Sometimes

I think about the things I've lived through, been through, and I can barely believe I've survived. I relive those moments again in my head with absolute clarity, and it feels like I am watching someone else live my memories. It can't be me. I couldn't have gone through something so horrific and still be alive. I'm not that strong. My memories seem like deception, but alas, they are true. Every single moment is true. Sometimes...I don't believe my own mind's recalling. How can I be here, when I was there? How can I have lived through that without losing my mind, my heart, my soul?

Keeps On Rolling

Ah, life. How unfair, yet healing it is that you continue on, regardless of the events within. I have wished you would stop countless times. I have wished you fast forward countless times. Yet, you ignore my wishes and steadily carry on, knowing better than I.

Steps have been taken and lost over these past few months. Mostly lost, but still, progress towards a little healing has been made. Unfelt, invisible, but still there in my days. My memories begin to hold not only intense pain, but also joy. I can sometimes envision his face without sobbing now, and the thought of his little nose and toes can bring a smile, when before there was only tears.

I carry my inked likeness of his tiny feet with intense passion and love, tenderly stroking the outlines of his baby feet daily. All of these things say "He was here." At this point, I can ask no more. Though there are so many moments that all I can choke out are pleas for his presence, there are now moments, amazingly, that I am able to acknowledge my gratefulness for his time with me.

Why?

Why not them instead of us? Why not her instead of me? Why not their baby instead of mine? How is it fair that they get 2, 3, 4, 5...and I can't even have just him? Why would you take Matthew away after we fought for him for so long, but give others beautiful "accidents". Why do I have to go through this, without the comfort of a child at home, or even children at home. Why did you have to take my first. I would have been happy with him as my only. Why would you make us go through so much, so, so much, and then rip him away. Why can't one good thing happen in my life, and not lose it. Why did you have to give me such an overwhelming desire, from such a young age, to be a mommy, but refuse me a living child. Why would you make me go through all that worry and fear with his heart defect and downs, then make everything wonderful again, only to rip him from my arms 5 days later.Why do so many, so many, get to have children they don't even want, and yet I can't have the only one I do want with every fiber of myself. Do I not deserve children? What did I do that was so horrible that I can't be a mom. Why must I suffer every day with constant thoughts of pregnant friends and mommy friends. Do I need to pray more? Do I not go to church enough? Is it because I cuss? I don't know. I know I'm not that great of a person, but did I really deserve this? Are my wrongs so great that my little boy and my husband had to suffer for them? I have never been good at anything in my life until I was going to be a mom. I finally felt like a person, instead of a lump of useless nothing, and I was going to pour my heart and soul into that little boy. He would have been raised to love you, to love his family, and to love himself. But now I'm left here, so desolate, confused, ripped apart, broken, and lost. Constantly plagued with pitied looks, having to respond to "how are you" with fake responses to avoid making others uncomfortable, and feeling like everyone has forgotten the one thing that gave my life meaning: Matthew. I had 6 months of pure ecstasy, after a life of pain and anger, and now I feel like I will lose myself in it. I just want to know why my little boy, when he was my world and my love, and everything to me. Why does my heart go on beating when his does not. Why do I have to finish life here on Earth when my place is with him. Why must I agonize through each day, and minute, and hour, without him. I just want to know, why?

Things

I miss shopping for my little boy. Strollers, bed sheets, pacifiers, clothes...I miss it all. Spent hours every day browsing every website I could think of, dreaming of Matthew and the use he would get out of the things I looked at. Now I am shopping for a lawn mower, a washer, and broken dreams.

The things I bought for him sit in the empty room that was meant for him, in the empty house he was to come home to, while Mommy's empty heart beats on.

2 Months

Happy 2 month birthday Matthew. I wish you were here with me every minute of every day.

Mommy put your footprints on her skin to show herself and others the footprints you left on her heart.

An angel, in the Book of Life, wrote down my baby's birth. 
Then quietly whispered as he closed the book, "Too beautiful for Earth."






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Better, Doesn't Mean Better

The last few days I've felt "better". A word I have heard countless times from friends and family. If better means not thinking about Matthew every second of each day, or being distracted for hours on end by a new game my husband and I are playing, or being able to sleep without crying first, then yes, I have been feeling better.

And I hate it.

I hate it so much. I miss the constant tears, the anguished thoughts, feelings of perpetual loneliness, the inability to function in daily life. I miss it all, because that's what Matthew meant to me. He meant everything. Every aspect of life, tiny and large, and without him, life shouldn't be able to go on. But it does. It keeps going. I can't stop the world from spinning, but in my heart, Matthew's death should have.

My grief is still incredibly great, but it is very slowly starting to not control my life. Very slowly. That scares me. When you have grief of this scale, it becomes all you know. I feel if I let go of it even the slightest bit, I will forget the intensity of love I have for my little boy. You don't recover from a loss this great, you re-learn life, you change, and you're never the same. The world looks different. Each moment looks different. You are different.

I think that is what scares me: I feel different, I act different, I think differently. My heart is harder, guarded now, and my compassion has dwindled.

Change. That's what it boils down too. So much change in so short a time. Not good, exciting change either, but hard, gut wrenching change. I've gone from young wife, to expectant mother, to mother of an absent child in less than a year. I used to have it all figured out. Now, I know nothing. When I finally was starting to understand and love life, it threw me a curveball. All I can do is hang on for the ride now, and hope that things get "better".

Today

Today, I should be 29 weeks pregnant.

Today, I should be larger than life with a belly that induces waddling.

Today, I should be feeling my little growing boy bounce off the walls of my womb.

Today, I should be a expectant mother, celebrating my first Mother's Day in a blissful state.

Instead...

Today, my son has been gone for 7 weeks.

Today, my belly contains only fat, and nothing to rejoice in.

Today, the phantom jumps of my son haunt me.

Today, I am the mother of a boy in heaven, celebrating Mother's Day in grief.



Today, I can only hope in the future. I can only wish that next year I will have our second child in my arms to help heal the pain I feel today. I can only bury myself into my husband and wait for the clouds to clear, and for the sun to peep through.

Today, I am a Mother, I am a wife, and I am broken. Today, tomorrow, and forever, I love you Matthew.