9.18.2015
I sit here, next to Alex, on the eve of what would have been Kaitlyn's second birthday. So much has happened in the last year, in the last two years, that it seems surreal.
Kiera is 11 months old today. I have been thinking for the last year that I had wished I had requested to wait just one additional hour when she was delivered so that the girls would have been exactly 13 months apart, but today I am grateful that I didn't. I'm grateful that today was Kiera's day, and tomorrow will be Kaitlyn's.
This year is so different from last year. Last year, all I was focused on was getting through Kaitlyn's birthday so that I could focus on my last month of pregnancy with Kiera. This year, I feel like time has slowed down and I can just breathe. Breathe into the loss, breathe into the grief.
I feel like, for the most part, I have done well separating the girls in my mind. By that, I mean that I don't mourn the loss of Kaitlyn every time Kiera hits a milestone. Then again, there are days that knock my breath away. It usually comes at the most unsuspecting time, but I can feel the air leave the room. Most of the time it's when I'm by myself, and I will just remember strange things, like the sound of the silence as she was lifted from my body, or the way that Alex helped me dry off after my first shower and how he lovingly patted my fresh wound dry.
We moved in May. God blessed us with the means to have a bigger home with room to expand our family again in the future. But today, I am reminded of our old house and how I cried over the nursery when we decided to leave. That was the only room, the only house, that will know the heart beats of both my babies. I remember watching Alex paint the accent wall in that room, and put together the rocker and the crib before he left to go to Afghanistan. I remember walking in on him after her we got home from the hospital, after all our family had taken everything from every other part of the house and put it in the nursery and shut the door so that we wouldn't have to see it the first thing as we walked in to our house baby-less. I remember so many days of sitting in that room and crying my heart out to God as I asked why, as I worked through so many issues and doubts and fears.
Grace has been a resounding theme over the last year. Every time someone asks me how many kids I have, or if Kiera is our first, I call on grace. It depends on the day how I answer. Sometimes, it is all I can do to not lash out at people who just don't understand that babies die. Life is fragile. Not too long ago, Kiera scared us by having some rapid breathing and we ended up in an ER down the street. In her explanation of what was going on, the doctor said, "Don't worry, your baby's not going to just stop breathing." It was all I could do not tell her that my first baby had died without warning, without reason. I had to breathe, and give grace.
Kaitlyn's urn still sits on my bedside. To be honest, I don't look at it often, and I think that is okay for me. I don't feel the need to stare at it everyday, or talk to it like she's here. Tomorrow will be different, but I know that my daughter is with Jesus and the remnants of her body are not her soul. I wrote once about how separation from God is essentially death, and how we are all born dead until we decide to walk with Jesus. I go back to that thought quite often and remind myself that Kaitlyn isn't gone, or even really dead in the sense of that word. "For the wages of sin is death..." The cost of our sin is death, separation from God. And if separation from God is death, than life is found in His presence.
And for this, as a closing thought, on the eve of my precious daughter's second birthday, I am again reminded of the glory of the Word and how it is a living, breathing thing. The Easter story means something completely different than it use to on the other side of infant death. In the story, when the women went to the tomb to dress Jesus' body in oils they found the stone rolls away and his body gone. It was then that the angels that had appeared at the tomb asked them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5)
That, my friends, is the freedom in Christ. Because through His grace and mercy, Kaitlyn truly lives.
