2 months.

"If ever there is a tomorrow when we're not together, there is something you must always remember: you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think, but the most important thing is, even if we're apart, I'll always be with you."

--Winnie the Pooh [A.A. Milne]

Time hasn't made any sense to me since the moment your heart stopped beating and mine continued. 

Two months ago today.

 

I suppose, at least. 

I'm at a weird mental place where, just like when you have a new baby and do not know when to start telling people they are 5 months old versus 19 weeks, I'm not really sure if now is the time by months.  But to think of months as in plural even catches vomit in my throat. 

 

Today you have been gone 8 weeks and 5 days.

But 2 months on the 29th. 

Either way, two months without you and it feels like an entire lifetime. 

 

This week has been my worst.  The missing you is horrific.  The other grief things--they haven't come and I'm not sure that they will.  After all, I grieved so hard and so long for you before now. 

I want to rest as I know you are resting. 

But my actual soul is in desperate pain.

 

I went to the Dr. this week, trying to take care of myself.  That feels foreign and strange and selfish.  My back has been hurting so bad for weeks and other very hormonal things were happening. 

All in all, there is nothing to be found.  Nothing except shoulders that are used to bearing your weight and a body that is shifting from the lack thereof.  Nothing but empty arms with an ache so big nothing could fill it.  Nothing but an actual hole through my heart where your physical-ness used to fit. 

It feels as if I'm weaning a newborn baby from nursing or dare I compare this to what a mother may feel like when she leaves the hospital after delivering a stillborn babe; womb and heart and arms empty.  Though you were outside of my body for five years, you never left me.  And your vacancy has consumed my entire physical being. 

 

My back throbs out like a heartbeat, pulsing low and deep. 

I long for yours next to mine.  It's sickening.

Each night I lay and feel it and I can't help but curse the grief that has overtaken me.  And there's nothing I can do to stop it.  As always, a person must make way for grief. 

 

It's an ocean of turmoil and turbulence with triggers that are both inevitable and unpredictable.  And it's also back pain that comes from nowhere in the dead of night; a vivid and dark reminder of your absence in the very next room.  What the world sees as a mom who is 'coping' really well, my own body tells me otherwise.  Grief reminds me that he'll show up wherever he can get his hands on me. 

...

I went to the cemetery alone last night.  That's not something I usually do because quite honestly, I feel you with me; close-- so close, all the time.  But last night I screamed and cried and groaned with such force that my body was wracked with agony afterwards.

 

None of this feels real.  And yet it so is.

Some days it feels like none of it happened at all.  And it so did.

This is a horrible nightmare to have to wake up to every single day.

Every single day for the rest of my life...without you. 

 

But as always, the confliction is my joy FOR you.  My love and hope and selflessness FOR you, my baby.  For the race you ran.  And the reward you received.

Well done, my girl.  Well done, indeed.

---

I miss so much our morning routine; your bright eyes, and dried-spit mouth.

I miss so much your soft feet and I miss pausing throughout my day just to unzip your jammies to  free them so I could smell and you could giggle.

I miss the pauses in general; the hour it took to feed you 6 ounces just to turn around and do it again another hour later.  The quiet moments with you that were ours alone.  I miss it so much.

 

I miss talking baby talk and watching you close your eyes and smile with your big tongue out.

I miss your grunting.

And though it's sad and was so unfair, I miss your jerking limbs.  Your arms that tapped strong since you were a new baby and your legs that were bendy and long, draped across me and kicking. 

 

I miss you with Nora and I miss you with Braden. (Oh how they miss you too.)

I miss Heidi laying beside you in your bouncer on your bad days where seizures were unending and she knew.  I miss the cat batting at your kicking, jerking feet, thinking that you were playing [and you laughing because I think you maybe were.]

I miss your car seat and miss having to adjust the rearview mirror to check to see that your head hasn't fallen forward. 

 

I very much miss our routine. 

Doing your meds, calling your nurses, hospice visits, tube changes. 

Oh I miss it all.

 

I miss standing outside of the French doors to your bedroom and watching you sleep under your perfect weighted blanket. 

I miss you with your 'da.' 

I miss you with Maggie and on Nanny's bed. 

I miss Aunt Jeni walking in and saying "Hi bebeeee." or Uncle Jake saying, "Hi Mabes," in only the ways that they can. 

 

Sometimes I miss you so terribly I think I might die myself. 

But I don't die baby.

I am very much alive here without you. 

...

Nora's birthday is coming in a few days.  My heart breaks for hers that she is turning 9 without you.  Just how can it be?  My mind cannot make sense of it. 

 

We are leaving to go on vacation next week.  I am so looking

 forward to taking Nora and Braden to the places that we took you last year.  That was the very best week the three of us ever shared together!  I hope to make new memories too; the kind that will enrich and grow our family in ways that will make us strong together.

 

  But learning to go forward in life; learning how to go out into a world that you are no longer living in and do those things-oh, that is so hard. 

...

As I knew I would, I am hearing so many cliche' sayings about life and death and time and healing and just about everything in the world that people think they should say to make a grieving person feel better.  And as a mom who is truly living with grief and mourning while also feeling true joy, all I can say on this two month anniversary of Heaven is this:

 

Time does not heal all wounds and in my opinion, it should not. 

Time is nothing in comparison to the love I have for you or the love we share[d] while you were alive with me.  Time means absolutely nothing now and it meant very little even then.  I learned to outlive time by my excessive love for you.  I learned to squeeze a lifetime of joy and abundance into a very 'short' amount of time by the world's standard of measurement.  Time now just means that I got to wake up today and feel sad that so much of it has passed since holding, or smelling you.  It means that I now get to count down to the next hard day that will make me incredibly sad to be without you again.  But it doesn't take away from the joy I have from mothering you, knowing you, loving you, having you. 

 

Time is not a thief of those very critical things. 

 

The more time that passes, the more I miss you-for sure. 

The more time that passes the harder this is-absolutely.

But that's because I shared my entire life; my every detail with you ALL THE TIME when you were alive. 

And I long so deeply for the day when time is nothing more than a blink because forever will be our true reality.  Right now, eternity feels like an eternity away and that seems scary and hard and unfair. 

 

Today, I feel like I want to spend a lot of time in bed, giving in to the deep need to just let myself ache for you.  Which I do.  I ache and I long and when I need to, I really do give in.

 

The sorrow is so unbearable at times, it just honestly overtakes me.  All of us, actually. 

My entire being literally breaks and reemerges differently at the memories that flood my mind without permission.  Because truly, if I had my way, I would throw up a wall and not dive into them deeper than I feel I can handle.  But that isn't how this works.  I still have no control. 

 

The God of this journey has always been and will always be in the lead. 

In your life, in your death, in the morning, in the night, in the hurt, in the joy. 

It's both the most intimate and most irritating thing I've ever encountered.

 

Oh baby, I sure miss you.

I'm a jumbled mess of unrest and unthinking. 

You are sure everywhere...and yet you are not. 

My heart yearns for you, my girl. 

I love you, baby.