April 18th 2013 was a really really really really really bad day for me. I think that would sort of be an understatement.
I'm not sure if a lot of people can pin point the day they they lost a part of themselves. Or maybe I'm wrong because one of the many things that universally unites us is loss. All of us will experience it in some form or another in their lives. It's just apart of the puzzle.
April 18, 2013 was the day that I lost my first daughter when I was 19 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I had a termination for medical reasons, she wasn't growing right. The story of what happened to her is long and something I don't care to dig into right now. But her heart and brain didn't develop correctly. She wasn't going to live outside of me.
For the first year after I lost her, I walked around in a haze. I got pregnant quickly after my loss and it was the happiest and most terrifying thing that could have happened to me.
But even being pregnant with a different child, the loss of my first still felt endless. I didn't feel like I could breathe.
On the one year anniversary of my loss I had already had Grace who was a healthy, vibrant, perfect 2 month old. Her and I went down to the beach together, I laid her on a blanket and I wrote every single thing I wanted to say on a piece of paper to the daughter I lost. I told her about how much I loved Grace. I told her I wondered if she would have looked like her sister. I told her about how I still ache for her every single day of my life. I told her that I wished more then anything she was with me. I told her how confused I was because if she was with me, I wouldn't have Grace and I loved Grace more then anything in the entire world. I told her everything. And I let that paper go into ocean. And I sat on a blanket and quietly sobbed while looking down at Grace nursing. Cursing the universe for everything it took from me and thanking it at the same time for everything it gave me.
The next year was just as hard. I didn't think about her every day like I had the year before, but she would cross my mind very often, and I would lay in bed with Grace while she slept and cry thinking about her. But on the two-year anniversary of my loss I spent it with a good friend of mine. She knew very well what I've been through and that day we did all of my favorite things. We got a good cup of coffee, went to all my favorite thrift stores, and while Grace napped in the car- we sat at the beach and cried together. I told her all the things I had written in my letter last year. And how I don't understand why this hole didn't seem to be getting any smaller.
Fast forward to the three-year anniversary of my loss. I am in the thick of it with my two-year-old. Spring is in the air, and we are outside playing happily. And then it hits me like a brick- I truly felt as if someone had dropped a piano on me. I woke up not even knowing it was the day that I lost a part of myself. I still thought of her often, I have a box of her clothes that we had bought her when we found out she was a girl and her ultrasound pictures. That box is still so hard for me to touch I've only done it twice since I lost her. But there I was, on the three-year anniversary of losing a part of my heart and I didn't even remember until well into the afternoon.
And I held it together until I put Grace down for a nap. And then I sat in my backyard crying until I couldn't breathe anymore.
How could I have forgotten? How could everyone have forgotten? What am I supposed to do? How I'm I supposed to move, breathe, be a mother today? I waited outside in my backyard and I cried until I heard Grace woke up. And then I put my mom boots back on, I wiped my eyes, and I scooped my beautiful daughter into my arms and we went to the beach and said hello to her. And I laid on the sand watching Grace play, even though it was absolutely freezing, and I let myself cry and smile all at the same time and I let myself be OK with the fact that I was only with Grace on this day, I let myself be OK with the fact that I didn't remember because I was so caught up in motherhood. And I told myself that I knew not remembering didn't mean I didn't still miss her. Or love her.
Loss is something that is so hard to talk about. But I don't want to not talk about her, and everything she gave to me, and everything she taught me. I guess the reason I'm sharing this two days later, is because loss so confusing -Day to day you can feel completely different about it. And there's no shame in crying, and there's no shame in trying to smile through it. And there is no shame in not always feeling the pain of the loss, and it's okay that some days it feels like it's going to kill you. It's all okay.
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