Five

Five years seems...long. And so it is that I cannot understand why, in so many ways, it feels like it all happened this morning. Moving away was hard. So much harder than I thought it would be. I was sitting on my bed, staring out my window when my whole world shattered into a thousand pieces. So leaving that window, with that view that existed in the one moment everything changed was like leaving her there, in Utah. Even though she had never, ever been to Utah.

I thought here would, perhaps, be easier. Because no memory of her was ever here. Except that isn't true. We were here, in Oregon, when we found out she was a girl and she would be ours. And here, in Oregon, I am around little tiny girls much more often than I was in Utah. They are bouncing through our church, giggling together, being four or five. And in a way that is basically insane, my mind sees her among them almost always. A shadow, laughing and jumping, outrageous curls tied up on top of her head.

She would be five. We would be wrapping up preschool and thinking about kindergarten. She'd have her own room here and maybe it would be pink or purple or orange with blue polka dots. Who's to say? We don't know what she would have liked and what she would have hated. All that potential and opinion died with her.

I've been more aware of this date approaching than I was in the last couple of years. It has loomed on the horizon since just after Christmas. Why this year, I can't say for certain. Maybe because I'm writing it all down.

There are two parts to Kate's story. The Kate part and the Will part. But both of them really belong to her. He knows all about her. He knows she died inside their mother and, before he understood that she came first, he thought they were together--which is, strangely, how I often think about them because I simply cannot have one without the other. The first time he comprehended that she went to Jesus, he tenderly and quietly said, "I should have holded her in there so she did not die." And it broke my heart.

Then I thought about it. I imagined that womb and I thought about how he was in that exact same space. They were there, occupying the same place, one after the other. And he came to me, bringing the life and energy of two people--at least. Almost as though she left a part of herself there and he brought it to me.

I wrote her part. And it was cathartic and hard. I'm certain it'll never amount to anything but I wanted it for my children. In case I get hit by a bus before they're adults. Maybe, if they read it one day, they will be able to fully comprehend what she means to me. I think, perhaps, if they can grasp what Kate means--Kate who was mine such a short time--maybe they will be able to break through the surface of my love for them and realize there is no end to that ocean.

Kate,
I miss every moment I imagined we'd have together. The story I'm writing is for you, the girl God promised me. You are still changing me, still softening my edges, still teaching me things. I wish I could have "holded" you in there so you did not die. But I do not question the Author. He is still writing my story and you are such a big part of it. I love you, girl in the ground. And I love that your spirit soars on. Here's to five years being changed, again and anew, by the memory of you.

Love,
Mom

Both Sides Now

I think that I think about her all the time. When I see the bouncing raven curls of a child suspended between toddler and little girl, she is there. When I stare into the deep chocolate pools of her brother's eyes, I imagine her there. When I wander through the purple frills and pink lace, rows of dresses she'll never wear, even then, she is there, at my side. For brief moments, her tiny hand slides into mine and we walk together. I see her. I feel her.

I think that not a day goes by when she isn't on my mind.

But I am wrong.

There are times and moments where I long to be in San Diego so that I can stop by and wipe the dirt from her grave marker. I'd say hello to the girl who isn't really there and leave a flower. There are days when I hate being so far away.

Still.

We were just in San Diego for Christmas. I thought about going on Friday because we were nearby but I didn't because I knew her daddy would want to go and he wasn't there yet. I thought about going on the way home from the airport on Sunday--just her daddy and me. But the flight was late and the cemetery was closed.

And then it was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the day after Christmas and in all the celebrating and all the festivities, I didn't think about going. None of us did. I stared at the stockings and wished there was one more to be counted, but I didn't think of the cemetery. Later, on Friday, we were close by once again and it would have been the easiest of things to drive over. I even commented, staring at my niece and my son fishing together, that she should have been standing there too. I thought about her. Still, I somehow forgot to go to her.

I forgot until the middle of the following week. We were already back in Utah. The boys were getting ready for school and Troy was getting ready for work. I was being lazy, buried under the warmth of the covers. Suddenly, like when the mom in Home Alone finally realizes she's left Kevin at home, it washed over me like a wave.

I hadn't gone to my daughter's grave.

My parents are so, so good to her. They frequently leave flowers or holiday decorations. They acknowledge the day her body came into the world. They make every effort to show us that they count her as equal to their five other grandchildren. And I didn't go to my daughter's grave.

When this wave of realization and grief washed over me, I was hysterical. 

I felt like a terrible parent. Who forgets to visit her child? WHO DOES THAT? All I could think about was how I needed to go right that second--but, of course, I couldn't. So instead, I pulled the covers over my head and sobbed. 

I know that she is not there. I know that it doesn't make a bit of difference to her if we visit the cemetery every day or never, but it matters to me. In the realization that I'd remembered until I'd forgotten, came the awareness that time heals. 

In many ways, I suppose that I don't want to be healed.

I don't want to reach a place where I don't see her in the face of a stranger or hear her in the echo of a transcendent giggle. She is only as tangible as our memories--all the things imagined as we waited for her. It is strange, the way grief ebbs and flows. In the busyness of Christmas joy, the tide washed out. Then all at once, it rolled back in, reminding me of what I've lost.

Four years.

It takes four years to forget to go to the cemetery. 

Four years.

And there are still days I sob hysterically.

My goodness, do I ever miss what I never had.

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

-Joni Mitchell

Remembering Kathryn (Kate) Ella-Grace who was born into the arms of Jesus on January 19, 2015, just seven and a half weeks before her due date.

Hamilton

I'll be honest, when I listened to the Hamilton cast album for the first time more than two years ago, I didn't initially love it. I'd heard of the show because I was obsessed with If/Then which had been running at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. It closed and Hamilton moved in. I heard the hype and I kind of thought, "A show about Alexander Hamilton? That sounds maybe not amazing." Ever so slowly, I started reading about it. I started hearing the insane Tony buzz. I decided to listen to some of the songs on the Internet.

Hip hop and rap aren't my musical genre of choice, usually. It was Jonathan Groff, coming in at song number 6, that won me over. Jonathan Groff doesn't typically have to do too much to win me over. I mean, in Frozen he's singing to a reindeer for crying out loud and I'm riveted. I decided I loved that King George so much that I'd start over with more of an open mind.

Looking back, this is hysterical. King George's part is funny. It's like the cherry on top of the delicious sundae. But it isn't the sundae itself.

I fell hard. Within the day, I'd purchased the album. I was head over heels in love with Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius. Leslie Odom Jr. has a voice like butter. The entire cast is incredible. I watched the Tony's with a great deal of interest and celebrated the wins. I soaked up the PBS special. I read interviews. I got really, very into it.

Two nights ago, I had the opportunity to see it from the 7th row. I could see the spit flying from the mouths of the actors. The sweat coming from their heads was visible. The show was fantastic. While I will readily admit that several of the actors just couldn't possibly live up to the original cast members (here's looking at you, Burr) I will also say that I certainly didn't expect them to. Three of the original cast members won Tony's for their performances. That's a tough standard to live up to. I was so impressed by the ensemble. I've never seen members of the ensemble working as hard as they do in Hamilton. It's like a marathon of never ending energy.

At intermission, I was texting my friend. She asked if I had cried yet. Truthfully, I had a few really annoying people around me. For the first act, the two people behind me felt the need to repeat every joke and then discuss it. Clearly they'd never heard the soundtrack and knew little about what they were seeing. Season ticket holders, maybe. At one point, after significant talking from them, the wife laughed. The husband leaned over and said, "What did he say?"

"Martha Washington named her favorite tom cat after him."

In my own head I imagined a scene in which I turned around and screamed, "FERAL! IT'S FERAL TOM CAT! NOT FAVORITE! IF YOU'D LISTENED TO THE SHOW EVEN ONCE BEFORE TONIGHT, MAYBE YOU WOULD NOT BE TALKING SO INCESSANTLY ABOUT EVERY FUNNY LINE!"

So, no, I hadn't cried during the first act because seated behind me were two chatterboxes. Strangely, however, I did get choked up during That Would Be Enough which is weird. I don't ever get emotional during that song. The staging of it had me thinking so much about unborn Philip Hamilton and that made me think of the later dead young adult Philip Hamilton and my eyes got misty.

Really though, despite my annoying buddies behind me, the first act was hugely enjoyable. We saw an understudy for Ham and he was phenomenal. Shoba Narayan killed it as Eliza. I found myself riveted to her character with a sentiment that, when I'm listening to the cast album, is usually reserved for Angelica. (Because, Renee Elise Goldsberry--come on. She wins at life.)

The neighbors behind me were much quieter during Act 2. I don't know if someone asked them to PLEASE SHUT UP or if there just wasn't as much to discuss. They'd really only talked about the funny lines and the second act has a lot less of those moments. Something happened, however, and the two people in front of me took over as the EVEN MORE OBNOXIOUS theatre patrons. For the entire act, the woman continually leaned over and told the man what was happening. In great detail. In a regular talking voice. As though she was teaching him a history lesson. This got so bad that I looked over, continually, at the usher standing next to us. She was somehow not distracted by this as she stood against the wall with her face enraptured with the joy of Hamilton. I would have to get up, walk over, and complain. And I wanted to be enjoying every moment of my show. At one point, the teenage girls next to me, who were delightful, were very visibly annoyed. It wasn't just me, is what I'm saying.

As for crying, I was actually kind of dreading It's Quiet Uptown. If I listen to that song, in my car, with my boys slugging each other in the backseat, during rush hour, I get choked up. I wasn't sure how I'd ever survive it performed live.

I have said many, many times, that I simply cannot imagine losing one of the children I have raised. The mere thought of burying a child I know, with all his personality and quirks and delights does me in. Because I've buried one I hadn't met and it was the most miserable thing I've ever been called to do.

There are moments that the words don't reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable

The moments when you're in so deep

It feels easier to just swim down

The Hamiltons move uptown

And learn to live with the unimaginable

I was crying before it even started. I was crying because Philip was dying and Alexander was holding him and I was thinking about Dear Theodosia. Then Eliza ran in and Philip died and Eliza screamed and the theatre was silent. Even the talkers weren't talking and you could have heard a pin drop.

I think of that phone call that changed everything for me, that phone call that took away my daughter. You hold your child as tight as you can, and push away the unimaginable. She was in my arms. Dead. The idea of her gone forever. If I lose Garrett or Matthew or Will, the scream will not just be heard throughout a silent theatre. It may, perhaps, be heard around the world. Tears ran down my face as they sang. I heard sniffing behind me. I wondered if I might let out an audible sob and I began to focus heavily on making sure that didn't happen. It wrecked me in a cathartic and theatrical way so that, in the wreckage, I found myself emotionally spent in, somehow, a good way.

A colleague of mine recently told me she thought Hamilton was repetitive and overrated. She hasn't listened to the entire soundtrack, mind you, but this is her conclusion. Fine. We're all entitled to our own opinions. I believe Lin-Manuel Miranda is a creative genius. I find his work to be neither repetitive nor overrated. She says hip hop and rap aren't her thing. Neither are they mine. But they flow into and out of his work in such a symbolic way that I am brought to a place of complete respect and utter enjoyment. She says she's just not a bandwagon jumper. Fair enough. But Hamilton is one bandwagon for which I am thankful to have jumped upon.

It is not just a piece of theatre. It is an experience. An experience I am so very grateful to have been able to have.

Since You've Been Gone

This time of year is hard for me. I try to pretend it isn't. I hope for the year when it just comes and then goes and I look back and realize I forgot to be sad. But that year is not yet. Instead, I count the days until the day. I think about how one split second took me from eager anticipation to destruction. That moment where the what-might-be's turned into might-have-beens*. I wish I'd been doing something extraordinary, something I'd never do again, something that wouldn't forever remind me of the phone call. I wasn't. I was sitting on my bed, my laptop open on my legs. Exactly as I am now. Three years later.

God has blessed us so extravagantly in the years since. I never could have dreamed that I'd be loving my girl's biological brother, but here we are. I did somehow think that would soften the blow of grief but it did not, really. In many ways, it just makes me want her more. To be here with him. With all of us.

I guess time numbs the pain. The days fade into years and that is both comforting and devastating. I wonder of the time when her grave is bare and no one stops by to clean the dirt off and leave a toy or flower. I know that day will come--when we are all old and senile-- but it is not now. It is not yet. For now, her impact continues to shake us all. 

I think often of the 24 inch casket beneath the grass. I think of all that she would be by now. And on this day I relive it all. The crushing weight of sadness. The broken heart that I'm beginning to understand will never beat exactly right again. The feeling of her body in my arms just the one time. The flowers. The journey. The enduring love I have for a child I never saw with my own eyes.

This post, about her beautiful service, is one of my favorites. It reminds me of the outpouring of love we had and of the beautiful way my God said, "I am El Roi, the God who sees."

*Some Other Me from the Broadway musical If/Then by Tom Kitt

Girl in the Ground

My friend grieves. Not death, but we mourn for so much more. There doesn't need to be a body in a grave. I told her that I would beseech the Lord on her behalf, that I would pray the words she cannot find. Because I have been there. Because there was a season in my life where the only thing I could pray was, "Oh God!" In the numbness, in the stabbing heart pain, in the days and weeks where it felt like there wasn't enough oxygen in the air, beloveds lifted me up.

I started thinking about her then. Thinking about grief always makes me remember her. Really, she is with me almost always. In the sweet smile of a two year old running chubby legged through a store, she is there. In flower pink dresses hanging on a rack, she is there. In her name, every single time I hear it--which is always--she is there. Whenever I see those four letters together in print, she is there. That name, the one we'd chosen for a daughter nearly twelve years ago, is simultaneously a melody to my ears and a deadly dose of kryptonite.

Grief comes like a foamy swell I somehow wasn't expecting. My stomach sinks the way it does when you go up, up, up and over the peak of a wave, sliding down its backside. This agony does not exist from the pain of having loved and lost. It comes from never having been granted the privilege to have known at all.

I think of my girl in the ground. Spiritually, I know that she is the lucky one--to have shot straight to heaven like an arrow of light. But in this oft-wrecked mama heart, when I get to forgetting that this world is not our home, I imagine a life for her and there is sorrow that she missed it.

I have not yet been where she has gone. This world is all I know. And so, in the twinkling of Christmas lights on a tree filled with memories--she's missing this. In the wiggling of toes in warm, salty sand--she's missing this. In the sticky fingers of pancake morning--she's missing this. I think of how she will always be with me, getting older every year and missing all of it. Slumber parties and graduations, a wedding and the chance to have her own little girl one day. She's missing this.

And I'm missing her. 

A kindergartner came to my class. Tears streaked his face and I asked the reason. "I miss my sister," he mumbled through silent sobs.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"She's in Heaven," he wailed. When I could, I pulled him aside.

"When did she die?" I gently asked, pulling him in closer.

"For two days she lived, is all. She is seven now. I could never meet her, ever. And I miss her." He was destroyed, this boy who was born after his sister went to Jesus. With two dozen kindergartners staring at me, I fought back tears.

"My little girl went to Heaven. She's almost three. Maybe your sister is playing with my daughter. What do you think?" He wiped tears and nodded. We moved on. As much as one ever moves on from gutting grief.

I could never meet her, ever.

There is peace in knowing where she is. But there is anguish in knowing where she is not. It catches me, unguarded. It's in the mourning moments of others when I most remember every detail of my unraveling. There were minutes and hours when I tried to invent ways to follow the clock back to her beating heart. I failed. Eventually, the fifth stage of grief overtook.

Still, there are flashes in time where acceptance eludes me. I hear someone say her name--a common name, an unavoidable one--and I'm instantly dreaming of the life she might have had. Then, she is with me. Her soft, bouncy curls press against my face as she snuggles in close. Somehow, these many years later, I find it possible to exist, for a split second or two, in that very first stage of grief.

Denial.

For in those few seconds, I can pretend that my girl is not in the ground.

Memories That Mean Something

As has been well documented in this particular space, I'm not a crier. I almost never just sit down and have a good cry simply for the sake of crying. If people are around--forget about it. As I've said before, if you've seen me cry, you're in a rather elite group of people. Even my current television obsession, This Is Us, doesn't make my eyes spring a leak in quite the same way that it makes the rest of the world. I love it, don't get me wrong. It's perfect and poignant and almost always spot on, but I've only choked up a handful of times.

Last night's episode did me in. I mean, I can't even talk about Randall's character without losing it. "My whole childhood, I felt split inside." And then teen Randall, "It's like a ringing in my ears and, uh, it quiets down sometimes. It can quiet down so much I almost forget it's there, but then, there are sometimes where it's so loud, I just feel alone." I was basically a wreck thinking about my boys.

But that's not even what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Sylvester Stallone.

"So it's a funny thing, when you think about it, time. Your sister sings a couple of bars of Rocky and for a split second I can smell the ring again. And then she tells me that when you were little kids, you watched a lot of my movies, and I'm thinking for a moment about my kids when they were little. The messy hair. The matching pajamas and all that stuff. And I swear to you I can see it all so very clearly I could just reach out and touch it. In my experience, Kevin, there's no such thing as a long time ago. There's only memories that mean something and memories that don't."

I thought about Kate. Which is weird. Because I don't really have any memories of Kate. I never saw her running down the stairs in her pajamas to see what Santa had left under the tree. I never heard her voice or danced with her or snuggled her into bed. I never saw her kick a ball, climb a tree, or twirl in a frilly dress. My memories of her are mostly painful.

But even those excruciating memories mean something. I see it all so clearly I could just reach out and touch it. Her tiny body in my arms feels like yesterday. The way I could feel every nerve buzzing when I heard that she was gone forever. The sound of my own heartbeat banging loudly in my ears. Trying to get off the phone because I thought I was going to die, right then, and I needed to do it alone.

I visit her grave and sometimes I say hello to a soul that isn't there, wipe the dirt off her name, and get back in the car. And sometimes I want, inexplicably, to dig her up, cradle her once again, and breathe life into her dry bones.

My friend recently lost a baby to stillbirth. She asked me if I would share some of the things we did to honor Kate. In the course of our conversation, I said, "Thank you for asking me. I don't pretend to know what it is like to give birth to a stillborn baby and I really appreciate that you just look at me as a mom who lost a baby. Not a lady who got too attached to a kid she never carried."

She replied and said, "I think of you as a mom of a stillborn. Not like that's your label. But it's part of your story."

And really, it meant the world to me to have her say that. In her own fresh grief, she accepted my long time ago sorrow. That's not an easy thing to do.

It's in the ebb and flow of grief that we learn to live. Like a surfer waiting for the next wave. Life is calm and serene and full but we know that the pulse of the ocean will bring another swell. On a birthday. When someone else experiences unfathomable loss. When Sylvester Stallone says that there is no such thing as a long time ago.

It was three years ago that I first heard about this birth mother who was pregnant with this baby. To some, three years is a long time. In those years I have loved and lost and loved again.

I cannot tell Will's story without telling Kate's. Two hearts. One birth mom. Sister. Brother. And a mama who isn't sure that there will ever be a day where grief doesn't surprise her in the strangest of places. My hair is tucked behind my ear the same way. My face, somehow, looks the same even though the circumstances could not have been more different. Devastation somehow filled with hope that the Lord would fulfill the promise He placed in my heart. Joy filled with sadness that he would never know the sister who first stole my heart. These are memories that mean something.

It's a funny thing, when you think about it time.
Your sister sings a couple of bars of Rocky, and for a split second I can smell the ring again.
And then she tells me that when you were little kids, you watched a lot of my movies, and I'm thinking for a moment about my kids, when they were little the messy hair, the matching pajamas and all that stuff and I swear to you, I can see it all so very clearly I could just reach out touch it.
In my experience, Kevin, there's no such a thing as "a long time ago.
" There's only memories that mean something and memories that don't.

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=this-is-us-2016&episode=s02e03

This Side of Grief

Before I say anything else, I want to preface all of this by saying that I know, by the grace of the detachment of time, that everyone meant well. I know that people were speaking to me from a place of utmost compassion and love. I appreciate the way that many of my friends reached out to me and gave me support, encouragement, and permission to be authentic. All of that needs to be recognized, thanked and celebrated.

I have an analytical mind. I'm organized and administrative despite my detestation of math, science, and pocket protectors. In spite of my penchant for the arts and my flair for the dramatic, I need everything to fit into appropriate boxes. Everything has a space and a home. Perhaps this is why I escaped into a place where grief was categorized and shoved into a sort of child loss flow chart.

I knew at the time that this was horrendously misguided but I couldn't stop the distraught thought process. I somehow needed to place grief against grief in some sort of fight to the death. I still don't know why this comparison felt vital to my existence.

In that intense Anger stage of Grief I wanted to say to everyone, "This is the worst thing I've ever felt. My baby died inside a womb that wasn't mine ONLY EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE HER DUE DATE! I held a pink blanket wrapped refrigerator bag at the funeral home! I drove my daughter inside of her casket in the back of my van to the cemetery!" Find me someone else who has done that. THAT woman I want to have a cup of coffee with. THAT woman has something in common with me. I felt all alone because my situation was uniquely mine.

In the many months since, I have purposed in my heart not to compare pain with an actively grieving woman. I will not feel the weight of her grief because it is uniquely hers. We can talk later, when the pain is not acute. Of course, if she asks, I will share. But I will not place my grief on top of hers, unsolicited.

Two and a half years after the fact, I'm not gasping for breath in the survival state of grief and I have come to recognize that It destroys people in different ways. It cannot be quantified. No one life matters more. No one human's existence is any less or any more important. No one mother's grief is bigger or better or more deserved than another's. I'm willing to bet good money that every mother, in the smack center of grief (and, maybe, forever), feels like hers is the absolute worst pain that ever there was. I realized that I was comforted most by hearing someone saying, "I cannot imagine your pain." Even if she believed she could. Even if circumstances were seemingly identical. Even if she believed hers to be much, much worse. Maybe if more people said, "Your pain is unbearable. It is the worst pain there ever was," the one grieving could honestly and wholeheartedly say, "Thank you. Thank you for seeing me and meeting me exactly where I am, swimming in the most pain I've ever experienced."

I would like to say that I've come out on the other side of grief. It simply isn't true and I'd be lying to pretend it so. There's a family at our school whose little boy is the exact age that my little girl should be. Their due dates were about a week apart. We ran into them at the pool a few weeks ago. I can still barely look at him. My brain fights my heart because I'd like to think that I'm not stupid. That little boy is not my girl. But my heart knows that his life reminds me of hers. It is not his fault that he makes me want to cry. The waves of grief ebb and flow and rush more slowly in the passing of years. But I do not think it is something we can walk through and come out on the other side. I think it attaches itself to our bodies, like a tattoo we cannot erase. It becomes a part of us. Forever.

It creeps in, like ink through skin, to the very fiber of our existence, so that when someone hurts, we long to tell our own story, to breathe life back into the corpse. As time goes on, tell their stories. For all the love in all the world, remind people that you had a child who is gone. Write. Share. Speak. Weave that One throughout your narrative because her life mattered. Because his soul still exists. But also, consider taking a moment to step outside of pain and whisper to the one who is surviving in the acute stage of grief, "I cannot imagine."

Because I think we can all agree that the weight of a little life lost is simply, unimaginable.

The Unimaginable

Sometimes I write with the intention to never share. Often I think about Kate and don't form a circle of my closest friends to cry. Life moves on. I don't want the world to look at me and say, "Wow. Girlfriend really can't process her grief, can she?" Lesser still, do I want the world to question how I could still be so deeply sad.

And I don't know, is the thing.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest thing, but wholly trust in Jesus name.

Why then, the grief?

Why do I wonder if I might wake to find that it was all but a dream? Perhaps, one day, I will see that losing her was just a passing nightmare. And I'll have both Kate and her brother.

My eight year old wept the other night. Through angry tears he exploded, "She should be asleep in her bedroom right now." And she should. How can you argue with that? Grief, as my mom said to me today, is a weird thing.

I wrote this last month and posted it to a writer's page that I'm a part of on Facebook. I never intended to post it here. But I'm not sure why. Because transparency is painful? Because I don't want the rest of the world to have access to my grief? Because she'll never be here the way I want her to be?

But he is. And he deserves every piece of my broken heart.

*******************************************************

There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable
-Lin Manuel Miranda

I held him, curly hair sticking out from his head in loose spiraling staircases. He looks like a man cub. His legs squeezed my hip, foot resting on the womb that held neither of them. A chubby hand clutched my shirt just above the heart that holds them both. “This is your sister,” I said.

His eyes locked on the giraffe caged in the shadow box. The soft, stuffed toy sits, staring, for always. Plump arms never snuggled the animal, sticky fingers never dragged it by the neck, soft baby breath never exhaled over it. The antithesis of a Velveteen Rabbit, the giraffe will never be real. She was never here to love it enough. I stare at the tiny footprints pressed into plaster. My eyes shift to his tiny toes. They wiggle slightly. I look back at her frozen ones and try to imagine them pushing against the walls of their mother. One minute they pressed and stretched. The next moment they fell limp—forever. My gaze lands on her picture. Black and white lines that form the image of my daughter, his sister.

“She was inside your other mommy before you were.” I was stoic. “She went straight to Jesus when she was born. And then we got you.”

I can’t tell him that his stillborn sister wrecked me. I can’t explain that while I walk without a limp, my heart beats erratic and broken. Our great God used the man cub to heal so much of that bloody wound left by her absence, but he can’t fix it all. An 8 month old cannot bear that burden.

He will not know the way I startle whenever I hear her name belonging to someone else or the way I choke back dreams when I see a little girl holding tight to her mama. He can’t know that when I stand in front of that shadow box, I imagine what she would have been. So much more than the cold corpse I held tightly in my arms before we buried her.

He is amazing life, incredible and indescribable joy. I will tell him about the sister who came before. I will share all the miracles. He will know her.

But I will not tie my albatross of grief around his neck. He will walk freely and hear only the ways my life is made infinitely better by his presence. I will shield him from the moments when, weeping, I succumb to the excruciating thump of my still cracked heart.

Two

To Kate on the occasion of your death and birth,

I never want to leave you there in the ground. I want to scoop you into my arms, run fingers through your curly hair, kiss mocha colored cheeks, dress you in ruffles and bathe you in snuggles. I want to do a lot of things. But I never want to leave you there in the ground.

I imagine you, buried under the grass. I remember your tiny casket and the flowers that were there, trying their hardest to mask death, their colors begging us to look away from the sadness. I remember choosing your grave marker, none of the dozens of choices seeming at all right. Because nothing was right. It was all messed up.

Everything is wrong when your baby is in the dirt.

The stages of grief aren't stages at all. They're fluid pockets of space and time, connected by wires that allow a girl to travel into any of them at any time.

Acceptance comes.

But even two years later, there is anger and sometimes denial, even.

You didn't die. Why did you die? If only you hadn't died. I'm mad at the world because you died.

In the end, I set my face stoic, remind myself of God's goodness and that the essence of who you are is with Him. I thank you for being you and making me fall in love with you so completely. I rub the dust from your stone, place the things we've chosen, tell you how desperately I continue to miss you. And then I turn and walk away.

But I never, ever, want to leave you there in the dirt.

2+1+K = 4

"Bash. Um," I always say to a new group of kids before I take roll. "Mrs. Bash. Um." It doesn't really matter. I'll get any number of new names assigned to me throughout the day. Teacher. Bashel. Bash. Bashman. The list goes on. Then, if I'm at my boys school, I will tell them that I have a fourth grader and second grader there. Now, of course, I also share that I have a baby at home. Because kindergartners and girls of every age will inevitably squeal and, seemingly, instantly like me once they know I have a baby. On Wednesday, a bright little kindergartner exclaimed, "So you have two kids here at school and one kid at home so you have THREE KIDS?" He waited expectantly, as though he wanted me to affirm his addition.

Great math, five-year-old.

He's too young to understand algebra. He doesn't know that 2 + 1 + k = 4. It's always a strange sort of thing whether it's a kindergartner or a woman in a store who stops me to say, "So you have the three boys?" It's the very worst when a well meaning person says, "Time for your girl now."

There's an awkward pause every time as I struggle to figure out what to say. Usually, I just say, "Yes." Or, in the case of the people who tell me it's time for my girl, I smile and reply, "Well, I'm happy with what God has given me."

Yesterday though, the little boy in kindergarten got a longer pause and, as sometimes happens, I felt the tug not to erase my daughter from the equation. "I have three kids with me and one in heaven." I don't know if I'm allowed to mention heaven in public school but it's as much a part of my reality as breathing so there you have it.

Another boy instantly joined in the conversation. I don't know his story. Maybe he's lost someone close to him, maybe he was just curious, but that little guy wanted to know. "Oh. That is sad," he said. "Your kid went to heaven?"

"Yes," I replied.

"A boy or a girl kid?"

"A girl," I answered.

He lowered his voice and asked, "What was her name?"

"Kate."

And at that, he seemed content to move on.

I've thought a lot about grief in these past 21 months. My heart had never broken like that before and I needed to know that it was the worst grief anyone could ever feel--because I could not imagine anything worse. Except my head knew that it could be worse--that one day, it would be worse. And so I walked a precarious tightrope of emotions, upset with everyone who said they knew how I felt and upset with myself for embracing, so intensely, a grief I have sometimes felt wasn't mine to experience.

She had never really been mine.

Only the dream of her belonged to me. How can the loss of a dream hurt so completely and how can I think, every day, of that little dream and what she would have become?

I struggle to find answers. I continue to peel away the layers of the feelings, to understand more and more as the pain becomes less and less. I mourn the loss of the dream. And I mourn for Kate. For her life, unlived. 

The stillborn are handled in one of two ways. They are buried or cremated for the purpose of memorializing them or the hospital disposes of them. We could have stayed in Utah. The baby would have been disposed of according to hospital protocol. We would have grieved our dream and, one day, moved on. That would have been it. 

We didn't stay. We went to her. We held her. We gave her a name on a stone and a piece of grass that belongs to her. We made her ours. She was our dream but she was reality. Her unlived life mattered. I think that is why I grieve so tremendously a little girl I never knew. Because if not her mother, then who? 

I know that if she had been born alive at 32 weeks gestation, instead of still, I would have rushed to her side and sat in the NICU until she was healthy enough to go home. I would have loved her and cared for her and rejoiced with her and cried with her and raised her as best as I know how. She was born still and I was not afforded the opportunity to do any of those things. What I was given was the great privilege to rush to her side and grieve for her.

Now, I have the privilege of thinking about her every day, wishing I could visit her grave every day, and struggling with how I answer the question of how many children I have. Because I have four. And I really miss one of them.

You Matter

Dear Kate,

I miss you. I can't help but think that, had you been born alive that morning, instead of still, the story would have played out in a more joyful way. And I wonder, "What if?" We'd have rushed to your side and cheered you on as you fought through being seven weeks premature. We'd have held you and cared for you and, modern medicine being what it is, hauled you out of the NICU in no time at all. There would have been an Easter dress and some sort of teeny tiny red, white and blue bathing suit. You'd have eaten sand by the fistful at the beach last summer and produced heinous diapers to prove it. Christmas would have been magical. Today, I'd put the final touches on your birthday party which, let's face it, in the absence of your opinion, would probably have had something to do with a couple of Disney princesses named Anna and Elsa.

I had it all playing out so differently in my mind.

But your life mattered. I want you to know that. Even though I can't tell you, I hope that, from your vantage point in Heaven, you somehow know. I hope you can see this family and how we're so much better for the lessons you taught us. I hope you know all the lives you changed without taking a single step.

Do you know about the mother who, after hearing your story, decided not to abort her child?

Do you know about all the people who have told me that they were deeply impacted by your life?

People saw the Lord move as we raised a ton of money in such a short amount of time.

People saw the Lord move as doors opened for us to be able to hold you and love you and bury you.

As for us, the year was not a total loss. We all miss you in ways I can't even begin to put into words. I hate that you're not here. If I could explore an alternate reality where I'm raising you and loving you, I would do it immediately with no questions asked. But I love your brothers a little more fiercely now. I love your Daddy because he's shouldered my grief while struggling through his own. I can't explain it, exactly, but despite never seeing your face, he's somehow still wrapped around your little finger.

I wish I could visit you more than the occasional trip to San Diego allows. I'm so thankful that your grandparents make sure to put fresh flowers on your grave often. Grandpa fills in the cracks and creases with fresh dirt and brushes off your marker so it stays nice and pretty. People love you. And I am hoping, more than anything, that one day we will meet in the heavenly realm and I will see your face and I will know...

That's my girl.

Kate, the tears don't flow as freely anymore. Time doesn't fix anything and the scars don't go away, but the acute pain is replaced by the desire to live each day to the fullest. I'd rather be scooping you up into my arms, kissing your chubby cheeks and your boo-boos, listening to your giggle, but I will settle for knowing that you are, truly, in a better place.

So, I think of you, Little One. Until we meet for the very first time...

Love,
Mommy

To My Children on National Adoption Day

I still remember listening to that voice mail...the one that said there was a birth mother who wanted to meet us.

I still remember standing in the middle of the mall in Oregon, hearing that she was a girl and she would be ours.

I still hope for the day when another phone call will come, when another mama has chosen us.

I remember getting ready for him, shopping for baby outfits with trucks and bears and baseballs.

I remember taking the boys to buy her outfits at Carter's.

I hope I get to buy hair bows and pink again someday.

I remember sitting by her side when our son was born. His chubby little body emerging from the only place he'd ever known into this wide world with all its possibilities. I cut the cord. I held my son.

I remember sitting by her side, just days after she'd birthed our daughter...still. We were empty. She was empty. No cord to cut. Later, I held my daughter, wrapped entirely in a pink blanket. And then I buried her.

I hope I get to hold another living, breathing child of mine and feel the magical moment of a life just beginning.

I remember the days and weeks and months and year of legal proceedings and prayer and despair and stress and devastation and joy and love. And then, the judge who officially made him ours. And it was worth it.

I remember the days and weeks and months of joy and pain and prayer and despair and stress and devastation and what ifs and whys and love. But then, there is a little girl for whom all has been revealed. Heaven is her playground. Our Father is her daddy. She is ours. And it was worth it.

I hold on to hope that there will not be death or months of legal proceedings. I believe that there might be just joy and prayer and love. And then a judge who will officially make her ours. And it will all be worth it.

This is adoption.

It is loss. Every time. For someone. Or for everyone.

It is hope. Every time. 

It is beautiful.

It is painful.

It is a picture of how our Father in Heaven longs for us to be His. How He waits for us. How He never stops pursuing us.

I would die for him.

I would trade my life for hers.

I would endure trial and tribulation for a chance to love another one the way I love these others.

People asked us what we were thinking. Some told us to consider the cost. We tried to separate our feelings, to look only at the little man in our arms. Matthew. Only, ever, Matthew. Does anything matter if we didn't do right by him. My goodness. What if we hadn't fought for him? He is worth every dollar. He is worth every moment. He is my son.

It would be easy to go back to that place over a year ago and walk away. The cost was devastating. And, ultimately, we lost her. I've tried to separate my feelings. But I held that little girl in my arms. Kate. Only, ever, Kate. Does anything matter if we didn't do right by her? My goodness. What if we hadn't taken the time to love her? To show the world that her life--however short--mattered? She is worth every dollar. She is worth every moment. She is my daughter.

What are we thinking? We consider the cost. We consider our climbing years. We try to separate our feelings. But ultimately, I cannot let go of hope. Only, ever, hope. Hope. Does anything matter if I let go of that? My goodness. What if I give up? If she is out there, somewhere in my future, she is worth every dollar. She is worth every moment. She is my daughter.

This is an adoption story--completed but always and ever changing.

This is an adoption story--completed but always and ever left wanting.

This is an adoption story--at the beginning, with nothing but empty horizons that we hope are one day filled.

Learning to Live Without

In a lot of ways, I feel like hope was a Band-Aid. Not eternal hope which is constant and sustaining, but the hope that allowed me to grieve my lost daughter and wait for another at the same time. It might not have been my smoothest move, to wrap this pain up in a bandage. I'm only just now realizing this.

Hoping for another child meant that I could have sad days and mourn the loss of Kate, but always through the filter of the fact that I wouldn't have some future child if we hadn't experienced the having and the losing of our first daughter. I figured that when we held our still-to-come baby girl, the pain of losing Kate would all be worth it.

I'd already lived this pattern twice. When Garrett was placed in my arms, it made infertility worth it. When Matthew was placed in my arms, it again made infertility worth it. After all, neither of them would be here if I could have snapped my fingers and had a positive pregnancy test the first time. (Or the thirtieth.)

When that future daughter was placed in my arms, it would make everything we went through with Kate totally worth it. This is what I told myself when I cried silently in a bathroom stall, overcome, suddenly, by grief. This is what I tell myself when one by one, my friends' babies are born happy and healthy and alive. Of course I want them to be born alive and well, but the stark contrast between seeing a warm baby wrapped in her mama's arms and remembering the cold bag I held with my own daughter inside is emotionally jarring. This is what I tell myself when I think about the fact that all I will ever have of Kate is a grave stone and the thought of what might have been. The struggle will make it worth it.

But I am learning that hope isn't a Band-Aid. It can't be. And the struggle isn't really worth anything.

Kate is gone. And I miss her. One year ago, we were praying and hoping that this little girl might be ours. Now, she is gone to Heaven but there is a stroller in the garage that I bought after Thanksgiving. There is a Christmas stocking in a box--but it won't be filled with tiny baby things this year. There are onesies hanging in the closet. There are diapers and formula and a crib mattress under my bed.

I thought it would be God's plan to bring us another daughter right away. And I would love her and we would visit Kate's grave but the ache would be healed by the presence of the baby who needed my devotion and attention. As it turns out, that wasn't His plan. We wonder, now, if it isn't His plan at all. Initially, we agreed to wait for one year. As that year draws to a close, and as we pray for clear direction, I am confronted with the fact that this might be it. And if this is it...

If this is it, then there is just grief. If this is it, we were hand picked out of obscurity to love Kate for three blissful months and then lose her because that was the plan all along. Either way, I am no longer at liberty to compartmentalize my pain.

Future baby or not, it has taken me ten months to realize that this grief is big and deep and wide and really, really ugly. It has taken me ten months to see that I have to trudge straight through it. I can't walk around it and I can't put a Band-Aid on it. I'm sorry for that. I know it makes no sense to those who ask, "How can you have been so attached to someone you never knew?" I know it boggles the minds of those whose silence during these past many moons has screamed volumes. But I cannot pretend that it isn't there.

I still believe, with all my mind, that God's plan is better than anything I could create on my own. Like Job said in chapter 42, verse 1, "I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know."

I do trust the plan and most days, I really am alright. My laughter is real. My smile is genuine. But I just need you to know that some days, I'm pretending.

You learn to speak so calmly when/Your heart would like to scream and shout/You learn to stop and breathe and smile/You learn to live without/You learn to count the quiet winds/An hour with no unprompted tears/And not to count the deadly days/As they fade into years/You learn to hold your life inside you/And never let it out/You learn to live and die and then to live/You learn to live without
-Brian Yorkey

Grief & Hope

Sometimes, I feel like grief is my new normal. It is there, just under the surface, kept at bay only by a conscious decision to make it so. It is there when I close myself into the bathroom stall and immediately start to cry even though I hadn't felt it coming. I cry hard for thirty seconds, wipe my eyes, and exit the same as before. No one knows. No one sees. It is there when my six-year-old finds a little pink outfit at Costco and pauses. Whispers quietly, "I want a baby sister." It is there, constant. A lump in my throat that I speak around, swallow down, live with.

Because my daughter is dead.

I expect everyone to get it. Sometimes. Other times I want to be the only person who has ever grieved like this. My sorrow is unfair to everyone because it is not predictable. It is fine for three weeks and then all messed up for five days straight. It is fluid. Raging waters. Stagnant. Ever the same. Always different.

Just last week, someone asked me about her. I said that it had been three months to the day since she'd been born still.

But it hadn't.

It was four. Four months. Not three. Inexplicably, this made me feel like a terrible mother. How did I not even know how much time had passed since January 19th? A lifetime? Five minutes? Three months? Four?

I sensed when it was time to stop talking, when people had heard enough, when I was expected--by most--to begin to pretend that everything was fine. It was long before I wanted to stop talking and long before anything was fine.

I smile. Sometimes because there is so much joy in life, so much happiness and so much to smile about. Sometimes because smiling is the only thing holding back the damage.

I did not know her. I mourn a dream. Still. Because I did not know her, I have just one memory of my girl. A fuzzy pink blanket with a kitten on it. Her small body in my arms. That day, I willingly gave her back to the funeral home. I stood and, ever so gently--terrified she would break--gave her away. Why didn't I simply hold her forever? Why did I walk away when it was all I had--all I would ever have? I had sensed that it was time. Now, I would do anything to hold that kid just a minute longer.

We were four and we were content. How then did this tiny dream come into our lives and leave such an indelible footprint that we feel lost without her? Why do we feel so incomplete?

I have said many times that we can grieve and hope at the same time. I believe, wholeheartedly, that this is possible and acceptable and right. But I am learning that, more often than not, it depends on the day. Most days I feel the expectant joy of hope. But there are other days when I feel torn up and twisted, wishing only that Kate's story had ended with a beginning.

Paper Kate

I hadn't cried in a good long while.

My mom's best friend's daughter just had a baby. It's her first and I'm super excited for her to experience the joy of motherhood. But, see, I have clothes hanging in the closet of the playroom baby's room library that match clothes she has hanging in her baby's closet. Our moms bought our babies matching clothes. I desperately hope that one day I will have a daughter to dress in the clothes that were bought for Kate. You see, I just don't think Kate would mind. She's in the arms of my loving heavenly Father and I really feel that, like every female everywhere, she'd want the clothes to be enjoyed.

So on the day that my mom's best friend's daughter was in labor, I had to open that closet (which I really rarely do because it's filled to the brim with baby stuff in the hopes that one day it'll be used) and I happened to fix my eyes on the matching outfit. I want her to wear hers, of course. I'm just reminded that Kate will never wear hers.

So a couple days ago, I cried. It had been weeks since I'd shed a tear which is really a testimony to the grace of God and the power He has to heal if we let Him. Sometimes we like to be stuck in our grief. Sometimes it feels so wrong and unnatural to be happy that we allow ourselves to stay fixed on sadness. But I am convinced that our loved ones do not want us circling sorrow for the rest of our lives.

They want us to live.

Still, sometimes, the grief creeps up on me. When my boys stare longingly at babies in Walmart. Grief. When I think of the life she won't lead. Grief. When I see tiny baby clothes left unworn. Grief. I sat on my bed and allowed myself to feel the weight of sadness for several moments. My eight-year-old walked into the room, took one look at me and said, simply, "Kate?" Then he came, wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight. I am convinced that, one day, he is going to love his wife just as tenderly. I simultaneously cannot wait for that day and could wait a lifetime for it.

Troy came in and pulled me close. I explained. "I just wish I could have one child that I did not have to cry buckets over." And I know that we will all cry over all of our children for one reason or another or a hundred. But just once, I would have loved to experience the joy of conception and birth and life without the pain of infertility and contested adoption and stillbirth.

Matthew wandered in and then wandered out. Later, he came up the stairs and handed me a gift he had made.

"It's a Paper Kate," he said.

"Now you have her. It's a doll. You can snuggle her."

It's stuffed with toilet paper. I plan to keep it forever and for always. I hugged him and told him I couldn't love anything more. This experience has not been fun. There are a million things I would rather do than go through this and, especially, watch my children go through this.

But it is making them tender. It is teaching them about life and love and Heaven and grace and mercy. It is, in painful ways, making them better.

I Am Not Alone

I'm singing a solo in church this morning. It very much runs the risk of being a train wreck. There is girl voice, people. If you know me in real life, you know that I never, ever, do that. I sing like a man. Singing like a man is right in my wheelhouse.  My voice may crack. It could go flat OR sharp OR both, there's really no telling. So I'm setting this particular post to "go live" at 11:00 am. Because if I wait to post it when I get home from church, there is a very good chance the train will have wrecked and I will be attempting to block it from my memory completely.

When I do any type of performance art, be it theatre, voice or modern dance, (completely kidding on that last one. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. I have two left feet and zero rhythm. I mean NO RHYTHM AT ALL. My youngest son had more rhythm at two weeks old than I've ever had in my whole, entire life.) I really want to find a way, a moment or a memory that helps me connect with the piece. I started rehearsing this song with our worship leader back in the fall. It was very out of my comfort zone and I knew it would need a lot of work but I was immediately connected to it.

When I walk through deep waters
I know that You will be with me
When I'm standing in the fire
I will not be overcome

We'd had an emotional year. Everything felt overwhelming, like we were hanging out in deep water, barely keeping our heads up. My cousin's baby had just been stillborn and I sent her a video of Kari Jobe singing this song. I never mentioned that. My cousin delivered her son stillborn in October. When my mom called me with the news I just sat in the middle of my floor, feeling stunned. I couldn't imagine her pain. This song came to my mind and I sent the words to her.

Through the valley of the shadow
I will not fear
I am not alone
I am not alone
You will go before me
You will never leave me

Not long after, I began rehearsing it. I thought of my family and my cousin and the fact that in September we thought I had cancer. It was easy to feel the weight and the truth of the song. The Christmas season came and we tossed this song on the back burner and worked on a Christmas special.

Then January rolled in and my daughter was stillborn.

I am not alone
I am not alone
You will go before me
You will never leave me

All the way to California, we listened to worship music. It was the only thing we could think to do. I cried for most of the drive. Shook. Sobbed. Whispered the lyrics to songs. Allowed the already written words to become my prayers. Meredith Andrews. Hillsong. Laura Story. Kari Jobe. I thought it possible that I might never be able to stop crying. Never be able to breathe without it hurting. Never be able to sing again...

In the midst of deep sorrow
I see Your light is breaking through
The dark of night will not overtake me
I am pressing into You

I clung to the hope that His light would break through my grief. It simply had to. I would not be overtaken. I would respond for His glory. People would see the joy I have in Him. He goes before me. Always.

Lord, You fight my every battle
And I will not fear
I am not alone
I am not alone
You will go before me
You will never leave me

I needed time. I couldn't even listen my way through the song without crying. Slowly though, I found myself crying less. Eventually, I could even sing it without breaking down.

You amaze me
Redeem me
You call me as Your own

No matter what. No matter what we go through, we are His.

You're my strength
You're my defender
You're my refuge in the storm
Through these trials
You've always been faithful
You bring healing to my soul

It is not easy. Just last night I saw a baby that had to have been about seven weeks old. My arms ached and my heart twisted. I wish it had all played out differently. But there is healing for the soul. He has always been faithful. He is my strength and my refuge.

I'm singing a solo this morning. It has all the potential of being a vocal train wreck. But I am singing for an audience of one. I'm saying, Thank you. I miss my child but I do not cry all the time anymore. You have brought healing to my soul. You have always, always been faithful. Accept this train wreck as a living sacrifice.

Isaiah 43:1b-2

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you."

A Piece of My Heart

My friend and I went to "coffee" this morning. It's just the universal term for, "Let's grab a beverage and gab." We both had hot chocolate. I don't know her well. Her family attended our church for awhile, then they moved to Massachusetts and then they moved back just a couple months ago. They left with one son and returned with an addition. Their daughter was born several months ago (and is CUTE AS A STINKIN' BUTTON). 

One of the reasons that she wanted to meet with me today was to give me this necklace.

I hope I'm not over stepping my bounds when I tell you that, during part of our conversation, she said she often reads my blog at night, when she's massively exhausted and dealing with a baby that is up for whatever reason. It impacts her in a certain way because she's got a baby in her arms and she said it helps her remember not to complain.

I've said it before and I'll say it again because I'm not ashamed. When both of my babies were screaming like banshees in the night and I was SO TIRED from all the NOT SLEEP, I thought I might sell them to the highest bidder. Of course, daylight would come and I remembered that I wouldn't give them away for all the money in the world. My point is that I have kids. I know what those long nights are like. I remember thinking my eyelids were going to fuse shut forever because they hurt so badly. I get complaining about those sleepless nights. Or the colic. Or the reflux. Or whatever ails your baby. I am NOT judging you (ANY OF YOU) for the list of things that make motherhood hard. Because I get it. And I see you and the sacrifices you're making for your children.

But I really do hope that, if I'm blessed with the chance to do the baby stage again, I remember all this at 1:00 am when I'm just exhausted. I hope it makes me a more patient mother. I hope I get to stare into a crying face and remember that I didn't get to do it with Kate. I hope it makes me better. 

Tiffany, thank you for the beautiful gift. It's perfect.

I'm Great, How Are You?

I was in a classroom and a student asked me how many kids I have. I paused. Too long. As if counting. As if I didn't know. Finally, I stammered, "Um. I have two." Gaining speed, my sentences toppled on top of each other. "My son, Garrett, is in 2nd grade. My son, Matthew, is in kindergarten." My daughter, Kate, is in Heaven.

I don't really talk about it a lot. I can sense when people are just plumb ready for me to move from, "I'm doing okay," to, "I'm great, how are you?" And I oblige. I pick up on the fact that people would prefer if my Facebook posts returned to, "Today Garrett announced that since finding out how babies are made, he has absolutely no plans to ever get married." Instead of, "My arms ache in the absence of my child." So I try. I go through the motions until the motions feel normal.

But then, Easter.

Last week I was putting together the boys' baskets and it suddenly hit me. By all earthly assumptions, I'm supposed to have a three week old. Of course, the Father always knew that the heavenly realms would welcome her before she saw the light of one of our days, but if...

If she hadn't died, she'd be here. She'd be in my arms and she'd be small and there would be an Easter basket for her. There would have been tiny diapers and a small Easter dress. Instead, there is an empty room.

Garrett says he'd be having so much fun right now. He'd hold her and help with her and love her.

Matthew says he wants to go to Heaven so he can visit her.

Troy buys an Easter lily and dedicates it to Kate.

I cry silently in the safety of these walls. I stare at two baskets and I am so thankful that they are here but, still, I wish that there were three. I want to visit her grave and I cannot because it's miles and states away. I smile and tell people I'm great.

Sometimes it's the truth.

Due Date

Today is Kate's due date.

For many weeks, I'd been feeling better and moving forward under the assumption that grief is linear and progressive, each moment less painful than the one before. I was wrong. This week has wrecked me.

She should be here now. In my arms. Squirming and cooing and not sleeping and being tiny. She is not.

I realized, very early in the week, that I was angry. This was jarring because, honestly, I'd pretty much skipped that step of grief. I wasn't lying when I said that I was finding joy in all of this. I didn't fabricate my emotions when I told others that I wanted God to be glorified in our loss. There was no manipulation of facts when I said that I trusted Him. I was devastated, yes. Mad? No. So it was weird to realize that at several points in the day I had conscious thoughts about throwing whatever was in my hand through the nearest window.

I was even more confused because there was no object of my wrath. I wasn't angry at God. He gives and takes away. Blessed be His name. I wasn't mad at a person. I really stopped and let myself wonder if I might be angry at Kate. I've known a lot of people who feel desperately mad at the dead. But Kate was completely innocent, untainted by life, small and fragile and I simply cannot be upset with her for being unable to survive.

I realized, finally, that I'm not mad at a tangible thing. I'm mad because I'm not happy.

I'm not talking about joy. Joy is found in my Savior and in Him alone and that has gone nowhere. But happiness is a different thing altogether. In October, my family was content. We had no idea that we could be more. For goodness sake, I made a list of pros and cons to help me decide whether or not to move forward with this adoption. We were done with babies.

Then we decided that we weren't. The list of pros grew and the list of cons was full of stupid things. Like the price of diapers. And college. We moved forward. We were all so very excited, so very much in love, and so very ready for this little life to join ours. We didn't look for her. She was dropped, miraculously, into our hearts.

Then she was gone.

Now, a piece of me will be missing forever. Deep down, I'm mad because I'm sad. I'm sad because she's gone. I don't want to wait for eternity to see her.

And missing her is just a part of living.

Upon Waking

When I wake up, I have the same thought. It might be 2:11 am and I just have to use to the bathroom. Or maybe it's 6:19 and the heater cycled on and woke me. Typically, it's 7:00 and the alarm is sounding. If I'm really lucky, it's more than once in any given night of sleep. Whenever I feel myself moving into the land of the living, the same two words descend on me like new revelation.

Kate's dead.

I'm sorry. I know it's morbid. It's short and to the point. It's like Hemingway wrote the words. Hawthorne or Austen or Steinbeck would have it playing out with painted prose that last for three pages at least. Their words would linger on the horizon of my mind for several minutes and I'd eventually realize that in all this verbosity they were defining something no longer living. Yes, they'd discuss death but in a way that made me feel alive with hope. I didn't get the descriptive words of these authors. I got Hemingway. Sparse. Quick. To the point.

Kate's dead.

I'm reminded over and over by a mind that won't let me forget. Not for a single minute. I can distract myself. I can get out of bed. I can get the boys to school or myself to work. I can make meals and clean house. But no amount of distraction can erase those two words. Every time I wake up. And dead is an ugly word to those still living. It's a shocking word to think in the very moment I shake the cobwebs. Second only to her name, which always comes first. Kate. 

It's really as though I live a lifetime in the brief pause between the two. Kate. In that name there is all the anticipation, the tea parties and the shopping sprees, the giggles and the magic I'd created in my own dreams. A moment later, the fantasy crashes down because dead follows. Every morning. Instantly, I feel a heaviness. Another day closer to her due date. But she isn't coming. 

My blessings are not lost on me. I could fill my own loquacious novels with pages and pages of the blood, sweat and tears shed before (and after) those two beautiful boys called me mama. I mean it. Literally. I gave so much blood to Kaiser Permanente in the name of infertility treatment that it's a small miracle I didn't need some sort of transfusion. I was sweating as I leaned over the couch waiting for my husband to plunge an hCG trigger shot into my hip and I was sweating as we waited for the results of a paternity test. Matthew's. Not Garrett's. Just for clarification. Then there was all the crying. Tears that turned to streams that ran to rivers that poured into oceans. I begged and pleaded with God and He gave me these two incredible little humans. When I count my blessings, they, along with their father, are at the very top. Still, it is hard. To have held the dream of one more and sobbed as it slipped between fingers.

There is a boy in Garrett's class. His sister is in Matthew's. Their mama had a baby last week. Both boys came to me, separately, with news of this little life. Matthew stared up at me with his deep, dark chocolate eyes. They filled with tears and he cried out, "I'm very jealous." His lip quivered and he said, "She gets her baby and I don't get to have my baby."

We talked to both boys about how it's definitely fine to be devastated over our own loss but that we still rejoice in the new life God gives to others. It's a difficult concept for the fallen natures of little men. If I'm being honest, it's a difficult concept for the fallen nature of their mother. We do rejoice. I have held babies in the many weeks since January and it has brought me great joy. I have thought about my unborn niece or nephew every single day and thanked God for the little miracle growing inside my sister-in-law. I look forward, with great anticipation to the day I get to hold that baby. I have congratulated friends on the births of their babies and meant it, completely. 

But we are also human. I have held my sons as they cry and told them that God has a plan. It is infinitely better than anything we could come up with on our own. We have to trust Him. We are His and this is not our home. This place--this temporary lodging--has the ability to take our hearts, rip them out, stomp on them, batter and bruise them, and then stick them back inside. They beat funny after that. Still, somehow, in working order, but with an ache. Sometimes dull, sometimes sharp, sometimes intermittent and sometimes constant. Only our Creator can mend the mess that grief leaves in its wake. Only He can find cause for joy in our humanity.

I dread waking. Kate's dead. It is like being buried under the weight of the world. In that moment, all that might have been floods my mind. 

I know.

Yes, she is.

I remember.

I've audibly said all these and more to myself. Tomorrow, though, I think I may choose a different response. I may confront that Hemingway style of economic prose with a little Steinbeck-like of my own.

A yellow line of brilliant light quietly shone through the open window just behind her. It was, somehow, as if God Himself had entered the now sacred space. He whispered, "Kate is not dead, anymore. She is just not with you. And those are two very different things, indeed."