Need to SEE You Again...

June 15, 2012                                                                                3:18 p.m

Dear Brynna,

I am so scared.  I am walking tomorrow in the Rock and Walk, and I am so very scared.  It is a walk to remember you and so many other babies that were taken from their parents.  I don’t know what to expect because I have never had to participate in a walk like this, and I don’t want to have to start. 

I will be walking with your Daddy, and your brothers, and some other people that have continued to show their love and support to our family.  But I am scared.  And I miss you.

And I wish so badly that you were just here with us, so we wouldn’t even have to know that a walk like this exists.

I have been so sad the last couple days.  Missing you and praying to see you in my dreams.  I went into your room yesterday, and picked up the froggy Daddy made me for Mother’s Day, and I rocked it.  I closed my eyes again and I rocked it, swaying back and forth, holding it trying to remember what it was like to hold you. 

I didn’t get nearly enough time to hold you.  I just want one more minute.  Daddy says even if I had “one more minute” of course it would never be enough.  And I know that, but I still want it.  Just one more minute.

I was so scared last night as I sobbed to your Daddy and admitted something that brings me so very much shame and sadness.  Sometimes, I told him, I am having a hard time seeing your face.  I can see you most of the time, but every once in a while, when I close my eyes, my mind is blank.   

What kind of a mother can’t see her baby’s face when she closes her eyes?!  What kind of a horrible, fickle mother, can’t see her daughter’s face??  It is horrible, Brynn.  It’s horrible to have had just 6 days with you.  It wasn’t enough time.  I didn’t have time to memorize every last little bit of you.  I wasn’t brave enough to take away all the blankets after you passed away, and force myself to study you.  Force myself to look at every last inch of you without all of the tubes and lines, and engrave your perfect body in my mind.  If I had it to do over again, I would try harder to be brave.  I am so sorry. 

I need just one more minute.  Please, just one more minute.  Oh God, please just give me another moment with my perfect baby girl.  Allow me to see her so that I can etch her memory in my brain.  Please.   Please.  Oh, Lord, please let me have one more moment in time, if only in my dreams to see my sweet baby girl. Please….

Daddy told me he’d had exactly the same thoughts last week and was feeling exactly the same way.  Funny, how even when we feel so alone as individuals, we are still reminded over and over again that we have each other.  We have each other to trust.  We can allow each other to be the most vulnerable, raw versions of ourselves with, and know it’s safe.  There will be no judgment.  No, “you should” or “you shouldn’t”.  Just acceptance and love.  And complete and total understanding.

I don’t know how to survive this pain, baby girl.  I don’t know how to “work through”, “move past”, or “go ahead” in this life. 

I need to SEE you.

As I am writing this to you, the Steven Curtis Chapman song, SEE, keeps playing over and over in my head. 

Maybe, instead, for just a moment, I need to listen…  and maybe then I will SEE.

Love,

Momma