Tomorrow...

You would have been celebrating your third birthday. I miss you so much and love you more....your mama

What's been going on...in pictures.

A little low...and random thoughts...

I wasn't really with Zoe's father when she was born (or cut quickly out of me, whatever) and I was afraid to see him for hours after it happened and I was lost and sad and had just had a baby and had no idea what form my life would take from that day forward. I never had a partner to grieve with (not saying her father didn't grieve) together. I went home to Ivy and tried to pick my old life off of the floor and shine it up and do my best for Ivy. It was hard. She was the kid at school whose baby sister died. I was the woman whose body gave out on her and her child and it killed her.

 Since her death, I suffer this alone (well, with my mother) and Kenny never got it and the awesome new guy I've been tries harder than most to 'get it'. It's lonely though, a different kind of lonely. It's like you had this whole god-awful experience that still brings tears to your eyes and makes you act like a bitch once a year, but everyone just thinks you're that crazy dead-baby lady.

 I snapped last night and said something ugly and was completely unaware I had hurt new guy's (someone I'll introduce you to soon enough) feelings.

 Let's back up a minute:
 Some of the events of Zoe's life are confusing or out of order in my mind. Anyway, I missed my baby terribly while I was in bed recovering from all of the blood-loss and she was being cared for in the N.I.C.U. and either I picked out a soft lamb, or my mom brought it up to me from the gift shop, either was, it was my surrogate Zoe, and hugging it tight and sending thoughts of 'live baby girl, please live' was the only way I could drift off.
 I have since strapped her hospital bracelet around the lambs wrist and set it in Aidyn's crib. He'll wrap his arms around it when he's on his side, and drift off to sleep.

 Last night, I went to bed alone. I was exhausted. I grabbed the lamb and found Dragonfly on Netflix. Just a warning, that movie WILL make you cry your eyes out. I turned away from the computer and just lay on my tummy holding the lamb. I pulled it up under my neck and all of the tears I haven't cried came pouring out. I could suddenly remember in detail, the feelings I had while holding that lamb up under my neck. The praying, wishing, hoping that I could rewind time, that I could fix this, that God would intervene and stop this.

 I haven't been able to access my feelings about my stay in the hospital, only Zoe's last two weeks there. I ignored that I was cut from my pubic bone to my belly button and walked for her and left bloody footprints on the floor, walked to see her. Held her even though it hurt. I think I believed I deserved the pain when I looked at her little body lying there still being kept alive by bleeping machines and tubes. They said she was never in pain. My mother's intuition didn't and still doesn't believe that.

 I know these feelings are coming around because the end of September is coming and then the three weeks that I can't think straight between then and October 17th. I feel like my statute of limitations to grieve over her is over (as far as anyone wanting to hear about it at least) and I'm not ready.

 I woke up again after trying so hard to fall asleep and noticed something was edgy about new guy's attitude. That's when I found out about my ugliness, and apologized. Then I went in Aidyn's room where he was sleeping and put my hand on his back to feel him breathe. I thanked God that he made it. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to pretend I was touching her, just for a second, then I took a bath and cried. There was no sympathy for me, as I had been such a bitch. I was alone in this grief, which is what I was used to. Honestly, for about a year, I've tried not to think of her in depth, in painful detail. She's gone and not coming back and that's it, I tell myself. It's how I cope with other things as well, but last night I thought about the boy with the dead big sister. Miss Ivy who will never grow up with a sister, even though she has had one. I think about me as well. It's hard with two kids, and would have been harder with three, but I would have done it. I would have done it like everything else in my life I've decided I was going to do.

They remembered...

My grandmother died a little over a month ago. I went to say goodbye to her. She looked like she had become one with the mattress she was laying on. I could see her heart beat in every vein in her body. She moved, tried to come toward my voice when I walked in the room. I told her everything I've ever wanted to say to her. I cried on her. I told her to hold my girl for me, to tell her how much her mommy loves her and misses her. I told her she was the greatest woman I ever knew. That was the last time she moved at all.
 I only focused on getting through the visitation and funeral. They didn't cover up Zoe's grave to bury her like I was so scared of.
 My uncle stopped me outside of the church, after I had gone to visit Zoe in the cemetery and see my grandmother actually in the ground, and told me that she had waited for me. He told me she never moved again, that she was waiting for my goodbye. I don't know about all that but he and my grandfather believe it.
 In the midst of all these anxiety invoking services over the course of two days, I never peeked at her obituary. When I finally decided to, I noticed that it reads, "Faye was preceded in death by, her first husband, parents, a brother, a grandson and great grand-daughter". I never saw that.
 This part of my family, that ignores everything, or at best will sweep an uncomfortable subject under the rug, remembered her. It took days to notice, but they remembered her. They included her. This same group, who left Zoe's name off of a huge family tree decoration at a family reunion (I took a piece of construction paper and a sharpie and added it in anyway), remembered to include my girl. They acknowledged that she once was. To me, she still is.
It's September. Almost three years since she was born.

(Thinking of Ciaran too, Bir)