September Hits

9.2.14

      It's September. I feel like a cloud of sadness just moved over the house. It's just a date, it shouldn't matter that much, but I found that the memories of Kaitlyn have started coming back even more than usual.
      I find myself reliving the events leading up to finding her gone. It happens randomly, while I'm driving to work sometimes, and I feel like I just need to break down. Sometimes I choke it back, sometimes I let the tears flow.
      I miss my daughter.
      I had decided that I wanted to start seeing Kate again as our one year anniversary crept closer, and on the Tuesday after Memorial Day I decided to go see her.
      We talked for a long time about that day. It has been three years since Piper passed away, and Kate told me that their birthdays were very close together. She even told me that she had "officially" moved her birthday to a different day all together because she just couldn't handle her birthday being so close to Piper's. And that this year, on the third anniversary, was the first year she didn't stop functioning.
       That comforted me some. Here was this amazing petite woman, sitting next to me with her legs crossed and the sun hitting her bright red hair, seeming to have it together but telling me that in years past she had lost it. She told me that in her grief, the build up to the day Piper was born was worse than the actual day itself. I begged her for advice- how do I stop the pain? How do I make the memories stop coming at me so quickly? How do I keep it together.
        Kate shook her head and said it was just part of the grief, and that I needed to feel it and not try to bury it.
         I don't want to feel it. I want to hold my daughter again. I want to feel the weight of her. Scratch that- I want to feel the rhythm of her rubbing her head up under my rib cage. I want to feel her kick me deep inside as I complain ignorantly about how huge I feel. I want to run my fingers through that massive amount of black hair, so silky and soft between my fingers.
         I don't want to have these memories so vivid stuck in front of me when I visit a hospital. It doesn't even matter which hospital. I just think about all the women that are in there having babies, some of them who are ill-prepared and some not even wanting a child to begin with.
         My arms start to ache again- that Empty Arm Syndrome that people talk about.

         All summer I had participated in a women's Bible study through Ester written by Beth Moore. The ladies that had surrounded me for the last three years would meet at our house every other week to watch a video from Beth, and we would share our lives together and enjoy each other's company.
         During one of my homework sessions, Beth told the story of her father, who was a World War II Veteran, finding these words inscribed on a wall inside a concentration camp they had just freed:

"I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining

I believe in love, even when I do not feel it

I believe in God, even when He is silent."

-Author Unknown

The big 3-0

8.30.14

     I turned 30 this year, and August 30th is my birthday.
     We had taken a trip earlier in August to celebrate both mine and Alex's big birthdays, so in a way I felt like I had already celebrated that. When I woke up Saturday morning, all I felt was sadness.
     It wasn't unlike the way I felt on Mother's Day. I missed my Kaitlyn. Even though we are so incredibly blessed to have another baby on the way so soon, I still miss my daughter. I miss that I can't hold her, and I miss that I am another year older without her here. It just feels so wrong some days.
      I finally peeled myself out of bed and went and sat on our living room couch. I just started crying and I couldn't control it. I needed to grieve the things that I was still missing. Last year should have been my last year without a kiddo here. And now I was going through the same motions again since we are pregnant. This year should be our last year without a kiddo.
      The thought still scares me.
      My mom and I have birthdays that are exactly 2 weeks apart. One of the things I loved about Kaitlyn was that she was going to be born so close to my mom's birthday, so I would always feel about her birthday the way I felt about me and my mom having birthdays so close. It was just one of those mother/daughter things that was special even though you never really talked about it. I looked forward to having birthday parties close together, and we would probably have even celebrated my mom and daughter's birthday on the same day some years (for convenience's sake).
      But now, I started to dread what September would bring. Even though I should have been happy on my birthday, I dreaded it because it was so close to September. One measly day away from September. I use to kid my mom about not being able to hold me in for another 48 hours because the birthstone for August is just so awful and September is a sapphire. She told me to wait and see how it felt to have contractions and then give her a hard time about not holding me in that long.
      Which brings up a whole other point: September's birthstone is Sapphire. If Kaitlyn had been a boy, this would have little to no meaning. But I had always been envious of all the pretty sapphires in the birthstone collection for girls, and I was really excited about being able to accessorize Kaitlyn with the sparkling blue stones. I like sapphires so much that my original engagement ring didn't even have a diamond as the center stone- it had a sapphire. The ring I wear now, and the one you see in the pictures of Kaitlyn, was a very generous upgrade from my sweet husband because he wanted people to know I am taken. But even in this ring, the diamond is flanked by two dark blue sapphires. Which, in a way, makes me love my ring even more.
       Alex's original wedding ring got lost somewhere over the mountains of California about 2 years ago. He flew in helicopters as a combat medic in the Army, and in part of his training they went to California to practice maneuvers and rescues. Alex had lost some weight since before we got married (he wore his wedding ring when he did a year-long tour in Iraq because I wanted everyone to know that he was engaged), so his ring never really fit him right. One day, they were flying with the doors open in the helicopter and Alex took his glove off and the ring slipped off his finger and flew out the door. He was really upset because he had worn that ring for two years and it represented so much to him.
      I was just glad he didn't go after it out the door.
      And I wasn't super upset because I had wanted him to get a ring that fit correctly anyways. So Alex got a new band to wear, and the now he calls it Kaitlyn's ring because its the one that she had on her little feet in the pictures we have.

      Anyways, this year my birthday was really difficult because I felt the void. I felt like I should have had more going on than we did. And I just felt this pit in my stomach begin to build with the doom of September so close and Kaitlyn's birthday coming up so soon.
      Alex comforted me by reminding me that it wasn't written for her to be here, but I still felt like I was in a funk all day.