Learning

I started writing Jenna's updates on CarePages a year ago today.

:*(

I remember accidentally stumbling upon CarePages after I opened a blogger account. I was originally going to use a blog to update everyone, but blogger seemed so complicated and I didn't have the time or energy to figure it all out. CarePages was wonderful... it helped keep everyone updated and helped us to avoid answering all the same questions fifty million times. And it was easy to use!

I look back now and wish I could go travel back in time, if even for a moment. I want that faith back, and that hope that everything WILL be alright. I never entertained her actually dying while she was in the NICU. EVER. I just didn't let myself go there. Not until I saw her suffering...

I look back now and *wonder* how I couldn't see it... how I could still hope against all hope? Blindly, naively hope... and I hated when the doctors would call her 'sick' because we didn't even know WHAT the problem was, or what 'syndrome' she actually had - if any. That drove me crazy. I didn't want to see her as sick. She was perfect to me.

Sometimes I see her little brother's eyes trail off behind me, as if he is gazing at something. Someone. And I wonder if it's her?

Tell her that I love her, I'll whisper in his ear.

I think sometimes he can pick up on my broken heart, so I try to hide it, force it away and pretend that I am okay. A big part of my heart is okay, but there is that part that was given to Jenna. That part is aching. And the aching just plain hurts. I miss my baby girl.

:::

I have been at home for a week now, away from everything to help my body heal. I wonder when I return to the normal swing of things what expectations the world has for me now? A couple of weeks after Jenna died I was expected to be 'moving on'... a couple of months passed and the world expected me to be okay around other babies and pregnancy. Six months afterwards, I was expected to be past the guilt, crying and anger of Jenna's death... a year and a rainbow baby later I fear the expectations are higher than I could ever reach.

I have learned to live with my daughter's death. But then there are days like yesterday and the paperwork for Joseph's first pedi appointment rehashed a painful reality.

"Have any siblings died?" Ummm.... actually yes. I wish I could be that person next to me filling the form out and answering "Of course not! That doesn't happen anymore, DOES IT!?"

But this is my reality and I am learning... not only to accept my daughter's death but embrace life afterwards. {keyword: learning}