8 Months Out, and Only a Lifetime Yet to Go...

How can this be?  How can eight months have passed by already?  Then again, how can it only have been eight months?  Is time ever going to start making sense again?

Everybody around here has been commenting how cold and rainy the weather has been, and how they "can't believe it's June" (now July).  People were even calling it "June-uary" because it was so gross out.  But, I haven't really noticed it much at all, and if I have, I haven't really been surprised by the weather, because in my head, I am still kind of stuck mentally in October.

Eight months already.  Only eight months.

I have cried enough tears to create my own ocean of sorrow, yet I know there are many more to come.  I have dropped to my knees in despair more times than I can count, and curled up into a tiny ball in my closet trying so hard, over and over again in my head to make some sense of this awful reality.  Yet, an explanation, a reason, a cause, a "purpose", eludes me.

Eight months already.  Only eight months.

I miss our daughter greatly.  So much greater than words can express.  So much more than the distance between us right now.

There are days that are more "do-able" than others.  I wouldn't go so far to say that there are "good" days.  She crosses my mind every day, a million times a day.  Sometimes, I can think about her and look at her picture and then go about what I was doing, and then other times, I am brought down to the ground again, experiencing a grief like none other.  This is not natural.  This is not the way "it is supposed to be".  We are not "supposed" to have to only be able to love our children in our hearts and our minds.  We are "supposed" to be able to touch them, kiss them, bathe them, teach them, get irritated by them, remember why we love them as we do, and then do it all over again, day in and day out.

For eight months, I have been seeing Brynna grow up.  I have seen her smile, heard her cry, heard her laugh, watched her roll over, sit up, crawl, try to stand, drink from a bottle, try "real" food.  But I have seen it all in my head.  Only in my head.  And I have felt the hurt in my heart as I remember with each passing day that that is the only place I will see her.  Only in my head.  Forever in my heart.

Eight months already.  Only eight months.  And still a lifetime yet to go.