It was 4 years ago today that the 39 week old baby I was carrying died.
4 years later I have another child but it still hurts. I’m not as angry or depressed, except very occasionally, but the event changed the way I look at my life and the way I look at my child. I can never escape the feeling that at any time something may go wrong again, that it’s too easy to lose everything. This feeling is with me always and has made me more protective than I would have been otherwise. It may be a good thing at times but mostly it just makes me anxious and over-protective and a worse mother than I probably could be.
What I wonder most is what that child would have looked like, how like or unlike his brother he would have been and what personality he would develop. These things I will never know.
For the last three years I have refused to celebrate my birthday because it falls on the day after I lost my child and it has too many painful memories. This year, however, I’m trying to move on beyond coincidences and unhappiness. There’s nothing I can do about the past and if I haven’t killed myself yet I may as well make the best of whatever life I have left. This kind of loss hurts every day of the year so it doesn’t really matter what day it was when it happened.
I’m so glad you have decided to try and allow yourself to make the best of your life. Undoubtedly you will never forget that day, because everything changed, and you changed and life was never the same again. You took your time, but it’s time you celebrate your life, and all your birthdays. I can’t pretend to know the amount of pain you went through, I can’t grasp it, but I consider it to be enormous, which makes your words even braver. Hope tomorrow you seize your day, and all your new year. Big hug.
sweetie, i feel that pain is the single most private thing, the one thing that you truly cannot measure, and some scars one carries for life, time helps but does not heal, we learn to cope and to breathe again (i did, there is nothing else we can do, and i only went through a major depression for over 20 years, and your loss was so much greater), sometimes forever captive, and some times, we decide to start living again, not like we once did, as life has been forever altered, but a new life, one that knows every single measure of love and loss, of pain and sweetness, of courage and fear…
To decide to start living again after the end of the life we once had is quite possibly the scariest thing ever, we have found our limits…but it is also the bravest, because we pushed through them…and keep on pushing, it is the decision to reclaim our life that will see us through.
I admire you for your path and your journey, but above all for your courage, it means heart and yours is immense and filled with love…I can only say ‘Aim for the stars, if you miss them, reach out and touch the moon’…baby steps, like Rita i hope you seize the day and with that a new life…
forgive me, but i can’t help it, your post reminded me of this poem, and i will share it:
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
ee cummings
Love, light and cosmic kisses, ana