I've been thinking about this over the weekend and how to put it into words.
I feel like I am becoming whole once again.
When J died, I felt like the three of us just weren't enough. There was a big hole. Someone was missing. I felt like how could we move forward ever again with someone missing who could never return? Everything we did on a daily basis, I had that feeling....like that was not how it should have been. If we went to the park, I'd think "I should be having to hold and feed an infant while watching my son play". If we went out on date night I'd think "But I'm supposed to have painfully engorged breasts and be worried about her at the in-laws." Anything I/we did wasn't enough. It felt like it could never be enough.
But something has changed in the last week. The three of us doing things together seems "whole" once again. It's not like I've forgotten about her, but rather the opposite. It feels like it's always us three plus one. She's with us. Her memory is with us. She's never gone, but always here in our love for one another. It's hard even to think about how things I do would be different. Those thoughts quickly go away. I try and imagine it, and I can't. It feels like this is how it always should have been. I guess it's a little sad to think about being whole without your daughter that would have been there.....but yet, it doesn't FEEL sad.
When I try and think about things like this, it seems like it should be sad. But the thoughts are thoughts without emotion behind them. Sometimes I even try and be sad, but I can't.
I'm sure there will be times where I can still cry about her and wish she was here.
But for now, she seems like she is always here, she was the product of our love for each other. And she will always be the big sister to whomever we will welcome in the future. I guess this is just where I am at right now. (I've even been smiling and playing with babies!!!! WTF?)
I am looking forward to the future while integrating the past and embracing the present.
All of this is very strange..........
missing_one
About Me
- missing_one
- west coast, United States
- I'm here because it seems to be helping. I am mother to a toddler and we lost our beautiful daughter on Mother's Day 2007 because of cord compression . Ironically, the day she died in the womb, May 12, was her "exact" due date(40 weeks). So many things like this I cannot explain. We welcomed our 'rainbow baby' Jan 2010! Email me: amendingheart at gmail dot com
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11 comments:
Sounds like a really good place to be in. Still feeling sorry for myself here, but I am hopeful I will get to where you are. I do.
Whole is a good place to be. I agree with you, you can be happy and still have her with you. I too, wish that I will create a legacy for my baby that is not the tragedy of his death but rather the joy that he brought us in the little time we had with him, while he was here.
Your post made me smile, thanks!
Your post made me smile too. I'm still far away from the place you're at. Sometimes I can almost get glimpses of it, but they are fleeting. For me a lot of it will not be laid to rest until I have a living child. There is a massive hole in my life and it is far reaching.
I look forward to the day when I get find a place to be with Jacob but also to feel like my life beyond Jacob is more complete.
In the early days of my grief I read the words of a mother who lost her daughter thirteen years before. Her daughter lived 6 days and then died as the result of an undetected heart defect. She was trying to express her feelings so many years past her loss, and all of the ways her life is richer for having loved and lost her daughter. She said something to the effect of that she doesn't even know how to imagine her life turning out any differently now. At the time, her words hurt me. I felt like she was saying she was better off for having had a child who died. But I see now that wasn't what she was saying at all. I think she was trying to say something like what you have expressed here so beautifully.
So happy to hear that you feel "Whole". It does sound like a great place to be in.
This does sound like a very good place to come to. I am glad you are feeling this way, and I hope this feeling stays.
It's not exactly like that for me. I think I accepted A's absence early on, in a factual sense. And because he died several weeks before his due date it was a little easier for me to not think of where I should be at the moment. But that comes too, occasionally. Or I might feel his absence acutely when I hug Monkey. Not every time, but sometimes. I say acutely because I feel his absence sort of "on low" all the time. And there is a whole lot of love there, but also, still, a lot of sadness.
what i'm gathering is that, when i felt that way a little while ago, i was still "in shock" or "still numb". it's hitting me very hard now that the shock/numbness is apparently wearing off. my days lately are complete sh*t.
if i ever come to feel like you do now, i think more than anything it will just scare the crap out of me.
Very nice. You inspire me.
I am looking forward to the future while integrating the past and embracing the present.
This sounds wonderful. Though far too ambitious a project for me to take on for myself.
Whole?? it sounds so far away for me, i'm not even half way.But you give me hope that i will be 'whole' one day..
I'm just one week into this. Reading you and other women's accounts give me some bit of hope that things will get better.
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