PILA Month day 20

Day 20 - a hobby of yours and how it changed since your loss.

oops maybe I should finish this here blog post instead of just having it scheduled with nothing in it...

I used to scrapbook. I love it. LoveD is more correct I guess. I started doing quicker versions of what I do when I was in high school and went on a cross country trip with my grandma. I had all these photos and the big idea to do a huge album with them and all the momentos I picked up along with way.

I never finished it.

Others did get finished however. An album for my charges I used to care for, various years of Zack's and my life together. Our wedding album.

I was doing pretty good at keeping up with the scrapbook of our daily lives until Grayson came along. I got a little sidetracked with his album that I wanted to be his first two years of life. I got about 9 months in and got a little sidetracked again. Our family album has not been touched since I was pregnant with G.

I went to craft night with some friends last night and realized as I worked on Grayson's album that I may be avoiding my albums. If I finish G's album I have Jaxon's and well at some point I have Jonathan's. That one is painful to remember. It is hard enough to look back at my blog and read what I was going through but to put it on paper (which takes WAY longer) and make it a hard copy, well, I just don't think I am ready.

Losing a child changes who you are. It changes your thinking and it changes you in ways you may never know until they pop up sometime later. Like this. Who knew it would affect my scrapbooking? But it has.

PILA Month day 13

Day 13 - a fictional book that is meaningful to you since your loss.

I picked up Jodi Picoult novels not long after we lost Jonathan. Some were harder to read than others. All of her stories are about "real" people and the choices they make in their lives. They have to choose between the best friend that accidentally killed their child or honoring the child that is gone. Or having another child to create a ready-made donor for your existing sick and dying child. Never easy choices. Never cut and dry.

I identified with them, though the stories were not the same because with Jonathan we had to choose. When we found out at 17 weeks that something was wrong with Jonathan and the next day what was wrong, we had to decide. To terminate or to carry. Everyone faced with choices of this nature think they have all the answers before the question is asked and then you get there and the answer is just not as clear cut as you once though it to be.

Groundhog Day... or 7 days to go

As the time falls through the hour glass I have been thinking about after. After Jonathan is born and its time to leave the hospital. When its time to let him go, and say goodbye. What happens then?

I have known since the beginning that the time would come, and while it seems like an eternity ago when we found out. It's also like yesterday. And the next day.

It's like Groundhog Day.

If you are not familiar with this Bill Murray movie its where this guy finds himself living the worst day of his life... over and over... and over again. Eventually he gets that he will keep living this day again and again so he might as well make the best of it.

Anyway, I digress. What do we do when we have had a baby and not been able to bring him home? Do we get a refund? There is this commercial on the radio right now for a fertility clinic that does this special en vitro fertilization process that guarantees you leave the hospital with a baby or your money back. That kills me. It is hysterical to me that someone thinks they can guarantee anything in life much less a child.

There are no guarantees in life. None. None that you will live to a ripe of age. None that you will live happily ever after. None that your child won't die before you.

I love that our society is so arrogant as to think that they deserve to have any such guarantee. They throw away everything they have as one time use and then expect other things to be completely permanent and without negotiation. As if it is possible to have it both ways.

I know that my heart will continue to break for many days and weeks and months and probably years to come. The hurt may never stop from what I have read and heard from others who have gone through the loss of a child. I won’t have the answers for that for a long time, if ever. I do know that the wound will eventually close up and cease to bleed.

And then I will think of all the things Jonathan will never do and how I will never hold him and that wound will bleed again. And again. And again.

Groundhog Day.