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
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