Remembering...

Every once in a while the day I had to say goodbye to Declan comes to mind and the breath completely leaves my lungs and I remember it all...the way my cry sounded...so unlike the way I had ever cried before...the way my heart felt pressure as though a cement block was placed on it...the way it ached with each heartbeat...those words cannot even describe the pain that crushed me that day.

It isn't often, but it will flow into my thoughts when I see a show or movie about a baby dying or when I hear of it actually happening to someone.

It is painful even when I don't know the person.  My heart feels its fracture...almost as if it were a broken bone bugging me before a storm...and I can feel it start to ache.  It's not the same...no day will ever compete with that day...it was the worst day of my entire life...hopefully for the rest of it as well.  But the memory is poignant and impossible to express...empathy pain is difficult...though not even close to the actual pain.

The fracture in my heart was felt tonight.  I try not to avoid baby death shows or sad things...because I know I can get through it.  It does surprise me though...sometimes I feel a false sense of security that I will be fine without the memory rising...but it never happens.

It isn't all terrible to think about...it reminds me why I love my kids so much...it reminds me why my heart feels as though it started to beat differently since September of 2010...it shows me why I shouldn't ever take for granted what time I do have here...and it helps me remember that I don't need to be discouraged with the last almost 20 months...there's a reason life has been dark and difficult...and I can't believe it really happened until I feel that pain.  That pain...the pain that rivaled my terrible c-section pain...that morphine did absolutely nothing to dull...I cried in pain long before I heard my baby didn't make it through his birth.  The combination of both nearly killed me right there...I still don't know how I'm still here.

The strange thing is that death always scared me.  Mortality frightened me.  I hated to dwell on it.  I believe in Heaven, but somehow that wasn't enough to keep it from traumatizing me when I would reflect on it.

I helped place Declan's casket into the grave...something that I never thought I would be able to do.  I remember specifically sobbing to Christian that I couldn't bury my baby...that I wasn't going to make it if I had to.  How did a mother do that?!

How did I hand the cemetery workers the tiny casket?  I can only think it was because of my faith in Heaven and the Divine Father there...and His Son.  The only way someone like me could still stand afterward.

I read in a blog that the author felt she was every parent's worst nightmare since losing her son...I felt that as I look at pregnant women.  I am their worst nightmare.  I am the person they don't want to think about as their sweet baby kicks inside them.  I am not the one they want to chat about deliveries or the excitement of what is to come...because it didn't happen for me.  No one wants to think about that...even when your doctor tells you it is possible...which mine did.

My only hope is that I can remind them that it is so precious...not to be lightly disregarded.  I have to bite my tongue when I hear women complain about kids or pregnancy...I was them three years ago.  I hope that people will look at me as I do the woman in my church who lost her baby girl over 30 years ago...she lives life and loves it...even through her grief.