Don't Know Much

January 21, 2013                                                                              11:35 a.m

This pain is awful.  The hold that it takes on your heart is terrifying.  It threatens to shred the person you were and leave you with only a shell of what used to be.  To the outside world, time passes, and you appear whole.  But you are broken inside in a way you never knew was possible, seemingly beyond repair.  And you work every moment of every day to try to reassemble the parts of you.

The others carry on.  Life is light for them.  Happy moments are just that…happy. 

But it seems now, that your moments will no longer be 100% happy.  Maybe 50%.  Maybe on a “great day” 98%.  But either way, there is ALWAYS something missing.  Always something detracting from the honest to God, no holds barred happiness….

She is gone.

Oh my God, how unfair this all seems!  Why do we have to live a reality such as this?  Why do I have to wake up every day and remember that she is gone?  Why does my heart have to break over and over and over again, each and every day?

What did we do to deserve this?

Don’t answer that. 

I know that we did nothing.

I know that we just got dealt a really, really shitty hand, and now it is our job to survive it.

But there are days when I don’t want to survive it.  It is such gruesome work to wake up each day and walk through this life when one of your children is not here to hold your hand and walk with you.

I am not fighting the “healing” although I feel that is such an inappropriate word.  I am allowing myself to feel what I feel in each passing moment and recognize that they’re all part of the “process” (another silly word). 

I do smile.  I do laugh.  I do have fun. 

But I miss her while I am doing all of those.  Every time.

This coming Saturday, she would have been 15 months. 

There are so many things I would have discovered about her by now, had things been different.  I would know for sure by now what color her eyes would be.  I would know how her cry sounded.  How her laugh sounded.  What her smile looked like.  Whether or not she was a thumb/finger sucker like her mom. 

And it makes me mad because I am so sad that I only know what she looked like when she was sleeping.  I don’t know anything else.  I don’t know anything about my daughter. 

That is so hard to live with.