Yesterday I managed to be the stay-at-home mom I always thought I would be. It only took me three plus years, but who's counting? We played, O crawled around like a nut, when he went down for a nap E and I baked bread and did a sticker project together, then we all went to the zoo with friends, we ate lunch, napped, I cleaned most of the house, made dinner, the boys got up, everyone ate dinner without a fuss, baths, bedtime, time with C. I baked cookies. Watched an episode of The Wire, which we just started. No one, not adults, kids, or any combination of the two, raised voices in frustration or even huffed.
Why can't every day be like that? Because for several moments in that day I actually felt like a normal person. Not someone who's inadequate, who's grieving, who's always playing catch-up with life.
I don't know what hit me today, but most of it was pretty good. Until it wasn't. I don't know if it's because I'm exactly 19 months away from the worts day of my life, which was, ironically, the best and only day I got to spend with Calla. I just found myself in the shower tonight sobbing, nearly screaming (except O and E were in bed so I held myself back). Why did she have to die? I just can't understand it, and somehow tonight in the shower it just came to me. She's always going to be dead. Forever. It doesn't seem fair, does it?
In spite of how much I love my boys.
In spite of how much I love my husband.
In spite of how much I love my life.
In spite of my abundance of relative good fortune.
In spite of all of this. I miss and want her so much. Somehow the memory of her birth, so painful, and primal, and awful, bubbled up to the surface of my brain tonight. And I wanted to scream for my little girl. Just like I did in that hospital room 19 months ago.
My little girl.
She's gone.
My little girl.
About Me
- Mary Beth
- My life on the run. Balancing family, mental and physical exercise, and all the emotional baggage accumulated throughout several decades of living.
I'm not even four months out but I read a lot of these blogs. A current theme, and one I've become familiar with already, is this: you know how in the beginning of your grief, the first time you smile, the first time you taste food, the first time you make it through a full shower without sobbing uncontrollably while the cruel stream of water washes every tear that is shed for your child forever down the drain and you think, "NO I shouldn't be feeling like this. I want to be absolutely miserable the rest of my life to prove how much I love my baby." There's the guilt. If you "move on" (which you know you never will) then it's a slap in the face of your child's existence. Well that's how I've felt anyway on many, many occasions. But now this:
ReplyDelete"Why can't every day be like that? Because for several moments in that day I actually felt like a normal person. Not someone who's inadequate, who's grieving, who's always playing catch-up with life."
Thank you for this post. I hope what I tried to say made sense.
This post made my heart hurt. Literally. Ouch.
ReplyDeleteI'm sending you so much love, Mary-Beth.
God I wish our little girls were here.
xo
I think these are the toughest kinds of posts to read and the worst part of grief. It's just impossible to get back to that elusive 100% capacity. I suppose that non-club members would say that you just have to dig in/move past/get over but, it's just not that simple, is it? And no matter how well you do with the grieving process, the simple facts of the situation don't change.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, it sounds like you gave your boys a really kick-ass day. I wish Calla could be there to share it with you.
It is always the hardest when the these intense feelings come on unprovoked and unexpected. You think that you're having a good day and then...wham! You are hysterically crying in the shower, missing your baby. I've been there too, so many times:(
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I feel that having a good day, when everything is going as I would wish it, seems to trigger my missing her. Because no matter how happy we are, no matter what lovely things we do together, our family is always going to have one person missing?
ReplyDeleteIt's so horrible isn't it? That feeling of being inadequate, not quite 100% as Tracy says. No matter how hard I try I keep running up against that one fact, she's gone, that makes the whole situation so unbearable and so unresolvable.
I'm so sorry Mary Beth. I'm sorry for you and I'm sorry for your Calla. She would have had a lovely life, your little girl, enjoying all those wonderful things with her brothers.
"No one, not adults, kids, or any combination of the two, raised voices in frustration or even huffed." This is amazing and wonderful and worth noting.
ReplyDeleteAh, but that next day. It comes on suddenly doesn't it? It still shocks me how hard and out of nowhere it hits. It really is too much to wrap our brains around the fact that our babies are gone. Or maybe our brains can get it, but our hearts can't.
It's just SO unfair. Too unfair. It's beyond comprehension. I'm so sorry.
ReplyDeleteI miss feeling like a normal person....almost as much as I miss my babies.
ReplyDeleteYou got me. I guess we are all the same in the end. But I so get this post and have had these feelings too. I don't know why we didn't get to keep our little girls. Hugs to you.
ReplyDeleteI think this is my fifth reading of this blog. Beautiful. Thank-you...
ReplyDeleteSo horribly sad. I've read this post a few times and while our families buoy us and fill our lives with love, there is this constant hole, black hole of despair, of missing, of forever dead. Your little girl, my little girl... Gone forever. That pulls on my heart and threatens to suck it right out of me into that dark hole. It also makes me scared... Scared that in over a year from now I will still feel the sinking, sad lonely loss of not having Camille like you don't have Calla. I wish I could pretend that the time will nullify, make obsolete the desperation of it. But your post makes it very clear that like our daughters' death, this missing, wanting, aching is also forever. I try and remind myself that with all of that... My love for Camille like your love fir Calla is also forever. Giant hug
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