Tuesday, March 26, 2013

17 months old.

March 26, 2013
Dear Brynna,

17 months ago today, you were born.  I can’t believe it!  I can’t believe that what should have been one of the happiest days of our life, turned out to be the starting line in our journey through this life without you.  How has one year and five months passed since that day? 
I sure would love to turn back time.
I sure would love a second chance at that day.
What I would give to try again…
To insist they find a way to bring you into this world without using Cytotec or Pitocin.  How different our lives would likely be if I had only known.  If I had only really known what the possibilities were… What the outcome could be…
I’m still so very sorry, Brynn.  I am so sorry that I couldn’t protect you.  That is something I will wrestle with for the rest of my life.  The fact that I am your mother and I could not save you simply undoes me. 
I’m limping my way through this life without you.  Some days I seem to walk as I used to, but then I trip over a memory of what might have been, and I fall.  Some days I get back up pretty quickly, dusting off the sorrow, but other days I stay down. 
I just stay down.  Because some days, it’s still too heavy to stand.
We would have had a lot of fun, you and I.  Do you know that?  You and me, the only girls in a house full of boys.  :o)  We would be amazing for each other because we would be able to enjoy Daddy and your brothers, and take part in all of their amazing, active chaos, but then we could have slipped off for a quiet day getting pedicures, or going out to lunch and talking.  I could have taught you how to ride a horse, how to French braid your hair, how to cook dinners that bring people running from the hills to eat.  Don’t get me wrong, I would have taught you to ski, wakeboard, play tennis and baseball, and all the other things you showed interest in, just as we do for the boys, but it would have been just a little bit different because you and I would have had “that something special” in common in the same way the boys and Daddy do. 
There’s just something special about a mother’s relationship with her daughter.
Can I confess something to you?  I am terrified that as the boys grow, they will find their life partners and, in a sense, forget their relationship with me, their momma.
So many people say, “A son is a son ‘til he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter the rest of her life.”  Does this mean I will be alone?  I know your brothers will love me forever, but will they be the ones to call just to “check in” and say “hi mom, how are you doing? Do you need anything?”  Silly to worry about, huh?  But this is my life now.  Sad about my 17 month old little girl that is not here to grow into my 37 year old little girl…
I miss you Brynna.  I love you so much, and I am incomplete without you.  That’s just the way it is.  The way it’s going to be.
Please don’t worry that I still feel sad.  Don’t worry that I won’t be okay.  Because I will.  I will feel sad, to a very certain degree, for the rest of my life on this earth, but at the same time, I will be “okay”.
I will.
I recognize that the boys and Daddy need me.  I recognize that I need me.  So, I will be “okay”.  I will keep trying to get up in the morning, vowing to face the day with some semblance of the woman I “used to be”.   The happy, more or less, “glass half-full” woman I used to be.  I will keep trying.
My goodness, my sweet girl, how incredibly deep my love is for you!  So deep that even death can’t extinguish it.  Not even a little bit.
I love you so very much greater than the distance between us right now.  Happy 17 month birthday, Beautiful!
Love,
Momma

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