2 Weeks Into Year 2

November 15, 2012                                                                                     8:40 a.m

Dear Brynna,

Well, here we are 2 weeks into year 2 of being without you.  I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that over a year has gone by already.  Daddy and I miss you like we did the day you left.  The pain of losing you is still sharp and heartbreaking.

We got through your birthday, and the boys’ fall festival at school.  We got through going to the pumpkin patch and trick or treating on Halloween.  We got through Halloween night and the early morning of November 1^st, watching a candle burn in honor of you, our sweet girl.  We got through November 12^th, the anniversary of your funeral. 

How?

I’m not entirely sure.  Maybe because we are still functioning, in part, on auto-pilot.  We have learned that fighting the passage of time and willing it to stop, is futile and just leaves our bodies, minds and hearts more exhausted.

But maybe we got through it because we are healing just a tiny bit.  I hesitate to use that word…”healing.”  Maybe “changing” is better…  Maybe we are changing just a little bit.

I am very protective of you, Brynna.  Protective of your life, and of your memory. I talk about you to anybody that will listen (and probably to people who don’t necessarily want to listen).  I feel like if I don’t speak up for you, who will? 

I talk about missing you.  I talk about the dreams your Daddy and I had for you.  I wonder out loud about the girl and woman you would have been.  I talk about what it feels like to be a parent lost without their baby.  I talk about loving you.  I talk about you loving us.  I talk about you. 

I miss you more than can be explained. 

And at the same time, I am feeling a slight change.  Not in missing you, but in how I manage it.

I see myself carrying my love for you and my heartbreak in being without you at the same time I am carrying my love for the life we have here on Earth.  The two are by no means in balance, but I feel a shift in that direction.

I have known for a long time that this is how it is going to be.  The Brynna shaped hole in my heart will never be filled by anyone or anything else.  It will be there always for you, and for you alone.  I do not need to “heal it” or “fill it” or even “ignore it”.  It just is.

I remember what I have said all along, “it hurts this much because we love her this much”.

Oh how I love you, sweet girl.  I love you greater than the distance between us right now, and I love you forever and then one day after that.

Please continue to come to me as you have been.  Fly free, but also continue to let me know you’re there somewhere on the wind.  Just a whisper away.  I feel myself standing a bit more steadily, but I am not strong enough just yet, and I need you. 

Is that selfish?  Does that somehow tether you?  Oh, how I hope not.  I hope my broken heart is not a burden to you where you are. 

It hurts this much because I love you this much.

I love you, Brynn.

Love,

Momma