Happy New Year

Sundown last night marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.  It’s a happy holiday, one spent with loved ones and family.   We eat apples and honey to symbolize a sweet new year.  We have large meals and celebrate the start of a new year.  We rejoice.

This would have been Allie’s first Rosh Hashanah.  She would be too young for the apples, but maybe I would have let her taste the honey from my fingers.  I will never know.  I was so excited to tell my aunt and uncle and cousins last year that I was newly pregnant.  Now I face them, some for the first time since my baby shower, with no baby.  It’s so sad.  And I suppose it always will be.

We saw our grief counselor on Monday and it was a good session.  She is visibly pregnant now, but that did not bother me at all.  If anything, I was relieved to know she was still pregnant.  I will be more relieved when I hear that she had a healthy baby as unfortunately, pregnancies to me now do not mean healthy babies at the end.  We talked about my feelings of failure and how that has, in a way, consumed me these past few months.  I feel like my body failed me, even though I know that is not true. I feel like my body failed Gary, too, and I keep expecting him to be upset with me. But he is not angry at me as he knows I did not do anything wrong.  I think it’s time to stop beating myself up, and yet I am unsure how.  I so desperately want to get pregnant again, but I worry that if I keep mentally berating myself, it will be no good for the baby or me.  So it’s really time to try to be nicer to myself.  

Per the counselor, I now have notes up all over the house.  “I am pretty” is in the master bedroom, along with “I am a mother”.  “I am a good friend” is in the kitchen, next to “I am a loving wife”.  It’s kinda nice.   Gary has taken to leaving me little notes in my lunch box or my purse or my wallet reminding me how much he loves me.  Sooner or later, it has to get through, right?  I did not nothing wrong.  Allie’s death is not my fault. I can still love and be loved. I am a mom.

A reminder note from Gary

On Tuesday, I got home from work to the nicest card. We got so many cards after Allie died and each one meant so much to us. In fact, we saved them all in the Memory Box with Allie’s things. This card was no different.  It was from a friend in college who was in my sorority with me. We were not super close, but we certainly knew each other enough and were friendly.  She stumbled across my blog on Facebook and wanted to reach out to me.  It was so thoughtful and so beautiful and here we are, 5 months later, and people are still thinking of us and remembering our daughter. It warms me from the inside out.

On Saturday, Gary and I are leaving for Memphis.  He had to be there for work on Monday and Tuesday so we decided to fly down a few days early and make a weekend getaway out of it.  We already have tickets to Graceland and plan on visiting the Civil Rights Museum, too.  We want to go to one of the legendary recording studios as well. We want to eat ribs and BBQ and fried chicken.  We are going to cram as much into 48 hours as we can!  I am so looking forward to it! 

 
I love travelling with Gary and exploring different cities with him.  I love that we are taking advantage of the “free” time we have now and making as many plans as possible.   I love that I can hope that next year this time, we are not able to travel as we will have a baby either on the way or already here.     

I want to make sure to make this a happy new year, indeed.  So I am off from work today, at home, reflecting on this past year.  I will have extra apples and honey tonight as I did last night.  I want far less bitter and much more sweet.  I really do not think that is asking for too much!  In fact, I know it's not!!