The 1st Birthday…

My daughter’s first birthday was the 20th of this month. I was severely disappointed by the people who had promised to participate, but didn’t even bother to acknowledge her birthday, let alone release a balloon.

I have come to realize, that after the first couple of months, people just think you need to shut up and get over it. At least, they think that way until they lose someone they cared deeply about. Though it’s not like the pain of losing a child, they regret their words none-the-less. Sad that they have to learn that in such a hard way.

Like I said I wanted to, we released a slew of balloons in her honor. Most were pink and blue, but there was one, however, that was a beautiful white. It carried a very personal message up to the skies to her.

The day was sort of peaceful. Almost…healing. It felt good to be able to celebrate something to do with my daughter. Her birth was not a day of grief or depression. It was a wonderful joyful day, and I want to keep thinking of it as such.

I had a few friends step outside and release balloons for her. One was in California, one is in New York, the rest were here in Missouri, and it was just so wonderful to see pictures of the balloons going up. My parents, husband, kids and I released 30 ourselves. My mother-in-law took 40 to work with her, and her coworkers each grabbed a balloons and released them all together.

So, in all, there were around 100 pink and blue balloons to float up in the air in honor of little Robin that day. It is such a wonderful thing to think about.

I hope you had a wonderful birthday Robin. We wish you could be here with us to have celebrated it, but I hope you got your balloons anyhow. We miss you down here.

And a special thank you to Gisela, Sue, Megan, Lizziey, Sam, and my parents for taking part in this special day.

It’s coming…

Have you ever dreaded something so much that you wished the entire day it is supposed to fall on would just vanish? Or perhaps you just fall into a coma before it happens, and wake up a week later?

That about sums up how I’ve been feeling about Robin’s 1st birthday. No, I don’t want to forget her, and I don’t really want her birthday to just go away. I’m scared. Plain and simple.

Last weekend was Mother’s Day, as we all know. I figured it was going to be simple enough to get through. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t Mother’s Day that I was worried about, it was her birthday. Gee, was I ever wrong. It was an extremely painful and emotional day. Not what I had been expecting from myself. I was a bugger emotional mess than I had been in a while.

I’m grateful, however, that I’ll be in the presence of family when her birthday falls in just 4 short days. My husband was granted his compassionate discharge, and embarrassingly enough, we are living with my parents until we are on our feet.

You can only imagine how that might be. Here I am, married, with my own family, and we have to move into my parent’s basement. Ick, right? That about sums up how I feel about myself. But we are aggressively searching for jobs, and will take any jobs until then, just to prove we aren’t about to roll over.

If it weren’t for my parents, I probably would have a lot more problems than I’d like to admit. They are a great support. The kids are over-joyed as well that they can see them again. Crazy how our lives have changed so much in such a very short amount of time. I guess that’s just what life does to you.

Well, Monday is going to come all too quickly, I’m afraid of the person I’m going to be that day. I am very afraid of all the pain I’m going to feel. I’m told it’s the first’s that are the most difficult. She would have been a year old. She would have been start to stand and take steps, giggling and playing with toys. I don’t have any of that…she can’t do any of that. Not here anyway. I hope she is somewhere in heaven, playing up a storm. I hope she doesn’t even have time to stop and peek in on her mommy when her birthday comes, because I don’t want her to see me screaming at the sky and pleading for answers.

Answers never come. I can wait for them all I want, but they never do. I hope, one day when it’s my time, that I get those answers I need, but for now, I just have to wait.

Well, that’s it for me today. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Much love.

Am I A Hypocrite?

I’m acquainted with a girl, a girl I called a friend back when I was in high school, and being selfish wasn’t so bad.

Here we are now, adults, we both have children, and I have found she never actually grew up. This girl, she has a friend she calls a sister. You know those people? The ones that call everyone they talk to at least once a month their best friend? Yes, that’s the type of person she is. Which is sweet, in itself. But allow me to explain everything first.
Her ‘sister’ had a little baby boy about 10 months ago. Adorable and plump, and oh so cute. Her friend could no have been happier. Unfortunately, this little baby boy was having a lot of health problems, and spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital. This final time, he was put on life support…and the doctors gave them the devastating news.
My acquaintance posted about it often, but not in the way one might think. I understand everyone has their own way of grieving, that is just something you learn. But, I have also noticed that we mother’s who have lost children, we start getting protective of one another, and that feel just sort of kicked in for me. I never actually said anything, but I felt anger, and just utter disappointment toward my acquaintance.
Her posts weren’t the ones you would expect, and I say this because normally, you would expect to see prayer requests for the family, or heart felt good-byes. No, these were posts complaining about how they would be taking him off of his life support on her birthday. I get that this is hurtful for her. I get that she doesn’t want anyone to go. But she was genuinely upset that the doctors chose her birthday to take him off life support, and actually posted about how she wished they would take him off of it the day before instead.
At that point, I wanted to reach through my computer and slap her as hard as I could. Again, I understand it being painful, but saying that you wanted him to go sooner just because you didn’t want it to happen on your birthday? Why? There is no excuse for that.
How self-centered does one have to be?
My heart broke for this momma. I can’t imagine the pain of WATCHING you little one go. It hurts so much just having my daughter gone, but to have to WATCH her suffer? No, there is just no way I would have been able to handle. So badly do I wish I could reach out and hug her. Just tell her “You are NOT alone, and it IS okay to be angry.”

I can’t help but be angry with my acquaintance. Even telling myself over and over that grief does funny things to people. Maybe that’s being hypocritical of me, but I just can’t get over it.

Moving

So, my husband has been approved for his compassionate discharge. His final day int he Army will be May 30th. It’s a relief, as well as terrifying. The military has been good to us. They take great care of him, and his family. We know things are going to be incredibly different once he is out, but I would much rather have him around more often.
We both are searching for jobs and a place to live, which is something I’m excited about. A job…I never thought that would be such an exciting idea. When we are back home, I will family around to help care for the kids until I can afford a sitter. Up here, there was never that option, so we decided I would wait until we were back in Missouri for me get a job.
Just being back down there is going to take away so much stress. I came back up in January after my husband asked us to come back with him, since it didn’t look like he would be getting out any time soon.
He was right, it was months before he did.

Well, though moving and starting over will be stressful, emptying out my cabinets and closet of useless junk can be slightly fun. Today they kids had some fun with sensory play. I put together a few bins full of rice, fake snow, beans, dirt, plastic toys, beads, and even paint bags to draw on. It was just a creative sort of day, and they had a blast.

Though I did have someone on my FB ask me why I needed to make a bucket for them to explore textures, instead of just taking them to the park or something. I wasn’t aware the sensory buckets were such a foreign concept. It was just something fun for them to do at home. But, if they were trying to make me feel like a lazy, pathetic mom, they sure did a good job of it. All well. Brush it off, Portia. You have heard worse!

I’m Normal

Okay, so, I may not be normal in the sense that you would think, but who is? What I mean is, I’m grieving normally. Her birthday is creeping up closer and closer. Just a month away now, and everything hurts ten fold. It hurts to look at her things, it hurts to see her pictures. I always does, but right now it’s different. Of course it is different.
I know these feelings will subside. I’m grateful that I can still feel. It’s so amazing that something so purely emotional can hurt so damn much. And it DOES hurt. This pain, it’s like being stabbed in the hearts, over and over. It’s like having a rope around your throat and glass behind your eyes. But all of it? It’s all just such raw emotions.
9 months later, and I still find myself wishing that I would just wake up from a bad dream. Maybe even coma. But no, this is my reality, and sometimes it is an excruciating one.
But, I am a very lucky mom at the same time. I have two other beautiful babies who need me, and love me. I am glad I have them to put so much focus into. I like that they keep me away from the computer, and I like that they sometimes leave me so exhausted at night that I’ve stopped having nightmares, or dreams all together. It’s comforting, in its own way.
They have been the brightest light int he dark journey, and I know they always will be. My reasons to live are asleep right now, just a few steps away, and they remind me every single day that their world just wouldn’t be the same without me. Is it self-absorbed to say these things? If it is, I don’t really care. They are sometimes what I need to keep going when I hurt the most.

Organ Donation?!

You can say how you would without another thought all you want. But until you ACTUALLY lose a child and have to face to face with that decision, you never really know.

I have chosen to be an organ donor in the event I pass away and can be of some service to people who need it. I thought when my eldest was born, if something awful would happen, I would do the same. However, when my youngest was born and passed away at 6 weeks, I knew there was no way I could allow anyone to take something from her.

Call it selfish, call it cowardice, I don’t really care. I call it grief. Here it is, 8 month later, and I still can’t donate her baby things. I probably never will, much as I have thought about it.

Allowing that is fully admitting they are gone. Maybe some people can do that right away, but I couldn’t. It’s the same reason I didn’t want to get her death certificate. Admitting they are gone takes a LOT. Until you are there, you never know which way you will go with it.

Your child, that you hold, sing to, bathe, dress, cuddle and kiss, is suddenly gone and then people want you to have her opened up and passed around? You’ll be lucky if you can even think coherently enough to spell your own name the next couple weeks after losing your child, let alone make that choice.

In the end, it really does take an extremely special person to make that choice. And most of us, no matter how much we tell ourselves we are, are NOT that kind of person. If you are, you won’t know for certain until that moment comes up, and I hope that it NEVER comes up for any of you.

It’s a wonderful cause, don’t get me wrong, and I wish I could be that brave, that strong, and that logical. But when it comes to our children, most of us aren’t very logical, huh?

Sleepless Nights

Well, it’s normal for me by now. I wake up every 15-30 minutes throughout the night to check on my older children. I know that they aren’t going to pass away in the middle of the night from SIDS like my baby girl did, but that fear is ground in so deeply I can’t help myself.

Most of the time, I manage to get in, check to make sure they are still breathing and covered back up, and get out before I can wake them up. However, there are some time that I freak out and shake one of them awake because they don’t breathe right when I think they should, or they feel colder than what I feel they should.
This evening was one of those times. I checked on my son, he was perfectly fine and adorably sprawled out in his new race car bed, the blankets kicked off to the side against the wall. My daughter however…I couldn’t see her chest rise and fall, she wasn’t moving. I knelt down and placed my hand on her chest, and my heart stopped. She was staring back at me, unblinking, her eyes wide and blank. I shook her and yelled her name multiple times before she blinked and actually focused on ME, then got up and grinned. “Hi mommy!” she said, and I gripped her in my arms and started crying.

I wonder if my daughter can sleep with her eyes open, or if I had woken her when I went to check on them, and she was just too tired to respond to my presence right away. Either way, this is just one more reason why I can’t ever sleep through the night, and why I have to run in and check on my children so very often.

I know my heart couldn’t handle another loss. I feel like I am becoming and overbearing mother. I don’t want to be, but I will do anything I can to keep them safe.

Birthdays…bah!

Birthdays are normally great things. Wonderful, exciting, sometimes bittersweet. Most people don’t dread birthdays. I don’t really dread them, no…I dread one in particular.
My mother’s birthday is tomorrow. And no, it’s not her’s that I am dreading. It’s my youngest daughter’s. It’s Robin’s. You see, after my mother’s birthday, there aren’t any birthdays I need to worry about until her’s.May 20th. May 20th my little baby would have been one year. An entire year old, can you believe that? What a big girl she would have been. What a pretty smile she would have had. Her hair would have been a bright red, just below her ears that curled every which way. Her yes would have been the brights of blues you have ever seen, and I know she would have taken up humming, much like her older brother and sister do now.
But no, she won’t be here. I am hoping she is someplace wonderful, someplace where birthdays don’t exist, where pain and growing older, and misery are completely unheard of.

It’s getting too close, you see. And I’m starting to hurt a little more than usual. I think it will be like this for many years. Where the pain will intensify around the two most horrible anniversaries of my life, but hopefully also taper off once I push through them.
I haven’t put much thought into how I will take on her birthday. I beleive I would like to do a balloon release. A bunch of pink and blue balloons with little notes to her attached. Symbolic and healing at the same time, I would think. Maybe I can get a few other family and friends to help me out with endeavor. Having family and friends from all over the country write a note to her and release it into the sky. Yes, I think that would be lovely. Even better if I could get everyone to record it, that way later I could collage it together and post it.

Just talking about it actually makes me feel a little better. Tackling it head on is the only way to go about it I suppose, and why not do it in such a beautiful and elegant way?

Just my thoughts for the night. I hope you all have a wonderful evening. Much love!

Questioning Faith

A friend of mine just lost her nephew. He had been battling cancer for a while now. I guess I just got angry about it all. This little man was only 3 years old. He had sent cancer into remission and it looked like he would make it. A happy story for the books, or it should have been.
A few weeks ago, they took him back in for a mirage of symptoms, and come to find out, his cancer had returned. He wasn’t responding to chemo…well, you see where this is going.
I had never met this little boy, but she talked about him often. I had made an awareness bracelet for his mother back before Robin was even born. He was such a brave, strong little boy, and it just isn’t fair that he was taken away.
I can’t help but question why God would make children suffer, why he would take them away when they are so tiny. Why let them hurt, why do this at all? I can’t stand the idea of parents going through this pain. It kills you inside. You will never be whole again, and something so precious has been taken away not only from you, but from the world. Who knows what kind of people these children could have grown in to. Maybe they could have been the people this world needs, but they never get that damn chance.

I hurt for my own loss, I hurt for my friend’s loss, and I hurt for any parent who has to feel this. I’m angry because people try to advise me on how to handle things when they have never experienced anything like this, I’m depressed because things will never be the same or okay for me again, and I’m questioning my faith in a God who put beautiful children on the Earth, just to take them away or make them suffer.

That little boy, I had been following his story for so long now, and I had so hoped there would be a happy ending, but as I’m slowly learning, There just aren’t happy endings. There are: “You take what you get and either deal with it or cave” endings, but never happy.
Maybe that’s just the talk of a person suffering from depression. Don’t take everything I say to heart. Don’t get me wrong, there are happy MOMENTS, happy MEMORIES, happy EVENTS, but I have never seen a happy ending…except in movies.

Anniversaries, oh how they sneak up on (or past) you.

No, I don’t mean the horrible one that will be coming up this summer. I’m still not sure how I’m going to get through that one.

I’m talking about Wedding Anniversaries. Or relationship ones, which ever you might have.
May 2nd was my husband and my fourth anniversary. And wouldn’t you know it? We both forgot. We were laying in bed, just talking about another month’s beginning, and Ray said something along the lines of “I know things have been hard, but you’ve stuck with me, almost four years now.” At that moment, he and I both stared at each other with wide, horrified eyes, grabbed our phones, and looked at the date. It was the third. Our fourth anniversary just swooped right past us, and neither of us noticed. We laughed about it, and held each other for another moment long, shared a kiss, and our day went on. But I can’t help but wonder what that means about us, for us?

Things have not been easy these past long months. We are incredibly stressed, his job keeps him away from home quite a bit, as military work will do, and I have tried to constantly fill whatever spare time I have. I get that things like this happen. Does it make it any less more sad? No, I suppose not. I don’t think this is some ominous sign of impending doom within our marriage. I feel like if we can somehow swim through the pain, depression, and confusion of losing our beautiful baby girl, then we can wade through a missed anniversary like champs.
Though…I can say I wouldn’t have minded a heartfelt kiss accompanied by “Happy Anniversary, baby.” I know, seems silly. I tried hinting at when I told him happy anniversary, hoping to hear it back. He did smile, however, and kiss my forehead, and things went on. We laughed about it off and on throughout the day, and tried to finish up some projects that needed done before the last rays of our last day of the weekend sunlight slipped away.

I guess, in all, I don’t need a special day to feel special with my husband. We have had some ups and downs, awful tragedies, and yet we are always there, right beside one another. No matter what the day came that we have been married 4 years. Four years that have been a roller coaster ride of emotions, but 4 years that have also brought me many good memories. I’m happy to have spent this time with him, happy that I have someone so good to me, and so willing to make sacrifices for his family’s happiness.

All in all…I am a very lucky woman when it comes to my marriage.