[DISCLAIMER: this was off the top of my head, it's grammar, syntax, tense, and point of view shift frequently, I hope you can keep up... I hope it gives you a glimpse into the mind of a grieving mother.]
No matter what you think you know, you're wrong. No matter how ready you think you are, you're not. No matter how long you've anticipated the moment you go from having a living child to having a dead one... you won't believe it actually happened when it happens.
Avalynn was technically healthy, but structurally wrong, which made her body work way too hard to stay alive. Her body eventually failed to function any longer. There was nothing else to do, medically, for her.
As her primary care taker, her mother, her nurse, her counselor, her play mate, her food machine, her bed, her comforter, and her fashion coordinator, I am lost. My 24/7 suddenly didn't exist the way it had for the last 107 days, or the last year. I didn't know who I was without my baby, as my life had become so dependent on hers although it seemed to everyone else that it was she who was dependent on me.
Avalynn was always known for her ability to communicate from the very beginning. She and I had it down to an art. We would know what each other was thinking and feeling, needing and wanting, fearing and loving, when we were fighting to live and when we were relieved we had beaten death that time. We knew when we were in dangerous territory, unfamiliar territory, or comfortable, baseline territory. We were never alone as long as we had each other. Everything would be alright as long as we had each other, because we could make it through anything together. It was what our entire relationship was built on, from conception to death. So we were good at it. It was as natural as breathing, as smooth as a slow stream. That is what I miss the most.
I miss the connection. I miss how easy and fulfilling our relationship was. There was pure, unconditional love and trust. More pure than I had ever known before.
Now that she isn't with me, I struggle, and it feels like I'm doing it alone because I am experiencing it differently. Luckily though, doing it alone and bearing it alone are two different things. I have been carried emotionally and sometimes even physically through life these days. I have had glimpses of really living again, although it feels like I'm the poor girl in rags on the street looking through the richest home's warm window on Christmas Day, witnessing the complete family, joy, decorations, and perfection I long for, and can see, but can't touch.
At times I think the worst part is that, because she was our first pregnancy and child, I got to experience what motherhood was. I got to feel what I have been waiting for and looking for my entire life, and finally found. I finally found where I belonged perfectly in the universe. I finally found where the massive amount of love I have been carrying around with me my entire life belonged. But then it was taken away. It wasn't just the carrot dangling in front of the horse's nose, he got a bite of the best carrot of his life, but never got to finish it when he thought it was promised to him. Then he looks around and all the other horses are eating their entire carrot, and he is left to wonder why.
Wondering why is not generally productive. There are not generally answers, at least not satisfactory ones. Because what you're really looking for is a valid reason it happened. Something that could give you understanding so you can experience closure and acceptance, instead of feeling things were unjust. Then you just feel grateful you got a bite of the carrot at all, because you realize there are plenty of horses that never even get a taste, a lick of that carrot, and you got not just a taste, but an entire bite. Then you think that the ones who can only imagine what it tastes like and can't have the carrot are better off than you, because at least they aren't tortured by the reality of what they can't have, just the fantasy they create.
& I know that we can eventually try for another child... but people, every child is irreplaceable, every child is uniquely beautiful. Having another doesn't fill the hole left behind by the one you lost...
Wondering why isn't a faithful inquiry. Isn't asking what we can learn from this a better question? Isn't finding purpose and making your suffering and her suffering better? Is that where healing will come? Is that how we can put the healing grace of God to use?
But no matter how hard you try, the why questions begin to burst at the seams, and there is no subduing them any longer...
Sometimes the what questions are the hard ones. What is she doing right now? What is the matter with me? What is the matter with other people? What is the matter with God? What if she is in danger because there is evil I can't protect her from? What if it happens again...
Sometimes the desperation is the worst part... feeling desperate for another miracle... the miracle you wanted, not just the miracles God provided...feeling desperate for what you believe to really be true, desperate for hope, desperate to feel useful, right, and guilt free, unashamed, and happy... desperate to feel alive...
And sometimes it's desperation for it all to be over. Whatever that may mean. Over because you healed quickly, over because you got an aggressive form of cancer, so you can die naturally and then see your baby again...over because someone found a way to make it hurt less... or desperate to feel the pain, to know you're alive because being numb is too much... that feeling everything was too overwhelming for you...Desperate to have your baby back in your arms, no matter what you have to do to get them there...desperate not to face another loss like this again, desperate to feel as strong as people think you are, desperate to believe the facade you put on social media... desperate to be understood, desperate to stop feeling desperate...
Then you question how you can feel so desperate if you have faith. You question how you can feel both desperation and gratitude, love and anger, peace and terror...
You wonder how you can have so much anxiety about life, but not about death... didn't it used to be the other way around.
You wonder if you will be different from everyone else the rest of your life because you have never felt such pain, and can't imagine it will ever go away... and honestly you wonder if it should go away, because even if you want it to sometimes, you also feel like if it does go away, you will forget or dishonor her, stop loving her, or be okay with a situation that is definitely not okay. Sometimes you wonder if you deserve to suffer because you couldn't stop your baby's suffering... And that feels like the worst, most unforgivable sin, because mothers are supposed to be able to protect and nurture their babies... so perhaps you weren't a good mother. Even though you were told by professionals that you were the best mother they'd ever seen... in your eyes makes it worse because it means you were inadequate for all that you were... That you can never be smart enough, pretty enough, loving enough, advocating enough to make a difference... so why do you exist at all...what is my purpose, what am I good for?
So nothing can prepare you for your baby to die... and nothing can prepare you for the journey to forgive yourself, for the things you feel deeply that you did, when your head and logic and friends, family, doctors, councilors, bishops, and others say you didn't... It is the biggest inner battle I have ever fought...
Or perhaps it is another version of the same thing you have been fighting your entire life... Who you really are versus who you think you are...
I hope that with a good support system, I can come to accept the things that happened, the lack of control anyone really had in the situation, and that I deserve forgiveness, and love once again... I hope that I will come to know and believe that my baby is safe, loved and cared for very well, but still wants her mommy... until I can be with her again...
