gone. My husband and I got to hold her lifeless body tight one last time, to kiss her face. But the pain was greater than any we have ever known.

I wrote a poem after that day:

Pain
Blinding, numbing
Burning like a volcano
And clouding out everything
From my vision.
Everything tastes like dirt or salt.
I choke it down to fill the emptiness
But the real emptiness remains.
Everything I see, touch, think about
Links back to chubby toes,
Chunky little legs
Soft little cheeks,
Bright blue eyes
Staring at me from around the breast,
Peach fuzz across the soft head,
Round little bum
Aimed at me for a change
Preparatory to eating.
Where are you, my angel?
I long for you.
My every thought is for you,
Wondering how yesterday could have gone
If I’d have been just a little more careful
With your fragility.
My only comforts,
Your older brother and sister,
Your daddy
And above all knowing one day
You will fill my arms again.

There is more, so much more. The last week has felt more like five years, and my baby sometimes like a fond dream rather than a sweet reality. But for now, this is all I can write.

Tami